Hero Factory Oneshots

Cogito, ergo sum

"What is this place?"

Caleb looked around himself. He was in some type of vast nothingness. A void. A white void.

"Ace, you somehow always know where we are, do you know?"

Silence

Caleb looked down on himself. "Ace?"
The brother he shared a body with stayed silent. He looked up and wandered around the void. Maybe they got split into two different bodies? That happens sometimes in his dreams. Provided this is a dream.

Caleb didn't find his brother but he did stumble upon another person sitting on the ground. A blue haired man, wearing a grey hoodie. Caleb thought he looked like the human version of his friend.

"Surge?"

The boy looked at him. He has bright red marks under his eyes.

"Half right. Call me 'C'."

"'C'? What kind of name is that?"

"It's my name."

"Right... Where are we?"

C stood up, standing with his back facing him.

"The Anti-Void."

Caleb tilted his head. Okay, so he was somewhat right. It is a void. But doesn't the prefix "anti-" imply the fact that it's the opposite of a void?
C answered him like he read his mind. "If you know the basics of the English vocabulary, you'd know that the Anti-Void is the opposite of the void. The void has nothing, nothing exists there. Here, in the Anti-Void, everything exists at once spread throughout the entire infinite space."

Caleb scoffed. Everything exists in this emptiness?
"So what, is this some type of multiverse complex?"

"It's different."

"What?"

"It contains the multiverse, yes. But it's not just a plain of existence. It goes beyond that."

C approached him. Even the sizes were warped, a normal human would be much shorter and wouldn't be able to reach Caleb's shoulders.

"The world we live in, exists within a digital world, we have no access to."

"Digital world? Are you serious right now? What kind of Matrix bullshit is this?"

"It's not the Matrix, you watch too many movies. We live in a world within a world, pieces of imaginations which can be contorted and moved and scripted."

"But.. we exist, or at least I exist. I mean, I'm able to think, my mind exists. I think and therefore I am, y'know?"

C chuckled and walked around Caleb. "Ah, the infamous philosophical statement or René Descartes, 'Cogito ergo sum'. I didn't say you didn't exist. But really, we just exist in a scripted world by, controlled by the creator."

"So basically the matrix?"

C sighed. "Let me just show you, maybe you'll understand it better if you knew more than just the theory."

He took his hand and they started walking. It looked like they were staying in the same place because nothing is changing. "Where are we going? This is taking forever."

Without looking back at him, C replied: "Time and space is distorted in this realm. The distance is near and the closeness is far. The past is the future and the future is the past."

One more step and everything changed all of a sudden. Caleb looked up and saw hundreds and thousands of paper sheets hanging from ropes. Red ropes. C let go of his hand and gestured to the papers above them.