Sherman Chex doesn’t quite get it. Jenny stares back at him.

  “Are you stupid?”

  “Sorry, where did the snake go?”

  “I’m the giant snake... Did you not pay attention to what Suzy told you?”

  Chex squints and thinks back to himself.

  “I don’t think she ever told me that you were the giant snake...“

  Jenny’s absolutely shocked at hearing this.

  “Are you serious?”

  Chex just stands there, as if he’s trying to remember if she ever told him. He can’t recall if she did. In fact, he’s wondering where Suzanne even is right now, since he lost track of the time.

  Jenny’s quite annoyed that he’s not paying attention.

  “Hey! Pay attention orange boy!”

  “Oh, sorry ma’am.”

  She smiles.

  “As I was saying earlier, hi! Welcome to my home!”

  “This is your home?”

  He wasn’t paying attention, but now he sees all of the green and orange things littered about. Mostly pieces of boats. There’s some entire boats, though most of them are destroyed. There’s some green things, like shields, boats, and trees.

  “Why are there so many boats?”

  “I like boats.”

  “Okay.”

  Sherman Chex walks around and admires the collection. He notices the fact that the majority are orange.

  “Why is there so much orange?”

  “I’m annoyed I lost something orange, so I’ve hoarded a bunch of orange things to make up for it!”

  She smiles even wider. It’s not a very pleasant smile.

  Sherman Chex has orange hair.

  Suzanne is currently inside the not-castle’s walls. Despite it looking like a castle, and a pretty small one, it is much larger on the inside. Large enough that it’s taking Suzanne several days to move through.

  The Ascyll family loves their green things, so most of it is green. There’s many long hallways that are solely green. Green banners on the windows which are really just green stones. Green carpets, green doors, green water in their green fountains. There’s a very large green statue depicting a giant snake curling around the planet in several rooms. It’s incredibly tall, around the height of seven people. It must have taken a lot of work to build.

  Suzanne kicks over the statue, as she doesn’t like the person being depicted.

  As she continues to run around, she realizes she’s literally getting nowhere. The rooms certainly aren’t repeating, as every room’s unique, but it still seems like she’s going in circles.

  As such, she decides to go up. She hops up through the ceiling and onto the roof. It’s green, and she’s outside of the non castle building. She notices that it’s grown a large amount since she first went in, and the Nevergreen Cell outside is getting smaller.

  Now that the lead’s back in his leg, Walker is trapped in the Lie that is the Nevergreen Cell. He’s interacting with people who aren’t real, doing his job as a tour guide, and all the while, completely unaware that the city he believes he’s lived in for a large amount of his life isn’t real.

  Every hour, the Ascyll family requires that people return to their homes such that they can “walk around the city”. Samuel Walker is annoyed at this. Why do they get to push everyone around? That’s not fair! He goes back into his apartment and tries to pull the lead spike out of his leg.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He thinks the Ascyll family put it there to control him. He’s right, at least the first time it was put there, but at the moment it’s not right. Once it’s out of his leg, he gasps heavily.

  “Oh my god. I’m never doing that again.”

  A ball of dust flies up from under a chair. It speaks in a very squeaky voice, as if it were a mouse.

  “Why would you do that again?!?!”

  “I’m sorry, I had to test something.”

  “!!! It’s so worrying every time you do that! Stop it!”

  “I’m sorry...“

  “Stop it!”

  “...I’m sorry...”

  “Hm... Don’t do it again!”

  “Okay.”

  Samuel Walker walks outside. There’s no one there.

  Of course, they aren’t real. Though he was hoping there would at least be a few people. He sees the Ascyll family. An elderly man, an elderly woman, and two children, seemingly teenagers.

  It’s strange, they were much younger just a few days prior.

  Time sort of slows down for Walker.

  “It’s quite strange, why does the idea of Acceleration make time move slower?”

  He runs over to the family and punches the father in the face. He goes flying into a nearby wall.

  The father gets up as if he’s unharmed. Walker is quite shocked.

  “How can an elderly man be unharmed after flying into a stone wall?”

  The son yells out in outrage.

  “How can you hit such an elderly man!”

  “Woah, that’s not your usual tone! It’s also not your usual age.”

  “It’s such a hassle trying to keep the orange lady contained!”

  Walker walks around them in circles. This does nothing, as he’s just walking in circles. Though his name is Walker, it only makes sense. The father asks Walker a question.

  “How did you get yourself free from the Lie? There’s four of us keeping it together!”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “How can you not know, don’t you people have to read that book to graduate!?”

  “What book?”

  “That book about the orange man!”

  “Oh.”

  Walker strokes his chin and thinks back to his time in high school.

  He’s in class, sitting in a seat. There’s other people in seats as well.

  The teacher stands in the front of the classroom. There are several copies of an incredibly large book on the floor. The teacher points a ruler at the books, then at the students.

  “You all have to read this book!”

  A student raises their hand.

  “How did you get the money for all these books? You can’t even afford desks!”

  “The country provides them. Everyone must read the book!”

  A different student raises their hand.

  “Why do we have to read the book?”

  “You have to read the book and write a 300 page paper on how it connects to any of the other books written by the author.”

  A third student raises their hand.

  “Is the author still alive? I remember my great great grandfather telling me about how they had to read this book...”

  “Yes, he’s still alive.”

  “Wow.”

  Class is dismissed and each student picks up a copy of the incredibly large book.

  Walker picks up the book and takes it home. He doesn’t live in the Nevergreen Cell at this point, instead he lives in the second capital.

  The second capital isn’t as powerful or influential as the first capital. Instead, it’s really just another city. It’s only the second capital because, just like the first capital, it doesn’t change location when the continent rumbles.

  The two capitals are connected by Success Road.

  At home, his father’s quite confused when he sees the book.

  “You all still have to read this?”

  “Yeah dad, we have to read it and do some analysis along with another book.”

  Walker’s father strokes his beard as if he’s in deep thought.

  “You know, I did mine on 35000. It was one of the more fun ones.”

  “35000? How many of these did he write?”

  “I don’t know, son, let’s check out the library and see.”

  They never did end up at the library, because they were run over by an inconveniently timed truck. This put Walker in a coma for 3 years.

  Walker stops thinking about this and faces the four people.

  “Nope, never graduated. Never read that book, either.”