America transformed around us in the two days that it took us to walk to the Florida Keys. Billboards and screens popped up everywhere, screaming about the Grand Earth Tournament. The cities bustled with people wearing tournament merch, peddling tickets, managing bets, and mongering rumors about this and that and the ever ballooning list of participants.

  Highly suspicious timing. To investigate, we purchased a set of t-shirts and hats and ten Tournament brand hot-dogs. Wearing and eating the consumables confirmed our suspicions.

  “Yare-yare… Low thread-count. How undignified,” said Kevin, grimacing at the baseball cap and t-shirt he wore over his fedora and trenchcoat.

  I spat out ten hotdogs I’d attempted to consume. “Fifty percent microplastic, forty percent cornstarch, ten percent chemicals, five percent sawdust!” To get the taste of empty calories out of my mouth, I created an emergency ration from the random protein powders in my pockets and consumed it.

  “Urgh. Bruh.”

  “I agree.”

  I had to create a second protein shake, though it took the last of my pocket protein to do so.

  “Will you survive?” asked Kevin, concerned. He’d already thrown his merch in the trash and chopped it up with his katana.

  My internal Chad organs were doing their best to expel any funky metabolites. “Aye, I’ll live. Alas, it is exactly as we feared. This tournament is organized by someone employing capitalism-maxing techniques.”

  Kevin struck a pose of deep Neckbeardy anguish and edginess. He tried to hide it, but I could sense the trembles in his Dao. My bruh was devastated.

  “Stay strong, bruh. All is not lost.”

  “I know Titan, yet… as a Neckbeard cultivator I cannot help but contemplate the darkest timeline. What if the Sigma is already in cahoots with the Celestial Emperor? This could be a trap to draw you out.”

  “Possible. We must investigate further.”

  We proceeded to one of the many info booths that’d popped up. There, we studied the tournament rules.

  Opening two rounds were Battle Royales to ‘weed out the chaff’. The proper tournament consisted of five rounds. The absence of a loser’s bracket was a dead give-away. Winner takes it all.

  “Classic Sigma design,” I observed.

  “Undoubtedly, but is this a trap?”

  I utilized Big Dick energy empowered [Big Brain] to reverse 4D-chess the series of events that’d resulted in the organization of this tournament. Possible chains of events unfolded before my mind’s eyes. Pain struck my brain in the abs like a sledgehammer. I recoiled.

  “Urgh!”

  “Titan!”

  I raised my hand to reassure my bruh, while letting my brain take a short rest between sets. Afterwards, I relayed my findings to Kevin.

  “My [Galaxy Brain] could not pierce the truth behind this scheme. It is far too convoluted, protected by at least eight layers of advanced mental gymnastics.”

  Kevin assumed a serious expression. “Most troublesome. Most troublesome indeed, for there are a multitude of local factions who could’ve provided the Sigma with such services. What manner of cognitive dissonance did you detect, specifically?”

  I shook my head. “A brief glimpse was enough to nearly kill me. Alas, the Big Brain techniques of Alpha Cultivation are too logic aligned to withstand the level of double-think required.”

  “Did you glimpse any potential waifus involved?”

  “No.”

  “Most unfortunate indeed. Then my own gentleman IQ techniques will be of little assistance.”

  “Are you two sirs sure you are alright?” asked the info booth clerk, a concerned young lady. “If you’re confused about the tournament rules, we have a children’s instructional video on the big screen.”

  Kevin’s instincts betrayed him, forcing him to take an aggressively neckbeardy lean against the counter and tip his hat. He said the words.

  She grimaced in disgust.

  “Forgive my brother, he cannot help himself.”

  “Security is one button away. No funny business, alright?”

  I employed various peaceful arm and leg gestures to assuage her of our intentions. “Fear not, friend, we are on your side.”

  “Uhu… Suure.”

  “Yes, and thank you for the video recommendation, but it’s not what we seek. We require an expert. Do you happen to know anyone well versed in mental gymnastics?”

  “Titan, she is but a young gorgeous m’lady, we should not bother her with–”

  She threw a pamphlet at Kevin. “Sure. Dad’s a lifelong science denier. Antivaxx, flat earth, science, politics. Show him a rabbit hole of dumb and he’ll be at the bottom by morning.”

  A moment later, she set us up with a video call to consult with a man possessing a deeply inflamed face. We were close to obtaining the truth behind the tournament, when I accidentally began giving the man life advice and health tips, causing a spontaneous moment of deep bro-to-bro connection. He promised to stick to my exercising routine, avoid rage-baiting, and think before believing from now on.

  Although I was glad for the man, we were no closer to solving the mystery. Only a Dao practitioner versed in reverse-think could aid us.

  Luckily, the clerk was able to give us the address of a nearby Skibidi Brainrot Cultivator.

  ***

  Years had passed in the time I spent away from Earth. The concept of Alpha was deeply ingrained in the human psyche and DNA the moment L. David Mech published their research about wolf pack psychology, which they later retracted as nonsense, but not all Daos are as deeply embedded in reality. New generations grow and mature and with them sprout new concepts, and though their truths have not yet solidified enough to be more than fleeting generational memes, they nonetheless have come to exist, and because they exist they have a Dao, though their powers are often destructive and chaotic.

  We met on a cool Florida night in a forbidding alley. Distant streelights flickered like fluorescent ghosts, casting the two of us in a gloom and illuminating the jagged silhouette of something unknowable. An altar? A throne? I did not tap into Big Brain, due to the dark Dao energies around us.

  “Be greeted, stranger. I am Titan Chadman, the Sevent Head of the Gigachad sect, and I beseech an audience.”

  My voice died in the alley without an echo or reply.

  I held out my hand and urged Kevin to hand me the black suitcase. As instructed by the booth clerk, I approached the altar. There, I opened the suitcase and spread the sacrifice onto a spot of even space on the altar, before retreating a step.

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  An otherworldly hum followed by a tremble of power.

  One of the phones I’d dumped on the altar vibrated with an update. Then another. Then five. Then eleven. All of them trembled violently beneath a storm of alerts. The phones unlocked violently, playing an endless loop of short nonsense videos and other memetic hazards on double speed, triple volume, while doomscrolling several different online platforms simultaneously, some of which had never existed in our reality, containing eldritch brainrot too smoothbrain to be described in mortal words.

  I had to avert my eyes. The briefest glimpse of the horror would’ve been enough to remove all of the ab-wrinkles of my brain. Otherworldly sounds screamed through the phone speakers and through the thousand other phones that came alive beneath the twisted cardboard altar. Distant streetlights bent away to avoid witnessing the unearthly wrongness and the alley groaned in agony as a power that was not meant to exist on our Earth or any other stirred.

  It possessed a memory of a humanoid form and a voice formed from used cardboard, rapidly scrolling phones, and a broccoli haircut. The words it spoke were sandpaper against my eardrums, each syllable imbued with the purest violation of sentient cognition.

  “Skibidi toilet, where the rizz be, fam?”

  Despite having undergone a full Gigachadification and Chad Core formation, even I felt the faint corruptive tickle of Boomer Energy on my brain, upon witnessing the full might of the Skibidi Brainrot Cultivator. There was a visceral wrongness about them, an eldritch otherness that could only be explained by the generational gap and the fact I’d spent a couple years in another multiverse. I dared not imagine what manner of brainrot they had consumed to have reached such depths of power.

  “We approach you for your wisdom, Skibidi-Brainrot Cultivator, as fellow cultivators of Earthly Daos.”

  “Ayo, skibidi or dip! No cap, let’s get that rizz, fam!”

  I grunted and vomited blood from the brain damage caused by enduring the entity’s presence.

  “Titan!” Kevin was by my side, offering me an emergency protein ration, which I accepted and consumed. “Titan, we cannot lose to this foul young thing. Allow me to unleash the full power of my Neckbeard cringe aura.”

  “No.” I paused him with a hand. “We approached them, and so we will endure their presence.”

  “You got that pibby glitch in real life or sum?”

  My brain tripped on its own wrinkles, causing a minor concussion and internal bleeding, but I channeled my reserves of Big Dick Energy to bolster it and showed no outward signs of damage.

  “I’ll live. We have a question only you can answer, it’s about the tournament.”

  “Blud thinks he’s in ohio fr, no rizz, no gyatt, not even a sigma grindset ounce of interest ?? go hit the griddy elsewhere, goofy ahh??”

  I made my heart perform a plank exercise to control the tension of my blood vessels and reduce the bleeding, then pressed on, “This is your chance to help humanity, even if you are no longer part of it. Tell us the truths and traps hidden behind the tournament.”

  Slowly, the entity turned around. Hands emerged from the inhuman arrangement of phones and cardboard and began scrolling.

  The entity appeared to have lost interest in the conversation.

  I instantly activated [Eyes of the Alpha] to re-establish eye-contact. Every object and person within visual range turned towards me and met my eyes, except for the entity. Through some unknowable Dao technique that blasted their face with doom-scroll too fast for even my trained vision, they were able to ignore me and remain absorbed in their phones. The moment caused my Chad core to lose a bit of Big Dick Energy.

  “Urgh.”

  “Titan, we cannot play nice forever. This… creature is–”

  “A person.”

  Kevin shot me a weirded face. “That?”

  “They’re a person. A human. A potential bruh. Or bruhette.”

  Kevin shook his head, but smirked. “A, of course, naruhoto. Greeting reality violation with reality violation would not be very Chad of us, it would not. Then I shall trust you and observe.”

  I reassessed the situation from a new angle. Like many others who pursued a half-formed Dao, this entity was deeply insane, but I was no stranger to insanity.

  I’d been where they had been myself, back in those early days of Happyland, when I questioned whether my meeting with the Sixth head of the Gigachad sect had been a phantom of imagination or a true event. Back when the results of my pains had yet to yield gains. I remembered the thoughts I’d harbored back then, the uncertainty, the sense of being adrift from reality when all others seemed to have it figured out.

  While I could and would never delve into the depths of detachment required for Skibidi Brainrot Cultivation, I could empathize and understand.

  They were escaping from having to contemplate their own reality and the fact that Earth was all but gone. Despair and fear held dominion over their heart. Whatever rudeness I perceived from their actions was merely a defensive gut reaction. A lashing out against a chaotic and scary world.

  “Careful Titan, I know that expression,” warned Kevin. “We require their brainrot Dao techniques to pierce through the mental gymnastics formation.”

  “Their condition is beyond the miracles of Chadness. Perhaps beyond even Dr. Edelfelt. But I can reach out.”

  I approached the wobbly reality swirling around the entity and the world around me was reduced to two-color static noise, by utilizing the [Eleventh Alpha Walk] to make the ground beneath my feet certain of my existence, thus reinforcing the local reality. With every step, the world grew fuzzier, as if obscured by an ever growing number of filters. With swaggering steps, I waded into the eye of that vortex of unbeing. There, amongst visions of outer places best left unimagined, I glimpsed the entity’s true form.

  The kid was young, a teenager. Their head was down and eyes glued to a phone, which they scrolled away to escape something. Surrounded by the dark nothing, they were deep, deep beyond the reach of the world.

  I stepped into their perception.

  The kid twitched. Startled eyes swept me up and down and up again.

  Naturally, I advanced all the way into their personal space. However, I then immediately exercised immense self control and mastery of Big Dick Energy by toning down the advanced Chad buff techniques and creating silently encouraging versions of them so as to not scare the kid. Clarity returned to their eyes.

  They blinked at me, disbelieving. “C-chad? A living gigachad.”

  “Titan Chadman,” I corrected.

  “Fuck.”

  “I come in peace.”

  “Why’s my brain working again?”

  My organs sweated hard from the strain of maintaining altered versions of my encouragement techniques, but I maintained a comfortable posture and amicable tone. “My technique is suppressing your powers.”

  Their gaze fell back to the endless scroll. “Yeah. You can stop. Imma go back to this.”

  “I will, but we need your aid.”

  “Ye, fuck that shit. You guys shit the world up even before cultivators. Let them finish it, who cares,” he said, subconsciously releasing an intense wave of jaded skibidi energy.

  Only a swift activation of a defensive technique allowed me to maintain consciousness. “There is hope, kid-bruh. Everything can always change, so long as we are ready to change ourselves. Lend me your power and together, we’ll make sure of that.”

  “Maybe. Dunno. Who cares? It always goes to shit anyway. Maybe there’s like one two gens of happy living. Then some corrupt old guy is in charge again. Always happens. I’ve seen history vids, you know. Repeats itself.”

  “Yet we must still try.”

  “Tired of trying. Tired of getting served L after L.” They kept on scrolling, faster, faster.

  Perhaps I was fundamentally incompatible with this cultivator. I could not relate. To an Alpha Cultivator, a setback is nothing but an opportunity for greater gains. But that is not the only truth of this world, merely the one I had lived.

  Yet there was a truth I knew that could reach them. One so ingrained deep in the foundations of mankind.

  “It may feel like that, kid-bruh,” I acknowledged.

  They slowed the scrolling. I had their attention again.

  “It may feel like that, but you kept trying.”

  “Yeah, shame on me for being an idiot, right?”

  “It may feel like that, but you kept trying. Not because success was ever a guarantee or even an option. It may not be. We may not win this battle against the Celestial Emperor, and if we do, who’s to say there is not a greater senior behind him, another power backing him, or an Earthborn tyrant ready to take his throne when we are still recovering.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you kept trying.”

  “I did.”

  “As I keep trying.”

  They snorted weakly. “Pretty dumb of you.”

  “Change may never come.”

  “Probably never will.”

  “Probably never will,” I agreed.

  That surprised them into silence.

  “We may be doomed by our very nature, even if we attempt to embrace the wisdom of history, the narrow path, or Chadness. We might be doomed from birth to walk into a black nothing at the end of everything.”

  We gazed into the warped nothing behind the Skibidi Brainrot Cultivator.

  “We likely are doomed. But, on the off chance there is a path forward for us…”

  I let my words hang in silence.

  A moment longer.

  Another.

  They licked their lips. “On the off chance?”

  I smiled. “What if we found that path, or the one after us, or the one after them, or after them. If somehow, someone down the line found the path forward, the real forward, not just the same old power-rules-power dressed up in nice words or technology or magic. If what we do here gives them even a single hint for finding that path. Wouldn’t that make it all worth it?”