Homestuck Music for Studying/Daydreaming (6)

Author's Note: After who knows how long, you open your eyes, trying to forget everything that just happened. The gray, drab, linoleum floor beneath you is cold and uncomfortable. It sends a shiver through you, from your palms, up through your shoulders, and all the way down to the base of your spine. You stand up slowly and attempt to get a sense of your surroundings. You notice that several terminals are lined up together on long tables that completely surround you on all four sides of the room. Strange machinery hangs from the ceiling and slithers through the walls like mechanical snakes. This place is so much different from Prospit and Derse. So unfamiliar and cold. In your exhaustion, you can only ask yourself… where did it all go wrong? Not so long ago, you and your closest friends pursued several paramount objectives. Victory against the black king, complete self-actualization, and even a new universe to explore and govern. It all feels so greedy in hindsight, given that the unthinkable has happened to you all in this game that once destroyed the Earth. Despite the significance and severity that you absolutely had to win, no matter what, you have lost… Your greedy objectives are far beyond you now, far beyond the realm of possibility in this empty, hollow veil. What is there to do now? What’s the point of trying anything at all? Doesn’t a failed session mean the end of everything, with only entropy to answer the question, “what next”? Suddenly, text appears on one of the terminals, immediately grabbing the attention of you and your fellow SBURB players. You see a string of messages in what appears to be some kind of chat client. Another living being? But how? Prospit and Derse were destroyed! EM: You don’t know me yet, but even so, II want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done… or II guess wiill eventually do. Perhaps now iis an opportune tiime for me to return a favor that has… of course… yet to transpiire. The person on the other end isn’t introducing themselves. Confused and exhausted, you make a desperate attempt to get some answers. YOU: Who are you? EM: Hmm… II hate to come off as overly secretiive and untrustworthy here at our fiirst meetiing, but regrettably… II cannot diisclose that iinformation just yet. IInstead, iif you’re okay with it, II can tell you how you can eventually fiind out… You sit with this for a moment. Can you trust what this mysterious speaker has to say? After enough deliberation amongst yourselves, you all realize that you don’t have much of a choice to make at all here. It’s either the inevitability of entropy… or a blind leap of faith. YOU: What do we need to do? EM: We’re goiing to scratch your session. IIt wiill be a very riisky maneuver, so riisky iin fact that II cannot guarantee that all of you wiill liive to see iits completiion. But iif you succeed, iit can promiise a second chance for you and your sessiion mates, by passiing the baton to a new iinstance of players much liike you, but also drastiically diifferent from you all at once. You try to wrap your head around what this could mean. It leaves your head spinning more than it already was. EM: II wish thiis was easiier for you, but our optiions are tragiically very liimiited riight now, and tiime iis of the essence. That beiing saiid, II need you to answer me honestly and quiickly. Wiill you try again? Before your brain gets the chance to imagine the kinds of horrors and struggles you will face in the near future, your heart answers on your behalf. It sparks a certain kind of raw determination that you thought you lost for good a long, long time ago. YOU: Yes.