Dear █████,

I don't know why I'm writing this out. There's one very obvious truth to this whole mess that I realized pretty early on. You aren't here. You just... aren't. You aren't you, and I don't know if the you that exists here really... exists here. You're dead, for all I know. Died, or unpersoned, or something, after you fled the underground and broke whatever barrier you had.

I'm saying this to say that... it's not like you're ever going to read this letter. It's not like the you that should be here is ever going to read it, either. It's not like I can find you, or him. Believe me. I already tried. I went to Mom and Dad and it was just like every other time. All the other times. They don't care. They don't see me. I can't do anything here, anything that lasts, unless I really, really try. And it's getting harder and harder to do that. But there is one big exception, though. And that's, uh, kind of why I'm writing this out.

We won, man. We actually won. The Godmodder's dead. Crusher48 — you wouldn't know him, I mean, you wouldn't know anyone, would you? — injected himself with the unholy power of Chuck Norris stims or something and then he roundhouse kicked the Godmodder into oblivion. No one knows where he went. No one could see, no one could tell. We all got his gear, he yelled at us like the baby that I knew he was, and then... nothing. He ragequit. He actually ragequit.

Uh, my share of the loot, let's see. While I'm writing this we're all still on the generic server just taking in the victory, dancing around, building whatever. That huge dragon, the Secret, left a while ago, and all the entities we've been spawning have been kinda filtering out. But my loot. I got... Huh. That's really weird. "Godmodder477's Left Arm?" I didn't even know you could get an actual player's arm. That's some bizarre plugin. I gotta go talk to TT2000 about it or something, because wow. Wild! Also some random enchanted Diamond Helmet that's got -1 on everything, of course. No, not -I. -1.

It just feels... I don't know, this is the realest anything's ever felt here, even though it's very clearly so UNreal that it stretches all possible imaginations, simultaneously, you know? (You wouldn't know, I mean, you wouldn't know anything, would you?) But, like... Of course back home there's no possible way anyone could hop on Minecraft and fight the second-closest approximation to God I've ever seen and be able to jump into the REAL Aperture Science over and over again and travel to the gaps between dimensions and all sorts of crazy shit. But here, it's just... it's on a whole other level. It really feels like I can do anything. Like what I do here can last. And all these players, all these people, they all get me! They all see me! They all know I'm here!

It's like... These words, these actions, these games I'm playing. They feel like the proof that I'm here. The proof that I'm a person, that's existing, even though I'm not where you are, or where Matt is, or where Mom and Dad are, or anything. Maybe they'll last long after I'm gone.

We're all celebrating over here, so... I guess I'll write you another letter later. Though, you know. It's not like you can really see it. But I can hope against hope, can't I? Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, my thoughts and actions can become slightly less fake. I dunno.

Stay tuned,
Adam
9/1/13

Dear █████,

Hey. It's me, again. Thought of some more questions you could ask me when I get back. Maybe we can compare these, see how things diverged, if things diverged, I guess. Let's see, I had a whole list set up. Alright. I figure you'll ask something like "who's the president?" And I'd say it's still Obama. That really hasn't changed. He got elected in '08, he got re-elected in '12. That's, like. That's old news, I guess. There's probably something to be said there about how even though me landing here has affected so much, the world at large still turns the same. Like. No one in Washington D.C. cares about me. There's not gonna be a law in Congress made about me. There was only one time people were, like, looking for me, but...

...I guess. I just realized. A question you might ask. Would be, like. "Who was looking for you?" Because I know I'd let slip that someone was on accident when I get back and then you'd be all who was it and I'd do that thing where I'm trying to hold it back but I have that half-smiling face that I do when I'm hiding something and you'd prod and poke and then I'd have to tell you. So. I'll write it out here. It'll take me a while, I guess, because I don't especially enjoy talking about it, but...

Okay, I landed in Manhattan. Somewhere thereabouts. And it took me a few days to find my way back home, and those were easily the worst days of my life, thus far, bar none. It sucked. I was lost, I was confused, I couldn't get those goddamn glasses off of my head, and I couldn't do anything about it. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been. 'Cause, you know. No one could see me, no one could interact me. For a while nothing could even touch me. Cars would go right through me; people would go right through me. I didn't need to eat, I didn't need to sleep. Felt like I barely needed to breathe. It was like existence was trying to catch up to me being there at all.

And sometimes I would notice things flicker in the corner of my eyes. And I'd look and I'd feel like the world was just a little bit different than how it was before. I mean, everything was a lot different than how it was before. Jumping between... is "art styles" really the right word that I would use? Is that how I'd describe it? I guess that's how I'd describe it. Sometimes things would be monochrome, barely even moving. Sometimes it would be like I was in a movie, a thirty frames per second movie. And every frame there'd be a different painting that made up my field of view. Sometimes everything would just be blocks of color, horribly drawn, barely holding anything together. Sometimes everything cut out entirely and I'd be in a totally white expanse, and the only thing I could see would be a haze of... rainbow? Rainbow. Just barely, at the edge of my vision.

So I ran a lot, throughout the city, trying to find my way back. I barely even know how I managed it. But while I was running through, I remember being chased. Everything was a blur at that time, honestly. Felt like I needed to vomit constantly from how often things would change, but I had nothing in my stomach. I barely existed, honestly, what the hell could I have done? So I just had to keep going. I never got tired, but I never got stronger. I was just stuck, constantly running. So, yeah, I was being chased. I remember. Some military group was storming through the grid of the city, with these cubic black guns aimed wherever they were looking.

And I remember being confused because no matter how much my ass-backwards existence tunneled around me, they never changed. It was like they were anchored perfectly into reality, just stuck there, always walking forward, always knowing the correct path. I won't lie. Just like everything else I went through in those days, it terrified me. Not like there was anything I could have done back then. I didn't know I had Far Lands powers. I didn't know I had anything special. I was just some kid stuck somewhere I didn't know.

I still am. But it's easier now.

Eventually... Eventually I got cornered by them. I was running through and then I realized the soldiers were on all sides of me, running right for me, and there was nowhere I could go. So I froze up. I never knew it was possible for someone to freeze up like that. Like, full-blown deer in the headlights, all that stuff. But it actually happened. Swear to God. And they all converged on me, and I could see them clearly for the first time. I realized that what I thought was one group of soldiers was... actually two. The first looked like a stereotypical American army unit, but... there was something indeterminately different about them. Darker uniforms? Different patterning? Their weaponry was definitely higher-tech than anything I'd ever seen. But the larger group by far was totally different from anything I'd ever seen on Earth. All black, holographic visors, nameplates in glyphs in some language I didn't recognize. Floating crystals hanging around their belts, energy crackling in their guns.

The two groups were talking all around me, talking about me, and the more I stood there, the more I realized a fundamental truth. None of them could see me. None of them knew I was there. They resisted whatever interference was screwing with this place, but they still couldn't see me. So I tried to walk through them. Except I couldn't. I actually felt the soldier I tried to walk through this time. And he felt me. And he looked down at me and I saw his mouth open in shock and what I can only assume was some weird existential horror, and his entire body recoiled and he reached for his gun, and then I backed off and fell on the ground and as abruptly as he started to move he stopped dead in his tracks. And all the soldiers around him were like "what are you doing" and he had no response. He just said that he swore he saw someone, for a brief instant, and that then they were gone.

All the soldiers were on high alert after that. Paranoid as hell, I'm sure. Looking around, scanning things with their rifles, shooting out beams of energy every which way. I noticed, only then, that none of the civilians paid them any mind either. They didn't just, like, walk through the soldiers or anything. They would just walk around them. Even though they couldn't see them. Like they instinctually knew, "hey, you're gonna hit something, don't do it."

So I remember thinking, like. What if I was to make someone hit them. Now that I could pretty clearly actually touch people. I tried it with other objects first. I could actually touch a trash can (though I really didn't feel like it). Lean on a traffic light. Sit on a car. So I ran over to some random person who was walking on the same sidewalk as an entire fleet of these soldiers, and I grabbed him. And I'll never forget the way his entire body shuddered, like all his nerves had been dunked in ice, and he looked around wildly and then down at me, and then I pushed as hard as I could and he slammed right into one of those soldiers.

...

As soon as they made contact the entire environment lurched and bubbled and frothed around me, in a way that it never had before. The sky boiled and sizzled onto the earth, the skyscrapers and buildings and people jumped into the air and shifted to the side and duplicated and multiplied and I could see them at all points in times at once. The ground molted into swiss cheese and I could hear the whirring, clicking sounds of a computer working overtime, echoing into the horizon. That same rainbow I saw at the edge of my vision overtook everything, sharpening and distorting into a neon dystopia.

And then I blinked. And everything was gone. And that guy. The guy that I pushed. He was gone, too. So was the soldier. That guy was walking with someone who I assumed was his wife? They both had matching rings, they were talking together, hand in hand. She was walking alone now. She didn't have a ring. She had different clothes. I blinked again. She stayed the same. I blinked again. She was about to run into a soldier, but she changed course and walked around him.

I ran out of the city and I never touched anyone else.

...You know. Just in case you were curious. That's. One of my many stories. I should probably call it here. And burn this letter.

Stay tuned,
Adam
1/13/13

Dear █████,

Do you believe in God? Sorry if that's a dumb question. I know we were debating it before I left. Mom and Dad were always so insistent on it that it was just... suffocating, I know. And I could see us really just growing away from the church. I could feel it happening. I want to say we were better without it, because, I mean, I think we were. I think we would have been. I've had time to reflect on it now, time to see what's being going on, and stuff. But like. There's just so much stuff they tried to teach us that now I see was just... not good? At all?

It doesn't really matter much anymore, though. Because now I know God is real. And I know that everyone else has got it wrong.

I've been trying to do a bit of research on it, and I've mostly come up empty-handed. It turns out that even in this obviously fake reality where nothing is as it should be, people still aren't really convinced that there's some new world order writing and rewriting everything and shifting and destroying whatever semblance of order you thought you had. But I'm not stupid, okay? And I'm not crazy. I can see through it. I catch glimpses of stuff, and it's like, how can that not be important?

You know how when you close your eyes you can see that fuzz in there, those constantly moving patterns? Systems and matrices of dots in faint neon colors? Afterimages of bright lights that rubbed and bled into your retinas? A sea of plasma hazily floating upwards? Recently there's a set of shapes I constantly see in them. I studied them a lot, and drew them a bunch. One of them's a cube. Pretty clear. One's a triangular prism of sorts? But the base isn't a rectangle, it's also a triangle. Then there's other, similarly three-dimensional polygons. In one, every face is a pentagon. On the other two, every base is a triangle. One's got a lot more sides than the other, though.

So I did some digging. Turns out if you lay all those shapes on top of each other, and you arrange them in tune with a set of thirteen circles — there's a real specific way you have to do it, too, like, one set of circles on each outer point of the cube, another set of circles within, and another circle at the exact center — you get this crazy mystical shape. And it's called Metatron's Cube.

Metatron. I did digging on that name, too. Supposedly he's the voice of God. The recording angel. A force in Heaven so powerful that it made some people think there were two gods, if I'm to believe whatever esoteric texts Wikipedia cited. I'm reasonably confident that the God we grew up believing in doesn't exist. At the very least, not in the form that we were taught. Whatever force threw me down into here, whatever heavenly thundering voice shouted upon me in a language I'd never heard but perfectly understood... that wasn't the Jesus Christ that died for my sins.

I can see a lot of parallels between what I remember from that blinding white garden and a bunch of religions. The flaming wings, too many arms, the recurring three-s, that geometry. The sacred geometry. Whatever I encountered, whatever was responsible for all of this, the reason I'm here... I don't think it's just the voice of God. I think it's the voice of every god.

I think it's Metatron.

Stay tuned,
Adam
4/2/13

* * * * * *

Dear █████,

You need to play FEZ. Like. You really, REALLY need to play FEZ.

Stay tuned,
Adam
7/31/13

Dear █████,

You know how in history class they'd always tell us history was split into ages? (You would know, you always paid attention in class, I mean, we both did, you don't become a straight-A student by slacking off.) Of course there was the Stone Age, where humanity was just starting out. When we were making stone tools and fire and painting on cave walls. And there were the Bronze and Iron Ages, which is, like, when you know stuff is really getting real. History is advancing, actually writing itself.

And there's that concept of the Golden Age too, which I get is a lot more metaphorical than the literal three-age system I just talked about, but still. That idea of a time period where everything is as perfect as you could reasonably get it. Where everything's efficient, where everything works, when everyone's making their best work. That Golden Age of peace and prosperity. There's the Ice Age, which, as we all know, is the greatest set of movies to ever exist, besides probably the Transformers movies. It just makes me wonder. What the hell am I going through? What are you going through? With this whole modern society, with everything turning on its end. Everyone's getting so connected, technology's growing crazier with every passing day. And now there's existences beyond the one that any history book thought was possible, and it feels like I'm the only person that knows about it. The only person who's been able to write about it. The only person with the will to act on it.

It really, really does make me wonder. When this is all said and done, when I come back, when the Godmodder is destroyed, and when I have nothing but amazing stories to tell you. What will the history books say? What will people call this whole ordeal that we have the unfortunately dubious honor of being stuck in?

What are we living in the age of?

Stay tuned,
Adam
6/1/13

Dear Jeff,

Hey. It's your brother. I know you'll never read this. It's not like anyone I write these letters to will ever read them. And I know I keep saying that a lot. It's something I do. I just talk myself into circles, running around in them, like a hamster or something. It's just, me writing to an imaginary you. The you I think exists. Even though I've never known you, and the you I've really known is a million billion miles away, somewhere I can never reach him, you're... Ugh. This feels so dumb to write out. You're not necessarily dead?

I mean, it's true! It's true, technically, really. GLaDOS, She, was... kind of a pathological liar? Or not even that, more like, really stubborn. She clung to this certain view of the world and was absolutely incapable of viewing it in a different way. She just wouldn't accept it. She wouldn't accept anything that She couldn't test Herself, that She couldn't prove. Deep down She was scared about being wrong. She basically told me as much. So... When She said that you were dead... I'm not really totally inclined to believe Her?

I'm more inclined to believe that computer terminal that said you were missing or... Or. I mean. I know what it said, like, the other thing it said, but I really don't want to believe that part? It's just easier to accept it when I know it's in some crevice that She'd probably have a hard time reaching and screwing around with, you know? It's like, there's some glimmer of hope. The possibility that you're there. And I really don't want to give up on that hope yet. I need to hope against hope.

I'm just saying this to say to the universe, or... M, or whoever controls it, that if you're really out there, could you just, I dunno, give me a sign? Give me something? Anything? I know it's really cliche, but you're the only piece of family I've got here that I'm actually interested in reconnecting with. My parents are just... I mean... I could. But I really don't want to. It's you I need to see.

Stay tuned,
Adam
4/17/13

Dear █████,

It's me. You know me. I know me! I sure hope I know me, it feels like it's really hard to at times! Everything's changing around me and sometimes it's like I'm changing too and I don't even know it. Hey, hey. Remember the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender? You know what I'm saying you totally remember the end of Avatar, who doesn't, it was the greatest thing to ever happen in the history of media. So like there was that whole struggle, with the comet. With Aang not knowing what to do about anything. The whole conflict between his pacifist ideals and his very real need to neutralize Ozai. And what does he do about it? How does he reconcile this? It's a struggle that breaks down to the core of his character, down to who he really is. It's tough. It's really tough.

You ever have a conflict like that? Something that you absolutely, seriously have to do, something that the entire world is screaming at you that you've gotta get done, or else everything is going to be terrible forever? But it's something that goes against every moral that you have, that goes against the way you were raised from birth, that goes against anything you view as decent or right, even if you understand how important it is that you do it? You ever have a struggle that makes or breaks you? That tears you apart from the inside out?

Because I do. And I know how edgy this is going to sound, alright? I know I know I know. But I go through it every day. I know that I have to join in that battle, that war. That war against the Godmodder, that fight on that Minecraft server, that game on that forum. It's piled on top of itself, a twisted array of meta-abstractions and I can feel its power even as I talk about it, I know how dangerous it is, and I need a piece. I need to get in on it. I need to be there for when it happens. But I can't help but feel like if I was to do it it'd be the worst idea of my life.

Not like I've had much of a life in this hell, I know, right? Not much of a life to have! But this could be it. This could be my shot. My one shot to do something that gives me some sense of value, some sense of worth. Something that I can say I did. Something I can be proud of. Some way that I can last in this insipid nightmare of a place. I don't even know why I'm obsessed with it so much, I mean I do know and it's killing me inside but it just feels so, irrational?? Is it irrational to want to do something so badly that you'll put everything aside just to focus on it, ignoring literally anything else in your life? Do I even have a life?

...Never mind. This does just sound edgy. Forget I said anything. Forget Destroy the Godmodder. I don't even know why I'm thinking about it so much, never mind. NEVER MIND.

Stay tuned,
Adam
2/30/13

Dear █████,

So, you ever just, like. Shit, I don't know. Stalk someone? Stalk a bunch of people? I know this sounds crazy while I'm typing it but I kind of think maybe I am going crazy a little bit, you know? (No, you don't know, you never could know, but I need you to know because no one else in the entire damn world can understand what I'm going through and I need to vent.) But yeah you ever just... Follow people's Internet presences without actually interacting with them and you're filled with the biggest desire to join them in their wacky zany life-or-death escapades because doing anything would be better than doing nothing?

I must know all of their names. Their usernames, I mean. I've been secretly following their thread for a long time. And I know in my earlier letter I was like "aaaah I'm so edgy what am I even doing I shouldn't be thinking about this so much" but hey. Look. What else am I gonna think about? There has to be a connection. There has to be a connection. December 7, 2012. December. Seventh. Twenty. Twelve. The literal DAY I crash-land into this faux Earth. TT2000 creates Destroy the Godmodder in the Forum Games section of the Minecraft Forums. And it's still going. It's still going! He's going down, things are happening! It's not even that he created on the forums, he, he created it in the actual game. There is an actual goddamn perfectly generic plugin filled server that is being terrorized by the Godmodder right now and I know it.

You wanna know how I know it? You wanna see the proof? You can't see the proof man, GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE. You know you can't see the proof. You can't see shit because I'm here and you're not and you're over there and I'm in here and you're out in the world in some cold December day freezing your balls off and I'm in here and I'm somehow in a house alone and nobody knows me but it feels like. It kind of feels like. Nah. Never mind. I was going to say something but I lost it.

The proof is that, like. People are talking about it online. Not the thread but the actual occurrence of the Godmodder. I've seen it. People on the Minecraft Forums have been making a bunch of scattered references to him. This mythical player that goes on random servers and he can't be banned, he can't be reasoned with, he can't be killed. He goes into the game and terrorizes anyone and everyone he sees. It's like it isn't even a game to him. He's doing things that no one else can. Interfering with plugins that shouldn't even exist.

It's not just that he's flying and he has invisible armor that's supposedly stacked to the nines with infinite effects and he must have every potion effect known to man and he can summon any mob and manipulate command blocks without even placing command blocks. It's not just that as time goes on people swear his account name changes, or he swaps to a new one, even though his account was always in the same place. It's not just that he can reduce servers to ash and fire and dust and rubble with what looks like the most minimal of effort and everyone cries about it.

It's that, like. Normally with these types of people. You know how they do it. There's LMAOBox or some super-cracked client or something. And they love bragging about it. Hackers like to brag. They love to troll. They'll ruin everything for you and make you watch and you know that they're doing it. They love spamming shit in the most obvious way so you know that that's what they're doing. But this guy. The Godmodder. He treats it like his job. Like his life. He's either the most dedicated role-player that I've ever seen.

Or he's being serious.

Stay tuned,
Adam
3/5/13

Dear █████,

At some point when I come back I'm going to have mentioned Homestuck to you. This is objective fact. I'm going to have mentioned Homestuck to you because there's very little that has had such an impact on me as Homestuck has. You need to read Homestuck. Let me tell you about Homestuck. Just, preemptively, I guess. I'll try not to bore you with the details.

So this kid, John Egbert, downloads a game called SBURB that lets him interact with the world via a computer game. Like. One of his internet friends — her name is Rose — downloads the game in tandem with John, and so Rose can interfere with John's house and environment, while John can act simultaneously and react to those interferences. She'll place constructions in John's house that can be used with his inventory to create items through some weird data-structure punch-card alchemical process, and it ends up transporting him into an alternate dimension. The actual game world.

And the story keeps expanding in scope from there, more or less. John's game has four players, and Earth is being besieged by meteors as a direct result of the game, so Earth is pretty much screwed and there's not much they can do. And there's a set of weird alien exile creatures that are stuck on what I'm assuming has to be Earth from the future, directing the kids' actions themselves? But, okay, here's the thing.

Homestuck is a choose your own adventure user submitted type thing. And I know what you're thinking. How are you supposed to make a story out of that? How do you direct the chaos of some random mob that's yelling for everything to go the way they want it to and make a narrative out of that? I don't know! But it works! And it's so interesting to see, too, they're making a whole world out of it and everything! There's animations, with music, and interactive games! And the exiles are some sort of weird commentary on it. Like the "players" are kind of being represented in the story itself, and it sort of blurs the line on who's really doing the storytelling.

At one point. That line sort of just erases itself from existence. There's this turning point in the story where an NPC goes rogue and hijacks the game's intended story, becoming a bigger bad than the actual big bad. And right after that the perspective cuts to the literal author of the story. His name is Andrew Hussie, and he's here to make your day just a little more awesome. But. Like. It's not literally Andrew Hussie. It's Andrew Hussie drawing himself. Obviously the real Andrew Hussie is on Earth, here, writing this shit out. And I assume he's there, really there, with you, writing this shit out too, in tandem. But in the story, the story of Homestuck, there's this entirely separate entity. This fictional recreation. This self-insert, of Hussie.

He jokes around with it and recaps the story and shifts the perspective back to John and it's all just a little jokey weird interlude. But Homestuck... doesn't really do little jokey weird interludes. It had an intermission earlier that made you think it was just a random sidequest and at the very end it loops right back into the main story in the craziest way. I'm telling you. It just builds and builds. So, my question is. How does Hussie's self-insert loop back in? Where will it go from here? Where will he go with this idea of him writing himself into his own story?

I'm just enraptured by the idea in a way that I can't put into words.

Stay tuned,
Adam
8/18/13

Dear █████,

I'm sorry. I caved. I'm in now. I joined it. I'm in the forum game and I made a post and I hopped into the Void Expedition they had planned. And I joined the Minecraft server, the perfectly generic plugin-filled server. I tracked down the IP and joined it and talked about how I'd been following along and just inserted myself right in. I'm in. I'm actually in.

And whatever move I take in the server echoes whatever move I post on the forum game. And whatever move I post on the forum game echoes whatever move I take on the server. They're connected. The actual game and the forum game. I don't even know how to describe it. It's something that really shouldn't be possible. But after watching my world melt and being cast into this nightmare by God and honing my Far Land powers and actually taking a trip to Aperture Science I think I'm beginning to realize something. Like, something big. A fundamental truth type of deal.

I need more time to think about it, but Destroy the Godmodder's importance to me wasn't just some byproduct of me going stir-crazy cooped up in this place I barely even know. I'd like to think it isn't, anyway. I'd like to think it's not just my mind screaming about being significant until I get my way, raging against the heavens. I think it's seriously important. I think it has something to say about the way this world works. About how people can just create a story and it actually happens. About how people can actually do something and it creates a story.

How easy is it to make a narrative? Can anyone do it? How much intent do you need to have to actually set out and make something, for it to actually happen? These people are just typing in a game and they don't even know the repercussions of their actions. Do they? The versions of themselves that are up there, with you, probably don't. But the ones in here, the characters they create? They know. They're here, with me. I'm here, with them.

How easy is it really to make an narrative? Can I? Should I? ...Will I?

Stay tuned,
Adam
5/8/13

Dear █████,

I'm still figuring out how this whole arrangement is being sorted. Like, all the pieces that got changed, all the little odds and ends that've been irreversibly shuffled and reshuffled. And a lot of those pieces fixate around the person who I guess I've inadvertently replaced. This guy named Adam Mason. You and I, we've become... so different here. But I can't even say it's wrong, because it's more like... At least for me, it's more like... What I would have ended up becoming?

As far as I'm understanding, Adam Mason is kind of a big deal here. To some degree, anyway. He's got his own website, with his own stuff. Stories that I remember thinking of, way back when, with you, except... more fleshed out. More understandable. Actually good, in other, less uncertain words. And there's other stuff that I remember I had vague plans for, the barest hints of ideas, that turned into these sprawling metropolises of stories. Like, whole multifaceted things with layers and levels that I feel like I never could have thought up. I can't even begin to talk about the things I never planned, the things that he just put out there from his own head.

...It feels like I'm looking at a ghost from the future. Does that even make sense? Like I'm a time traveler that's jumped ahead a bunch of years, and now I'm in this other timeline where I get to see the life I would have been able to live if I'd just stayed put. But the person who lived that life isn't even around to live it anymore, because of me. I don't want to say I killed someone, but... haven't I? Haven't I, technically? Dress it up in whatever weird meta flavoring you want, but this whole independent person existed, and then didn't exist, and it's my fault.

Adam Mason. He was thirty-one years old. We had the same birthday, March 27. All of us do, or did, or whatever. So many of his old sketchbooks are in the attic of our house, just collecting dust, along with whatever detritus this Mom and this Dad picked up over the years, and the... decades. So many drawings that in the back of my mind I know I would have made if this was me, but just... wrong. Gone are all the drawings of the shows I watched as a kid, because when he was a kid, they... weren't on. It's replaced by everything I assume he was into. But the original ideas, the things I made regardless... They're still there.

Remember that whole thing in third grade? Action Komicz? I'm pretty sure that's how it was spelled. With some teenager being a chosen one, or whatever other term they used for it, and he encountered all these cryptids and supernatural beings and aliens, and there was a whole other universe full of them, but they were invading the normal world and disturbing the peace? How New York got invaded by aliens and Al Capone's ghost set off a nuke and there were mutant talking rabbits? I remember it, clear as day. I remember pitching the idea to you in the kitchen and I remember doing the math in my head about how old he — Zach, that was his name — would have to be to drive? Like, oh, it's 16, so he'd be in... eleventh grade.

I'm never going to get to be in eleventh grade. I'm never going to get to see high school, or even the rest of middle school, what little of it there was. I'm never going to get to play Minecraft with any of my friends, I'm never going to get to see who wins America's Got Talent, I'm never going to have another piano lesson... I traded away everything that made me me and in return, what do I get? I get to look at my picture-perfect life, lived by a dead me.

...So many things are different here. We live in the same house. The same town. The layout of every room is more or less the same. But the things we own, the way it feels... it's all so off. Everything about it is. All different flowers, all different furniture, Dad picked the guitar back up and you can tell, there's so much equipment everywhere, even more than before. It's my house. It's supposed to be my house. But it's not.

It's just not.

Stay tuned,
Adam
1/5/13

Dear █████,

I've always known this world was fake. That so much stuff got changed around. I know I wrote earlier about how a lot of it was because I changed. But you changed, too. You're Jeff Mason now. You're thirty-one. You're born on March 27. And you're still six minutes younger than me, I checked the birth certificates, I know the folder where he keeps them. And I'm still not over the fact that you're just... you're just literally working in Aperture Science. The actual place. It actually exists. It's real. It's not real but it's real in HERE.

But the really huge stuff like that, the obvious fabrications, just kind of numb my brain a bit. It's too much to wrap around at once. It's like a sensory overload that's been mathematically tested to short-circuit every neuron that I have conscious control over. It's the little things that really sink into me. The odds and ends that stick out, the details that no one would notice but me. And I think what sealed the deal for me was when I went out back to where the basketball hoop was.

I went down those stairs, same as they ever were, but I could tell different people lived in those houses because all the decorations and all the plants were different, it was just so... obvious. And I went down there, made the right, made the left up the ramp, and walked through the gate. And there was a group of kids just chilling, playing basketball. Just a couple of years older than us, if that. And I walked up to them and asked if I could join in a game. Just casually, quietly, to test the waters. To see if anything would happen.

The kids right next to me kinda stopped and shuddered for a second, and I could see every hair on their neck stand up, and he turned and looked around and pretty clearly didn't know what to say. And the rest of them started joking around, taunting them for looking scared. So I yelled it louder that time, and every single kid turned around to look me dead in the eyes. They could see me. Their eyes weren't unfocused, they weren't staring off somewhere. They were looking straight at me. Their gaze was like lightning, bridging the gap between how fake I felt and how real they looked, and I felt impossibly insignificant in that moment, more than I ever had before.

How... how can I explain it? You and I both know there were no kids in our neighborhood. No one our age. Just people walking their dogs. People walking their babies, people walking with their parents. Rabbits and robins and cicadas. The same sets of cars every day. The same sets of trees. No one like us. So to see these people, here... It felt so off. Like this was the universe reminding me that nothing I knew applied. Nothing that I thought mattered applied, anyway. That I was gone, and I was wrong, and everything I cared about would change.

And after a second, they softened up and ignored me and went back to playing their game, as though I wasn't even there. I had half a mind to shove them into each other. See if the wonderful rainbow that seeped behind all the seams and cracks in this purgatory would swallow them whole, like it did to that couple.

I can make people disappear. I can make people forget I exist. And I can make people forget they exist. I can trick the universe, the entire universe, into skipping over people. Into erasing them, making them non-entities. I can see the rainbow dance around my fingertips and corrupt the air around me and it sickens me and makes me shudder and makes me want to throw up, but I can do it all the same.

I've been given a gift. An amazing gift.

Stay tuned,
Adam
1/31/13

Dear █████,

Hey. I just wanted to catch up. See how things are. See how things have been. I know, I know. Who am I kidding. You can't see this. You can't see me. Maybe you'll be able to in the future, and that'll be the happiest day of my life. But as it stands... you can't. But. Still. I just wanted to do this whole one-side gag, since it's... you know. A special day.

I wonder what you got. I wonder if time even passes for you up there, if you know that I'm gone, and that I'm stuck here. It must. Weeks have gone by in here, and I can absolutely feel every excruciating tick of that clock. I know I'm getting older. I know everything around me is moving on, uncaring, unknowing. Everyone's just simply having a wonderful Christmastime. Everyone's playing in the snow, and unwrapping presents, and watching the same movies every time. I could list them off like clockwork by now, rapid-fire. Rudolph. Frosty's. Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Nightmare Before Christmas. A Christmas Carol. A Charlie Brown Christmas. The Grinch. It's the routine. The routine that sets in and once it's ripped away it makes you wonder how you're supposed to live without it.

That's what I'm missing. It's what I'm missing! The old routine. I have a new routine now, of course, one formed by necessity of me having to cope with not existing on any possible plane of reality, and not wanting to exist on whatever plane this is. But it can never be the same as the old one. It just can't. Mom and Dad aren't here to do all the little things, all the big things, that they've always done. And you aren't there. Even when you've always been there.

So I was just, you know. Just curious. About what you got. I know I wrote that up there, but then I got sidetracked. I... usually get sidetracked. Especially when I write these. It's just really too easy to let my mind wander, you know? It's not like I have anyone I can actually talk to about all the stuff I think of, and about all my experiences. I'm just curious. How was the Wii U? I know the launch lineup isn't stellar, but... You know. Did you get anything on Steam? I'm going to assume you did, and I'm going to assume it was good.

...I should also probably assume that. If time is flowing the same for the both of us. That really, you haven't been doing anything for Christmas. Except wondering where I am. And how I'm doing. And maybe, you're... Maybe you're writing letters for me, too. Maybe you're out looking. Maybe you're...

...

Merry Christmas,
Adam
12/25/12

Dear Jeff,

How do you sleep at night? Do you sleep at night? Or are you up at every single moment of every single day of your life, constantly moving your feet to run away from the only family you have in this world? Do you think about it? Do you think about it often? Does the knowledge of your cowardice eat away at your self-image and poison your heart with the truth? That you left them? That you left me?

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU EVER SINCE I FOUND OUT YOU EXISTED AND YOU'VE BEEN HIDING AWAY IN SOME BACKWARDS CORNER OF THE WORLD LIKE A COWARD. FOR WHAT. YOU RAN FROM APERTURE SCIENCE, RIGHTFULLY SO, I SHOULD ADD. YOU WORKED ON THE WORST PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY TO EVER EXIST AND THEN YOU ABANDONED IT BECAUSE YOU REALIZED YOU HATED WHAT YOU MADE. And that's good! That's really really good! That's a great start! It's just that I feel like, you know, since then, maybe you, uh, overshot things a little? And you started abandoning anyone and anything that you ever worked on? Because when you ran from Aperture Science I'm going to assume you realized you had somewhere to go and you consciously ignored that fact? FOR WHAT?

YOU COULD HAVE COME BACK. YOU SHOULD HAVE COME BACK. SO THAT I COULD SEE YOU. SO THAT I COULD KNOW YOU. SO THAT I COULD MAYBE HAVE SOMEONE TO CONNECT TO BESIDES MY PARENTS, BESIDES, I, I GUESS THEY'RE OUR PARENTS. I WANT AN ACTUAL BROTHER. SOMEONE THAT I CAN CALL A BROTHER ANYWAY, EVEN THOUGH YOU AREN'T EVEN REALLY MY BROTHER, JUST A CHEAP FAKE FAKEY IDIOT THAT I CAN'T EVEN RELATE TO! BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE COME BACK. WHY COULDN'T YOU COME BACK. WHY? TELL ME! I WANT YOU TO LOOK ME IN THE EYES AND TELL ME.

I'M GOING TO RUN BACK TO MICHIGAN IF I HAVE TO. I'LL RUN ACROSS THE ENTIRE GODDAMN WORLD IF I HAVE TO. I'LL EXPOSE EVERY FLAW, EVERY INACCURACY, EVERY DIFFERENCE, ALL THE CRACKS AND IMPERFECTIONS AND EXPOSURES CONTAINING A BATSHIT WHIRLWIND OF ANARCHY AND COLORS AND MAYHEM IF THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES TO FIND YOU! BECAUSE I CAN'T LIVE KNOWING THAT I'M RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU. BECAUSE I KNOW THAT SOME CONGLOMERATE OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELS FROM A VIDEO GAME THAT CAME OUT THIS YEAR BURYING ITSELF UNDER THE EARTH AND ACTING LIKE IT'S BEEN THERE FOR DECADES HAS TO BE MY FAULT. BECAUSE EVERY SINGLE CHANGE CAN ALL BE TRACED BACK TO APERTURE APPEARING, AND TO ME APPEARING. BECAUSE I CAN'T STAND HOW CONTENT EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IS IN IGNORING MY FRACTURED LIFE, SPIRALING OUT OF THE REACH OF ANYONE AND CRUMBLING INTO NOTHING, AND HOW LIFE MARCHES ON AND ON INTO THE HORIZON AND LEAVES ME BEHIND IN THE DUST.

BECAUSE I'M YOUNG, ARROGANT, AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR.

Adam
5/4/13

Dear █████,

The fight against the Godmodder has been... Well, I mean, it's taken some interesting turns. Like, really interesting. As it turns out, me grabbing that FEZ using my Far Lands powers actually had consequences? I know I told you to play it; I'm just going to assume that you have at this point. I think it's a safe bet. So, like. I tried to use the FEZ. Emphasis on tried. From what I've heard it boosts you up an entire dimension, no matter what? So, like, how Gomez was able to manipulate the third dimension, I could manipulate the fourth. Crazy, huh?

Yeah, well, emphasis on the word could, there. Turns out I must not have been cleared to use it or something, because when I tried, it shattered the Hexahedron and caused the Glitch to happen in the actual game! Now it's corrupting the Godmodder, distorting him into some unrecognizable sea of polygons, but... it's spreading across everything. There's this list of integrities at the top of the field now. "Godmodder existence integrity," "environment integrity," "overall playability," and, very worryingly, "player invincibility integrity."

There's... Well, there's a very real chance that I could actually die here. I know it wouldn't really be that bad, because it's not like I'm literally dying. But if what I think is going to happen is happening, then we won't just not be able to destroy the Godmodder, we won't be able to do anything. Black holes will consume the server, our Minecraft accounts will be torn to pieces, our computers will probably brick, if I'm being honest, and this whole crazy battle that I've already invested so much time and thought and sweat and blood into will be over. And it'll kinda be my fault?

I guess TT2000 didn't have to let the Glitch go through. He could have axed it. But he let it happen. He was cool with it. He's encouraging it. I guess that makes things somewhat easier, since if he's allowing it, then he's gotta have a plan to fix it, and it's not like he'd really let us have a bad ending, right? I mean, it should be simple. Restore the Hexahedron's pieces, bada bing, bada boom. Only problem is, I have no clue where they are. And if it takes too long of a time to find them, those integrities could run out, and then... Say goodbye to player invisibility, I guess.

Oh, god. GLaDOS. She must really not be happy about this development, I just realized. We spent all that time and effort trying to push her onto the Anti-Godmodder side and now there's the computer glitch to end all computer glitches running amok in this server! I'd better make sure nothing happens to Her. I absolutely don't want Her getting angry at me. Not again. Not after what happened last time. I'd like to think I'm in better control of my powers now, but it's just... Well, it won't be fun.

It's weird, though. I have to admit, it's really getting to me now. That whole stuff I've been talking about with the power of narrative; everything that has to do with that has been percolating in my head for a long time now. That's a good word, huh? "Percolating." The more into this I get, the more absurd I realize it is. This goes beyond a simple Minecraft server, I already knew that. It even goes beyond the probably ludicrous amount of plugins this server has. You can't have a godmodder through plugins. You can't have that Void expedition through plugins. I literally took another trip to Aperture Science to get Her on my side and She's genuinely in the game right now. How could that possibly be through plugins? And this FEZ, this Glitch, the shattering of the Hexahedron, is really just the final set of nails in an already stuffed coffin.

It's impossible to ignore now. Destroy the Godmodder is making things that shouldn't be real real. Anything the players of the game do, actually happens. It happens in a computer game, on a Minecraft server, but it superimposes itself onto reality. I know I sound crazy, and I know how absolutely idiotic this whole thing is. But you have to believe me. It's like they have just as much power over the story as TT2000 himself does. But TT2000 doesn't even really interact with the actual Minecraft server, yet he's just omnipresent in the forum game. It's like there's two versions of all these people at once, two Destroy the Godmodders existing simultaneously. It's a bootstrap paradox, a narrative conjuring itself from nothing, from my perspective. It keeps feeding on itself infinitely, creating new paths and forging ahead to some kind of ending.

I took Aperture Science and plugged it into Destroy the Godmodder and all of a sudden GLaDOS and Her Turret Army are plot-relevant. I used my Far Lands powers to tear a portal through the world and found a discarded FEZ floating through the ether and pulled it out, and now the Hexahedron and the Glitch are plot-relevant. Chuck Norris, Team Fortress 2 weaponry, Star Wars drones and ships, giant, grotesque forms of Minecraft's normal monsters, and so much more are just consistently thrown around, willy-nilly, inserting themselves into the narrative seamlessly.

I don't know what it would look like from your perspective, as an outsider looking in. But as an insider looking out, it's not just a simple elaborate fan fiction crossover. It's countless stories colliding and combining and rewriting themselves, all because of the actions of a set of people typing away at their computers, pretending they're playing a Minecraft game and then somehow actually playing that same game in this world. Destroy the Godmodder is a story about stories. It's telling itself, it's playing itself. But how? How can that even be possible? I know anything can technically be possible here, I know this world works on its own set of rules with its own set of differences, but...

How easy is it really to make a narrative? TT2000 is. He's doing it in our world. The real world. Countless people are doing it there. Whether it's huge unstoppable blockbusters, or spoken-word ghost stories passed down at campfires, or 18+ fanfics. But this if the first time I've ever seen what that... entails. What a story actually looks like when you're... inside of it.

I think... I think I'm living in a fictional universe. Not just some random alternate dimension. A universe that is literally being written by the people up with you. A universe that is writing itself. A cosmology that I never thought I could piece together, but I... somehow am. What the hell is happening? Does anyone even know? ...Do I?

Stay tuned,
Adam
7/1/13

█████,

I couldn't sleep. I could not sleep at all. I have not slept one wink since I went to bed. I was tossing and turning under the covers and the red light from my glasses kept reminding me of you and of home and of all the stars that I'd never get to see again because of the ever-present light pollution that reminds me of how feebly tiny my world of fiction is. But the point being, the fact of the matter presenting itself, is that I could not sleep. And I couldn't sleep because I had a breakthrough. I feel like I'm just writing every single one of my thoughts down right now and they're all slurring together because, well, see aforementioned lack of sleep. So I'm trying and failing to get to the point and I hope you bare with me.

I realized something. Like, genuinely realized something, to the point that I think I've broken through some grand mental barrier I'd conjured for myself, ostensibly to keep me from going insane in the face of how clearly bastardized this fictional plane is. I should have cracked a million times over by now. Shut up, I haven't. I totally haven't cracked. I'm as cool as a cucumber right now. A very green, very sweaty cucumber. And I am green, make no doubt about that. I've been cursed with this green jacket ever since I slammed into the cold Manhattan asphalt. Landing down like that was essentially the only thing I actually felt in between that moment and running desperately for home and touching all those people that I passed through and making them disappear into a multicolored oblivion.

Uh. Whoops. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that. I probably shouldn't have, I think you'd get mad at me if I did, I know I'd get mad at me if I were you and I did. I think you should get mad at me for it. Please get mad at me for it. When you read this letter tomorrow or whenever it is I get back — I'm not saying if I get back because I absolutely will get back and this is not negotiable I refuse to accept the idea that I can't go back because that would be a perversion and defilement of my inalienable rights as a player of the vaunted experience that is the destruction of a modified god — I want you to strike down upon me with great vengeance and furious anger. Can I say I've killed people? I kind of want to phrase it that way to hammer home how awful my actions are, but I don't really think I can say it in that way. It wouldn't be fair. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't watch the life fade from their eyes as I actively attacked them with my own hands, forcing them, forcing everyone to notice me and to SEE how significant I am. I just made them stop existing. Like they were never even there.

Sorry. I lied. I lied back then. I told you I stopped after that one guy, and I didn't touch anyone else until I left the city. Well, it's a funny story about that, really. There were multiple. I don't know how much, and I don't want to say how much, because I feel like I'd hate myself more if I did. And besides, I don't even know how much, really. Because I made myself forget. Because I can make myself forget. I realized it recently. I don't know if I realized it before. I think some of the repressed memories are slipping through, because I... really haven't been getting much sleep, if I'm being honest. And I am! I'm on an honesty streak. The constant fighting and stress probably has a lot to do with it too. But yes. Yes! I can't do it anymore, probably because I've anchored myself a lot better in this world in the intervening months, but back then, when barely anything knew I existed, it was easy. EASY. TRIVIAL. I could do it without trying. And it was messy and volatile and horrific, and it never worked quite the way I thought it would, but it was something.

...God. Wow. Sorry. Blinked for a second there, for a pretty long second, and realized how crazy I was acting. I barely even know what I was talking about, anyway. Still incredibly tired, though, and very likely prone to saying things that I shouldn't be saying. So let me just give you that realization I had and leave you alone. Probably forever. Hopefully not forever. I miss you too much to ghost you like this. Look. Destroy the Godmodder is a story writing itself. The creator and the participants have a say in the way it goes. And it is a story writing itself into existence, currently. It has a tangible, demonstrable effect on reality. My Far Lands powers. GLaDOS. Yeah. GLaDOS is gone. She's dead. Has been ever since She "died" in the "game." Quotation marks necessary, because the hard line between fiction and fact is more like sludge at this point.

But... but. There's something else with that quality, too. That level of collaboration, of participation, of layers, stacking themselves up and up open themselves into a story the likes of which I've never seen before. It's Homestuck. It's always been Homestuck. A story created by a visionary whose fans, whose participants, directed its flow in tandem with the original author. An author who locked himself in his own story even while he was directing it himself. A story where the characters are capable of referencing, seeing, and interacting with the reader. A story that exists in said sludge between fiction and fact.

I think Homestuck and Destroy the Godmodder are connected. If this really is a fictional universe being made by someone up there, then Homestuck... which is, in the actual story, a fictional universe being directed by someone within it who represents someone up there... Does Homestuck actually exist, too? Like, in here? With me? I don't know. I don't know and I think there's more too this that I haven't even figured out yet, but... I just don't know.

I'm sorry for the rambling. This is just... very important to me.

Stay tuned,
Adam
8/22/13

Dear █████,

It's really cold in here. I know it's supposed to be this thing that if you're a New Yorker you're really good at handling cold weather, but I don't think that's me. Winters were tough back home, and winters are tough back here too. It's not like I moved states. Not really, anyway. I guess I technically did. But whatever. Out of all the details, the ones that matter and the ones that don't (but maybe they all matter and I'm being unfair), the unforgiving winds of winter stayed the same. Just my luck, right?

But I guess with every winter wind comes a dream of spring, as they say. Do they say that? I'm pretty sure only George R. R. Martin says that. But hey, what do I know about A Song Of Ice And Fire anyway? I only know that it's very good and very... not age-appropriate. According to some people. Mom. Wow, I miss her cooking. I feel like you'd miss her cooking too if you were here with me. I mean, you definitely would. It's just not the same, you know? It's just not the same at all.

I remember I talked about the routine earlier. About how there were all those things that I did every day, and every week. All those things I'd come to expect of my life, and how it worked on a regular basis. And how all those things have become completely upended and there's essentially nothing I can do about it. How there's so much stuff I'll never get to do; stuff that I'd been expecting that I'd be able to do anyway. Stuff I was certain I'd be able to do. Okay, this... this one might be a tangent, but just, bear with me.

Seven days after I fell here, someone with my name shot up an elementary school over in Connecticut. Can you imagine that? An elementary school. It was all over the news, all the news, and of course it sparked a debate on gun control and a debate on mental illness and a debate on violence in video games, as it always does. But the entire time I was thinking about it, I was thinking... Well, a lot of things. Of course I was thinking about how horrible it was that people died, let alone that children died. What type of person do you have to be to go to an elementary school and...

...What really did it for me was this idea that these children had absolutely no idea that anything like this could happen. I can't speak for all of them, really; maybe some of them were at least a little aware. But by this I mean, like. The idea that you can die at any moment isn't really factored in, I guess. That's what I'm getting at. When you're a kid, you're just focused on living. On living with your parents, on watching your favorite shows, hanging out with your favorite friends, going through school, going through sleep. But it's so much different. There's a lot to be said about that whole childhood innocence and naivety where anything can be whatever you want it to be, and how powerful imagination is, and I get that a lot. I really do. We both get that.

Death, though. Death never comes in. Maybe some of them already experienced the loss of a family member, or someone else close to them, and that would probably get them to realize. But usually when you're a kid death never comes in, and you think that it won't come in, not for you. Sure these people died in a horrible, untimely fashion, but you won't. Because there's so much you have left to do! Because it would never happen like that! Kids dying makes no sense in the grand scheme of things, young people aren't supposed to die, let alone be killed.

But they did, and their entire world fell out from under them. And it just hurts that much more, knowing that there were so many potential futures that were just... robbed. Silenced. By one person. How does anyone remotely close to that incident even begin to live with that? I don't know how I'd be able to, if I was them. ...I don't know how I'd be able to at all.

Stay tuned,
Adam
2/14/13

Dear █████,

So, like, I was thinking. And I know this might eat up into all the time you don't have, or whatever, since as always you'll never read any of these little idiot pieces of paper that I keep insisting on writing, but hear me out for a second. I hope this isn't an issue in a few years, but... I don't think I've ever been annoyed at something as much as I am at the film industry's trend of shooting, and sometimes converting, their movies — even their old, classic animated movies — into 3D. Though wow, I really should say "3D," huh? Because it's such an atrocious effect, give me a break. How insidiously boring can you get? Not to mention that they're also being released in IMAX, which, okay, I have less problems with. IMAX could be really cool. It's huge, it's flashy, it's a spectacle — but it's not for me. I don't want to be strapped into a cinema wind tunnel and blown against the wall at full force while my ears bleed.

But really, though, the 3D. Can we talk about the 3D? How you have to sit still for dozens of minutes, and sometimes hours on end, and strain your eyes so that flashy images can pop out of your head? And as more and more movies are being made for direct-to-3D, or whatever kind of funny phrase you wanna give it, so that studios like Disney can cash in on the idiot gravy train, they make it so... obvious? You'll have scenes dedicated to images flashing by, even in front of the letterboxing, for the explicit purpose of screaming "I'M 3D! I'M 3D! I'M 3D!" at the top of their lungs. Give it a rest. Please! Do us a favor and give it a rest.

Will they, though? Really, will they? What are you kidding me, of course they won't. It's pretty obvious that companies like Disney only care about making money. Every corporation possible only cares about making money! Capitalism as a system is designed to only care about making money. And maybe I'm just a teenager talking out of my ass in a fictional plane of existence that has absolutely no bearing on your sweet, dear precious life up there. But as a wise disembodied voice once said to kick off a cinematic epic dedicated to defiling the graves of every fairy tale ever told, "My world's on fire / How 'bout yours?" Because it's as obvious, to me, that this happening to you, too, and to any other possible world I could have gone to, and to all worlds, everywhere. The iron machine keeps clanking, and the train keeps running. It does! This is probably a searingly hot take, or more like a code that's been burned into my metaphysically twig-like bones, but I'm kind of antithetically opposed to the idea of creating art with the chief purpose of turning a profit?

I know this is probably incredibly idealistic of me, and you can feel free to laugh at me whenever you read this. You can get all up in my face and cackle and chortle and guffaw, if you really want to. And I won't blame you. I'll feel upset, but I won't blame you. But I just always worry that focusing on money first rather than art first will severely limit the potential and capability that your art has. And I know the counterargument is that you need to be marketable to be successful and that it's a child's endeavor to think that your raw, unfiltered creative output could ever hope to speak to the masses in a way that a corporate, syndicate product could, but isn't the internal rebellion against that what keeps you going as an artist? Maybe even as a person? I just don't want to see the world that I grew up in, a world with Sonic the Hedgehog and his immortal legion of fans, with Aang, the last airbender, the blue people of the highest-grossing film in human history, with four kids who played a game and ended their universe and toyed with the shackles binding an author to his own creation, fall victim to the latest act of a play meant to siphon any meaning from artistic expression and replace it with nothingness.

But the worst part — they already have. You remember Avatar. The aforementioned blue people. The aforementioned highest-grossing film of all time. Yes, I will admit, the spectacle was a lot to get worked up over. Very visually impressive. But that's it, really. That's it! It was the first huge 3D film, serving as a gigantic, glorified tech demo for what an extra level of space could really do, and it worked way, way way too well. And of course, since you have to be marketable to be successful and we live in the above society, everyone followed the leader. And you definitely remember The Last Airbender. Which, among its many faults, stood tall as one of the film with the worst uses of 3D, and, well, CGI in general, ever. The film that Roger Ebert himself claimed "puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that." So you see? People agree. They AGREE with my incessant ramblings. I have my fingers on the pulse of the world, the zeitgeist, that accursed spirit of the times, and I am living for it!

...The bottom line is that art inspires me more than anything else in this world. It's not a very hard decision to make, since in this world, there really isn't very much to inspire me. I want to tell a story that I think no one else can tell, and I've fully accepted the fundamental law that everyone always takes ideas from everyone else and nothing is original, but I firmly believe that that doesn't mater. It's all about rearranging the pieces, the tropes, the cliches, into an assortment that is uniquely you. By making a story, you itself have put a piece of you inside of it. You've made it a part of yourself. And you've made yourself a part of it. And as such, any time anyone tells a story, they're telling a story only they can tell. And if anyone else retells it, fundamentally, it just wouldn't be the same.

To drag this back to some semblance of reality, I guess this is a part of why this universe is... well, frankly, terrifying and awful and dark and somewhat inherently malicious, but also interesting. This idea, this nagging grand unified theory in my head that stories can become real here, with the proof unfolding before my eyes and consuming my thoughts. Storytelling really is the most powerful thing. I can make my ideas real. If I make a story here, maybe... Maybe it could really exist, too. This question keeps repeating in my head of how easy is it, really, to tell a story. What do you have to do? I could probably do it, I'm a creative person, I love making comics and bouncing ideas around in my head. I could probably do it. I could totally do it, even!

But if only I had a chance. A chance to just... really let loose. To seize on the one good thing that this place has given me thus far, and to grab the laws of this world by the neck and twist it in every direction at once and shatter any sense of malaise that Metatron thought he could make creep up on me. If only I had the chance to be significant, to show that I matter, to tear down all these rules and unrules and orders and disorders, and to peel everything bare and lay waste to it all.

If only.

Stay tuned,
Adam
7/14/13

Dear █████,

I still don't know how time works for you. I don't think I ever will. I don't think I ever can. But it's our birthday here, for me. So now I'm twelve. Twelve whole years old. And for the record, I started writing this at 10:06 AM, so yes, I am actually twelve. Which means I get to relish in the obligatory period of six minutes per year where I'm a whole year older than you! FINALLY! I've been waiting for this for... a year! You know, back when I was your age, I was still waiting for this moment to arrive. But now it's here. It's been so long!

...This would be a lot funnier if I was actually saying it out loud, and more importantly slash relevantly, if I was saying it to you. But I... can't. For clear reasons. I was... I won't lie, I was really dreading this day. Out of all the days I've spent here, the days spent under a sky that's just a bit too blue, under clouds that are a bit too wispy and long, surrounded by buildings that warp in odd perspectives and flicker in odd colors, this one's been the worst. And I've only been awake for, I dunno, an hour? It's just that this day, above all others, reminds me of what I've lost. Which I know is really easy for me to say, and is probably a foregone conclusion, but that doesn't stop it from hurting.

A lot of these feelings are the feelings I wrote about last Christmas. So I guess I don't have to go down and write them again, but part of me feels like I'd be doing this whole thing a disservice if I didn't. This whole impromptu diary letters time capsule project has been... I don't know, refreshing, in a way? Cathartic? It makes me feel like there's actually someone I can talk to, even if that someone is a million billion miles away from me and potentially has no idea of my current situation whatsoever.

These feelings are a lot worse today, though, since this was, y'know. Our day. I don't even know why I'm spelling this out, I just feel like I should? Maybe that way someone can respond? Maybe someone will see me writing this, see these words, and I'll feel a pat on the shoulder and a hug and I'll hear it's okay and it won't make everything feel better but... maybe it would help. I started this whole thing... kinda out of that same misguided hope. That hope against hope. When you believe in something so hard that it stretches all your other perceptions of reality taut, and they threaten to strain and snap and break, but you keep on believing and pushing, to the detriment of everything else.

That's... basically an accurate description of my mental state, I guess. I'm just constantly torn between feeling hopeless and worthless — a little tiny speck of nothing, really — and having this raging, burning desire to do something about it, and to get my cut of the action, and to be involved. The only thing thatch overcome feelings of insignificant is striving to be somebody, I guess. Be somebody that people talk about. Be somebody that people remember. And even if people aren't fully capable of remembering me right now, they will. They'd better.

...Happy birthday, man. I'm not going to stop fighting, even if I'm fighting myself at points. And I'm doing it for you, for Mom and Dad, and for everyone back home. I'm gonna make it here. I can promise you that. That's my birthday present for you.

Stay tuned,
Adam
3/27/13

Dear █████,

It's wearing off. The whole impermanence thing. The whole "people don't even know I exist" thing. Reality's almost caught up, and things are feeling... well, I don't even want to say real, so I guess... "grounded?" Everything around me still looks like this shifting haze of color and form and shade, but even that's getting much more stable. Like. I was walking through town, and I noticed that as I approached people, they were... looking at me. And it's always this same look they give; I've talked about it before, you know what I mean. That glare that cuts through anything in its path until it meets your eyes. It's as though I wasn't there, and as soon as I got close, I was. Then they'd walk around me, or do whatever, and I'd turn around to look and they'd be walking off normally again.

I... even went back to Mom and Dad, for a bit, to test things out, and sure enough, they actually answered the doorbell. They actually said hello. Of course, they remembered me as... Adam Mason. Or at least, as what Adam Mason was twenty years ago. So I had to explain it over to them again, but I've explained it enough that they're getting the picture easier. I could get them their actual memories back — of their lives up there, their real lives — but it's more trouble than it's worth, and they'll just fade away as soon as I leave. So I don't see a point.

Still, though. It's progress. Actual progress. Progress for what, I'm not totally sure. Evidently it's making me a "real boy," and... I guess I want that. To be treated normally. But I, you know, want to be treated normally in a normal world. This is only solving one of my problems, but not the root cause of all of my problems. I'm living life on my own, turning to people when I can, helping to destroy the Godmodder as always, but I'm no closer to finding my way home. And I don't really see that changing any time soon. I mean, it's not as though I have many leads on that whole front anyway.

My glasses? My red glasses that flicker with starlight even at high noon and make my head hurt whenever I wear them for too long? My red glasses that I can scratch and pop out and break and crush whenever I want, but always end up back on my head, perfectly reformed, without fail? My red glasses that can choose at any moment to be indestructible for no reason? My red glasses that make my brain scream whenever I have them on for too long? I don't even know what to do about those. They're how I got here, yeah. But I have absolutely no clue how to use them to get back. Which leaves only two other options, at present.

There's my Far Lands powers. Which, despite me getting realer, have actually been getting stronger as time goes on. I'm going to assume that you're familiar with the Far Lands; I can't exactly remember but I'm pretty sure we went on that Minecraft Wiki rabbit hole before I disappeared. In case you aren't, though, let me lay it down. Essentially, if you get far enough from spawn in a Minecraft world the engines start to break down. The game'll start lagging out, items won't render correctly, and at a far enough level, terrain will malfunction entirely, creating these hulking monoliths of land that look like a cross between static and Swiss cheese. I think at a certain point you can't walk into them, you can only just observe, which has connotations all its own.

I've never actually been to the Far Lands in a Minecraft world, for the simple reason that they got patched out a while back. A lot of the buggy effects when you hit those levels are still there, but the physical landmasses are gone. Which is unfortunate. And also kinda fortunate, not gonna lie. There's something so unwholesome about them. This idea that you're staring at the end of the world. It's that same sense of awe and terror that I feel you'd get if the world really was flat and there was an edge and you could just look off it into the unknown depths below.

So I call them Far Lands powers because that's... essentially what they are. Any time I use them everything around me stutters and corrupts itself exactly like the Far Lands. It all turns into worse, low-budget, exponentially glitching mimicries. When I use it on anyone, or anything, it's like... I gain the ability to control them? Kind of? I can tell people to act a certain way, or to do a certain thing, and they will. But it goes deeper than that. It's not like I'm mind-controlling them. It's like I'm... rewriting things. If we use Minecraft as a metaphor still, it's as though I'm changing their code. Making pieces of the universe operate on different levels.

Which means I could use these for much, much greater things than just mind-control. I could rewrite people. I could make people not exist. I could make things not exist. Heck, I could probably make things not not exist, either — creating something from nothing. The possibilities are endless! But there's some major draws. I can't use it over and over, and tapping into the Far Lands requires very serious effort and a lot of concentration. And I haven't been able to use it for anything incredibly huge yet. Zapping a person here and there works out, but changing something as huge as letting me go home... I think that would take a lot more power than I have.

And that leaves one other option. Destroy the Godmodder itself.

I know this is probably a very far-out idea, but you have to hear me out on it. If the players of Destroy the Godmodder can control their own stories, provided that TT2000 is the interpreter, then... Theoretically, I could control my own story. I'd just be doing it in here, and not out there, but... I could somehow game the system so that by the end, I'd be home. I don't know how well it would work, though. The game's wrapping up, and I doubt TT2000 would be receptive to me just... taking control like that.

...

...

...I just got an idea.

Stay tuned. You aren't going to want to miss this.
Adam
7/6/13