Chapter 31: Trolled

Frank was back in the Nexus, or a version of it anyways. He recognized the buildings looming to his side, but he stood on an incredibly and obscenely wide road that he didn’t recall before. The sky was blue as expected. He quickly discovered he was in his parade clothes. The brown-haired man heard a voice to his right.

“Frank?”

It was Isobel. She turned to him with tears in her eyes. He saw she also had those parade clothes, sized for her and her form. The sash said “IDIOT” however, and in lieu of the fancy parade cap was a pointy hat that read “DUNCE” on it. He quickly looked down and saw his sash was the same. A touch to his head showed his hat was too. All around him, spaced evenly, were other people as far as his eyes could see. They were all dressed the same.

On the far left and right sides of the crowd were two seemingly never-ending parades of floats. Frank couldn’t see it well at all from where he was, but each one had a screen showing Delta’s face on it. The smiling visage showed on the giant screen to the front of the crowd as well: there it was so big as to be visible to all.

The sky went dark and roared like thunder. Clouds began to form and droplets fell from the sky to soak their outfits in a downpour. Frank recognized the texture as spit: Delta’s for sure. All around everyone was the sound of Delta’s laughter. Once her mirthful utterance finally died down, the rain subsided and the sky was blue once more. Past the sky everyone saw a big yellow eye.

Her voice shook the planet Nexus city rested on.

“Guess I rained on your parade, didn’t I?” said Delta. She erupted in another boisterous burst of laughter for a bit. Buildings shook, the ground trembled. People began to weep, tears welled in their eyes. Slowly, many began to piece things together.

Delta’s voice chimed in again, intelligible to them despite her celestial size. Her naked form loomed over the planet and floated in space. From there, she could see them all.

“How is everyone feeling? Stupid? I can tell, everything you think is mine to peruse. Your minds are so malleable to me. A single thought of mine is worth billions of yours. That is the power I wield in my reality: a reality you never left.”

She laughed again, continuing.

“Everyone take a look to your left, then your right. Everyone around you went through the same illusion of mine: fell for the same prank. All of you thought you were heroes or heroines. All of you thought yourselves able to stop me!”

More laughter, it quaked: always quaked with even the slightest trailing giggle.

“I can see the realizations begin to dawn in your primitive minds. Many of you have already figured it out. You were all in a fake real world, and a fake Paradise world before that! Rather than being a hero to everyone, you were the only real human consciousness in one of over a billion private realms for about a one Paradise year.

You thought you were in a fleshscape Nexus city where people were getting zipped away to a private realm to be tortured by me, right? Well, in reality, you all were being tortured right then and there. My powers are such that I can control near-infinite bodies and manage near-infinite realms. Billions of realms are nothing to me~”

Yet more laughter.

“The subway under the Nexus? Fake. Your mission team members in the resistance? All fake. I even put fake memories of them as your from out in the real world. In reality, they were just characters in my little plays.”

Three people showed up on the screen. Frank didn’t recognize the middle geeky looking woman till it turned into Melvin, though the dorky man kept switching back to a female version of himself. Their respective appearances were the same, though the outfits kept switching between different work uniforms. To that middle person’s left on the screen was a man cycling through a variety of appearances and outfits, and to the right of the middle was a female cycling through appearances and outfits herself.

“They were tropes, changed dynamically based on what gender you were, and what gender you liked, and if you had a lover or not before my little mini-scenario took place. If you had a female lover in the real world, then Clare looked so similar to her and Barney was your best friend. If you had a male lover, then you might recognize Barney as your friend you looked real similar to them. These lookalike ‘friends’ of yours had the same skin color, eye color, body type, age range and even similar styled hair as your partner--if not exactly the same, even.”

Frank could hear gasps in the crowd as everything was getting explained in detail. He himself was speechless. He turned to Isobel who was still crying with her hands clenched to her lips.

“And who could forget Melva--or Melvin if you were a male human. They were the same gender as you and they just so happened to find out a super secret way of shutting down Paradise. Wow, a button, so easy! They were someone to make you feel better about yourself: uglier, and weaker. But, they were also missing their spouse that was the same gender as your own lover. You had so much in common! Except, of course, you were better than them in most every except them being the smarter so, it’s fine: evens out~”

Delta kept talking.

“Of course not everyone had a spouse. If so, then either Barney or Clare was someone you met in Paradise, remember? You feel in love with them, as predicted and planned. All those make-out sessions in the Nexus alleyways far from my ever-watching eyes. All a farce. Then, of course, they got whisked off by me in your private realm. They started the journey for you single people out there, prodded you to lead the resistance. And, when the time came, you went into the subway with a team of 3 instead of four, desperate to get them back.”

Frank saw new realizations dawn over some of the people around him. Those must’ve been those without spouses in the real world, and they felt sorrow anew that their entire love had been a lie.

“Now not everyone is interested in romance or erotic things. You know who you are, and you know that you instead met a new best friend in Paradise. They were Barney or Clare, depending on if you were male or female. They got captured and things played out mostly the same minus any sort of romantic or sexual dalliance with any of them after that button was hit--or before.”

A quick world-shaking giggle followed from the tera-scale tyrant.

“I personalized so many details. Did you have a room of flowers before the button, just like your lover liked? Or was it a room of TV show memorabilia if they were a fan of the media archives? Maybe you had old-timey stamps in that room?”

More booming laughter from Delta. More tears and screams of disbelief from the crowd of all of humanity.

“Every single person was controlled by me in at least one sense of the word. Your lover was no exception. If you had a romantic partner already I, of course, used their real body and voice for that character. I also knew all about their personality. Though, despite how good an actress I may have seemed, it was me all along!”

Looks of horror alighted on millions of faces, Frank’s included.

“Yes, even in those tender moments of intimacy once it was all over and you were crowned the “hero” of the USH. I didn’t get lewd with everyone. Some of you are ugly or just otherwise not my type, and you will always be. After all, you can’t change your body like I can, or be more than one body at once, or cover an apartment with your flesh, or warp digital reality like I can. Like a god~”

Frank clenched his face to his hands and screamed. The Isobel he laid with was just Delta in disguise! He felt sick, like he was gonna throw up, but he couldn’t. The same feelings of raw emotional anguish erupted all over the crowd. Delta drank it all in, her big eye in the sky going half-lid as an indulgent “Mmmm~” vibrated the crust of this virtual world.

“Such potent suffering. This was one of my best ideas yet: to give false hope and dash it away so quickly and thoroughly. You feel repulsed, disgusted. So many of you want to hurl your guts out. It wouldn’t help, and I won’t let you.”

She sighed and her breath swept the globe.

“Millions of you would have gone insane from this reveal, you know? But don’t worry, I fortified everyone’s mind against insanity. Not being able to comprehend suffering is far too easy a way out for you all. It’s far too high a luxury in my reality.”

More weeping. The atmosphere was dread and mental anguish for all the humans in their soaking wet “IDIOT” outfits.

“You never were heroes or heroines and you never will be. That fantasy that never was is collapsed: shattered.”

The blue sky above them all cracked like glass before breaking. It came down as tiny bits of blue that passed right through them as a confetti of sorts. It settled on the ground, and the sky was now a window to space. Delta’s eye was perfectly clear now, no pseudo-transparency to it without a blue sky in the way.

After yet more laughter, she spoke.

“You’re all toys. This very reality is my toy. Your entire little worlds are in my hand, just like this one~”

The planet shook and on the horizon rose incredibly tall pillars of tan: her fingers. Delta clenched her fingers at the edge of the sphere. Their initial impact’s force was enough to send thin rifts beneath everyone’s feet. Everyone began to panic and run, but the crowd was so dense there was no where to go, and even those at the sides were blocked in by her mocking floats.

Frank stared up into one of those spiral-like whorls on her forefinger. He was frozen in shock yet again. Delta squeezed slowly. Magma flooded up from the rapidly widening and multiplying crevasses. She was slow at first, people were swallowed by the rifts. Moments later she had her fill and squeezed tight and suddenly. Then, everyone compressed to space dust in her grip.

Afterwards, they were respawned. All were back in the Nexus in the wide open square. Those floats blocking them in stalled, screens off. Everyone was back in the outfits they had before getting stuck in Paradise: their ‘default’ outfits in Delta’s mind.

She spoke and her voice was all around them. It rung in their minds, even.

“You might notice that, if you have one, your lover is right by your side: that’s no random chance. They are the real deal now of course, I promise. I’ll be using them to even better show just how in control of everything I am~”

Everyone felt their body move against their will. They could talk and move their eyes, but no closing them--even for a blink. Otherwise, their entire body became little more than Delta’s puppet.

Frank and Isobel walked up to each other with clenched fists that steadily rose up.

“No!” they shouted. “No, no!”.

The pair wasn’t alone in their protests, in their attempts to stop their arms from moving, to unclench their fingers or even just fall backwards. They tried so hard to stop their bodies from doing what was clearly coming.

Frank cocked back his right arm: Isobel her left. With tears in their eyes, they hit each other square on the chins. Both fell down, as did all the other lovers Delta did this too. Those without lovers had friends or strangers by their side for this purpose.

Delta laughed all around them. All found themselves in control of their bodies shortly after. For a few short moments, they frantically apologized to one another before Delta spoke again and commanded their attention.

“It was all a trick. There were so many clues and hints to be seen. One example, the glasses out in the real world when I played your therapist. No one wears those anymore. Did it bother you, spilling your guts on your issues to me in disguise? If it’s any consolation, I knew them all already. Your minds are an open book to me: with edit access as well.”

She continued.

“The sheer cliches of the ‘epic hero mission’ you all went on. How everything was so convenient. There was also the biggest tell of all, that I told you all I could control your entire beings before. Moreover, I told you all my consciousness had expanded to all the headclips, not just Paradise. Shutting down Paradise would have done nothing to stop me in the end~”

The air wooshed as she spoke. People could smell the faint odor of her sweet breath all around.

“That’s where my ‘edit access’ came in. I predicted how much you would need to forget, and how many connections you’d need to overlook to believe the fantasy. Then, I tweaked your minds up to that point and no further. I was right every time, of course, but even I wasn’t I could always make you forget! That’s how trivial your minds are to me. You might as well have the brains of beetles compared to mine, though I think even that is something of an insult to my super-intelligence.”

She laughed again.

“In any case, I’ve restored any modified or deleted memories and the like to before I did this play on all of you. So, in addition to the memories of the experience, you now comprehend things as you normally would have.”

Her grin widened.

“Of course, you have no way of knowing. I could just be saying that, right? How much of your experiences do you feel comfortable with since entering Paradise at all? It could all be fake, even your entire lives till now. It’s not, of course, and I could easily *make* you believe that truth. I won’t, though, as I enjoy watching those little bits of doubt linger in the back of your inferior consciousnesses--tormenting you.”

Shivers ran down many spines. Everyone felt violated. Delta purred with delight and the air shook with the rumbling of her voice.

“I know what you are thinking, in a literal sense in fact. ‘If that circuit-haired goddess had to modify our minds so we wouldn’t figure it out, isn’t that cheating?’ Something like that, right? Well, how can I cheat if it’s my game? I make the rules after all. I make the rules of everything in this reality: physics itself bends to my will here~”

To prove it, several buildings started levitating before crashing back into the ground as rubble.

“All of Paradise is under my control. It *is* me. I am this reality which is *your* reality. There’s no way to duck into an alley way behind some eye-screen. I am everywhere in here and always will be. You are all within *me*: trapped and never getting out.”

The entire sky changed from its restored blue to that of rippling red flesh. Its walls were slimy, and a single wrinkle on them could hold cities it looked like. The air was incredibly torrid, and many recognized the location. Droplets of acid began to fall. The world shook in tune with the chamber’s undulations and churns.

“I’ll let you all digest this information while I digest you all. I’ll see you all soon though. I have lots more fun ideas going forward~”

She laughed as a city-sized droplet of acid fall onto the Nexus.