Finnegan felt his mind slowly collapse in on itself as his brain tried 
very hard not to do the same. 


Enough neurons were out of its event horizon for him to drop the 
hat, and the captured memories went supernova. His mind exploded 
in a blur of all the colors, sounds, and scents he could remember 
ever experiencing. 


And then he passed out. 
Luckily he didn't land on the panama hat on the floor. 


« Involuntary Isolation | Hub | Killing Knowledge » 


567-937122. 
Audio Log 567-937122 
<Begin Log> 
Agent -021: Please state your name. 
Heavy breathing is heard from D-937122. No response 
Agent -021: Please state your name. 
D-937122 does not respond. 


Agent -021: Look, | am very sorry, and | want to 
help you, but we can't give you medical attention unless 
you cooperate with us. So please, please state your 
name for the record. 


D-937122: My name? You want to know my name? Fuck 
my name! There is no name! There is no anything! But... 
but there is. | escaped! | got the metal off! None of the 
[DATA EXPUNGED]. | should be free! Let me go! 


D-937122 is heard struggling, apparently attempting to 


escape. 
Agent -021: | apologize, but now we have the 
opportunity to.... 


D-937122: *interrupting Agent -021* Fuck your 
opportunity! There is no opportunity! There is only 
escape! You called me a monster. Maybe | am one. But 
the nightmares...... they.....*unintelligible mumbling*. 
Compared to their crimes, I've done nothing! Nothing at 
all! They [DATA EXPUNGED]. | haven't done anything 
wrong...... nothing....... 


<End Log> 


Closing Statement: At this point D-937122 breaks down into 
hysterical sobs. Agent -021 attempts to calm her, but she only 


Killing Knowledge 


Reality coughed chalantly as a Way warbled into existence within 
the roots of the oak tree outside the Birch home. Finnegan lurched 
off the tree and kicked the air filter and adjoined vial of ectoplasm 
into the hole, watching it stretch beyond infinity before disappearing 
completely with a faint pop. He grabbed the panama hat from off a 
low-hanging branch, taking care not to look at it or think about it for 
too long. 


After a sigh he took a step over the void and he dropped down the 
rabbit hole. 


Finnegan stepped, or rather slid, into one of the upper foyers of one 
of the many branches of the Wanderer's Library. The ectoplasm 
sloshed as he collided with the filter, threatening to tip over. A quick 
look around told him his entrance only served as a sort of catwalk 
between the two nearest "floors" of the Library. 


After reorienting himself he stood and stumbled and slouched 
against the railing, looking down into the other lobbies from his 
pseudo-balcony. A group of authoritative individuals, whom through 
a fair amount of squinting and guesswork suggested to be from 
FBI's Unusual Incidents Unit, were communicating with another 
group of Serpent's Hand members. 


The Hand was, so far as Finnegan understood them, a group of 
unlikeminded individuals gathering together under a name that 
sounded like a Cult from an '80s film. They had no cohesive creed, 
had no way to filter out undesirables as joining amounted to claiming 
to be a member, and had no leadership beyond the self-imposed 
bosses of the various cliques. 


This particular clique seemed to be missing said boss, as none of 
them in particular were communicating with the UIU head. One did 
step forward long enough to take a box from the hands of one of the 
UIU members. It looked like the groups continued speaking after 


that, but from this distance Finnegan couldn't hear anything and he 
quickly lost interest. He had more pressing matters at hand anyway. 


Like the human-shaped headache on the balcony opposite of him. 
Finnegan couldn't quite make out what they looked like, but they 
made his head throb. Snapshots of the Library, taken from various 
places, slid before his vision before being clawed away. His vision 
swam as he looked away, but the reach of the hole in his head 
extended as he began to associate the problem with the Library. 


It took only a few moments this time, and Finnegan released the hat. 
A single row of books exploded into a massive bookshelf, which 
unfurled itself into an entire wing. Finnegan squeezed at his temples 
and leaned against the railing. 


By the time he was fully cognizant he could see a group of 
authoritative figures down below, marching single file through a 
portal. He could barely make out the UIU logo on one of their 
shoulders before the last of them departed. 


It was then he realized he had no idea where he was. He gripped 
the railing and leaned forward, craning his neck to take in floor after 
floor of bookshelves. They bent in on themselves and doubled back, 
like the cortex of some giant being. The immensity of it almost 
overwhelmed him, and he swung back away from the railing. 


Finnegan bumped into someone in his backpeddling, but they 
caught his arm and steadied him. He offered a rushed apology and 
looked- 


A black hole bore straight into his mind from the hands of an 
indistinct figure in a tweed wool newsboy cap. Eyes caught in the 
event horizon, Finnegan could only stare. The pit in his mind 
expanded, having grown large enough to continue growing without 
Finnegan actually holding the hat. Images of the Birch home fell 
away, quickly followed by more books of the Library. A gap opened 
within his minds' eye of The Utterly Bazaar, and shops and 
shoppers fell into the yawning chasm. He tried pushing his way 
through the crowd but the crack in the concrete eventually caught 
him, and he fell into nothing. 


Nobody was on the balcony several minutes later. Two Nobodies, 
actually. 


The newer of the two palmed the panama hat on his head and lifted 
it so he could properly see. A young Asian woman with a newsboy 
cap stared back at him with no small amount of trepidation. 


Blinking, he tried to assess his situation. He couldn't remember 
anything, at least not specific to himself. Simple factoids and 
language skills remained, but the whens and hows of him learning 
them were gone. 


Focusing, he found a slag of emotions, thoughts, and memories 
coagulated into a solid lump in the center of his mindscape. 
Something called a Finnegan pulsed from within. Pushing into his 
former sense of being, Nobody found Finnegan in a memory. He sat 
at home, alone, working on some audio project or another. He was 
content. 


Nobody stood up slowly. His female counterpart cocked her head 
and they stared at each other for several seconds. Something in the 
air sparked between them as two similar forces butted heads. The 
longer they retained eye contact the stronger the friction became, 
and spacetime was not handling reality trying to ignore itself very 
well. 


But then she looked up and the sparks dissipated, air collapsing 
back into the void while simultaneously popping back out into 
existence. A pair of wet pops went off and the area was no worse for 
wear, save for an unmemorable singed smell. She nodded at the 
space to his left and she walked off. 


"Thanks?" he ventured over his shoulder. 


She paused. Opened her mouth as if to say something, shook her 
head, but then hesitated again when she moved to leave. 


"Wait, wait." Nobody hauled himself up with the aid of the railing. 
"Where do | go from here?" 


"The Head Librarian might know something, but nobody just walks in 
and starts getting answers." 


Turning on his heel, Nobody scooped up the nearby air filter and 
headed for the Head Librarian's office with a confident stride. 


"Twizzler?" 


Nobody eyed the bowl of candy suspiciously, then eyed the world 
serpent in the pit before him. He weighed his options before 
lowering the filter of ectoplasm- he still wasn't sure why he had 
brought it with him. It had just felt important, somehow. He nodded 
at the Head Librarian appreciatively and took a candy. 


"You have come to question the nature of your existence." 


"Something like that," Nobody said with the Twizzler hanging from 
his mouth. "| can feel who | used to be, poke and prod at memories, 
but it feels... distant.” 


"| cannot tell you who you will be, but | can speak of who you were," 
Satan replied. "Our multiverse- because yes, there are plenty of 
multiverses within the omniverse that do not include us- is 
constructed from thirteen intertwined baseline realities with a vast 
nothingness in the center." 


Nobody eyed the bowl of Twizzlers. 


"Within these baselines are thousands upon thousands of individual 
universes, with massive similarities between some universes from 
different baselines. Each universe of a baseline has one specific 
thing in common that roots it to the baseline. Of these billions of 
universes, your former self is within 74 of them." 


Nobody almost choked. "That's it?" 


"| suppose it might be 73, now. Within every other iteration of reality 
that he happens to be born in, he subsequently leaves it roughly 
twenty-five years later. Can you guess why?" 


"| be- | mean he, Finnegan, becomes Nobody." 


Nobody wasn't certain whether snakes could smile or not, but he 
was willing to bet that's what Satan did in response. Or smirked, at 
the very least. It was unsettling, whatever was happening. 


"Or Reality tries to make him one, at least." 

Something stirred in Nobody's mind. Said something, or someone, 
was shaped suspiciously like a Finnegan. "What do you mean 
tries?" 


"It doesn't always... take, so to speak." 


Faint quasi-memories of his mind exploding filled his mind. The 
thought of being ushered into the nothing between worlds filled the 
resulting void. It did not sound fun. 


"How would | make sure | stay in place?" Nobody asked. 


Something sparked behind the pince-nez spectacles. "Nobody really 
knows for certain." 


With a grin and a twirl, Nobody departed with the filter in tow. 


« Jam Jars | Hub | Library Lifeline » 


Library Lifeline 


It turned out that finding a book containing the location of a single 
cave against the backdrop of the entirety of the multiverse was not 
an easy task. Rows upon shelves upon sections upon floors upon 
wings of books loomed around Nobody as he searched for a book in 
a bookstack. 


Wandering through the sections, air filter still in hand for some 
reason, was a painfully nostalgic experience for Nobody. Painful in 
the sense that the nostalgia-induced memories were not strictly his. 


Finnegan sat at one of the many tables within his branch of the 
Wanderer's Library. Flanking either side were rows upon rows of 
empty tables further flanked by equally empty chairs. His only 
company was Joaquin Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe in the form of 
his autobiography titled Heisenberg Shit, his only conversation a 
one-sided debate by Grant Kirkhope. He was in his own little bubble, 
where he was... well, perhaps not quite fully happy, but certainly 
content. 


Said bubble was popped by a blonde individual moving into the one 
seat, among thousands, that was directly opposite of him. Well, one 
to the right of directly opposite of him. Regardless it made his 
stomach coil. 


Finnegan examined them from over the rim of his reading material. 
He couldn't quite pin whether they were male or female. They had 
the sort of childish face that stood straight in the center of the scale 
and grinned. Their hair was cut at about chin length, but that didn't 
mean much nowadays. They weren't paying any attention, as they 
were already engrossed in their own book. 


Finnegan returned to his reading and that was that. Several hours 
later he closed the book and departed for his apartment without 
either of them speaking a word. 


Nobody whacked himself in the temple and the memory jarred out of 
place. Through the haze of recollection he had apparently found his 
way to a small section detailing various paranormal phenomena 
within Armenia. He grabbed several volumes detailing geographical 
oddities and piled them onto the filter, stumbling over to a table and 
setting it all down. 


After several trips he shoved the books off the filter and moved it to 
the floor. He situated himself in one of the chairs, using the filter as a 
footrest. Choosing a book at random, he cracked it open to the index 
and felt something explode in his head. His vision stretched and 
tore, a fuzzy scene visible through corrupted film of his 
surroundings. The last shred of his surroundings snapped with an 
inaudible- 


The following night he returned to his usual reading place to find that 
the blonde had amassed a small tower of books on the table. They 
were nose-deep in a thick book titled The Hypostasis of the 

Archons, or a History of Sarkicism as related by Sage Sabaos the 
Blind. As much as he preferred to read alone, he wasn't about to 
give up his spot. The blonde offered Finnegan a small glance when 
he sat down, their eyes ringed black from lack of sleep. They blinked 
dumbly and then went back to reading. 


Several hours passed, Finnegan poring over a single volume while 
his pseudo-companion skimmed through several. Eventually their 
stack was exhausted and they looked to Finnegan, taking in what he 
was reading. They said something, but Finnegan only saw the 
raised eyebrow and the moving lips. 


He paused his music. "Sorry, what?" 
"Are you an anartist?” They pointed to his book. 


Finnegan considered lying. It would have been fairly easy, anartists 
across the ages had uncovered many unique ways to go about 
doing things and if all else failed he could simply claim to be a 
history buff. But the earnest tone and the hopeful look on their face 
made it difficult to deny them this small respite. 


"lam. Mostly sound stuff," he said, marking his place. Then out of 
automatic courtesy rather than curiosity he asked, "What about 
you?" 


"Sculpting, but | use a bunch of stuff. Clay, metal, bone. Did glass 
once." 


The mention of glass sparked his curiosity. "You know how to blow 
glass?" 


"Nah, it was a bunch of individual glass pieces | got from a friend. | 
just put it all together. Was a miniature glass house, heheh." 


The spark fizzled slightly, but he pressed on. "Ah. | worked with 
glass once. It was a modified glassblowing technique that basically 
let you blow it out of sound." 


"How'd that work out?" 
"Poorly." 


They barked out a laugh, and he chuckled. They picked up one of 
their books back up and cracked it back open, and after a moment 
Finnegan did the same. After another hour of silence Finnegan 
yawned and pushed back his chair. 


"Night," he yawned. 


"Night," they replied, only glancing up from the page. 


This time he was walking down a staircase. Behind him was the pile 
of books he had amassed, still waiting on the table. Errant scraps of 
information floated through his senses. His own footsteps despite 
standing still, the faint rustle of pages. 


Taking deep breaths and massaging his temples, Nobody ascended 
the stairs. He paused at the platform, leaning against the railing, 
before slouching over to the table. After crumpling into his chair he 
held his head in his hands and panted. 


It had to be the Library. All around Nobody were sights and sounds 


that played a vital role in some of Finnegan's strongest memories. 
But he had no choice, the Library was the only place to find the 
place he was looking for. So rather than flee he cracked open a 
book and began to read. 


Deep inside, Finnegan stood up from the chair inside his cocoon 
and began to Wander. 


The night after that, Finnegan hoisted a bag of food from Red Bear 
Bob's Food Truck onto the table with as big a thud as he could. The 
blonde awoke with a jolt. 


"Wazzit?" they mumbled, hair in their face. 


"Bob's," he replied, lifting a meal out of the bag and sliding it over 
the table. He grabbed his own meal and sat down. "Hurry up, it'll get 
cold." 


"You know what that stuff does to you, right?"