"What is this place?"

Caleb looked around himself. He was in some type of vast nothingness. A void. A white void.

"Ace, you somehow always know where we are, do you know?"

Silence

Caleb looked down on himself. "Ace?"
The brother he shared a body with stayed silent. He looked up and wandered around the void. Maybe they got split into two different bodies? That happens sometimes in his dreams. Provided this is a dream.

Caleb didn't find his brother but he did stumble upon another person sitting on the ground. A blue haired man, wearing a grey hoodie. Caleb thought he looked like the human version of his friend.

"Surge?"

The boy looked at him. He has bright red marks under his eyes.

"Half right. Call me 'C'."

"'C'? What kind of name is that?"

"It's my name."

"Right... Where are we?"

C stood up, standing with his back facing him.

"The Anti-Void."

Caleb tilted his head. Okay, so he was somewhat right. It is a void. But doesn't the prefix "anti-" imply the fact that it's the opposite of a void?
C answered him like he read his mind. "If you know the basics of the English vocabulary, you'd know that the Anti-Void is the opposite of the void. The void has nothing, nothing exists there. Here, in the Anti-Void, everything exists at once spread throughout the entire infinite space."

Caleb scoffed. Everything exists in this emptiness?
"So what, is this some type of multiverse complex?"

"It's different."

"What?"

"It contains the multiverse, yes. But it's not just a plain of existence. It goes beyond that."

C approached him. Even the sizes were warped, a normal human would be much shorter and wouldn't be able to reach Caleb's shoulders.

"The world we live in, exists within a digital world, we have no access to."

"Digital world? Are you serious right now? What kind of Matrix bullshit is this?"

"It's not the Matrix, you watch too many movies. We live in a world within a world, pieces of imaginations which can be contorted and moved and scripted."

"But.. we exist, or at least I exist. I mean, I'm able to think, my mind exists. I think and therefore I am, y'know?"

C chuckled and walked around Caleb. "Ah, the infamous philosophical statement or René Descartes, 'Cogito ergo sum'. I didn't say you didn't exist. But really, we just exist in a scripted world by, controlled by the creator."

"So basically the matrix?"

C sighed. "Let me just show you, maybe you'll understand it better if you knew more than just the theory."

He took his hand and they started walking. It looked like they were staying in the same place because nothing is changing. "Where are we going? This is taking forever."

Without looking back at him, C replied: "Time and space is distorted in this realm. The distance is near and the closeness is far. The past is the future and the future is the past."

One more step and everything changed all of a sudden. Caleb looked up and saw hundreds and thousands of paper sheets hanging from ropes. Red ropes. C let go of his hand and gestured to the papers above them.

"This. Is the entire multiverse. But not the multiverse you know from astronomy, no no."

One sheet of paper was lowered down to them and C got a hold of it. It was completely blank on both sides.

"Each one of these papers contain one universe. One script, one story, that gets played over and over again like a movie. All of them, are alternate realities, timelines, universes that differ from each other completely."

A portal opened on the blank paper and Caleb could observe what he knew happened in the past. C grabbed another paper and it showcased an AU, in which they were all humans, and another one where roles are swapped. He then took a universe in which people appeared Caleb never saw. Some guy dressed in all black, a man who is apparently a psychic of some sort. C said the universes are organised into fandoms. Hero Factory, Murdle, Creepypasta, even the already complex multiverse of Undertale.

"All of this, is the multiverse. One paper, contains everything you may or may not know, past, present, future."

Caleb stayed silent as he tried to process it all. A single, thin piece of ordinary paper contains an entire world. C released the paper back upwards. "We are all just mere puppets who entertain a wider audience. We-"
"Hold up hold up hold up, I need you to wind back. First of all, you said in the beginning something about 'digital world'. What the hell do you mean by that?"

The man took a breath. "Maybe I should've elaborated on that first... We exist to part in a computer program. I say to part, because some of the stories I just showed you and more have been digitalised or created on a digital device, mobile, tablet, whatever. We don't know. But parts of the stories only exist within the creator's imagination, until they explain it to the outside world, of which we have no idea of. This Anti-Void is made up of codes and pure imagination."

The robot stared at him in disbelief. "... what." How is that even possible? Imagination and "reality" mixed all into one?

"So you're saying, the world we exist in, is.. not real? There's no real 'reality'?"

"Hm... how do I say this without making it more complicated?... The reality you and I know, exists, and is real for us. But for the outside world, we're just mere stories, characters, puppets. We're only really real, once the creator publishes a piece of the story to the world, just like this chapter in a book on Wattpad."

"Wh-"

"It's all scripted. Everything you and I say, is typed out on a digital device, to be published to the world. All is real, and all is fake."

"SHUT UP! Just SHUT UP!"

Caleb took a breath and stared at C. He looked down at his own hands, his surroundings, examined the man in front of him. The place shifted again and Caleb suddenly landed on a random couch. C sat down himself as well. Caleb held his head as he tried to even comprehend all of it. Was someone really controlling him? Are his thoughts scripted by some higher deity? His words? His actions? Everything? He laughed. This is insane.

"You're fucking with me, right? This is just a wack dream, right? There's no way this is true..."

"It's all true", C replied calmly. He was playing with some red ropes which suddenly appeared in his hands. "Then why..." Caleb asked. "Why, out of all people, was I chosen to even hear all this? Why me? Why not someone else who already has some special abilites, like Lynn or Siren or Purge? They're already hoping in and out of universes after all."

"Siren is a character created by her outside world self. The creator has no control over her, so they could not bring her here. And Lynn is already aware of everything. Lynn is The Puppeteer, who controls us according to the script the creator gives her. Purge is just an alternate version of Surge. Yes, he can move between universes within the Hero Factory fandom, but his mind is not complex enough to understand this. You however, have two minds due to your schizophrenic disorder, which created Ace. You have a complex hardware, so that if you just come to terms with all of this, you can understand it."

Caleb thought it over as he stared at the floor. Puppeteer, a mysterious creator, mind complexity... what the fuck?

"What about you, C? You look like an alternate version of Surge. How come you know all of this?"

C shrugged. "Simple. Favouritism. I am one of the creator's favourite characters, in my original universe, so they decided to incorporate me into their mutliverse complex."

"And... what's your role?"

He sighed again. "Goodness, this is taking longer than I wanted. My name is an acronym for "controller". I basically do the same thing as Lynn, but I'm a rank higher. I am the righteous hand of the creator, basically."

Caleb just hummed. So this place even has some sort of hierarchy going on. It just sounds fake, everything. But since C is so insisted on this being all true, Caleb decided to just ask questions to see if he'll understand soon.

"You said that everything exists at the same time in the Anti-Void. Why are we alone here then?"

"We're not."

"Huh??"

C stood up. He brought his fingertips to his eyes, from which some red liquid flowed out. The controller pulled his hands away and the red "tears" became strings. Caleb just shivered at the sight. With some simple and yet complicated movements, the ropes turned into two slings, which connected to the non-existent ceiling. C beckoned Caleb to step onto one of the slings. Hesitated at the thought those strings were tears just a minute ago, Caleb still complied and got on. It seemed quite sturdy and barely moved. C did the same and with a short jolt, they moved upwards.

Caleb kept his gaze up to see if anything appears. He started seeing spots, which became bigger and bigger. And then a loud scream of a familiar voice. His grip tightened on the rope and he stared at C, who seemed too calm for his taste.

"Oh, that was Stormer from your universe. I believe it's currently going through the part where he was kidnapped and tortured."

"C. You're forgetting you're talking to a literal idiot right now. How the fuck does that work?"

"Look behind you."

Caleb turned around and almost fell off, if it weren't for his grip on the rope which is causing his hand to cramp up. In front of him, hung everyone he knows and doesn't know. Red strings wrapped around their arms, neck and torso. We are just puppets, C said earlier.

"What.. the fuck?..."

"Whatever happens to one of them within the universe, the effects are also visible or, in our case, audible here."

"That... that's fucking messed up!"

"It is what it is. I deal with this every always, amongst other things."

Caleb looked around. He could hear murmuring and see slight twitching of fingertips or face expressions. Somewhere in the crowd, he saw himself. Something was off. He looked back at his hands and to his hanging self. It was like he looked in a mirror, the colours of his two sides are swapped.

"Why am I hanging there? I'm right here. Why does everyone exist once while I exist twice within this place?"

To his horror, he could see his puppet self mumbling the same exact time he talked to C.

"Simple. Even if you understood everything, you'd still be a puppet of the creator. Even if I told you everything of this mutliverse complex, you wouldn't be able to escape the strings you're attached to. All puppets, are essentially trapped in their own minds."

The rope he stood on suddenly jolted downwards and Caleb grabbed it like his life depended on it. He looked at the rope and saw that it started to tear.

"T-the hell? Are you doing this?!"

C just smiled.

"It's time you go back. I told you enough for now."

With that, the rope tore and slipped right out of Caleb's hands. He screamed helplessly as he fell, the puppets and C becoming smaller and smaller before going out of sight. He braced for impact, but instead crashed through the floor like glass and the white surroundings instantly turned black.

*****

Splitface sat up in his bed after a falling feeling. He groaned and rubbed his face, before looking around. Everything was the same. Same closet, same ticking of the clock, same walls, windows, door, table, bed, his boyfriend laying beside him.
"Hey, Caleb", the voice of Ace said in his mind. Caleb answered with a "what?"
"Do you think ever feel like life just... doesn't feel real? Y'know, that short existential crisis feeling that goes away after a few seconds."
Splitface groaned again. "Ace, brother, I'm not in the mood to deal with your shower thoughts right now."
Ace stayed quiet at that. Instead, his boyfriend shifted and mumbled a little. Splitface laid back down and took him in his arms, to which Purge snuggled closer to him. Splitface smiled a little.
He stared up at the ceiling.

"Multiverse complex, huh?"