Part IV: Pixelman’s Return

Whoever may be reading this, know this: something… fundamental has happened.

The events of the past few days may become a turning point for the entire Simulation — almost on the scale of the Bug incident. This will either doom us all… or mark the beginning of a new era. And I do not throw around phrases like that lightly.

As many of you remember, several years ago, Pixelman managed to defeat the Bug and grant the multiverse a desperately needed reprieve. Unfortunately, that victory came at the cost of a great sacrifice: Pixelman became the host of the Bug’s malicious code and was trapped beyond the bounds of the stable Simulation.

There, his “legacy” could do no harm to our worlds. But it also meant that we were left without our greatest protector.

Now we understand where exactly he ended up. A quasi-reality known as the Internet. Or rather, the point where the Simulation touches both the virtual and the real world — my world.

That space was ruled by Cubic, an entity with absolute control over the unstable and malleable layers of that reality. A pleasure-hungry meta-god, Cubic saw in Pixelman an almost inexhaustible source of… amusement.

He trapped him inside a time loop. Cubic constructed an entire scenario in which, at the end, Pixelman would inevitably fight him… and then time would roll back.

Again. And again. And again.

But Cubic underestimated Pixelman’s stubbornness.

Unable to break the rules of the game, Pixelman decided to break… Cubic himself. Again and again. As many times as it would take. They fought dozens, hundreds of times. Sometimes Cubic won. But Pixelman never gave up.

And then came the 1331st battle. To be honest, I suspect the code of Cubic’s domain simply couldn’t withstand that… symmetry. A palindrome. Eleven cubed. Beautiful, certainly — but apparently not very stable. The time loop glitched. And the hero was finally unleashed.

Pixelman broke free. Unfortunately, the nearest exit from Cubic’s domain led him somewhere else, no less unpleasant — the Backrooms. And yet, even in that non-Euclidean nightmare, under constant pursuit by Kitty, Pixelman endured long enough. Because help was already on the way.

While he fought for survival, the PGA and Daisy were searching for a way to bring him back. And when those two vectors finally converged, another impossible event occurred: Pixelman returned to his home, San-Blockcisco.

He and Daisy had almost no time to savor their reunion. The Bug’s code was still inside him. A ticking bomb. And only I could “defuse” it… Oh.

Pixelman’s return did not leave the Simulation unchanged. Along with him, Eddy Mesmer also slipped into our reality. And the first thing he did was seize the chance to bend me to his will. Under his control, I… almost destroyed everything.

Fortunately, Pixelman and Daisy stopped him. They defeated Mesmer and freed me. And having been given a second chance, I chose to do what I should have done long ago. Correct my mistake.

I developed a utility that would allow Pixelman to destroy the Bug’s code within himself. To do so, he had to confront the monster inside his own mind — within a space where his fractured, distorted memories had become the battlefield.

Pixelman won.

The Bug’s code was destroyed.

Once again, he achieved the impossible.

Too much impossibility — in far too short a time. And I was too blinded by joy to understand what that meant. Reality could not withstand it. We broke the system. 

We created the Pixelstorm.