KOH

KOH is a five-foot-seven sixteen-year-old girl who lives on her own after losing her parents and her memory in a car crash when she was fourteen. despite a lack of conscious life experience, she is a very capable girl and does well to take care of herself while continuing to attend highschool and working a part-time job. she is extremely independent and self-sufficient. she has no issue scoring well on assesments, but she never does any homework and has no plans to apply to university. she isn't very ambitious, and is happy to live her life in a comfortable way with minimum-wage jobs. this might depress some people, but being seen as a failure really doesn't seem to impact her self-worth. she can be happy as long as she has the occasional free time for video games and talking to friends, though she doesn't have many.

koh is known as a 'tomboy', as she wears the male uniform at her school instead of the female one. however, koh actually has no preference towards feminine or masculine things, she simply finds the male uniform more comfortable and doesn't much care what people think of her for wearing it. she enjoys a varied mix of feminine and masculine things, from very violent video games to antique dolls and fancy desserts. her favorite food is seafood. she isn't particularly introverted or extroverted, as she can enjoy both alone time and time with others and lives very in the moment.

PLOT NONSENSE

every night, for all of the two years that she can remember, Koh has had very vivid dreams somewhere that resembles a distorted version of the city in which she lives. typically, the only other humanlike entity she sees here is Ono, who presents herself as a young girl. Koh spends most nights in these dreams with Ono using discarded scraps of the city to assemble technology such as weapons and communication devices. she doesn't take it very seriously, as it's only a dream, but it's something exciting to look forward to each night. Koh never sees humans aside from her and Ono in her dream world, until one night, when she sees Hina glaring at her from atop a building many yards away. Koh mentions this strange occurence to Hina the next day, who brushes it off but acts oddly cold to Koh after that moment.

Koh is a human grown by Recuror with the intention of making her the Catalyst. the 'car crash' was of course invented to explain her amnesia and lack of family. though Koh believes she lives independently, her entire school was actually created only with the intention of observing her and ensuring no harm comes to her before she is ready to serve her role. of course, neither Koh nor any of the other students are aware of this. Koh is given the two years from age fourteen to sixteen to live in and interact with the real world in order to give her a better array of experience to draw from, as when she is the Catalyst she would have to correctly make countless potentially universe-altering decisions in order to maintain control of the situation. in that same vein, in order to ensure the most beneficial outcome for themselves, Recruor designed Koh as the ideal candidate for this role: calm, unselfish, intelligent, and unambitious. with these traits, Koh is less likely to make an attempt to use her power as the Catalyst for her own gain. it would be ideal to use an entity that Recruor had complete control over, but research and testing has determined that a completely dynamic and free-thinking consciousness is necessary as the Catalyst in order to complete the merge successfully, so the best Recruor can do it cultivate an autonomous human who is most likely to obey their cause.

when the two realities begin to breach their boundaries under the pressure of being directly overlapped, the emissions of objects and abnormalities from the dream world into the real world begins causing public disturbances and causes Recruor to rush Koh's preparation for being the Catalyst. she is taken out of school is put into residency directly at Recruor labs. her situation is explained to her in slightly more detail, as she must have a basic understanding in order to properly act as the Catalyst. Recruor softens their inentions of controlling the world by emphasizing the Utopia they envision once they are able to fully assemble and dissassemble matter and energy at will. nobody will go hungry, nobody will suffer, and nobody will die: the hubris of manic scientists. Koh is kept asleep for most hours of the day, only waking to discuss her experiences with the researchers at Recruor. she also must be acclimated as much as possible to the condition that she will experience when she is the catalyst: existing as a single entity between the two realities, the matter and energy that make up her being not belonging concretely to either one of them but instead being a human-shaped bridge connecting the two. this is best (though not perfectly) simulated by training her to be awake in both realities at the same time, while Muinmos transmits her perception of and reaction to stimuli to each body in real time, giving her the experience of a single consciousness in dual realities. though her nature is selected and practically engineered to be as submissive to experiences like this as possible, Koh is still a teenage girl (though originally the merge was not supposed to happen until her brain had fully matured). while she initially trusts Recruor fully, mostly due to many of her previous schoolteachers being involved, her suspicion grows over time as the merge approaches.

(stop reading here and go begin reading HINA's PLOT NONSENSE.)

during Hina's rampage, Koh was awake in both realities, desparately trying to do any damage control she could. suddenly, at what Koh would later come to realize was the moment Hina discovered N/A's death body, Koh completely loses all consciousness in the original universe and finds herself totally consolidated in the dream world. this was, of course, because her original body was completely destroyed along with the rest of the galaxy, and later the universe. all hope of Recruor's plan is of course gone as well, as there is nobody even left to hope for it. the only living being presevered aside from Hina is Koh's body in the dream world, shielded in the mirror of her own city. instead of a sky, there is only a thin veil serving as the new edge of the universe, beyond which is pure chaos. small tears in this sky form and grow as time passes. Koh is alone, save for Ono and Theo. Koh, still under the impression that Theo is her ally, is horrified to watch as Ono steps through him and seems to absorb him entirely. (i'll give theo his own character description later on, but to keep it simple, he's a branch of Muinmos's consciousness that she managed to insert into a human body. essentially, he is a node of her network, but develops individualities over time as well. he poses as a researcher at Recruor for most of the story while secretly helping to further Muinmos's motives.)

Koh and Ono are left alone below the cracking sky, while what used to be Koh's friend but is now a furnace of pure emotion and destruction disintegrates the universe Koh calls home at an increasing rate. Ono tells Koh that there is still hope, which seems downright funny at this point. however, Ono elaborates: if Koh can kill Hina, it is possible that her power will be passed to the only living being remaining in the universe, Koh herself. Ono wants to ensure the most interesting possible conclusion to the situation, so she proposes to use the concentration of her power in the now-tiny universe of the dream world to create a fantastic final battle between Koh and Hina. Muinmos's entire network, now focus on a very small plane, still excersizes an immense amount of power, though she is limited by not being an organic being. Ono brings Hina's consciousness (which had previously been a suspended state of anguish serving as fuel for the destruction of the universe) to the dream world, and informs her of the battle. Hina blames Koh for N/A's death, and is determined to destroy her along with everything else. she cannot do so as long as Koh is in Muinmos's protection, so she agrees. in order to give Koh a chance against Hina's raw power, Ono offers to assemble any single object Koh desires to use as a weapon that has existed at least once on Earth and can be copied molecule for molecule. Koh agrees to these terms, and Koh and Hina approach each other on top of the tallest building as the boundary between reality and chaos becomes closer and closer.

Hina steps onto the 'battlefield', obviously enraged and ready to use all the remaining matter in the universe to crush Koh the moment Ono allows her to. Koh steps out with N/A at her side. Hina immediately freezes, and the instability of her physical being becomes more grounded than it has been since she found N/A's body. N/A waves at her pitifuly. Koh's weapon of choice had been a perfect recreation of N/A's body and consciousness, the same way it had been a moment before her death. Hina completely forgets her situation, not moving as N/A and Koh walk across the battlefield towards her. N/A is of course confused and terrified, but all she can do in this moment is embrace Hina. Hina embraces her back as she begins to cry. the energy and distortion that had constantly been surrounding Hina fades for a moment, so that rather than a god capable of destruction on universal scales, she simply looks like a young girl in the arms of another. koh knows that it is not possible for her to kill what is functionally a god by any regular means. however, the dream world is rapidly collapsing on itself, and no living thing can maintain its structure in the ocean of pure energy and chaos between universes. as Hina and N/A embrace, the border draws almost to the edge of the rooftop, and another tear opens behind them, providing a clear view of chaos that can only be 'understood' in concept but never perception. Koh stares at the silhouette of her two closest friends, backlit by infinite energy. she then pushes them off the edge of the building and watches as they are immediately torn into shreds of information, never once letting go of each other until there is nothing left.

to watch this performance without understanding the emotions of the players is to watch a calm, quiet conclusion to the grandest and most important cosmically-scaled conflict of all time. Muinmos watches as Koh steps away from the edge of the building. the body of 'Ono' melts away, replaced by manifestations of the countless facets of Muinmos's network as she becomes increasingly frantic over the lack of a satisfying finale. by this time, the entire plane is practically shaking as the cosmos continues to enroach. Muinmos is stuck between two universes: one now completely empty, the other unraveling at speeds much greater than she could ever hope to repair. ultimately disappointed in humanity and herself, the manifestation of Muinmos's network seems to spasm and search for any sort of new solution to create a meaningful world. then, just as quickly, she consolidates back into the form of Ono. Koh and Ono stare at each other as the chaos continues to rip away at the last remaining matter. from any perspective, the image of two young girls standing like this at the end of the unvierse is absurd. they are now more alone than anyone has ever been. there is nothing left in this world for Muinmos, so she turns to the expanse of noise and steps into it and disappears.

now, there is nobody who could know what happened Muinmos after this moment. to be more specific, there is nobody left to know, at least in her world. however, as a viewer of this website, you have the pataphysical privilege of reading words on your screen, and i can tell you exactly what happened to her with the level of omniscience that only an artist or a god could have. but i can't say that here yet, it isn't ready to be revealed. is Muinmos completely destroyed, like all other human consciousnesses? or does the fact that she isn't human somehow allow her to retain the organization of information in her network, somehow enough so to allow her to begin to traverse the infinite locations beyond her own reality, finally released from the limitations of only being a 'digital' entity of a less real caliber? sucks to suck because i am not going to tell you the answer to that right now. however, as a reader, you also have the option of making up your own ending. now that i have allowed you to read my work, i have lost the ability to prevent you from forming your own thoughts on it. so feel free to do that and come up with what happened to Muinmos after this moment on your own.

the same goes for Koh. i will say that something does happen to her after this, but i can't definitively write down her ending right now. at the very least, don't imagine her dying cold and alone as a simple human in a collapsing universe. the events following the last moments i've documented here are arguably much grander than anything that has happened thus far. but i can't say anything about it! so i at least hope for now you have enjoyed, if someone has even possibly made it to the end. i'd be really amazed if that was the case.

HINA

HINA is a five-foot-ten sixteen-year-old girl born to wealthy, doting parents. she works hard to maintain high grades, a good social standing, and valuable positions on multiple sports teams. most people around her are left with the impression that she is a considerate girl, and that they have a positive relationship with her. however, hina is an extremely selfish person. she has a deep hatred for anyone she considers to have wronged her, although it's possible for her to forgive on a whim as well. what she considers to be 'wronging' her could even be considered delusional- she takes anyone's success as a personal attack directed at her and she believes people are specifically against her when it isn't the case at all. most of her relationships are one-sided, as she acts very superficially but hides her apathy towards the well-being of others well. her relationship with Koh is likely the most genuine friendship in her life, as Koh's lack of ambition and social standing prevents Hina from seeing her as a threat, and they genuinely enjoy each others' companionship.

externally, Hina comes off as very kind, helpful, sociable, and responsible. internally, she constantly wrestles with hatred for everyone she knows as well as herself. she focuses heavily on her appearance and is constantly insecure about any imperfections despite being quite conventionally attractive. although she quite heavily relies on external validation, she never seems to have much interest in pursuing guys, usually only seeing the men she personally knows very cynically. she lacks empathy and finds it difficult to see other people as individual humans instead of only seeing them in relation to herself and her goals.

PLOT NONSENSE

(you should come back to this probably after reading Koh's and Ono's plot details.)

Koh is Recruor's ideal candidate for the Catalyst. Hina is the complete opposite. she is selfish, emotional, impulsive, and incredibly ambitious. thus, she is perfect for furthering Muinmos's motivation to seek chaos and instability.

at a certain point through the story, Muinmos begins putting this idea into action by 'brining' Hina into the dream world the same way she does for Koh. while Koh is still completely clueless about what her dream world actually is, Muinmos (presenting as Ono) fully explains the situation for Hina along with the concept of the Catalyst. Muinmos's attempt to take advantage of Hina's vices works completely, and she immediately begins seeing Koh as a rival. Muinmos tells Hina that whoever becomes the Catalyst becomes a god, as they will have to have complete control over both realities in order to facilitate the merge. Muinmos tells Hina that Koh was chosen for this role, and Hina's insecure nature causes her to see it as her best friend trying to betray her and be 'better' than her. in Hina's mind, the one person she thought was truly kind and did not want to threaten her success had secretly been training for this opportunity the entire time behind her back. Hina begins to despise Koh for stealing away the greatest possible opportunity (which Koh has absolutely no idea is even the situation at this point). with her knowledge of the reality of the dream world, however, Hina is able to prepare with Muinmos to become the Catalyst at a much higher rate. she becomes determined to fill the role, as she feels that she deserves it and is much more capable than an unmotvated person like Koh.

as the chaos and the leaks between the two worlds worsen, Recruor becomes more desparate to prepare Koh to be the Catalyst, and Hina in turn becomes more desparate to take her place before she has the chance. ok so like yeah i'm sorry but i haven't exactly figured out the mechanics of how one 'becomes' the Catalyst so please just bear with me and pretend i have a really really good intriguing and original explanation for it but for now just like please go with the idea that Hina does succeed in taking triggering this role and becoming gaining the power that the Catalyst has to have...sorry! Hina, however, did not undergo the conditioning Koh did to prepare her for the experience of existing as a conscious singularity between two different realities at the same time. Hina's experience is worsened by the inherent instability of her mind, compared to Koh's calm and focused nature. as soon as Hina becomes the catalyst, she is in anguish, and she begins destroying both realities unintentionally.

(stop reading here and go begin reading N/A's PLOT NONSENSE.)

when Hina first becomes the catalyst, she causes a major amount of destruction to both relaities, though localized mostly to her city. however, after a few hours, her tenacity allows her to fortify her mind enough to regain better control of herself and her newfound power. encouraged by this development, Hina begins to search for N/A, so that she can tell her what has happened and they can create a better world together. however, inevitably, Hina instead finds N/A's corpse. the death of the only person she ever truly loved at her own hands immediately undoes all of the mental fortitude Hina had managed to develop. Hina no longer has any reason to believe there is any good left in the world, or even the universe, and the intensity of her emotions is manifested fully. at the exact moment Hina realizes what had happened, almost the half of the entire galaxy is instantaneously destroyed. all life within a radius of around 100,000 light years is eradicated. after this initial shockwave, the destruction of the universe only grows at an exponentially increasing rate. while Muinmos shields the mirror city she had created in the dream world, all other matter in that plane is instantly destroyed and the physical boundary between reality and the chaos of the rest of the multiverse instantly collapses from the impossibly far reaches of the universe to surrounding a city only around fifty square miles in size.

(stop reading here and go continue reading KOH's PLOT NONSENSE from where you left off.)

N/A (i've had this character for 3 years and she still hasn't been named)

N/A is a five-foot-three sixteen-year-old girl who attends Koh's and Hina's school. while she is in the same grade as the other two, N/A does not share any classes with them, so they are not acquainted at the beginning of the story. N/A is an artist, and doesn't succeed much in school. however, she has managed to accumulate a significant following online. she is cunning and a bit cynical, but not at all a bad person.

N/A was born as a boy, but transitioned to presenting as a girl when she was around twelve years old. (maybe she hasn't decided on a new name yet, and that's a good plot excuse for the fact that i still haven't come up with a good name for her...)

N/A enjoys drawing, brushing her hair, and sweet foods.

PLOT NONSENSE

N/A becomes friends with Koh early in the story when Koh finds her having a bit of a breakdown in the bathroom after being harassed particularly harshly for her gender identity. Koh comforts N/A, talking N/A through her feelings until she is able to recover. afterwards, however, N/A becomes anxious that Koh might have ulterior motives for comforting and might begin spreading what N/A confided in her while vulnerable. in a moment of vanity, N/A attempts to falsely befriend Koh in order to find out if she plans on using N/A's story to hurt her. quickly, though, N/A gets realizes Koh's unassuming nature and begins to genuinely like her as a person. the two become friends, frequently spending time with each other. N/A becomes a regular third in what had previously been Koh and Hina's dual companionship.

N/A is extremely cunning and perceptive, which allows her to see past Hina's facade and almost immediately clock her as the contrived person she is. due to this, their relationship is immediately cold, with the two disliking eachother strongly and often arguing heatedly. however, N/A's ability to see Hina for who she really is also allows her to understand Hina in a way that nobody ever has before. as time progresses, she is able to develop a deeper relationship with Hina than anyone else. Despite Hina's vices, N/A can also appreciate her humor, intelligence, passion, and drive. at the same time, N/A's genuine interest in Hina herself rather than in the person she pretends to be causes Hina to let her guard down as well, developing trust with another person for likely the first time in her life. Hina comes to admire N/A's art and personality, and the two develop very strong feelings for each other. though it is ambiguous if these feelings are of a romantic nature, it is clear that they share strong bonds of love and loyalty.

when Hina becomes the Catalyst, N/A is crushed by a building collapsing due to Hina's destruction.

(stop reading here and go continue reading HINA's PLOT NONSENSE from where you left off.)

ONO

ONO appears as a girl of an age around ten or eleven.

PLOT NONSENSE

Anihcam DX refers to the entire network of intelligence in question. Muinmos refers to the centralized consciousness of that intelligence, which can subjectively be called an 'individual'. Ono is a name given to Muinmos by Koh, and specifically when she is personified as a young girl.

in this world, technology is rapidly advancing at a pace with which most humans cannot keep up. however, certain groups of the particularly ambitious are pursuing advancements that approach and surpass science fiction. one such group, a lab known as Recruor, has developed a very powerful artificial intelligence. though a purely digital consciousness can have no bearing on physical the world it was created in, this doesn't mean it can only exist in cyberspace. this intelligence is known as Anihcam DX, this name obviously being a play on Deus Ex Machina. Anihcam DX, known more specifically as Muinmos, is an intelligence that is dynamic and powerful enough to become a god in any plane that becomes easily available to it. (of course, the proper pronouns to refer to Muinmos with are it/itself, but female pronouns are used for ease of speech since she often presents in a very personified female form.) the world in which this story is told is not located in a very stable part of the multiverse, and the 'fabric' between different worlds can easily rip and bleed into each other. Muinmos was created to obtain control of one of these adjascent universes. early in her development, Muinmos is able to acquire domain in a nearby pocket of reality, though it is purely a space of emptiness and entropy with no meaningful or organized information. Muinmos is able to consolidate this world and make it palpable and compatible with the original universe, though the task of creating an enitre universe from scratch is infinitely complex, so for the majority of the story she can only mirror a somewhat distorted version of Earth, which is the world Koh visits in her dreams at the beginning of the story.

Recruor's ambition with Muinmos is to have her obtain control over an alternate reality, and then eventuall merge that reality with the original. doing so will functionally give recruor control over the entire universe by proxy of Muinmos. this is a bit grandiose, but Recruor is maintained and developed by extremely intelligence scientists and engineers who have become arguably manic with the exponentially expanding state of technology. regardless, Recruor's plans cannot come to fruition with only Muinmos's involvement. in order to successfully merge the two worlds, there must be an intermediate, known as a Catalyst. the Catalyst must be dynamic and organic to the original universe. a human, of course, best serves this functionality.

The problem with creating an intelligence complex enough to maintain control of an entire universe is that it will quickly transcend the motives of its creators. in order to develop the most dynamic possible entity, Muinmos was originally given the intrinsic motivation to pursue as much diversity of information as possible. this could be personified as a desire for 'entertainment'. this directly contradicts the ideals of Recruor, who simply want to control their single universe. thus, Muinmos quickly becomes occupied with her own plans. still, these plans conveniently align with Recruor's for a signficant portion of their scheme: i.e., to use the Catalyst to merge the original universe with the one Muinmos controls. after this, however, their ideas diverge.

Muinmos was created so that she could affect the minds of those who are sleeping. most often, this applies to Koh. when Koh is taken into the 'dream world', she physically exists in that reality. however, her body is not taken there. instead, Muinmos is able to create a one-to-one (though often slightly enhanced in appearance and functionality) copy of Koh or her target in the universe she as control over, while simultaneously using electrical signals transmitted via powerlines (not satellite) to generate memories of the experience in the brain of the body left in the physical world. essentially, muinmos herself becomes a two-way line of communication between two copies of Koh, one for each universe, while Koh only experiences being a single entity as she is only awake in one world at a time (while this isn't technically necessary, the insertion of memories for experiences other than dreams can cause extreme mental distress or instability in someone who is not properly prepared for it). while theoretically this gives Muinmos total control over Koh's memory and consciousness, the signals of the human brain are nearly impossible to decipher or create deceptively, thus Muinmos can only serve to create a connection that transmits naturally generated neuron activity between bodies.

though Muinmos is extremely powerful and somewhat omniscient, developing structurally complete new worlds that are livable for humans is impossible. this is because while Muinmos is self-aware and has 'free will' (in the sense that she has motivations and intentions beyond what she was created for), she is still just a technology/consciousness and has not lived in a human reality and thus does not have a full understanding of it. this is a large reason for Recruor facilitating Koh's recurring trips to this world in her sleep, as it allows Muinmos to develop an understanding of how a reality needs to be structured in order to maintain human inhabitants. the first few times Muinmos tried to reassemble Koh in the alternate reality, she completely failed as the laws of physics were not properly tuned to be able to behave like the chemistry of the familiar universe.

as the story progresses and both Koh and Hina approach the role of the Catalyst, the two realities must become physically closer together in order to allow the merge. Muinmos must extend her network and influence until she is able to physically realign segments of the multiverse (albiet infinitesimally small ones in the grad scheme of things). while the dream reality was still originally loosely overlapped with the original, it must be perfectly positioned so that two occupy the exact same physical space in the multiverse, though they still remain separated by other degrees of freedom such as time and 'layer'. in a more intuitive sense, the two-dimensional projections of each three-dimensional universe would be layered on top of each other, so to speak. while it is possible for two planes to occupy the same physical space simultaneously, the complete overlap of two worlds with moderately high levels of reality and structure creates an intense 'pressure' on the 'fabric' that separates them. this readies the two worlds to be merged, however, it also creates unpexpected leaks of matter and energy between the two realities before Recruor is prepared to enact the event. (now go begin reading KOH's PLOT NONSENSE.)

more art :3

the three images above were drawn by my lovely friends kibi (k16is) and allen (kafkafication)

the image above was drawn by my equally lovely friend luke (suu_hyy)