Zero

The single consciousness of an empty universe, who became that universe's first and last defender, and then became the universe itself.

What he was

Before Ink arrived, Zero was the only resident of a reality made of concept rather than matter. He had no name, because names are given by others and there were no others. He had no form, because forms need boundaries and there were none. He was the space and the space was him (ch. 0).

He had never questioned his solitude, because solitude implies an alternative. What he carried instead was a dissonance he could not name, "like a perfect melody that suddenly reveals itself to be missing a note that was never there to begin with" (ch. 0).

The naming

Ink tore through into the empty universe, and the presence of a defined being forced Zero to take a shape in answer. Ink named him Zero on the spot (ch. 0).

Zero understood at once what the name cost and what it gave: "To be named was to be limited, but also to be known."

What he could do

He manipulated the fundamental structure of reality rather than anything inside it. Offered a chair, he did not make one; he took hold of the space around him and folded it until it served as a seat, "a throne made from the compressed fabric of existence" (ch. 0).

Ink, who had travelled the whole multiverse, had seen nothing like it.

What he became

At the battle against The End, Zero inverted himself. The being who had contained a universe turned that containment outward and closed it around The End, making a prison of his own existence (ch. 2). It holds "for as long as there is existence."

His body shattered. One fragment remained, and Ink carried it home and laid it in the empty universe, where it dissolved outward and seeded the reality that grew there.

• "He's becoming everything he protected. Everything he loved." (Dream, ch. 2)
• "A soul as beautiful as yours couldn't simply cease to be. That's not how the multiverse works. Energy transforms; it doesn't end." (Ink, ch. 2)

The chapter closes on the line "The 1 that became many."

Why he matters to everything after

Every later volume rests on this. The world of the story grows inside the universe Zero seeded, out of the essence he became. See ../systems/essence.md.

He is still walking around

The fragment Ink laid down did not only seed a universe. At least two pieces of him became people.

You're the literal left part of Zero's brain. [...] 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝. (ch. 134)

The left is Blook, who called Zero Father in ch. 3 without explaining why. The right is Illia, who works it out first and tells him.

Blook describes the state in the same conversation: "a fragment of something larger, torn between timelines, existing in the spaces where probability hasn't decided which version is real yet", carrying "echoes from realities where I was whole, where I had power".

So Zero's sacrifice did not end him. It divided him, across a world and across timelines, and two of the pieces spent centuries not knowing.

His own thesis is quoted back at him by his left half, to a woman watching the world end in most of the futures she can see:

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚢𝚎𝚝, 𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚝. 𝙽𝚘𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍. 𝚉𝚎𝚛𝚘 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚞𝚗𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚎𝚛, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚗𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚗. (ch. 134)

His children is not a metaphor there.

Open questions

• Whether anything in the later world knows this happened, or whether the Prologue is known only to the reader.
• How many pieces there are. Two are named. The phrasing "left part" and "right part" of a brain implies exactly two, and the world was seeded with him entirely, which implies more.
• What Ink meant by "Not limited, just waiting" about Zero's universe (ch. 1), said before Zero seeded it.