So, I think this fourth section is all it takes to wrap up this particular chapter of the overall story.

There’s loose threads still, but that’s been the case for every chapter so far, and I dig the vibe that gives. I dunno, I’m starting to see the entire story as a living thing at this point. I never expected the original short to have anything else added to it. I’m not sure how well it’ll work as a single collected story, but I really dig the way it’s unfolding in my head.

Anyway, part 6D

Edit: so, I figure that because of the change from .world to .cafe after I had done the first prompt, this whole thing might be a pain in the rear to read from the beginning. I went looking for somewhere reasonable to make it all public as the story progresses. Settled on wattpad for lack of anything better

https://www.wattpad.com/story/416773738

---

“Okay Kerry, I get it. You had to get rid of it fast, but you fucked me hard in the process. Without even the offer of a reach-around after the fact. But I’ll be damned if I’m opening up the med supplies until you tell me exactly what in the immortal shit is going on with Eternus.”

“General, I’m not your fucking soldier.”

“That’s not why I have the fucking name, asshole.”

“I know, but the point remains. I’m not called The Doctor because I’m a fucking doctor, but people sure as fuck expect me to comply with their ideas of what a doctor is. It’s the only reason I put up with your brother; he doesn’t.”

“Are we going to sit here jerking off, or are you going to spill?”

"Fuck! This would be easier with at least some benzos on board. No, shut your mouth, I just pulled off a fucking miracle and have been given a blast of shit ever since.

Don is going to be fine, for now. I fucking fixed what was wrong. His brain was melting. And with all the shit I saw while we were hooked up, I’m amazed it took this long. You know me and him have been friends for years in his perspective? I just fucking downloaded parts of those memories of myself. I’m flipping the fuck out inside because everything is fucking surreal right now. I don’t know where I end and the other mes begin. Yeah, I shoved all the brain damage into Nuke, and you’re welcome for the free lobotomy of that walking WMD.

But the memories? Not just of me, but his memories of himself fragmenting and dying over and over again. Some of those are stuck in my brain now, and I don’t know if it’s permanent.

He’ll be fine for a while, once he wakes up. The shit that broke him isn’t likely to happen again soon, Finale’s little time fuckery wouldn’t be easy to pull off in purpose, or that’s what Don thinks.

Damn it! I fucking remember sitting around with you, drinking hard cider and playing cribbage. This shit needs to go away, and I need some fucking drugs to deal with this shit!"

“Fine. Fine. But keep talking.”

"Just the Xanax for now, but pull out that fentanyl and the ketamine. Gods, the ketamine might actually wipe some of this out.

Got anything good to swallow these with?"

“Define good.”

“Something other than water. Preferably with a high proof.”

“Follow me.”

---

"Damn, not shabby Max! Breaking out the barrel proof stuff. Thanks.

Yeah, this’ll help.

So, you know anything about how Don’s shit really works? Like, beyond what the two of you may have talked about."

“Maybe. Once he started having trouble, I tried to find help. Some stuff came up, but I’m not sure how accurate it is.”

“Well, General ol’ son, Don doesn’t really know for sure, but I can make a guess based on what I felt in him. Maybe not for sure, but call it an educated guess. His loops aren’t just him waking up with memories of the future. His brain is different. You ever notice how he can keep all kinds of shit straight in his head?”

“Yeah, his memory is freakish. He’s rattled off exact quotes of things from years ago. He can hold really long chess games in his head for months, maybe years.”

“That’s part of it, yeah. There’s limits, but his brain is more elastic than the rest of us. Faster too, but nothing superhuman, just smarts. The key is that his brain isn’t exactly stable in time. At least, that’s the idea me and him cook up in a couple of years. It’s the time worm thingy.”

“What? Time worm?”

"Whew, Xanax is hitting.

You know, how we think we’re these apes here and now, four arms, four legs… Wait, that’s not right, two of each.

Anyways. That’s not what we really are. We move through space, right, I wave my arm like this, it moves from point A to point B, and you see an arm. I do it fast enough, maybe it blurs, but it starts here, ends there. You with me?"

“I think so. Should you really be drinking that much after that many pills?”

"Don’t worry, my tolerance is ridiculous, it doesn’t really get dumped unless I try super hard.

My arm though. It didn’t move from here to there. It did, but it also moved from then to now. And before it moved, it was here, and back in the infirmary, and down the stairs. If you look at anyone from outside time and space, they don’t have arms. They’re one long, skin colored worm with wiggling extremities like eel fins. We’re worms. We’re time worms."

“Okay, I’m following. And Don’s brain is different than ours.”

"Yeah. Not really physically, not in any way that matters, though he is at the extreme end of some structures related to memory and time perception. But he can kinda see time from the outside. At least, we think that’s part of how it works. He’s not so much moving in time as he is experiencing a shift in perspective.

When he loops, his body doesn’t come back, but his brain remembers seeing everything, doing it all. The dying part is the trigger, not the real core of his power. He’s, kinda sorta maybe, always seeing his entire timeline, and death just moves the point of view back until a time-place where his meta-self judges change can be made."

“Were you both high when you came up with that?”

"I refuse to answer on grounds it would be prejudicial.

Look Max, neither of us is sure that’s exactly what happens, but it explains part of it. It’s why every time we meet for the first time, with our brains synced, I can actually pull his memories of the future. At least, that’s the hypothesis.

What it doesn’t explain is why Finale’s time bubble thingamajig broke him. Finale saw multiple Dons. Don was multiple himselves. So there were other bodies, which doesn’t fit the theory, but we can’t figure out if that was the boosted power causing it, interfering with Don’s power, Don’s power interacting with Finale’s brain, or what.

But it shouldn’t have broken him. His brain already keeps track of thousands of himself. Thousands of conflicting memories."

“Okay. So that’s why it won’t happen again soon?”

"Yeah, but it’s likely to happen again eventually. Even his brain can’t sustain eternal rewriting, and that’s what it does to his brain, as opposed to his mind, his meta-self that’s partially outside of space-time.

I pulled all of the copies of him into one him. Which was a fucking nightmare because I almost lost my self, my identity. I was fucking drowning in him by the time I was halfway through. I had told him to tell me to go deep. So I did. And if I hadn’t gotten rid of the echo of it all, I would have drowned. My power, it’s fucking weird. Like, I pull a tumor out, and one grows in me. But it isn’t a real cancer, it’s almost the ghost of one. Even metastatic cancers, they don’t keep progressing, I just get all the pain and symptoms, but never get to die.

So, you know, fuck Nuke, because better him than me. And on that point, you should let him die. He will; when I dump something, it is the real thing, not a xerox. Dunno why, but that’s how it works. The loop he’s been in? Where he’s dying and locked into this specific day? That’s because the rest of Ragnarock try to spring him. They get ahold of records of where he went and found this place.

Don and me were the last ones they got to.

If Nuke dies, it probably won’t happen."

“I’m supposed to just let him rot? With all the crap you shoved into him? You said something about syphilis. What else was there?”

“Max, my man, I came here after six months of hunting down some really nasty motherfuckers. I still haven’t found them, and I was saving up everything I could from going around homeless shelters across Jersey and New York. He’s got cancer of the everything. Honestly? He’ll be dead by tomorrow if he doesn’t get cured.”

“Then do it! You can’t condemn him to death like that!”

"The fuck I can’t. Max, I couldn’t give two shits about Nuke. You want to try, go the fuck ahead. I’m going to get fucked up and try to forget as much of that pain as I can before I take on anything new.

Oh, and yes, I apparently sign on next month. I’m on fucking vacation until then. But I’ll keep you lot of fuckwits in better shape and it’ll reduce how often Don has to loop so maybe the fucking Kitain don’t ass rape everything. You really don’t want to see those fuckers. I sure didn’t, but it was right there in Don’s head. The things they do, Max, even I gotta take a stand. But fuck Nuke. That’s on you to fix."