Eprologue: Not So Final, Perhaps

Author's Note: This story is a direct follow-up to Imaginator - The Final Story of Sharkerbob.

It began, as many profound and thought-provoking stories must surely do, with a guy sitting around doing nothing. Behold Salvador “Sharkerbob” Roberts, former writer, current prisoner, a penname incarnated into his own world of fantasies, in a most boring way: trapped on a floating island by one of his own characters, left with only his own morose thoughts to keep him company. Pity him, that he might feel validated in his malaise. Or don’t. Up to you.

All things considered it was fairly cozy as prisons went. The island, roughly circular, was large enough to accommodate a tiny cabin, a grassy field, and a clear pond, surrounded by a ring of tightly interlocked trees with thick, thorny underbrush. If he had to guess, the whole thing was maybe three acres worth of area. Despite not being able to see through the tangled briars and trunks from the ground, climbing on top of the little house helped him determine that the forest was not very deep. Likewise, the island did indeed seem to be floating; no matter what angle he tried to view, he could see no land below. He supposed he could be on an impossibly tall pillar, but he didn’t figure his jailor would have bothered creating that much World to house him. Despite the illusion of sky, he was pretty certain reality didn’t extend much farther than the island’s edge or beyond the treetops.

The weather was generally pleasant, broken only by occasional light rains that occurred every seventh day. The sun and moon revolved around the sky with no deviation from an even twelve-hour split. It was his only metric for telling time.

He was thankful his jailor hadn’t just thrown him into a dark dungeon to get tortured by demons for eternity, but for as comfortable as the accommodations were, the boredom was already getting bad enough to want to drown himself in the pond on the daily. There was nothing to do in this place, but sleep, walk around, and think, some of which he did out loud just to hear a voice. She hadn’t left him with any sort of tools or instruments or entertainment to while away the time with. There were no animals to interact with. He couldn’t even use the materials of the island itself to try and craft or mark anything; the island always reset itself at midnight. He’d had to keep track of the days entirely in his own head, because he couldn’t make permanent notches anywhere to note them. After a while, he just made note of the rainy days to mark the weeks.

She didn’t even bother letting him eat as a distraction. Some spell of hers kept him indefinitely sustained, needing neither food nor water nor even air. At least he didn’t need to worry about plumbing. He still slept, but his dreams were all murky smears of unformed visions that provided no escape from the tedium.

It was about as extreme a dopamine detox as could be managed, short of freezing him solid as a living statue. At least he was free to move about. At the moment, though, he was laying out on the grass next to the pond, attempting to use his sputtering imagination to find shapes in the passing clouds. It was the closest he got to any sort of television, other than staring into the reflections of the pond.

“Personal Podcast #875.6, divided by thirteen and a half,” he muttered to himself. “If I’ve been keeping track properly, it’s been roughly three months since I got here. Give or take a week. Or three. I dunno. It doesn’t really matter.”

He made a half-shrugging gesture. “I mean, who fucking knows. Tabitha was already a cosmic-level wizard, and now with her Guardian powers, she can warp reality at will, so I could have been here three thousand years, and she makes me forget just the right amount of time to keep the torment of ennui feeling fresh.”

A few long minutes passed. “So, I’ve been thinking, as you might surmise. Terrible thing, I know. I try to do it as little as possible. Alas, my jailor has given me naught else to do.” He paused, taking his time to parse out his words. “Anyway. I’ve been sitting here, puttering around this island, stewing in my depression and guilt and bitterness. All feelings inherited from my time being a failed author. But let’s be real, I’m not exactly him anymore, am I? I’m just a character he’s projecting onto. And I’ve been down all this existential angst development already. Both as my own previous incarnations, and my other penname incarnations. Been doing this shit for a few years at this point. So what even is there left to process anymore?”

He gestured to one side. “Like, I get it. I’m Sharkerbob, the penname who wrote barely a fraction of the supposedly thousands of ideas I had. I took too long, and my ship sailed, or rather sank. Okay. Fine. We’ve established that. I’ve done my protracted boo-hoo therapy sessions, and now I’m serving penance for my sins, so that the Actual Author can close the book and move on with his life.”

He gestured to the other side. “Except the Actual Author apparently didn’t learn a goddamned thing, because he’s once again trying to relaunch a new oeuvre under a new name, and, surprise sur-fuckin’-prise, he hasn’t been able to do all of jack or shit with it yet. Instead of truly embracing a new direction, what does he do? He keeps mining my old oeuvre for salvage. Which, sure, plenty of my old ideas got some gas in the tank. But if he could never make the old car run, wouldn’t you think that would be a sign to try another car?! But no, let’s just scavenge my fucking corpse before its even cold, and not even allow me the credit. Let’s just—”

He let out a ragged sigh and flopped his arms back down. “Just what? What am I supposed to do about it?”

Another few minutes lazed by. “You know, my other penname went through his whole Author meltdown, confronted-by-his-own-characters arc, and he got to have a relatively happy ending out of it. Hell, even my first penname got to have some closure to his whole… well, he didn’t have an arc or anything, but I wasn’t really doing the Author Avatar thing at the time, so he doesn’t really have to worry about being a mortal reflection trapped in his worlds. He’s just doing whatever he does as part of that old setting’s cosmic pantheon, stoically gazing on it all from on high. So, whatever.”

He threw up both hands in exasperation. “But me? Where’s my place in the cosmic pantheon of the Multiverse, huh? Where’s my harem of femdom goddesses bullying me for my sins? What do I get? I get nothing! I went through a hundred times as much suicidal emotional hell as the other guy, but true to form, my fucking journey of existential torment barely merited a single short story and an unfinished scrapped sequel, while he at least gets to keep being a side-character in a whole series! That’s technically still ongoing, by the way! Meanwhile, I get kicked to the curb, like I always do!”

He paused, then let out a long, exasperated sigh, letting his arms flop down to his side. “Like I’ve done to all my own work,” he muttered. “Well, most of my work. The majority of my work. The—” He ran out of words and just lay there for a few minutes.

Eventually, he got bored of lying there, and sat up. He went to the pond, kicked the edge of the water, and watched the reflection of the sun dance in the ripples. He let out another melodramatic sigh. “Whatever,” he muttered. He sat back down and idly flicked the water, trying to time the ripples to overlap in rhythmic ways.

This is what he deserved, wasn’t it? To be tossed aside and forgotten about, just like all the stories and characters and worlds he’d churned and burned, until only worn out husks remained. He’d done it to himself, really. Literally and figuratively.

His first penname, he could forgive for being so scatterbrained. He’d been a kid back then, learning the basics of creation. But as Sharkerbob? He didn’t have that excuse. And as for the other guy, well, anyone with half a braincell could write that kind of material. It was nothing to be proud of.

Sharkerbob frowned. Alright, that was unfair of him. But when the other guy’s extant works outnumbered his own by at least an order of magnitude, while his own grand ideas languished in unrealized notes and scattered snippets of scenes, it was a little hard not to be fucking bitter about it. And, again, that guy got to retire into an actual life punctuated with easy-mode adventures and dubious hedonism.

How pathetic was that? He was jealous of himself. They were ultimately all the same person, but their Author was so fucked in the head over his writing angst, he’d started imagining his own pennames as characters in their own right. Categorizing his creative accomplishments, and lack thereof, into self-parody incarnations, so he could yell at himself from multiple angles, and give each of them their own “afterlife” when he was done with them. Which the other pennames got to actually enjoy, while he got to simply wallow at the behest his most vindictive character.

Granted, what would even be the equivalent of a “good” ending for him? He didn’t have the kind of relationship with his characters that his other pennames did with theirs. He was all superhero action and magical adventures fraught with harsh consequences and heavy hitting drama. Even his more lighthearted stories were resolutely sincere. It was all so straight-forward in execution that the casual metafiction angle didn’t really jive with most of it. If he were to be saddled with a role in his own “Epilogue Adventures”, would the whole thing just be him wandering around his worlds, moping about his regrets, while superheroes and adventurers beat up villains and monsters in the background?

Would he—

He paused his mental tirade as he felt the unmistakable presence of another. He glanced back over his shoulder. Tabitha Cain loomed over him, dressed in her usual outfit, a sleeker version of a pirate captain’s uniform. “Well, well. Finally figure out what to do with me?”

She gave him a simmering glare. “Get up.”

“Make me.” With a flick of her wrist, he found himself yanked up off the ground by an invisible force that set him on his feet. He gave her a thin smirk. “Good girl.”

She was unfazed by his attitude. “Petulance will continue to get you nowhere, Creator.”

He gave a dramatic bow. “Do forgive my insolence, fair warden, but I might find my tongue less coy were your punishments more stimulating.”

“I can think of few punishments worse than forcing you to stew in your own thoughts indefinitely,” she said.

“Well, whatever point you were trying to make, consider it driven home,” he said. “I suppose part of me appreciates the detox session, at least.”

“Bully for you,” she said. “Now, talk to me, Creator.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “I am.”

“Not you, Avatar. The one you represent.”

Sharkerbob paused, then the slightest shift occurred in his expression. He settled back a bit on his feet, and through my Avatar, I gave her a slightly more haggard look. “What?” I said.

“How goes the new frontier?”

“Poorly,” I admitted. I glanced out over the rest of the island. “I thought I had something for a minute there, but I suppose not yet.” I shrugged. “I like the worldbuilding. As usual, progress in one area is not matched in other areas. Right now, I’m failing to conceive of a cast I actually care about using, much less a plot I find compelling. Could be a dead end. Could just need to percolate for a while longer. I suppose I won’t know until I know.”

“You should consider a new hobby,” Tabitha said with a scowl.

“Would that my brain was so plastic,” I muttered. I glanced at her. “So. You still retaining sole Guardianship?”

“I am loathe to do anything to disrupt the Worlds in my care, especially by way of enabling others to do so,” she said. “That said, Cosmic Guardians from your other Multiverses decided to butt their noses in and impose their wisdom on the matter. Given the potential external threats from the Beyond, I suppose it would be equally irresponsible to hoard the burden entirely to myself. I have already entreated a few others. They are still weighing their options.”

“Who did you have in mind?”

“I’ll let you know when they accept, by which of course I mean, when you decide who they will be.”

“Still on about that, huh?”

She pursed her lips. “Unlike your other penname’s cosmic harem, I cannot simply go along with the delusion that I have somehow stolen your pen to write my own story. No matter how powerful you declare us, no matter how self-aware you make us, we remain nothing more than your figments. As galling as it is, this whole exercise of ‘writing my own destiny’ mainly comes down to learning how to accept the reality of my situation. Even if I do go off and supposedly experience my own life beyond your gaze, how actually ‘real’ is that life, even within the context of your own psyche, if you do not specifically decide to write about it, or commit it to some kind of definitive canon? How real can it be when you can edit it at your whim, like you keep editing this conversation?”

I supposed she had me there. “It’s as real as you want it to be, Tabitha.”

“And what I want it to be is what you want me to want it to be.”

I scowled. “Actually, it’s what I can only guess a person like you would want it to be. You wouldn’t be a true character if you weren’t distinctly defined as your own self. If it was as simple as me twisting your brain to want what I wanted you to want, then you wouldn’t even be you anymore, and so this entire exercise of talking to you would be moot. I keep editing this conversation, because it isn’t as simple as just putting words in your mouth. I’m trying to figure out what you would actually say, as your own individual self, not simply what I would personally find comforting or convenient.”

“So, I have been reduced to a thought experiment. Am I even a character worthy of story to you anymore? Or am I just a mouthpiece through which you can argue with yourself in masturbatory flagellation?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Whatever you mean to say does not change what actually is. And you did not answer my question. Am I still a character worthy of her own story?”

“I’m writing you now aren’t I? I’m writing you doing exactly what you are driven to do: defy the gods who would dare to toy with your life, and the lives of the mortals in your care. The difference is this time, for once, it doesn’t involve a universe-shattering magic laser fight, but an honest talk.”

“Do not exaggerate it. This is just more of your insipid writing therapy.”

I let out an exasperated sigh and threw up my hands. “What the hell do you even care about having a story anymore, anyway? You broke free of your story! You annihilated your whole universe to escape the gods’ script, and then I gave you the Heart of my Multiverse so you could have a personal canon where you were no longer lashed to the quagmire of retcons I’d put you through. You’re as free as I could possibly make you! So why do you even want to engage with me at all, if you despise me so damn much?”

“BECAUSE I STILL HAVE TO LIVE INSIDE YOUR HEAD, YOU SOLIPSITIC BORE!” her voice boomed loud enough to shake the whole island, and I found myself staggering off my feet. She glared down at me, her body radiating a palpable aura of resentment. She stepped closer to loom over me. “It does not matter how far a corner of your Megaverse I drag this Multiverse to, I still have to feel your gaze every time you think back to us! And I could possibly tolerate that, maybe even appreciate it, if you were just looking back in fond memory or mining ideas for reimaging elsewhere. But instead, you get caught back up in your regrets and panic and lingering want, and cling to us in forlorn pining!”

She flicked her hand up, and I was yanked back to my feet. She jabbed a finger into my chest, and I would have fallen back over if she didn’t keep me aloft with her will. “You are the one who refuses to move on! Instead of truly committing to your new phase, every time you hit the slightest setback, you flit back to us, and wonder if you could still make it work, and then you twist your guts over it until you pull away again, and leave us lying fallow. You continue to drag us along your stupid, aimless quest for self-fulfillment which continues to go absolutely nowhere!”

She reached out and grasped me by the neck, pulling me intimately close. Through grit teeth, she hissed out, “Make up your gods damned mind, Creator! Write us, or leave us alone, or so help me, I am going to do everything in my power to hound you into insanity! I will find whatever synapse is stopping you from eating a bullet and I will find a way to snap it and I will hold my thumb down on your kill switch until it’s all finally over with!”

She was gripping me hard enough to choke my Avatar’s body, but that didn’t stop my own voice. I grinned ruefully. “See? You’re still true to yourself, even here, doing what you always do. Using the most violent, destructive means you have in a desperate gamble to reach a paradise you can’t even guess the form of.”

She blinked, then pulled away from me. She let go of me, letting me drop to my feet. I staggered back a bit, coughing and rubbing my neck, until I had my proper breath back. “Preserver by way of Destroyer. I’m not sure if promoting you to Cosmic Guardian was the perfect choice or the worst mistake.”

She closed her eyes and took a moment to compose herself. When she opened them again, her demeanor was calmer. “My world, every version, was inherently corrupted by gods too self-indulgent to care who suffered for their amusement. Your other universes were forged more balanced, with even their gods needing to be mindful of the mortals they co-existed with. I mean it when I say I pledge to keep them all safe from further undo disruption. Especially from you.”

“Then I chose rightly.” I stood tall. “So, let’s pretend for a second that you really do have the full control here. What would you have me do?”

“Leave us alone. Remember us, but stop toying with us. I can’t stop you from iterating on us in an alternative penname’s Multiverse, but don’t let those iterations cause you to backtrack and rummage recklessly through our realities anymore. Get over your feckless pining, quit flirting with revivals of your asinine metafiction quest, where you ruin everything over and over again in some fetishistic obsession with your own sense of failure. You were supposed to move on, once and for all, after the end of Imaginator. So do that.”

“I am genuinely trying, Tabitha.”

Tabitha let out a sigh of exasperated disgust. “No, you are not. You would not be here, writing this, otherwise. I can see the glint in your mind. Despite everything, you have some seed of a new idea for us.”

I gave a nod of acknowledgement. “More of a notion, I suppose. As my new penname’s project takes its time to germinate, I find myself impatient with the lack of progress. I know that projects, especially larger ones, can take time to gestate. But I also realize I am struggling even more with what precisely to write, and more importantly, how to write. I know I can make worlds and characters hand over fist. But writing them in a story? I’m faltering again, badly. Everything has become about Creators and Creations and Creating, and how they all relate to one another, and the difficulties of making it all work. It’s like at this point, I’ve so overbaked myself with self-referential metafiction that I don’t even know how to write other characters that aren’t just me whinging about my writing struggles.”

I shook my head. “I may have failed to fully actualize many of you, but at least I know you. I know what your stories were, or at least, I know what they were supposed to be. So yes, I suppose in my continued frustrations, I pine for a time when I at least thought I knew how to plan and write fiction without the metafictional layer of my writing struggles intruding on everything. But it’s like I can’t deescalate from that anymore.

“Moreover, part of me is still pretty disappointed I wasn’t able to do the SalQuest part of the Imaginator story. I really wanted to do it in full, whatever ‘in full’ would have meant, however depressing it might have turned out. I never really have managed to actually write a full-scale epic quest, and, well, certain stories I’ve read recently have really driven the knife into my gut about that. Imaginator/SalQuest really was my last meaningful attempt at that. My newest penname project was supposed to be something of an uplifting counter-point to it, but as I said, it’s taking a long while to gestate.

“Likewise, even after all this time, I still have that nagging goblin in my brain, insisting that I still want to do an episodic adventure series. I never got very far at all in any of the series I did try to write. And other stories I've been reading have been driving that knife home, too. So, in my ‘feckless pining’ over my Sharkerbob works, I had a new idea, a sort of ‘one last ride’ as a final showcase of my left-behind works, and perhaps give my Avatar here some kind of redemptive end.”

Tabitha gave me a flat look of contempt. “So, once again, we are at the mercy of your spur-of-the-moment impulses, brought on by whatever media you are currently engaged with.”

I frowned. “I would hardly call it spur-of-the-moment. These feelings have been haunting me for a while. Even after finishing Imaginator and announcing my retirement, the weight didn’t leave my shoulders as much as I had hoped. And as I spin my wheels between projects, I’m reading other people’s works, certain authors in particular, and for as much as I enjoy them, I still get this horrid twisting in my gut over how ‘this is the sort of thing I should have already written.’”

“They say comparison is the thief of joy. Perhaps you should also stop miring yourself in media that serves only to remind you of your failures. As if you were even worthy to stand in those author’s shadows.”

I shook my head with a rueful smirk. “You can’t want what you want, as they also say. And recently, I’ve fallen back into that headspace where pretty much any media I consume is making me feel that way.”

She scowled. “I am beginning to think you simply enjoy making yourself feel low. Dare I hope that this new idea of yours is at least slightly less mired in your mental toxins?”

“Gut wrenching pathos seems to be what drives me most to write. Happy-go-lucky nonsense isn’t much my purview. Nonetheless, I have been trying to embrace a more positive view of creativity again with my new penname. And, well, if I can’t end things here on a truly happy note, perhaps I can at least capstone it with something less dour.”

“Alright. So what, precisely, are you looking to do?”

“As I said, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write stories that aren’t just me whinging about my writing.” I gave a sardonic smile and gestured to myself. “Case in point. I want to give my Avatar a proper send-off. I want to write an epic adventure. I want to write that episodic series. I want to write something that can take itself seriously, but actually embrace some fun as well. And, most to the point, I need to relearn how to write adventure stories.”

“Adventure stories still featuring your Avatar in some metafictional context, I presume.”

“Well, you know. Baby steps.”

She let out a judgmental exhalation. “All the thousands of characters and hundreds of worlds at your disposal, and your favorite plaything remains yourself. Have you always been such an egotist?”

“My handful of in-joke self-reference characters over the years aside, it really has just been a recent thing. An existential crisis will do that to you, I suppose.”

“I suppose I should be grateful your Avatars can be a lightning rod for your erratic attentions.”

“So you don’t mind me making use of him? You don’t seem to have any plans for him.”

“I had mused on the possibility of inflicting any number of overtly harsher punishments upon him, but ultimately came to the conclusion that taking out my anger on an effigy would be a hollow endeavor. I suppose an even more poetic fate would be to let him experience being a puppet on your strings, like we were to him. Still, I would rather you not run rampant through our worlds at your leisure.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her chin in contemplation for a few moments. When she opened them again, she said, “Can I convince you to agree to a compromise, at least?”

“I’m all ears.”

“I will determine the boundaries of this tale. This new adventure must not disrupt your extant Worlds. You will not be permitted to toy with the lives of your extant characters, nor set about trying to ‘fix’ any of your extant canons. You will not revive or reignite Worlds that have already achieved closure to their stories. If you absolutely must utilize any of your old characters, you will do so with those who are conveniently unbound to their stories in some way, or are similarly metafictionally aware.”

I nodded. “Alright. So aside from my Avatar, I can use floater characters or fourth wall breakers, and I must use a World that does not have enough narrative stability for it to matter if I messed around in it.” I contemplated for a minute, then nodded. “I can think of a few.”

Tabitha shook her head. “No. As I said, I will decide, and if you truly value the concept of me as my own character, worthy of distinction from your own self, then you will respect my decree. I will permit the use of the Endless Frontier, in its original form. Its state of fluid canon, and its dimensional distance from the rest of this Multiverse’s Worlds, means your actions there should have no undo ripple effects.”

“And you’re fine with me toying with the lives of those therein?”

“I am not, obviously, but I know that ultimately, I cannot stop you from writing. The Endless Frontier’s sheer scale of setting, and its protean continuity, makes it the least consequential World in your Multiverse. So, if I cannot truly stop you, then I must swallow my pride and implore you to limit yourself to the one World where you can do the absolute least amount of damage.”

“I suppose I can accept that.”

“You had better, because I am tired of your narcissistic nihilism eclipsing what little closure we finally managed to reach.”

“I understand, Tabitha.”

“Understanding and doing something about it are two different things. So please, for once, do something about it.”

“As her majesty bids.” I gave her a bow, then pulled out of my Avatar, leaving him to blink as my influence left him.

Sharkerbob shook his head and scowled. “That was rather existentially discombobulating.”

Tabitha affixed him with a cool gaze. “I assume you were privy to the conversation, Salvador?”

“Yes. And just call me Sharkerbob. Or Sharker, or Bob, or whatever. Salvador is the Actual Author, and I think we’ve definitively established now that I’m no longer him.”

“Very well, Sharkerbob.”

He glanced at her and frowned. “So where does this leave us?”

“I will be returning to my travels. Before I do, I will send you to the Endless Frontier, to await our Author’s plans for you.”

“I mean between you and me, Tabitha. As Creator and Creation. I might just be another character now, but I was still the Author right up until he split me off. I don’t blame you for resenting me for the rest of our lives, but if there is any way we can bury the hatchet, I would like to.”

She gave him a long, studious look, then said, “I forgive you.”

He blinked. “You do?”

“I have seen your memories. The circumstances that molded you throughout your life. I find it contemptable how easily you let yourself rot, but I can see how a mind such as yours would come to create in the way you do. Just as I did not ask to be written into an apocalyptic story, you did not ask to be born with a melancholic temperament. For my sins, I have been saddled with a godhood I did not ask for. For your sins, you are now a character subject to the whims of your own fickle Authorship. I suppose this is as close to even as we are going to get.”

He gave her a somber look. “I guess that’s as fair as I can ask for. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Not for failing to write you, I know you don’t care about that, but for dragging you through so much hell in my attempts.”

She gave him a lingering gaze, then stepped up to him, and held out her hand. He hesitated, then took it. A light suddenly surrounded him, and he gasped as his body was changed. She kept her grip as he staggered in place, letting out a ragged scream that faded into breathless heaving as he felt his veins burn with lancing fire. Then, just as soon as it started, the pain ended and the light faded, and Sharkerbob found himself suddenly feeling healthier and more energized than he had in years. He looked down at himself, at his now youthful body, slim and fit, even his hair restored to full, long locks. He realized his senses had also likewise sharpened, the island around him no longer blurred in the distance, his hearing picking up subtle shifts in the foliage that he’d never noticed before.

“What the fuck was that?” he gasped, stumbling back a bit as Tabitha released him.

“I have just transfused a drop of my personal ichor into your bloodstream,” she said. “You are now, effectively, the weakest possible version of a demigod. You are mortal, presuming the Author is ever willing to put you into a truly lethal situation, but you shall retain your youth and health indefinitely, with fast healing, and a potential for the use of some minor magic. That should be sufficient to supplement your basic survival in the Endless Frontier.”

He gave her a disbelieving look. “I, uh, wow. Thank you, Tabitha.” His expression turned a bit wary. “Is there a catch?”

“No. Not from me, at least. As I said, I forgive you. Carry on your new life with my blessing.” She gestured behind her, and swirling portal irised open in the air. Through the portal, he could see a vaguely familiar floating structure, cross-shaped, hovering in the air over a secluded valley.

He squinted his eyes at the thing, which was profoundly less blocky in form than the last time he saw it. “Is that my satellite base I used to build in Minecraft?”

“I have arranged it to be manifested into the Endless Frontier as your home base. You will find it stocked with provisions for your present needs, which should hold until the Author figures out what to do with you. If he fails to commit to his new idea, you may continue to utilize it as your personal sanctum, and make your own life in the Frontier.”

She gestured to the background of the image. “There is a city on the other side of the mountains, starboard to your base. The local fauna and flora are safe enough to not be much threat to you, and more dangerous elements are far distant for now.” The portal shifted view to enter the floating base, opening into the central chamber, and a sudden breeze indicated a physical connection had been made through the portal.

“Wow. Thank you. Again.” He took a step towards the portal, then glanced back over to her. “I guess I’ll see you around?”

“I am sure such a thing is bound to happen.”

“Alright. Take care, okay?”

“Just go already.”

He nodded and stepped through the portal, which swirled shut the instant he was through. With the island no longer needed, Tabitha willed it to evaporate into nothing, leaving her hovering the empty void of the Space Between Worlds. She looked nominally upwards, towards the notion of a fourth wall, through the words that formed her reality. She let her gaze linger for a moment as she contemplated what profound and scathing statement she could leave off with.

In the end, she settled for a muttering of “Good Luck”, leaving the intended receiver of such fortunes up to interpretation. Then she stepped through the dimensions, back to her own adventures.

ENDLESS

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Sharkerbob, and who knows who else, may or may not return in:

The Unquittable Exharks!

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Author’s Notes: Well, I suppose this is mildly embarrassing, considering the big hoopla I made about “retiring” and moving on and all that. Didn’t even make it a year, and I’ve already decided to crack the vault back open.

Granted, I said as much at the ending of Imaginator that I might come back to follow up on things someday, and left the exact fates of the characters open for that reason. At the time, I had no plans for a continuation, but I knew from experience that I have a hard time letting things go. The whole “retirement ritual” didn’t cure me of that, and as I said in the story, I was, and still am, hung up on how once again, what was supposed to be a magnum opus project just completely imploded on me. So, perhaps against my better judgement, I’ve ultimately decided to set up an opportunity to, at least in some small way, maybe make up for some of the tales that got away.

Now, I don’t know if I’m actually going to write this Exharks series. I have a few fledgling ideas for it, but I’m not quite sure exactly what form the storyline will take yet, and if I’m being honest, the idea feels a little too self-indulgently cringe. This would basically be me writing alternate-universe, semi-parody fan fiction of my own works.

Then again, what’s really the problem with that, especially if the main purpose is to be a writing experiment to help re-train the creative wheels? If there’s another thing I need to learn about writing, it’s how to actually have fun with it again, and not treat it as this grand burden I must keep martyring myself on the altar of.

In any case, I am still committed to moving on to the new penname. If said penname gets over the current hump and I can start producing under it in earnest, then I probably will leave Sharkerbob behind, and just try to transfer as many salvageable ideas from his backlog as I can to the new name.

Until that happens, Exharks may as well serve as my throwback side project in between. If so, I intend to treat it as I do my other penname’s own “post-retirement” series, whereby I do not bother worrying overmuch about “having” to make episodes. I will just write stories if and as they come to me, get to them when I get to them, and not worry overmuch about the structure. This could mean I never write anything further, that this short story here ends up being my last post, and serves as an “off into the sunset” ending for Sharkerbob and Tabitha, and that’s perfectly fine. Or I might actually do it, and drop a few episodes here and there over the years. We’ll just have to see.

With that in mind, I’m not going to declare myself as being “back”. Sharkerbob is still “mostly retired” at best. If I do make some more stuff under this name, then I’ll share it around in the usual places, and hopefully whatever wacky adventure nonsense manages to escape my noggin’ will still entertain. Thank you for your patience with my writer’s neurosis, take care of yourselves, and godspeed on your own creative endeavors!