I had a lot to contemplate. Once again, I find myself sitting in an endless void, unsure of what''s happening in the real world. More than once, I''ve pushed time to accelerate like before when I had a timer to gauge my progress with. Now there is no stimulus or feedback to reflect my effort and energy. So instead I end up landing on an invisible floor and doing a backflip into a noexistent pool, or at least I tried to, even if I know that all I did was push off a surface and keep flying in that direction under no influence of gravity or orientation to actually say that what I jumped off of was the bottom, top, or sides of anything. If this space could be objectified in the first place.


    I cross my arms as I continue my backwards rotation from pushing off a surface in such a manner. My hair sways slightly in the angular momentum from my spin, in perfect opposition to what gravity would relentlessly force upon me. Even now I realize that the only reason it does this is because, in my mind, matter has inertia and thus weight to obey the laws of physics by.


    Soon, or maybe forever later, I stop spinning. Holding myself still on nothing. As I reach out to feel the borders of this place, I feel that I have in fact stopped moving, but in exchange, the cube that I''m in now spins at the same rate I was spinning. I add gravity, so I start to fall. Impacting a wall and sliding along it until I intersect with the next wall. Here, even now, I can tell the space is still moving, and trying to hold it still makes it gradually slow to a stop. It''s crooked, and the surface, which I''ve decided will be the floor, is slanted at a steep angle. In the midst of all this, I realize that I had given the walls texture and a gray color; otherwise, how would I have been able to see in the void? There was light too, but nothing as a source. Just ambience.


    <hr>


    Some more time passes, and after I had leveled out everything, I constructed a small house with outfitted accommodations just to my liking. Nothing was permanent though; I''d walk into another room, and something from the previous room would disappear as soon as I paid it any less attention.


    A ding rang out, echoing and distant. No mind was given to the sound. It didn''t mean anything to me if I couldn''t interact with the world where the system was operable. Sure, I knew what it was. There never was any doubt; rather, it angered me that I had senses to some degree. The world was passing by just out of my reach.


    I lost track of time.


    Somewhere along the way the dings lost their frequency and were replaced with conversation. Strange languages and syllables with no meaning flowing in with no mute button. I sat in a chair, the front wall of a house just behind me as I rested on my front porch. Unless I thought about the rest of the house, only the wall closest to me existed. The sun was setting again. Or maybe it was the first time. It never moved from the horizon, so perhaps an endless sunset is infinite sunsets all at once.


    <hr>


    Something must have happened in the next moment, though. The encapsulated world shook violently and shattered into billions of fragments as the real world took shape around me. My phantom self slammed into some kind of workshop space, blinding bright light taking up my vision everywhere I looked. Searing pain struck through me as a figure worked at their desk. A split moment later it struck me again, the pain welling tears from my imaginary body. As the world cleared up more and more, I could see a man with a knife cutting a dark blue sludge into smaller pieces. A third time the pain stabbed into my body, like a million cuts from razors all along a single plane through my torso.


    The knife was serated; it was cutting my slime counterpart into thin strips, a goopy mass far from flexible and being sliced like jerky. I screamed, pulling and pushing the man away. It seemed to work, his body stumbling back a few steps from the unexpected force. Quickly, a loud ringing in my ears and the pain from all the previous cuts rushed back, tears rolling down my face, sourced from a limitless supply. I crumpled to the floor in agony, clearly unaudible to the man who mindlessly tried to get back to work.


    I kicked at his foot, making him fall. As he landed upon my body on the floor, his impact was softened a great deal, some nature-bound rule keeping his and my body separated even if I had no physical form. As he scrambled to regain his footing, his hands ended up encountering my phantom. Trying to feel around my body to identify the invisible, his face struck realization and rushed off somewhere outside of my range of vision.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I took a few minutes to recooperate and stood back up. The pain felt so real, and yet looking at myself, I seemed unhurt. Returning my attention back to my battered and shriveled body on a cutting board, I tried to push myself back together. The slime barely reattatched, a hair-wide connection that eased the pain I felt from the disconnection. My physique looked like long-overused playdough, dirty, and covered in debris.


    I heard some voices, the words garbled and nonsensical, before four similarly dressed people reentered my range of visibility. The first man was speaking frantically with an excited look on his face; the other three, a woman with a bored face plastered with disbelief; and two other men, who still looked skeptical but at least seemed interested enough to wait for him to finish explaining. Periodically, he would gesture to the floor and mimicked being pushed back from time to time, and later, reaching to pick up the knife he had been using earlier.


    Uncertain of his intention, I slapped the knife out of his hands. This seemed to surprise not only him but the people who were observing as they trailed the blade clattering along the floor with their eyes. A few questions were asked, and the woman—who''d seemed so disinterested it was almost agresive—left for something. Her eyes now held a look of searching for something she knew well. As for the three guys who remained, the story continued as each of them leaned on the counter and island in the middle of the space. The story gradually garnered more attention from one of the newcomers, who started to ask significantly more questions, almost to the annoyance of the other listener.


    This back and forth continued behind me. I was more interested if I could get any response out of... well, frankly, what looked to be dead slime. My attempts to send messages back and forth like I''d had success a few times before were met with static and white noise. The conversation abruptly stopped, and I looked back to see the three men looking beyond what I could see. As their faces converged on the lady as she walked closer to them, it was now her voice that came into a ramping audibility before she fully entered the edge of my view once more. Held up to her eye was a kind of monicle-looking glass that was glowing blue; her other eye was shut, and the eye peering through the glass was staring straight at me. She seemed to give pause to her step as soon as she came into my range of view, seeing as my eyes snapped straight to her as soon as she got close enough.


    She looked a bit bewildered at my sight. One of the men seemed to retort something and held out his hand. The annoyed look on her face returned in kind, and she shoved the glass into his hand. He who now held the device looked through it and scanned the room. The smug smile he wore faded rapidly as soon as his vision landed upon me. Instead of further unnecessary conversation from the one who''d taken things less seriously, he quickly handed off the viewing to the other two, directed by those who had already seen to look in my direction. They swapped hands on the glass several times, each kind of freezing in place whenever looking at me. Naturally, I wasn''t just idle as they took turns looking at me; instead, rather quickly, I was turned back around again and trying more experiments with my delaptiated counterpart.


    The workers gathered to the side, the other three behind whoever was looking at me. They seemed scared of my presence. It seemed they''d adopted a stance where the observer would describe what I was doing and speak to the others about my actions. There wasn''t any reason I found not to try and get myself back to a functional state and attempt to form a drinking glass in the phantom world. Really, I didn''t expect it to work, but <i>something</i> did in fact come from my arm and reshaped into a crude mimicry of a clear container. It wasn''t accurate, and I couldn''t pretend water was in it, but I made drinking mimes to the observer and pointed at my freshly divided slime.


    They got the memo pretty fast and scooped up my parts into a small tub of water. Unfortunately, they were anything but careful and tore my segments apart in the process. They weren''t exactly secured together, and the pain on my face was evident. This sparked another reaction, which made some of them think that the water was harming me. To my benefit, the woman seemed the most expert in whatever field they were part of and corrected the misconception.


    My slime practically disolved into the water after a moment, new processes restarting within that hadn''t functioned in a while. The small tub of water turned straight into a tub of most certainly slime, and I began eating all the gunk that was covering me. Within that brief moment, I became far clearer again and hopped back into my body.


    ''I must thank you for rehydrating me; I was most helpless.'' I sent to the four in the room with me.


    Back in my body, the system was functioning as it should''ve again, and I could understand the words being spoken. They practically scattered at my words, all looking around searching for where the voice was coming from.


    "An invader?"


    "Did someone break in?"


    "Who else came in today?"


    "I don''t know; everyone else is sick!"


    "If a thief got in, they could ruin the antidotes we''re in the process of finishing!"


    Truely a chaotic bunch they were. At least I thought so.