Reality Failure
From Long After Reality Failed
Somewhere toward the latter half of the era annotated WN, the whole of reality ceased to exist. This has commonly become known as "The Point Where Reality Failed", or "The Big Splat" (Which is short for "Big Splat With A Few Small Crunches and At Least One Moaning Creak Though There May Have Been More We Weren't Really Johnny-On-the-Spot With the Tape Recorders Seeing As We Didn't Have Much Warning That The Universe Was About To Splat".), or "When Life Started To Suck", but also the point at which time measurement switched over to the ARF system. There are many theories as to why reality failed, though as reality has, in fact, failed, there's not much evidence left to support any of them.
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[edit] Reality Failure Explained... Sort Of...
The failure of reality resulted in several very distinct universal symptoms. First and foremost, around 99.999998% of everything ceased to exist. This includes, but is not limited to, galaxies, stars, planets, people, places, things, and space itself. With reality itself--the very fabric that holds together the universe--lost along with everything else, things such as gravity, light, temperature, quantum mechanics, temporal mechanics, and all of the other natural laws of the universe equally failed to continue to exist. What was left was what is commonly referred to as "notspace" and "unreality".
[edit] Notspace
Notspace is hunter green, slightly viscous, and completely devoid of everything. It has no mass, emits no light, has no temperature (That is, it is not simply cold, but actually exhibits no concept of temperature whatsoever.), and absorbs anything "real" that it comes in contact with. It is the only known thing (Though it is actually nothing at all.) that is recorded as being able to completely destroy matter, violating the law of the conservation of mass, had said law still existed at the same time as notspace.
[edit] Unreality
Unreality is, quite simply, the absence of all reality and the laws that comprise reality, in so much that if you were to be surrounded by unreality, the quantum material that comprises your body would lose all bonds that hold it together and drift apart while simultaneously and most likely turning into something totally random, such as paperweights, before being swallowed by notspace and ceasing to exist. As neither notspace or unreality, technically, exist, such a death is said to feel like nothing at all.
[edit] Theories of Cause
There is no definitive information available on the subject of what caused the cessation of reality (Current methods of time travel do not allow travel to within 87.694 years in either direction of the Point At Which Reality Failed, making observation of the incident impossible.), however, there are many theories. The most popular of these are as follows:
[edit] Reality As An Entity Theory
This theory relies heavily on the idea that reality itself is, or was, a sentient being. The theory states that reality grew tired of the constant hassle of its day-to-day life, and simply took a vacation. This is widely regarded as a ludicrous fantasy, as it primarily implies the hopeful concept that, one day, reality will return. A number of religious texts have been mysteriously and miraculously "found" that agree with this theory.
[edit] Humanity's Fault Theory
A very wide-spread theory of the cessation of reality is that the human race is solely responsible. The theory comes from the fact that, of all the races known to have existed prior to the cessation, humans alone evolved the ability to do the impossible on a daily basis. This ability, the theory maintained, eventually overwhelmed the universal laws of reality and damaged or destroyed them, causing a universal reality failure. This theory is supported by the fact that large portions of Earth survived the failure, and that Earth itself seemed to be the epicenter of the wave of unreality that destroyed the rest of the universe.
[edit] Deity Rent Theory
A lesser-known theory that circulated for several years after the failure was that the pantheon of Deities that survived the failure (Thanks wholly to their immortality.) were at fault. The theory goes that the gods were only renting the universe from another, more powerful deity, paying eon-ly for the rented space in which they built their respective societies. At some point, the deities stopped paying their rent, and the universe was repossessed, though poorly, as large chunks of it survived the failure. This theory seems to have originated from the anti-deity sentiment that came to be after the cessation of reality, largely due to the fact that the deities (All of whom survived the failure.) were caught by surprise like everyone else, ruining the concept that they were omnipotent and, due to their inability to protect the races they had created from the end of the universe, souring public opinion toward them.
