Great Reset

### Cause(s)

- Katie and The ChessMaster re-creating everything that they had lost during the Total Annihilation of the Original Universe

### Outcome

- Alternate Earth is created
- The Universe is now sentient

- Humans can now turn into Freaks if they resonate with one or more Universal Concepts strongly enough

The Great Reset is a Universe X tier of Magic spell that was cast by Katie and The ChessMaster that re-created a near-perfect replica of the universe containing Original Earth, resulting in the creation of Alternate Earth. However, their emotions and thoughts got intertwined with the universe in the process, resulting in the universe itself becoming sentient. Due to this sentience, Freak transformation became possible, and can be unintentionally triggered when a Human resonates with a Universal Concept strongly enough. This is a great secret that only Katie and The ChessMaster know about.

## True Explanation

Unfortunately, the moment Katie had saved her ex-husband from the Total Annihilation of the Original Universe by pulling him into her personal Lab Dimension together with The ChessMaster, her ex-husband succumbed to his fatal wounds before she could do anything about it. As his soul left his body, Katie's attempts to revive him failed, and neither she nor The ChessMaster knew if it was even possible to revive someone whose soul has perished, let alone actually know how to do it. She had forgotten her documentation of the Critical Universe Loophole in all the confusion, and so all copies were permanently lost. The chaotic fight between the bearers had gotten so out of hand so quickly, that despite all their power, there was nothing more either of them could have done about it.

Katie and The ChessMaster spent three days in the quiet, reflecting on what had happened. Katie had felt so crushed by the loss, that she did something that she had researched only recently - which was how to create human life. With a complex magical spell, she crafted the mind of someone who would seem like her husband. However, it was just not the same, and all she managed to create was an almost mindless human who only knew how to say that he loves her and keeps reminding her that he is sorry.

Despite being an extreme source of constant heart wrenching distress, Katie kept this pseudo human alive to make believe. The ChessMaster saw this as too sad and pathetic, and while she was sleeping, he destroyed him for her. While initially furious at him, Katie later thanked him. Katie told The ChessMaster of her backup plan, which was a crazy attempt to re-create the entire universe, which The ChessMaster was very skeptical of, as he believed that there was no more hope, because if they go back, they will immediately be crushed by the universe-wide black hole - that there was nothing to go back to, and that all they had was each other. Katie refused to quit on this idea, saying that they not only have each other, but they have centuries of human research stored in the dimension with them. Katie stated that if they could figure out how to destroy the black hole, and combine their magic power to re-create the Universe, that they would fix all of this. The ChessMaster then agreed, because there was nothing really better to do in Katie's relatively small Lab Dimension.

Katie had changed. She vowed that, if they managed to re-create the world and go back to life as normal, that she would never allow the Humans to discover the Critical Universe Loophole. She also vowed that she will continue loving humanity unconditionally, but at the same time, keep herself pure and not do it by going on a forceful conquest by abusing her power.

The ChessMaster had also changed. While he was curious on the many situations humans could feel and felt constantly tempted to engineer weird and unlikely situations for his amusement, he felt too sad to see Katie like this. Due to this, The ChessMaster vowed to refrain from engineering any situations that can cause irreversible loss of life, such as the Permadeath of any Human. The ChessMaster started feeling compassion, and no longer derived enjoyment from engineering situations where humans kill each other, or catch 22 situations involving losing something dear permanently - it no longer amused him, and in fact, such situations started just bringing sadness and guilt to him instead.

The emotional stress of having no home to go back to was great for the both of them, and for the first week, Katie and The ChessMaster sat, stood and lay around, doing nothing other than reflecting on life itself and wishing they could have a home to go back to.

Eventually, they began doing small chores - such organizing their research, creating and moving furniture to make the endless flat dimension with white tiles look like it has some kind of bedroom, and eventually began moving to building the place to become a lab. They spent 6 months working on construction. When they had a place that properly looked like a home, the both of them felt a huge sense of relief and belonging.

Following that, they began researching on how to create their own pets and lifeforms to make the place feel less empty, and inventing their own activities. Katie created a society of sentient miniature candy-themed people for The ChessMaster to toy around with and have a good chuckle, and for her to endlessly love. They would tower over their miniature candy people, to play with them - The ChessMaster would do things like trick one of them into thinking that another candy person stole all their fruit juice to cause them to get angry at each other, and Katie would respond by giving them both more fruit juice to make them both happy and become friends again. And then, both The ChessMaster and Katie would share a chuckle. When Katie started having nightmares of loss and grief, The ChessMaster pitied her and started helping her sleep by cuddling her to sleep every night. She stopped having trouble sleeping when the night-time cuddling became a regular habit. Because of this, Katie quickly grew extremely fond of cuddling. She promised herself that when they manage to recreate the universe, that she will make a club just for cuddling.

Following that, Katie and The ChessMaster floated in space for 500 years, dedicating most of their time to research, and creating fun things to do and buildings in Katie's personal Lab Dimension. They became close friends, and their existence together made the otherwise bleak situation not only tolerable, but fun and exciting. They always had something to look forward to, and Katie's Lab Dimension became their new home. They grew to love the simplicity of this life, doing whatever they want in their little slice of heaven where everything was safe, and they continued to grow in power as they understood the science behind magic more.

Eventually, those 500 years passed. It had been so long since they had left Earth, and they enjoyed their time there so much, that they started questioning whether they should even perform **The Great Reset**.

Due to the powerful attachment they had to their new home, even though the Great Reset was ready to execute, they kept postponing it, year by year - until one day, they both simultaneously woke up on another beautiful morning and decided that it was the right thing to do - Humanity deserved to exist.

### Day 1 (0 - 24 conscious hours from the start)

The spell was ready - a complex mess of MagiProgramming, Proto Magic and True Magic, all linked together in one ritual site. The two of them combined their powers to create a smaller, "pilot" version to see whether what they were doing would work on a small scale. They were ready to exit the personal dimension to the real, destroyed one again - their plan was to create a Soul Backup in case they died, and to enter a zero mass form where they can float without being affected by gravity. They began to clean up particles, gradually destroying the black hole by causing its mass to explode into beams of light. Eventually, there was a huge explosion, where the black hole was completely eliminated, sending particles back out into the farthest reaches of space and time. Once the universe was safe again, Katie and The ChessMaster grew their bodies to the size of a galaxy so they could see each other more easily and be more defended against comets and asteroids.

Using data from the previous solar system as it was before, they invoked a magical algorithm to cast a spell to destroy the black hole and, by random chance, reproduce these planets, exactly as they were, as a blank slate. To do this, the energy had to be manipulated in such a way that billions of years later, they would eventually form the Milky Way as they knew it, complete with human life. This all relied on their greatest and most difficult discovery, which was the Universal seed combined with the Universal Randomization Algorithm, which they spent 500 years trying to discover, although using Dimensional Magic, the proto-magical device responsible for its discovery spent a total of 9,039,530,137 actual years trying to reverse-engineer how randomization in the universe works, without Katie and The ChessMaster having to wait through those years. Armed with this knowledge, Katie and The ChessMaster knew what was the exact moment, down to the nearest nanosecond, that they needed to explode the black hole. Due to the sheer time accuracy, this massive explosion had to be rigged using Proto Magic.

Due to the discovery of the universe's seed and the universe's randomization algorithm, Katie and The ChessMaster more easily cast far more powerful versions of Prediction and Hindsight.

When the massive explosion was successfully created and the black hole was dispersed, Katie and The ChessMaster fast forwarded time until the first signs of Earth and the Milky Way were observed using Prediction magic.

### Phases 2-4 (24 - 96 hours in)

Next, they spent 72 hours shaping it using all the knowledge they had gathered in the past 500 years in order to make Earth go through all the natural changes required to end up the way it was. Phase 2 involved flooding the world with an immense amount of water. Phase 3 involved making sure the oceans settled, causing continents to emerge. Phase 4 involved spacing the sun and moon to make sure that a day lasts exactly 24 hours of unit time, with a mathematical calculation involving the circumference of the planet, distance from the sun and moon, and taking into consideration the paths of orbit. During these days, they took 4 hour naps.

### Days 5-6 (96 - 144 hours in)

On the 5th day, they shrunk their bodies to their normal sizes, and landed themselves on Alternate Earth to see that their experiment was going well - there was a viable geological composition and a breathable atmosphere, allowing them to finally take a break from casting infinite breath magic and breathe their first bit of fresh air in several years. Due to having to wait for a few millenia for life to even start existing, they agreed to freeze themselves in a time-stasis lasting multiple years at a go, checking whether any life has sprung up in intervals. During these intervals, Katie obsessively recorded scientific documentation of the Earth in its several pre-life stages.

5 hours in, Katie found out that the first biological cell culture has formed, The ChessMaster was relieved. He was bored of having to go into stasis and out of it so many times, though at least they were not conscious during the several years of stasis. They shortened the duration of the intervals, to document early life-forms, eventually finding out that quasi-humans started coming into play, much to both of their enjoyment. For a moment, they were tempted to have their fun again, but quickly stopped themselves and agreed with each other to only have their fun on a minor scale while Katie continues her documentation. They were so excited by this process, that they couldn't get themselves to sleep. Due to the mechanics of stasis they had only really been awake for 32 hours, but they were too pumped with excitement to go to sleep. Katie at some point tried to figure out how to make the time stasis replenish mental energies, but it proved too complicated and she cut her losses to turn her focus back to observing the early humans by taking snapshots of several parameters. They eventually found that humans were forming their own larger cultures, and witnessed that they had started creating their own calendars.

47 hours in, when, to their glee, they found that not only were numbers invented, but they found a calendar that claimed that the current year was 0AD, they finally declared the experiment was a huge success. History had played out exactly the same as it was documented, and later they confirmed that this is a successful exact replica of Original Earth, and thought that if they do not intervene, all historical events will play out exactly the same. For this reason, they promised themselves not to interfere with any important historical events, and keep each others' powers in check and only use it covertly, making sure to evade public attention at all times.

### Day 7 and Onwards

Finally, 143 hours after the beginning the process, they collapsed to exhaustion after breaking into a human's house, after hearing rumors of someone in the village having the comfiest bed to ever exist. Even though the owner was already in the bed, sleeping, they clumsily entered the bed anyway and fell asleep on either side almost immediately.

Katie and The ChessMaster awoke to some confusion. Apparently, they realized that they were using this human as a cuddle pillow without even realizing, and that there was his furious wife in the room. Using their pan-lingual translation magic to figure out what they were saying, they found out that the human's wife was thinking that he was not only cheating on her, but sleeping with demons. And not only that, but also sleeping with a female one AND a male one. The husband was clearly confused and denied these allegations, and was stuck in the hug. This was an especially juicy situation for The ChessMaster and a highly embarrassing one for Katie, but they both blessed the day that this happened, as this was going to be the start of their amazing journey of the millennia - The Great Reset was finally complete.

From that day on, they lived through the ages having their fun, with Katie helping the downtrodden without directly evicting dictators, and The ChessMaster fabricating situations of almost any kind for his amusement without having it ever result in Permadeath or irreversible tragedy. Whenever a situation he causes results in tragic loss of wealth or anything else, The ChessMaster would always revert it and give them everything back.

Several years later, Katie had found, much to her surprise, that the way they re-created the very fabric of The Universe had caused some kind of strange anomaly. Because all their feelings and emotions, hopes and dreams, fears and despairs getting mixed and entangled with the very creation of the universe, The Universe became sentient, and could connect with Humans if it empathized with its concepts well enough.

Katie and The ChessMaster were very shocked when they found this out, and were even able to talk to The Universe through a special mental channel they discovered. It explained to them that it had become a mixture of Order and Chaos, and could feel for humans now. Every time someone suffered, the universe felt sad - every time someone succeeded, the universe felt proud. Some Humans, when they were special enough to resonate so deeply, start unintentionally siphoning magical power from The Universe until they undergo a permanent Freak transformation. Knowing this, it makes a lot more sense why Tangles turned out to be a robo spider (websites and digital technology), Whimpers is a black and blue butterfly (social butterfly who had their feelings hurt), and why Arky is an inflatable rubber raptor with a literally explosive temper (inflation, loving to play and anger management issues).

Knowing the secret to what causes a Human to become a Freak, Katie and The ChessMaster knew that this was one of two secrets that they were burdened with keeping. The secret to how freaks are made and the sentience of The Universe is so secret, that not even the Astro Surveillance Team knows about this, nor her dearest and most trusted Freaks such as Whimpers and Squiggles.

Together, they continued living through the ages, as forces of order and chaos, until Katie settled down on The Island of Freaks, and they both agreed that The ChessMaster needed to be contained in The Final Layer of The Underground for the greater good once he started getting increasingly bored and more tempted to see what happens in scenarios such as what would happen if the Earth was split in two. Even though that was 2000 years after the re-creation The ChessMaster consented to this, fully knowing what a battle between them could mean, and fully remembering how dangerous his own powers could be.