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Fib - Original Version
🕑 Added 2023-09-26 04:00:24 +0000 UTCThis story actually has two versions with significant differences between the two. The Original Version is more akin to the writer's wishes, while the Alternate Version is more akin to the commissioner's wishes. Enjoy!
Commissioned by Rjjt456
Written by 0neGenericWord and HikerAngel
Fib smiled, out to an empty hallway. She could hear the empty beeps and boops in the background, the usual bustle of office life in the adjacent rooms. Papers being filed, shipped, shipments being sorted, sorting being processed, processes being revised, the entire cycle of office living like a serpent eating its own tail. Outwardly, she probably fit the part. She’d managed to get her friend to lend her a nice business casual outfit, a good spotless white blouse and a very modest miniskirt-stockings combo to sell the cute but professional vibes she so desperately needed to give off. She heard somewhere, at some point in her life, that confidence came from within. That by simply smiling and sitting up straight, one could simply manifest the good vibes one needed into the universe. She was trying so desperately hard to do that right then. She tried to fight the urge to twiddle with her natural black hair, gently curving here and there as it bobbed down just past her shoulders. Twiddling looked antsy, and antsy looked unprofessional, and unprofessional didn’t get jobs. She shook around her disposable cup, hearing the trace bits of coffee slosh around.
Her day wasn’t enviable by anyone’s standards. Any moment now she’d be called in through the door to the right of the bench she was sitting on. There she’d go through a critical interview at Seacrest, the latest startup to hit the Fortune 500 list. From there, she’d need to be downtown by 1:15 to meet up with her longtime friend Jeanne. They’d be hitting up a high-end boutique right at the crossings of the financial district and the arts district. Hopefully there she could find something to wear to her engagement that night, when she would be meeting with the fabulously wealthy Montgomeries, aka the parents of her current boyfriend Leo.
All this would be anxiety inducing as it were, but it was the additional catch that had Fib sweating bullets underneath her mask of controlled confidence. It was the catch that made the narrow hallway close in just that bit more, that made the fans slowly rotating above seem almost motionless in time. The catch being that Fib was not qualified for any of this. At all. She was going into an interview based on her resume of being an accomplished businesswomen coming back from successful internships at top companies all along the East Coast, all fabricated. She was going from there to a shopping trip with her fabulously successful bestie who was blissfully unaware she was ludicrously broke, hence the need for the job interview. And she was dressing there in preparation for a dinner with her date’s even more fabulously well off stingy parents, who were no doubt secure in the knowledge that their son’s knowledgeable, polite, classy girlfriend would be a wonderful addition to the table.
Fib, Fibee to her parents, sometimes wished she wasn’t so good at living up to her name.
She felt her heart beating louder and louder in her chest. The room was too quiet, the background blurring and blurring til it dropped to white noise before fading to true silence. She needed to leave. She shouldn’t have come here. Her heart was like a ping pong ball, swinging between self-assurance and dread, between ego and insecurity. She’d taken these steps because she believed that she had it in her to rise above such petty things like “formal qualifications” and “basic competency”, but that ego had locked itself in the closet three miniature panic attacks ago. She was left alone with just herself, her own heart, and—
And…
And then the world fell out from underneath her. There was no office, no beeping, no booping. No thumping heart. No anxiety. The world went dark. Blackness wrapped around her, sealing her mouth shut before she could so much as open it to scream out. And then she saw a million billion stars, points of light poking out through the curtain of space as everything came back into focus. Zooming outwards, the stars multiplied until she could see them forming the familiar shape of two beautiful eyes decorated in the mascara of superclusters. And the universe winked upon her, and everything went hot.
“Fuck!”
Fib nearly jumped off the bench. Her thighs stung, her ass was sore, and everything from her waist down was soaked in coffee. She looked out on the floor, where her now emptied coffee was still pouring out. Steam still flowed off it. No one was in the hallway to hear her little epithet, but it begged another question that she was very much not comfortable having answered. She dared to check her watch. 12:05. She was late.
“F-“ Fib started, before catching herself. “…..frick. Frick frick frick frick frick!”
What’s with all this anxiety, girl?
Fib brushed coffee off her skirt. The stains sank deeper in.
You’re Fibee LeBlanc! You’re hot! You’re sexy!
She ran to the door immediately beside the bench, only to realize that the door next to the bench was room 783B, while she needed 785C. Why anyone would call a room 785C was beyond her own comprehension.
You’re the star of the show! You’re anything you want to be!
“783C…. 784A…. 784D?”
Her eyes caught on a plaque labeled 785C. Bingo.
Remember, it’s all in your control. Just fake it ‘til you make it, and you’ll be good.
Fib opened the door.
“Fake it ‘til you make it… “ she muttered to herself. “Fake it ‘til you make it…”
At the desk was a stern looking man in a well to do suit. He wore the sort of show-nothing gaze that would do him well in politics or high stakes gambling. Corporate politics was a bit of both, so he was particularly noteworthy. Mr. Bradshaw, Director of Sales at Seacrest. There was a little gold desk plaque with that name and title engraved into it. It was the only bit of decoration he would afford himself.
“Ms. LeBlanc,” the man said, “how nice of you to join us. Five minutes late.”
He gestured towards a clock hanging over the door frame. If Fib was sweating under her clothes, it was lost in the coffee droplets.
‘Oh, ha, that clock’s just a little fast is all, I checked my watch just before I got in here. Actually, I might be a little early!” Fib lied.
The man dryly checked his watch. 11:55.
“Hm. So it is. I’ll have to get that checked out then.”
Fib moved to take her seat.
“And don’t worry about the wetness, just got some water on myself before coming in here. It’ll dry off in like half a second. You won’t even know it was ever there!”
Fib strained a smile, as if her sincerity would sell her lie better. And yet, under her notice, the coffee staining her clothing seemed to vanish into thin air, leaving nary a trace of residue. If Mr. Bradshaw took note, he didn’t show it. Instead he pulled a large folder from under his desk, one with her name on it.
“You have a lot of accomplishments listed here, Ms. LeBlanc. Very strong resume. You don’t see many people your age with a portfolio like yours.”
“Oh, thank you,” Fib said, her smile even more strained.
“Now, I want to go through and review it off the top but first, why Seacrest? I’m sure there would have been a lot of companies chomping at the seams to let you in.”
“Oh, uh, well… I guess it’s because Seacrest was just… such a strong up and coming company, with their… strong work ethic and production schedule.”
The man chuckled at this answer. “Well, I suppose Seacrest has been on the up and ups as of late. I’d like to say we’re proud here of what our company has already managed to accomplish in the short time we’ve been here.”
Fib de-tensed a small amount. She finally passed the first question.
“Now, onto the next step: your resume says here that you got a… Masters in Macroeconomics at Harvard University? Now, I’m a Yale man myself so I have to say, very very impressive. Is this all correct?”
Fib wordlessly nodded. The man’s eyebrows scrunched.
“Oh, I mean, uh, yep, Harvard grad, that’s me! Harvard Harvard, ra ra ra!”
Somewhere in the fabric of space and time, an unraveling was taking place. What were at first slow and steady ripples, of the sort common towards any bookkeeping of reality were fast becoming massive waves crashing against the waters of eternity. The invisible strings connecting concepts to places, particles to particles, laws to reason, were slowly but surely reshaping themselves as history slightly rewrote itself into a different world. In this one, Fib had sent out a few applications to various Ivy League schools on a whim at the end of high school. She distantly remembered being left in wide open shock seeing the single acceptance letter— Harvard, of all places. She remembered her move in, and struggling through her classes, and meeting Jeanne there, and all these other moments that had already and had always happened, because she had subconsciously willed it to be so.
Fib was, herself, unaware of anything but a dim recollection of an awareness she thought she should have had on the tip of her tongue.
“Oh yes, you can probably check in the school’s register. It was, y’know, tough going but I’d say my work ethic really… really helped me stick through it. Yeah, I’d say I’ve always been a hard worker.”
This, of course, hadn’t been true until Fib had deemed it such. But now Fib remembered long winter nights spent working until the early morning on school projects, a streak of almost rigid perfectionism that had stuck with her through all her life. It was a wonder why she had seemed so surprised receiving her acceptance letter to Harvard in the first place—to everyone around her the acceptance must have seemed inevitable for such a bright young lady like her.
“Yes, I checked that right before you came in here. So, you have a rigid understanding of macroeconomics?”
“Yes, I’d say I, uh, um,” Fib said, her thoughts losing her. She had gotten all the way up to a Master’s degree from Harvard, why was it so hard for her to keep her thoughts together? “I’d say I have a pretty solid background in the fundamentals of macroeconomics. Oh, and microeconomics too!”
Her posture shifted as a new comfort washed over her. All at once, six years of career-ready studies came flooding into her mind. The sort of work that some of the richest and most confident young students at the most prestigious universities had done flooded into her like water into a cup, all at once filling her mind with endless understanding of complex market theory and consumer insights that she up until that specific retroactive point wouldn’t have thought a single thing of.
“Hm, well, let’s go through some basic scenarios, help you jog your confidence back.”
Fib relaxed a bit in her chair. “Yes, I think I would like that.”
Elsewhere, the cosmos were in disarray. The universe as it is known can perhaps best be considered less an actual location and more a spectrum of locations, dimensions and planes layered on top of each other like ancient rock formations. To each frequency one might be able to attune to, they would find an entire complete universe all its own, with its own strange rules and component parts working in tandem to keep the entirety of existence in harmony with itself. Some frequencies might be privy to forces so strange and foreign to human minds that they might be considered magic by themselves. And many beings connected to those fundamental forces have such an intimate grasp on their power that they might be considered what a human would call a god.
There were countless gods, as many as there were uncountable stars in the layered universe. Some might seem familiar, even uncannily humanlike save for their impossible strength. Others would seem like something out of a cosmic horror story, complete with tentacles reaching in and out of the ninth and tenth dimensions painted in colors too horrid to describe. And yet focusing on any particular individual world, or really any location a divinity might be found, it would be hard to tell that these beings were the same ultipotent forces of nature one would expect to find.
Whether they were divine pantheons high in the clouds or ethereal alien civilizations sealed away in closed dimensions, sane or insane, comprehensible or incomprehensible, what united all was a sense of chaotic discord. To mortals, such changes as were happening on the waters of reality were invisible, imperceptible even by all but the keenest of eyes. But to the gods, they could feel it. The forces that gave them strength were being twisted, ripped from their intended dimensions and tangled into each other. Time and space were subtly but notably being warped in ways that no entity could explain, and the greatest scholars of these innumerable godly worlds were fast at work on trying to uncover the source.
These outer dimensional forces naturally had no bearing on the interview Fib was currently embroiled in. She deftly answered question after question with expect timing, surprising even herself. She wasn’t even sure why she was so nervous about the interview. This was pretty simple stuff. Any questions she didn’t know she would confidently bluff through, and in subtle ways the universe would fit to rectify her errors. Already she’d mispronounced the name of several important technical concepts in business theory. Most were forgivable, but there were more than a few graves of a few famous economists who found their letters ever so slightly rearranged to fit their new reality. All this for an interview for a position Fib had not a few minutes been totally unprepared for. Uselessly, because this interview was a breeze for her, and was always destined to have been.
The interviewer seemed to be captivated by her answers. He had plenty of decades of experience under his belt, but he couldn’t not be impressed by how casually this woman was answering his questions. He had expected her to defer at least a few questions, which would show how the candidates reacted to stress, but she hadn’t given him the chance. Fib’s nerves were evident still, even to the interviewer, and her social skills in formal situations definitely needed some help, but she could definitely be an invaluable asset to the team.
“…and that would pay 15% dividends each quarter,” Fib finished. “Any other scenarios?”
“No, no, that will be good for now. I must say, Ms. Leblanc, your grasp over this stuff far outclasses most interviewees. It’s clear you did your homework.”
“Thank you sir,” Fib beamed. “Oh, and it’s Fib. Weird nickname, I know.”
“Understood. Now, Fib, let’s move onto your prior work experience. Unsurprisingly considering your resume, it says here that… hm.”
“Hm?”
“Well, I don’t know, this might have been a misprint but… it says here you took an internship at Security Investings from 2015-2016, but that you also had a full time position at KenTech from 2014 well into 2019. And since you graduated in 2016, well… it was probably a misprint, I’m sure you just had a position from-“
“No!”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, no, no it’s not a misprint. I was—I double time’d at KenTech and Security Investings while finishing up my Senior year. I got special permission from both companies, uh, yeah. I mean it was, kind of di… well no I guess it was pretty simple, I’d say I’m a pretty organized person and my strong work ethic and teamwork skills made it possible for me to work like that.”
Mr. Bradshaw raised an eyebrow.
“Well if this reading is correct you would have had to be working 16 hour days while still taking what I presume were a full set of classes. An 80-hour work week seems rather extreme.”
“Oh pffft 80 hour work week? I could have worked twice that, I get my things done so quickly that you don’t even notice it! I was between KenTech HQ and Security’s HQ every other day, they could hardly get enough of me!”
This was Fib’s first slipup. If she had simply said that she had worked remotely, perhaps, or admitted a misprint, or changed her internship to a part time position, the universe might have been spared her wrath. But KenTech’s corporate headquarters were located in Maryland. Security’s corporate headquarters were located in Maine. To travel between both as she claimed she casually had would take something along the lines of superhuman endurance and speed that would no doubt result in countless major rewrites of the natural laws of nature and the subsequent course of human history that could easily have torn the world in two.
The disaster was narrowly avoided, but at no small cost. What Fib was alluding to, it turned out to always have been, was the East Coast TransitLine, a famed historic bullettrain using state of the art technology to travel all along the eastern corridor in a fraction of the time even an airplane might be able to cross it. It was a massive trillion dollar infrastructure plan needing unprecedented bipartisan support from congress, taking well over twenty years to be finally completed just in time for one Fibee LeBlanc to be able to travel from one job to another to complete it. Mercifully, Fib’s words had allowed enough leeway for her to have taken a semester off to take both of her internship positions. And, of course, Fib herself had become such a casual master of the field of economics and such a superhumanly hard worker that she could complete an 8-hour workday in the runtime of the average feature length film. So working two jobs and commuting an hour between them over hundreds of miles in a drastically reimagined eastern seaboard was no trouble at all for her. Very few things, it was turning out, were ever trouble at all for her.
“I suppose with the ECT it might be possible for you to… hm…”
“Well, I did take that semester off. Full time classes with that kinda commute? No thank you.”
“Very inspirational, I must say you’re quite the hard worker.”
Fib beamed.
“Now, what positions did you hold there? I don’t see them written down here”
Fib froze. She had forgotten to write her own positions down. How had her resume managed to get this far into the process without titles written down? In her stage fright, she’d forgotten what those positions had been. In reality she had never held those positions and as such hadn’t detailed what they would be, but that reality had long since been shunted out in favor of the new reality where she was an up and coming talented businesswoman making her way through sales.
“Oh, well, I was an intern… in… sales,” Fib stammered out.
“Yes yes I get that but what position did you hold at KenTech?”
“Um…”
Fib’s eyes darted about the room. How did she forget her own position? She could barely remember any position at any company, despite all her years of intensive studying and hardline work experience she had seemingly neglected to take note of the titles for the positions she worked in, under, and with. It was mortifying. Finally, she caught a glimpse of the desk plaque again.
“I was… Executive… uh… Executive Director of Sales Tech- Tech sales! I was Executive Director of Tech Sales!”
The man’s face went pale. In that moment, Fib’s casual slip of the tongue had flipped the social dynamic of the interview on its head. No longer was she the innocent promising up and coming applicant to the sales department, destined for some junior role to climb the corporate ladder from. Fib had been a climber since high school. She’d used her parents name to foster business deals, gained work experience before she could drive a car. She’d studied macroeconomics textbooks top to bottom by the time she had even applied to college. And she had experience. Lord did she have experience. Her resume was packed, and it was a curated list. There was no doubt Fib was superhuman now, she was a machine, crunching numbers and writing thirty page formal business proposals in the time it took most people to use the bathroom. Companies at first seemed sheepish about taking business decisions from a girl who was still taking high school sophomore English classes, but she soon proved her worth. Every company she advised for rocketed to the top, even some of the investment companies that were funding Seacrest were products of her genius. She was brilliant, she was brilliant beyond brilliant. There were rumors that her research work in college might soon earn her a Nobel Prize in economics.
He went pale because he realized there would be only one reason Fib LeBlanc would be in his room at that moment, on that day, being given an interview as if her talent as a businesswoman wasn’t self-evident already. The application for the junior position was a formality. She was here to take his job. Most assuredly the higher ups had already made the decision behind his back, under his notice. Was it something he had done? Had the first quarter earnings actually been below expectations? He assumed his presentations had gone flawlessly but there had to be some catch somewhere in the mix. Or did it at all matter when right before him was one of the most prominent shooting stars in industry? Was he just the one who drew the short straw? His mind spun out into a thousand different tracks, each track steadily on its way to total derailment.
“I.. ahem, I see your qualifications.”
“I know,” Fib beamed, oblivious.
“You’re, clearly, well.. yes… I think…”
Fib was already losing interest in the interview. Not because it was beneath her (though unbeknownst to her it now was), but because the coffee spill she’d retconned from existence had been her only food all day. Endless impossible productivity required quite the food intake. Mr. Bradshaw watched the disinterest in her gaze with growing horror.
“I, yes I see you’re a busy woman with a lot of important things to do, how about we cut the interview here. I think we’ve… seen more than enough. Thank you for your time we’ll be in contact in about a week or so feel free to contact us thank you for your time have a nice afternoon I’ll see-“
Fib held out a single hand. One of the many infinite skills she’d adopted in becoming a demigoddess of business was the art of diplomacy. There were micropositionings in gesture and pose that could signal different levels of competency and power between different individuals. Actions so minute they would seem totally imperceptible, but that added together into a broader portrait painting out a dynamic. A strong handshake might symbolize dependability, but too firm might indicate some deeper level of distrust. These were ideas that might not be stated aloud, but would be absorbed as subliminal messaging nonetheless. But because Fib had mastered this art as she had now mastered so many others, even the handshake she gave her interviewer was mathematically perfect. So honed to a point in every subtly that the only message it could possibly convey was one of overwhelming superiority. So honed to a point, in fact, that the untrained hand might only notice a tenth of the full potential of the perfect common business handshake that she had unleashed upon the world.
Nevertheless, Mr. Bradshaw was speechless. The man sat back down in his chair as Fib smiled and walked out. In her haste she’d forgotten to greet him, but it wasn’t as though it mattered. The interview was a formality, she had well earned his career. He just hoped he’d be allowed to leave with a decent severance package.
Fib strutted out of the building with the sort of power pose that supermodels would sacrifice a thousand virgins to summon. In her mind she felt she must have seemed like a mess. Every person she met in the hallways as she made her way back down to the ground floor seemed to deliberately avoid her direct gaze. She wondered if her coffee stain was still visible on her shirt.
It wasn’t until she left the building that she let herself slide out of businesswoman mode and back into her usual familiar self. Good ol’ frazzled Fibbie, one third of the way through her day. She took a deep breath in the open air, then squealed.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god!” she cheered. “I totally kicked ass in that interview! That guy didn’t know what hit him. I’m so gonna get that position now!”
She gave herself a high five, this one not mathematically perfect. One trial down, two more to go. Now if only she could find the subway…
Thirty minutes passed, and Fib had finally made her way to Willlow’s Café, high end boutique and fashion store. The boutique sat right at the heart of downtown, which was about ten minutes away from Seacrest’s offices. The other twenty minutes were mainly more self-congratulation and total abject confusion navigating the city. But she was here now, dressed top to bottom in the same outfit she’d gone to the interview with. It was slightly nicer now, the same style but with higher quality fabrics that complimented her body better. Fib couldn’t tell the difference, but Jeanne definitely could. And would, as her head panned across the room following her friend with two jewellike emerald eyes.
“Hey girl!’ Jeanne called out. She was seated right at the front entrance, at a quaint coffee table. She’d been nibbling on some frosted scones.
“Jeanne!”
Jeanne stood up to hug Fib. It was a kind gesture that reminded Fib of how much she hate being reminded of the height difference between them. Jeanne was 5’11, athletic, bright eyed. Her hair had no doubt been dyed crimson just that morning. Fib barely knew what Jeanne even did for a living. It wasn’t clear if it mattered. Jeanne’s parents were in real estate; she’d been well off for as long as Fib had known her. They raised her on a steady diet of horse-riding lessons and private ballet classes. It filled her with the sort of all American girl charm that really stood out against Fib’s lanky dullness. Not that she actually was dull. Fib still radiated a bit of the condensed girlboss energy she’d channeled at the interview. Even Jeanne couldn’t help but give Fib a second glance.
“Damn, you’re looking crazy good today! New clothes?”
Fib smiled. “Nah, this is nothing new.”
Nothing on the surface changed. The conversation wouldn’t skip a beat as it went on to the minute details of their lives. But it was becoming increasingly rare for Fib’s slips of the tongue to not rewrite reality on a cosmic scale. This was no exception. And yet an outsider looking in would be hard pressed to spot the change that Jeanne had undergone. If one were to take Jeanne, unraveling her life out like a ball of yarn to stretch it thin, one might see the arc unfold nearly exactly to how it did before. But there were shifts. A look in Jeanne’s eyes as Fib gushed over her third new high paying job offer. A dropped beat as Jeanne saw Fib walk away with some new gorgeous boytoy. Every second glance a passing stranger might make from her outward beauty to Fib’s strange invisible radiance.
In a lot of ways, Jeanne felt what Fib had always felt, seeing the boys flock to her side, seeing her pictures from extravagant vacations in faraway countries, and seeing the world at large pass Fib over for her cuter, richer, and generally more pleasant friend. And even as she had rewritten history to improve her own merits, Fib’s feelings of inadequacy to Jeanne hadn’t waned. But now Fib had so effortlessly passed that same burden onto her friend, planting within Jeanne’s heart the same seed that for so long had quietly tortured her. Jealousy.
Fib was Jeanne’s friend in as much as Jeanne Fib’s. She would never risk a friendship over feelings so petty. After all, wasn’t her own life charmed as is? And yet, the way that Fib grabbed her wrist to drag her over to begin looking through clothing made it perfectly clear that their dynamic had changed in an invisible yet irreversible way. What Fib took as post interview confidence, Jeanne recognized as solidifying proof that Fib truly was… was…
“Ugh, could you get any slower?” Fib teased.
“I’m just a little tired,” Jeanne lied. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. It’s cool though, let’s start digging through.”
The two went straight to it. Jeanne eyed some new pants while Fib poked through a rack of overpriced blouses. She held one out, a thin fabric with rose print.
“Pretty, right?” Fib asked.
Jeanne took it in hand, holding it up to her body. Fib’s jaw dropped. The colors, the patterns, the way the silhouette seemed built for her figure, the blouse was tailor made for the fashionista. Though, with a face as soft and radiant as hers a garbage bag worn as a shawl could look beautiful.
“Jeez, I haven’t even put it on yet! Let me…”
Jeanne delicately plucked a few articles of clothing hanging over Fib’s shoulder. Jeanne might have been jealous of her freakishly talented bestie, but she was still the same outgoing go-getter she’d always been. The little bit of positive feedback Fib showed her was already doing wonders for her energy. She huffed over to the changing rooms, Fib following dutifully behind.
The blouse was, naturally, a perfect fit. As were the next seventeen items of clothing, including but not limited to three designer jeans, a fur coat, limited time flats billed as a collab between a well known Italian shoemaker and a popular hip hop artist, and a pair of campy Christmas socks that nevertheless looked stylish as ever on Jeanne. Really, if it weren’t for all the changes Fib had forced into reality, Jeanne’s natural looks and impeccable fashion sense would seem almost inhuman.
It was, in fact, somewhere around item twenty one that Jeanne remembered why they were even here in the first place.
“Oh my god I’m so sorry Fib I totally forgot, we were looking for a new outfit for you to wear to your nice date with Leo~.”
Fib stumbled back to awareness. She’d been eyeing a tag for a very nifty looking t-shirt that was inexplicably priced in the triple digits.
“Hm?”
“Honey. Sweetie. Your date? With your boyfriend? At his parents’ house? His ritzy and very stuffy parents you want to impress?”
Fib looked down at her current outfit. “Is this not… good?”
Jeanne frowned. Not because Fib was wrong, much the opposite. The minor improvements in Fib’s outfit her casual reality warping had made were impressive to say the least. Her outfit had gone from a thrown-on attempt at business casual to a genuine fashion statement. Something about the texture in the stockings really brought out Fib’s skin tone, while the subtle off white coloring on the blouse seemed bold yet approachable. Really, it was surprising Fib hadn’t shopped here already.
It took a second for her mind to reconcile the matter.
“Well, it looks nice. But. Have you considered something less… business-y?”
“But I want to seem well off to Leo’s parents, right?”
“You don’t want to seem too businesslike. If you’re all serious they’ll think you can’t have fun.”
“And if I look like I’m having too much fun they’ll think I’m a slut.”
“The paradox of womanhood, Fib. Look, how about we try a few new outfits on and we’ll-“
“I’m good, thanks.”
Fib turned away.
“I thought I was the one bummed out today.”
In truth, Fib would be thrilled to get out of the cheap tacky clothes she thought she was still in. The boutique was lovely, all the outfits she’d found today had been lovely, and she would have been thrilled to buy it if she weren’t convinced that she only had somewhere on the order of thirty dollars on hand at the moment. This wasn’t true, since she now had a net worth somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at the bare minimum. But in Fib’s mind, she was still the same broke out-of-college student she had been when she woke up in the morning.
“I’m just, fine, okay? These clothes are snazzy enough as is.”
This was probably already true, but her blouse’s color became just the slightest bit more appealing.
“I mean, it’s great, I’m feeling it but, don’t you wanna hang out, just check out the clothes? If you want I can even pay, look-“
“No! I don’t need you to pay!” she shouted. “This boutique’s third rate anyways, nobody even goes here anymore. All the clothes are, like, last season or whatever.”
The clothing in Jeanne’s hands immediately went down in quality. Rougher fabrics, cheaper brands, gaudier colors. Jeanne felt a little ashamed even holding them. Laying them atop a nearby rack gave her an excuse to get distance from Fib, whose anger was starting to summon the inhuman aura of cold calculated perfection Fib was notorious for in the business world.
“Oh, okay, I mean we can shop somewhere else if you-“
“No! No no no!” Fib stomped, and it was somehow classy. “I don’t want it, and heck, I don’t even need it! I’m like, basically a fashionista already, one way better than you are! I get groupies and I don’t even need an Instagram or whatever. I’m basically a freaking icon, and I’m sorry but I am too hot for this junkyard of clothes!
Jeanne winced as though she’d been physically punched. And in a way she had been, metaphysically. She was being shouted down by Fib, her best friend who was way better dressed than her, a supposed fashion influencer. She couldn’t even remember why they’d come to this ransack shithole thrift shop anyways, and at this point her brain was too frazzled to correct the cognitive dissonance. Worse, their little fight had attracted stares, and Jeanne could guess from who.
“Aw crap,” Jeanne muttered.
“Hm?” Fib asked.
“Um, no one,” Jeanne began. She leaned over to whisper into Fib’s ear. “Stans, nine o’clock.”
“Your side or-“
“Nine o’clock, my side.”
Fib’s gaze peered slightly over Jeanne’s left shoulder, to where she could see a few teenage girls hastily turning away. It made sense teenagers would be shopping here, the clothing was so cheap even she could probably afford to put a decent outfit together. Not that she’d need it, really, with how good her outfit was as is.
“I see teenagers.”
“They were totally eyeing you down.”
“Gay teenagers?”
“No. Well, maybe I don’t know, but I think they’re among the weirdos who comment on all the posts I have with you in them.”
“Wait, like, like the groupies you get sometimes? I have groupies?”
“Yes you have groupies, you just said that!” Jeanne responded, frustrated at Fib’s denseness.
“Oh my god I have groupies!” Fib bubbled. It was like she was living out a childhood dream of becoming some famous Hollywood celebrity.
“Yeah bestie pipe down, you don’t want them to see us. Look, I think you’re-“
Jeanne cut herself off.
“What?” Fib asked.
“I just saw the clock on the back wall.”
“Cool?”
“It’s a quarter to five.”
“… you’re losing me.”
“Bestie. Your date. It’s at five.”
“Oh. That’s not good.”
“His place is an hour up north.”
Fib nearly snaps her neck to spot the clock. Sure enough, it reads 4:45. The time was actually 3:34, the store owners not having bothered to account for daylight savings time.
“Oh god it’s 4:45.”
And then it was 4:45 PM. At this point, Fib’s changes had gotten so large in scope that erasing an entire hour from a day was minor in comparison. Fib was far more concerned with running out of the store in a hurry. Jeanne chased after, out into the late afternoon cityscape.
“Fib! Just call him and tell him you’ll be late!” Jeanne screamed. Her vocal cords strained against each other.
“I’ll be fine! I know a shortcut, I can get there in a minute!”
“It’s an hour away, hon, you can’t-“
Fib disappeared into the crowd. Literally. She winked out of existence between two passersby making their way through the downtown plaza. It left Jeanne briefly stunned, before a high school girl pounced on her back. She nearly slammed the kid onto the pavement on instinct. The high schooler got back down on the ground, yet still bounced as though she were eager to leave it again.
“… crap, were you one of the groupies that-“ Jeanne started, her voice only hesitating when she realized that the girl was not alone, but was instead with a group. A pretty large group of about twenty or so people, a few as old as Jeanne and Fib were, a few barely old enough to be called teenagers. Mostly all women. The initial high schooler, seemingly the leader of the bunch, seemed to beam at the recognition.
“Oh, so you’re… all groupies.”
Jeanne scanned them over, a wave of nods or affirmations returning in response. They all seemed stylish enough but there was some nagging feeling Jeanne couldn’t let go. She knew she could be a little preppy with her outfit choices, but these guys took it a step beyond. Nice ironed dress shirts and blouses, peppy blazers, nice leather flats. Stockings. It was almost as though they weren’t dressed to go out, but for office work.
“Or an interview,” Jeanne mumbled under her breath.
“So you were with Fibbie? Are you her understudy? Are you her photographer? Are you her girlfriend? Are you-“
“You’re Fib’s groupies? She doesn’t even have a public… anything account, really.”
“Oh, we’re just a small group dedicated to the absolutely style redefining fashion icon who’s been spotted around town recently!”
Another young groupie chimed in. “She was tagged in a lot of other people’s photos, and she’s kind of been the unofficial face of officecore.”
“Officecore?”
“Wow, you should read up more on fashion, no offense. Officecore is what’s in now, it’s what’s popping!”
The second groupie followed in turn. “It’s the spirit of the working individual juxtaposed against the conformist yet comforting clockwork hegemony of global capitalism! Which makes it very in.”
“Very in,” responded the other chorus like groupies.
Jeanne frowned. “Look, kid, I don’t know where like, any of your parents are but I’m, sort of a big deal. TrenderFenderBender? Yeah, that’s me. I know Fib’s got a tight style but-“
“Do you know where she is?” responded the lead groupie, the others following in turn. Jeanne knew stan culture could be weird but these cats were seeming more cult than following. And all for a girl they hardly knew.
“Well?” the second groupie responded, more indignant in her questioning.
Jeanne took a second to mull over her answer.
“Gonna be real with you, I have no fucking clue where she is.”
Let us return to the realms of the abstract and the divine. Or the realms formerly of the abstract and divine, currently of the shit and fuck with the degree of total nonsense that is rippling through every level of reality right now. Those beings capable of higher thought were at this point well aware of the source of the cause. On some lower plane of existence, in a three dimensional planetoid its inhabitants called “Earth”, some lower lifeform had somehow come into contact with… something that had allowed them to make such wide sweeping changes onto the fundamental nature of reality. The ambiguity unsettled them. They kept track of libraries of countably infinite size and shape with intellects powered by the energy of entire star systems. And yet even they, the intellectuals of the layered universe, could not even hope to fathom what accident of spacetime had allowed this benign mortal, less than a germ to their heights, could so easily bend reality to its breaking points.
Star systems winked in and out of existence. Spells cast in one realm would spray out into another. Gravity would start, stop, reverse, invert, then wrinkle to begin the cycle all over again. On some of the more abstract planes of existence, the changes were more drastic. Everything from history to time to conceptual understandings were being molded like clay to conform to this single woman’s demands. The universe was at its breaking point. Anymore and meaning itself might crumble to dust, reality itself became a plaything for her to contort as she pleased.
So the thinkers and watchers and entities and abstracts pushed upon the impenetrable bubble that had been built upon the three dimensional universe and its strange little planetoid called earth. Like a wall, it held firm, but like an egg, it was not without cracks. And through one of those cracks, just a bit of the unknowable began to seep through, down into the mortal world below.
Fib exited the dimensional wormhole she’d created with her exaggeration in a single breathless motion. She stumbled a bit, before regaining her poise and composure. She looked around. She’d somehow crossed out from the middle of urbanity right into the middle of the backroads of the backroads. Leo’s family definitely liked their isolation. She’d only been there once before, when Leo had to go back to pick something up. She remembered the oak trees, so high and mighty as they seemed then. Perhaps it was how nicely her day had been going so far but, they didn’t seem nearly as high or mighty now. It gave her the inner confidence to push through the ritzy marble gates at the front of the manor. They were just for show, really, but it was one hell of an impressive show. She felt as though she were stepping into another realm entirely. And far along on that grassy path was the edifice itself. A striking colonial home, too small to be called anything but a mansion but somehow quainter, less artificial than the term might otherwise imply. It had a driveway, like most homes, and a front door with a wooden doorbell and a hanging lamplight, also like most homes. It was just larger. A lot larger.
The woman felt her will waver for the first time since waiting for the interview. She was about to actually meet her boyfriend’s parents, for realsies. What would they think about her? Sure she had nailed the interview and had a decent if weird time downtown, but this was different, way higher stakes. Everything Leo had told her about his parents had only raised her anxieties. Perhaps if she knew of all the accolades she’d given herself she’d feel more secure in her position, but as it was she couldn’t help but feel as though her earlier accomplishments during the day had been mere flukes.
“Fake it til you make it… fake it til you make it…” Fib repeated under her breath. It was part mantra, part ritual, as though she were casting a spell to manifest her confidence into outward reality. It wasn’t entirely far from the truth.
“I’m Fib LeBlanc. I’m cool. I’m smart. I’m like, so sexy that anybody else would be lucky to be around me. I’m super lovable, and talented, and I’m a strong independent woman. Did I say smart already?”
With every self-reassurance, she changed. Her height went up by nearly half a foot. Her bangs became immaculately kept, like those a celebrity might prepare before an interview. Her figure filled out til her curves seemed to almost define the outfit more than the outfit defined her curves. Her eyes became like deep almond pools, punctuated with pupils dark like space itself. Her face’s features came into vivid focus. Years of focused muscle training appeared on her in moments as hardened abs formed on her stomach. And all this merely compounded her existing inhuman composure, that mastery of natural charisma and confidence she’d acquired from her business life. It was as though a storm of Fib had begun pushing towards the manor, down along the lengthy driveway up to the front doors, where two perfect knocks heralded the arrival of that which none could ever hope to prepare for.
There was a pause, and then the door opened.
“Well, I figure you must be,” an older man with the beginning whispers of gray hairs began. He didn’t finish, because the rest of his sentence was stuck in his throat as he took a quick look at the indescribably gorgeous sweetheart who was standing before him. His heartbeat shot up through the roof as he totally failed to contain his perversion. His mind clouded over. Those legs, that waist, those arms… oh god, the eyes. His own internal monologue seemed to trail off into infinity.
“Hey, I’m Fib. Um, I’m assuming you’re Mr. Montgomery? I’m Leo’s, um, girlfriend.”
The older man nodded, eying her down one more time. Fib wasn’t totally oblivious, she could tell he was creeping on her at least. She tried to shrug off the discomfort, chuckling as she walked in. Mr. Montgomery reached a single hand out to her, which she pushed away with only the barest of effort. She noticed that the gesture seemed to throw the man back a ways, shaking him from his Fib induced trance state.
“Huh, I must be stronger than I thought,” Fib mused to herself, eying her fingernails.
She was distracted long enough to crash headfirst into a certain young man, slender and lanky in a sleek sort of way. He fell flat on his ass, totally laid prone by Fib’s now definitely superhuman strength.
“Oh, Leo! Sorry babe, I got distracted, your dad let me in,” Fib explained.
Leo’s mind was blank. He saw one look at his date in this form and was instantly hypnotized. Every element of her that he loved physically seemed amplified to an almost painful degree. It was like staring at the sun, where the sun was also a black hole that his gaze was drawn to all the same. Every part of her body seemed to be so perfect, every inch of her pose so commanding that he couldn’t help but feel his heart and will totally bend. He wanted, no, he needed to serve her from now until the moment his breath gave in. He would—
And then he saw it. Well, he didn’t truly see it, because if he had he would have gone mad from just the glimpse and spent the rest of his days in an insane asylum. What he saw could more accurately be described as the shadow of the unseeable, just the echoes from the veil of reality peeling back just slightly, allowing the smallest fraction of the endless layered realms to make themselves known to him. And he didn’t truly comprehend that, either, but what the momentary connection did allow him was a moment of complete sobriety. Not knowledge, just the deep guttural understanding that something about the world as it was now was deeply, fundamentally wrong.
“Oh, you must be Leo’s little lady, you look absolutely gorgeous darling! Let me take you right in, dinner’s almost ready!”
Leo snapped back into focus as his mother pulled Fib away. His father came right up beside him, having just gotten back on his feet himself.
“You’ve got yourself one heck of a lucky lass around your arm, Leo.”
“Yeah…” Leo said, unsure of his own unsureness.
Dinner in the Montgomery household was a sacred affair, reserved mainly for guests and major events. Otherwise it was something best left shared alone in front of a tv with some reheated dish. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Montgomery would admit this aloud, to do so would be to break the spell the meal had over them. And there truly was a powerful spell in the air that night. Fib’s mind melting beauty had calmed to a more reasonable impossible beauty that coupled with her effortless charisma had the Montgomeries eating out of her hand, Leo excepted. He had instead taken to silence, only chiming in when directly prompted. He seemed to be intently concentrated on something, but Fib couldn’t figure out what it was. She tried to not fret on the matter.
Fib poked at her air fried artisanal steak. She wasn’t sure in the slightest what that word meant, but it seemed interesting in any case. It was tasty as all hell. She jabbed Leo with her shoulder, hoping to catch him off guard with a witty line of some sort, but he only glanced up at her with a strange confused look.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“Have you… always been this tall?” Leo asked.
Fib thought about that question. “Am I taller than usual?”
“No, it’s probably nothing,” Leo answered. “Just feeling weird.”
“Oh.”
The table went quiet again. Mr. Montgomery broke the silence with a heart laugh.
“So, Leo was telling us about you having an interview today? Quite the working woman, are you?”
“Oh, yeah, at Seacrest? They have some offices in the city.”
“Ooo, Seacrest. I hear they’re up and bustling,” Mrs. Montgomery chimed in.
“Yeah, they’re like, basically the richest company in America right now,” Fib exaggerated. Instantly, the company’s net worth shot up into the trillions of dollars, stacking it right as the richest company not only in America, but indeed in the world. “Kind of a big deal.”
Mr. Montgomery let out a polite whistle. “Ooo, impressive. One of my old business partners just landed some new deals with Seacrest, an absolutely wonderful place. Think you did well?”
“I mean, I basically already landed the job,” Fib bragged. It was functionally true already, but a bit of codification into the fundamental laws of reality never killed anyone.
“I thought Seacrest was a new company,” said Leo. “How’d they climb to the place of the wealthiest company in the world in just a few years since going public?”
Fib winced. “Well, um, actually they’ve been around like, forever. A lotta time to acquire capital or whatever, right?”
Leo’s parents nodded, suddenly recalling Seacrest’s long successful century in industry, spreading from one field to the next. They had long since become a household name. Even Leo remembered seeing ads for them on tv as a kid, which bothered him because he was also just as sure that he had barely even heard of the company before Fib had walked in today.
“Well yes, very very long running company,” Mr. Montgomery confirmed. “Cousin of mine worked there in HR for a… how long was Maggie there, dear?”
“Twenty years, give or take,” Mrs. Montgomery added.
“What? No, Aunt Maggie worked at Dynaplex, right?”
Mr. Montgomery chortled a bit. “Dynaplex? What on Earth’s a Dynaplex?”
“Well it’s… a…” Leo’s voice cut out. He realized suddenly he had no idea what he was saying. He looked to Fib, who only shrugged.
“But enough about work talk, let’s talk about you!” Mrs. Montgomery said. “Are you into any sports? More of a nature lover or a city girl at heart? No judgment, Hank here didn’t start jogging til he was 40!”
She chortled to herself.
“Hey, I think the proof’s in the putting. Look at those biceps, I think she’s been hitting the gym. You could take some tips from her, Leo. Don’t want your girlfriend to out-bench you!”
“Yeah, with the amount I work out, I’m probably way stronger than you!” Fib chimed in.
She barely even noticed her fitness triple, the tendons in her muscles growing denser. She patted Leo on the back, slamming him against the table.
“Oh, sorry. I guess I don't know my own strength.”
“You've… never been into working out,” Leo responded.
“What?”
“You’ve never been into working out. Or big business.”
“Uh, I’ve, always been super into both of those things. Is your memory working alright?”
Leo shook his head as new memories flooded into his mind.
“No, that’s the issue I think. I’m remembering all of this stuff but it feels like I’m seeing through someone else’s lenses. And like, the more stuff about that Fib I remember, the less I remember the Fib I, uh, actually know.”
Fib frowned. “Look babe if you weren’t feeling it, you could have just called out.”
“Come on, let me go into the kitchen,” Mrs. Montgomery began, “I can prep up some desert and-“
“You two should step out for a second,” Fib stated. The finality in her voice shut them both up. They silently nodded, pushing out their seats and leaving like two scolded children.
“What the…”
“What the fuck, Leo? I thought you were the one who wanted me to meet your parents!”
“What did you just do?”
“I… I said it'd be better for them to step out for a second.”
“No, you told them to leave. Just like you told them to like you and just like you’ve been saying all this crap all night that somehow keeps winding up to be true even though I know it isn’t.”
“How do you know? How do you know I’m not all the things I say I am if you even admit your memories agree with me?”
“Because I just know! Because when we went out for the first time, I wanted to hang out with someone who wasn’t so busy with deadlines and productivity and sales and money like everyone else in my life. Because you were you, the short lanky girl with the messy black hair who always had a quick comeback in the back of her mind, who could talk her way out of everything. Its not that I’m not happy for you but… this is…”
He put his head down in his hands, his mind torn by the countless conflicting truths bouncing around in his mind. Fib retreated into herself.
“I. I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Sorry, look I fucked up dinner, let me just call my parents back and we can-“
“I lied!”
Leo looked up.
“What?”
“I lied! I’m not rich and successful, Seacrest is just a new tech company in the area, they aren’t the richest company in America. I’ve been wearing flats and holding my chest. Yeah I was getting into jogging but I’m not some kinda fitness junkie. I just, I’ve been going through today lying through my interview and through hanging with Jeanne in town because I thought, maybe if I could say enough good stuff about me, maybe I could lie to myself. And maybe I could believe it.”
With every sentence her form retreated back into itself as she reverted to her old, demure self. She wouldn’t meet Leo’s eyes.
“Fake it til you make it.”
Her eyes lit up. “Yeah, exactly.”
“I think you’re saying it too literally. It doesn’t mean lie until the lie becomes the truth. It’s more like, uh, hyping yourself up, and giving yourself that confidence you need to take on anything. I mean you impressed my parents, and you kinda shocked me with how good you looked when you came in. All that with just a bit of self confidence? I think you don’t even need to lie to yourself.”
Fib thought on those words for a moment.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. I don’t need to be some sort of super businesswoman or fashion celebrity to be awesome. I’m Fib Fucking LeBlanc! I’m cool! I’m hot! I was basically destined for greatness!”
With every exclamation a radiant aura of beauty and grace burst outwards from her. Leo’s quiet joy in Fib’s self-actualization morphed into sudden delayed realization of exactly what was going on.
“Wait, Fib, you should—”
“Everyone everywhere should love me! I’m like, the best thing that ever happened! Anywhere!”
She was glowing, literally actually glowing so brightly that the reflection was glaring off every reflexive surface in the dining room.
“Fib, hold on, let’s just talk this through, okay?”
She turned to Leo with bright burning eyes of fire, growing up past six feet as her ego skyrocketed. “I’m bigger than Jesus! Bigger than Buddha! Bigger than John Lennon! I'm basically a goddess!”
And that was that. Leo dropped to his knees as Fib’s entire appearance transfigured itself. Her clothes burnt off with radiant light, no mortal fabric fit to conceal her form. Something akin to a robe cloaked her, but it flowed as though made of creams and honey. The young man stumbled back on all fours away from the new being that had once been his girlfriend.
“Fib! Fib you have to stop talking you—”
“I’m better than a goddess, I’m like a goddess’s goddess! I’m like, capital G God, wayyyyy above any existence possible or impossible. I’m like, the Divine Itself! Everything else exists only because I desire it! Only because I willed it to be so!”
Leo’s voice gave out a squeal as his eyes burst into tears and flame. Fib couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything but the splendor of Her own ascension. The layered universe collapsed in on itself. All levels pouring into the third dimension and stripped of any heights or titles they might have known. Fib’s words rambled on and on in endless tongues layered over each other, deeming Herself with every single status or position held. Everything from the lowliest prince to the most unfathomable elder horror found their abilities and glory stripped, to be fed to the endless fire that was Fib. The universe smiled upon her, and it loved her. And its eyes, her eyes, looked upon herself and deemed it good.
And then the noise cut out. Leo was silent, backed against the wall as Her Radiance took a bearing of the surroundings.
Huh. That was weird.
Her voice cut into the fabric of reality. It twisted and turned all that was, is, and could be.
“What… What did You do?” Leo asked.
Dunno. Felt real nice though.
He writhed from just the feeling of Her attention on his form. Before She could ask more painful questions, there was a ring at the doorbell. Her light was so powerful that it had seemingly drowned out the rest of the room, the dining room blurring into a mess of shapes.
… I’ll get that.
Fib came back to the front door, only to be met with a floating golden man with thirteen wings. He was kneeling on a cloud.
Who are you, again?
He spoke and it was an endless shout of jubilation and praise for the One Final Ultimate Goddess. Fib’s eyebrows furrowed.
In English, please?
“Glory be to the new Goddess of Ages! I am merely your instrument.”
Answer the question, dude.
“I was once the omnipotence over ten thousand realms, but you have sundered all and taken it from me. I will kneel before your might.”
Fib rolled her eyes and stepped past. She was stopped by a mass of writhing dark tendrils that seemed to seep out of an endless void.
jesus christ what the fuck are you?
“We are the representatives of the dark eternity. We see all things at all points in time, and you have taken it all as claimed. Let us serve you, and we shall give you power. We shall-“
Gross. Try that again but like, less ugly.
Immediately all the elder terrors of the night, from the hivemind in the Montgomery entranceway to the terrors on the furthest edge of nonexistence screamed at once. Their endless infinite forms twisted and contorted in on themselves to her whim, each and every one molding into the form of an attractive lithe sharply dressed pretty boy with wide black eyes and a pervasive grin. Their forms and powers were little more than window dressing for Fib’s store, and she desired they be made more appealing to her.
There we go. Now, say that agai—
The transformed cosmic aberration sprung for Fib, immediately diving for Her hand. They kissed and kissed at it, leading Fib to blush bright gold. Her hair by this point had long since taken on the same radiant gold as Her aura, one fitting for an ascended being like Herself.
Awww, cute! But I’m… still sort of taken so, bye.
And then the aberration screamed as its form wrinkled into nothingness.
The third and last guest in the lounge was a pouty looking woman, who seemed like she’d be somewhere around college age.
Okay, and who are you?
“I was the conqueror of ten trillion star systems. They all knew me under a name so terrifying that it would be unpronounceable in Your tongue, Superior One. But all my titles have become Yours. I only ask that I may be asked to supplicate at Your heel.”
She seemed almost pained to state this, a little fact which amused Fib heavily.
Well, eat up I guess.
The former galactic conqueror fell to her knees, immediately kissing Fib’s toes with reckless abandon. She rolled her eyes.
Okay, today’s been fucking wild guys, nice friends Leo, I’m just, gonna walk out and-
Fib opened the door. Outside were seven hundred starships, a small army, every world leader within ten lightyears, several former gods and goddesses from many different pantheons, and no less than thirteen hundred practitioners of what humanity might only be able to call magic. She turned to the golden man.
?
“More worshipers come to adore Your Ascension.”
Ascension?
“You Are. You have become the pinnacle of perfection and grace, the apex of existence! You must go out to bless Your many new acolytes, and reform the-“
She slammed the door shut. With a glare, the two other dimensional outsiders winked from existence. She brushed Her hand, and with a single moment, the entire arrangement outside morphed and warped til it became little more than imaginary thought, and poofed with a small ‘pop’. She chuckled.
Hey Leo? I’m gonna just sleep upstairs, if that’s okay with you.
She heard some vague burbling from the dining hall She interpreted as agreement. As She stepped up the stairway, She mumbled to Herself.
Goddess of everything, huh? I guess it’s about time I got some recognition around here.
She smirked, and walked upstairs.
