Chapter 6: The Universe’s Rubik’s Cube

A few moments ago…

Haki strode through Neo-Atlantis's spire, the observation deck's hum fading behind him. The Andromeda galaxy loomed outside, its spirals photobombed by the Milky Way's dust—a cosmic middle finger set to clap everything in 1 year, 3 days, 17 hours. His AI chip, a neural lattice woven into his cortex, whispered the countdown like it was reading a weather report. To Haki, it was just Tuesday's to-do list.

The spire's interior was all sleek panels and ambient glow, a minimalist fortress against a world screaming overstimulation. Haki's yocto-optic eyes scanned a holo-display flaring to life: reports of collapsing governments, cults chanting for salvation, and wormhole labs imploding in Copernicus Crater. Screams from stranded scientists still echoed in the bandwidth, twisted by physics no one could grok.

'Amateurs,' Haki muttered. Building wormholes like they're Lego sets.

Why couldn't humanity just yeet itself out of a galactic collision? Nine billion years of tech—warp drives, near-light-speed ships, wormholes, spacetime editors—should've had an answer. But the universe wasn't playing fair. It wasn't just physics. It was… alive, in a way. Not a bearded sky-daddy, but a system with rules no one saw coming. Philosophers had babbled about it, waving incense instead of math. Haki hated to admit it, but those weirdos had the last laugh.

Acca's nerdy voice piped up in his mind, glasses glinting. "The universe exhibits self-regulating behavior, akin to a biological organism. Fascinating, if inconvenient."

"Inconvenient?" Hell Dave snarled, his eerie black aura flaring. "Hmph! It's a coward hiding behind math. Let's punch it!"

"Sure, punch spacetime," Haki shot back. "I'll get you a glove and helmet to protect your ego when you fail and come back a fool."

Hell Dave shrank while others mourned for him. He already looked like a burnt offering so why did Haki have to roast him further?

The first problem: the Fractal Lock. Spacetime wasn't a highway anymore—it was a busted Rubik's Cube. Humanity's warp drives and wormholes had poked too many holes, turning reality into a multi-layered fractal trap. Fly far enough, and you looped back to your starting point, like a glitchy sim. Haki's chip had crunched the data: Kuiper Belt probes, sent to scout escape routes, kept popping up in Star 556's orbit, a red dwarf 12 light-years away, winking like they'd never left.

For dummies, Haki thought, 'imagine the universe as a solved Rubik's Cube. We turned one edge wrong, and now it's twisting itself back to equilibrium. No VIP pass out of this galaxy.'

Even dumber? Still don't get it? You are the universe. Imagine your eye had sentience and created a wormhole just to say 'hi' to your balls… yeah, that would hurt wouldn't it. Would you allow it?

The Milky Way wasn't just Earth's problem—it was a sprawling, disordered mess of terraformed planets and cobbled-together societies. Planet B-689, a steamy jungle orb, housed bio-engineered colonists who worshipped their AI mayor. C-442, a frozen rock near Star 556, ran on crypto-mines powered by geothermal vents, its warlords trading Yoctotech for loyalty. Gas giant Z-19's floating cities churned synth-food for the quadrant, drones fighting pirate fleets for scraps. No central government, just factions, cults, and rogue AIs playing king. Humanity had spread like roaches, but the Fractal Lock kept them caged in this galactic Petri dish.

Kevide's sigma (slaps head in frustration and embarassment) voice cut in, all velvet menace. "This chaos is embarrassing. We're the universe's reality show, and the ratings suck."

'Tell me about it,' Haki thought. 'At least the pirates have style.'

Then came the Multiversal Conservation Protocol. Every universe had a finite energy signature, like a cosmic budget. Mass exodus—say, billions fleeing via wormholes—spiked the bill, triggering a self-erase to protect multiversal symmetry. Small trips, like probes or explorers, were fine even though they would still be looped back to their starting point. But a galactic evacuation? Instant nullification. The universe wasn't evil—it was just balancing its checkbook. It could use two methods to complete this Reverse Loop—Time and Space.

One could be looped by a sort of universal teleportation node, wormhole manipulation or just space/ Spatial Editing in general. But the most terrifying one?

Time.

The reversal of it.

Time could be reversed just to complete this recursion. It had happened many times. Time was reversed for the people involved in probing—Galactic Surfers.

It was even theorized that due to some conditions, a different method of Temporal Editing was already used on everything within the Milky-way Galaxy. Terrifying.

Haki smirked. So, if too many bolt, we all get Karanos-snapped. If we stay, we're cosmic roadkill. Cute paradox.

He descended a mag-lift to his lab, a fortress buried in the spire's core. The doors hissed open, revealing a cathedral of quantum processors, gene synthesizers, and experimental reactors. Yoctobots swarmed, calibrating tools faster than a pit crew. Holo-screens danced with collision Sims: stars imploding, planets shredded, spacetime rippling like a bad holo-flick. Martian supercomputers had run the numbers—zero-point shields could tank meteors, not galactic mergers.

Heavenly Dave's soft voice stirred, his clean and pure white aura glowing. "We can't save them all, but we can redefine what survives." He ended with a beaming smile.

Instinct's silver-shrouded form flickered, silent but nudging. "Not just survival. Transcendence."

Haki's lips twitched. "You two are worse than a self-help sim. Have you even saved yourself? Tch. Let's build something."

The lab was his war room, where he chased the impossible: manipulating dark energy, rewriting entropy, anchoring reality against the collision. A central console flared, showing a signal's waveform—pulsing like a heartbeat from another dimension. Haki frowned. "A quantum grid."

Acca chimed in. "If the signal's a quantum artifact, it could stabilize a soul-matrix, preserving consciousness through the collapse. Feasibility: 19%." He ended, pushing his glasses up his nose bridge.

"Better than zero," Haki thought. "Let's science the hell out of it… What the hell am I even saying."

"Wait, you were the one making snarky jokes about Sevven's world right? Bastard… " Haki winced in regret as he remembered Acca's smarts "Here it comes."

"Well technically, you are, my father… "

"…"

He tapped the console, pulling up his Quantum Matrix design's blueprint—a theoretical beast inspired by that dumb novel's "Ritual of Unbeing."

While not alchemy, it was close: a lattice to bind information, letting the possibility of riding the collision like a surfer on a tsunami possible. The Council would call it madness. Haki called it leverage.

Hell Dave growled. "Tch! Build it or burn it. Quit overthinking."

"Patience, edgelord," Haki shot back. "I'm not dying to a math equation."

"We need a lab rat".

"We could kidnap Amanai's autistic son, no one would miss hi-"

"Amithaba! You need to apologize to that poor soul's spirit right now. Do not bring negative karma to us." Hell Dave was cut off by none other than his other half, Heavenly Dave.

"Hmph! What do you want me to say … Oh! I got it"

Everyone braced themselves by protecting their respective braincells.

Then, it came. Hell suddenly went down on his knees in a prayer posture.

That didn't last for long as he sprung up into the air, his arms spread apart with his legs dangling freely.

"Gomen Amanai… "

As they bickered inside Haki's head, a reactor hummed, Yoctobots weaving a prototype lattice. Haki's eyes glinted—part scientist, part sigma (facepalm again), all defiance. The universe might be a living jerk, locking him in a fractal cage, but he wasn't here to escape. He was here to rewrite the rules, to carve his name into the stars before they fell. And if that meant cracking its Rubik's Cube, so be it.

"Glitch that, I'll just escape".