John Dies At The End feats, lore and respect

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John and Dave (or John Dies At The End, for the name of the first book in the series) is a comedy cosmic horror series written by David Wong/Jason Pargin. It follows the shenanigans of John and Dave as they have to solve various paranormal events and inter-dimensional incursions. So far the series consists of four books; John Dies At The End, This Book Is Full Of Spiders, What The Hell Did I Just Read and If This Book Exists, You're In The Wrong Universe, with a 5th book yet to be written as of writing this. A movie of the first book has also been made.

 

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The Soy Sauce is a mysterious black livng drug which grants the one who consumes it eldritch knowledge. Most people who consume it though will die. Gruesomely.

Using the Soy Sauce, Dave enters a state of frozen time, in which time flows much slower, with 1.78 seconds being anything from two minutes to two trillion years (to give an example). He's also able to count every sub-atomic particle in the Universe and knows that every possibility was chosen at the dawn of the Universe billions of years ago (the part about the super computer will be important later).

Time stopped.

It was so easy for me, I almost laughed. Why hadn’t I caught on before? I had a full 1.78 seconds before the detective would step through the door. The only reason we would normally perceive that span as being a short amount of time is because the wet mechanism of our bodies simply can’t accomplish very much in that span. But a supercomputer can do over a trillion mathematical equations in one second. To that machine, one second is a lifetime, an eternity. Speed up how much thinking you can do in two seconds and two seconds becomes two minutes, or two hours or two trillion years. 1.74 seconds until confrontation time now, my body and the body of my nemesis frozen in the moment, on opposite sides of the door, he with his hand on the knob, me on hands and knees in suspended agony.

Okay. I needed a plan. I took a moment to mentally step back, to assess my situation. Think.

You are standing on the thin, cool crust of a gigantic ball of molten rock hurtling through frozen space at 496,105 miles an hour. There are 62,284,523,196,522,717, 995,422,922,727,752,433,961,225,994,352,284,523,196,571,657,791,521,592, 192,954,221,592,175,243,396,122,599,435,291,541,293,739,852,734,657,229 subatomic particles in the universe, each set into outward motion at the moment of the Big Bang. Thus, whether or not you move your right arm now, or nod your head, or choose to eat Fruity Pebbles or Corn Flakes next Thursday morning, was all decided at the moment the universe crashed into existence seventeen billion years ago because of the motion and trajectory of those particles at the first millisecond of physical existence. Thus it is physically impossible for you to deviate— I never finished this thought. - John Dies At The End

Other powers of the Soy Sauce include telepathy, interdimensional travel, time travel, out of body experiences and invisibility.

This particular thing had never happened to John on Soy Sauce before, but that was par for the course because the same thing never happened twice. Out-of-body experiences, time travel, interdimensional travel, invisibility, yes. Stopping time? No. He’d have to tell Dave. If he remembered, that is—unfortunately, the godlike status you sometimes achieved under Soy Sauce, however briefly, was kind of like the boost in sexual confidence you got from beer: nice while you’re in the moment, but the next day you don’t remember shit. He tried to get over the initial shock of what was going on and assess the situation. Who knew how long the effect would last, and when time would suddenly burst forward again? - This Book Is Full Of Spiders

The Soy Sauce is able to end up back with the heroes after travelling around the world due to a series of very improbable events, as it wishes to be back with John, Dave & Amy.

 

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The Shadow Men are entities unbound by time and space (who have a connection with Korrok & Millibutts, which we'll get into later). They can control time & space, being able to retroactively rewrite reality on a whim and move between universes and time at will.

You have never heard of anyone being harmed or killed by a Shadow Person, in the sense that you have never met someone who failed to be born. Our unique, limited perception limits us to see only one possible outcome of an event. If we grow tiresome of a tedious conversation with a man, we cannot, say, simply switch to another quantum reality in which that man did not survive a bout of childhood pneumonia, winking him out of our thread of existence like turning the channel on a television. The Shadow Men can. - This Book Is Full Of Spiders

Shadow Men live inbetween moments and outside time, across dimensions and maybe never in any particular place or time at once. That they look like men is humans enforcing an image on something they cannot imagine. They're also thought of as ghosts, and long ago, Shadow Men would have been called faeries and succubus in the past, and would appear as tiny gray aliens to others.

These beings live in between moments and outside of time, across dimensions and perhaps never fully exist in any particular one. They have been called ghosts, and no doubt they wear the faces of the recently dead in the imagination of a person trying to reconcile what they saw in that dark corridor, or in the silence of their bedroom at three in the morning. For others, they will perhaps appear to be tiny, gray aliens. Centuries ago a Shadow Man would have been called a faerie, or succubus. That is how the human brain works, when it looks at a formless cloud, it tries to see a shape, or a face, or otherwise associate it with something that makes sense in some known cultural context, like the proverbial image of the Virgin Mary seen in the grain of a tree stump, or a slice of toast. But make no mistake—the observer supplies the face. - This Book Is Full Of Spiders

As a threat, a Shadow Man causes the airplane Amy was in to crash and not crash, and telepathically communicates with Dave (and seems to move Dave to this explosion).

THE AIR STANK. My ankles were submerged in cold liquid that sloshed when I moved my feet. I blinked and could almost see I was in a doorless room. I reached out and touched a metal wall. I could see only by two small spots of orange light and I realized with horror that it was the shadow creature’s eyes. There was a steady rumbling sound from all around us and I had to brace myself as the floor seemed to shift and tilt under me. The black thing stood at the end of the room and stared.

“Where are we?” I asked, to see if it would respond more than anything else.

The answer did not come in the form of an audible voice, but a picture. In a blink I had a perfect, mental image of an airliner and of a spot under the passenger compartment where a large center fuel tank was housed. I was standing inside the center fuel tank of a passenger jet. The liquid at my feet was jet fuel. I also knew with some certainty that this was Amy’s plane, that I was standing just a few feet under the spot where she was sitting and likely striking up a conversation with whoever she was seated with.

Strangely, the first thought that came to me—even before “Am I really here?”—was that they had forgotten to fill up this tank. Then the answer came to me that they often leave it empty depending on the distance and load of the flight. Then I realized how creepy it was that I was having this telepathic conversation with this thing and I made an effort to close my mind to it.

The shadow thing moved. It drifted like a puff of smoke in a mild breeze, stopping near a bulky apparatus that emerged from the ceiling and dangled to the floor, probably an instrument for measuring how much fuel was left. The fumes were burning my eyes and nose and lungs. It was making me light-headed. The black thing drifted to the apparatus, swirled a black appendage over and around a conduit, a jointed line that probably housed an electrical wire. The black thing caressed the line, almost sensually. Sparks flew from the conduit.

I screamed.

I TURNED TO Arnie and said, “There was light and heat and noise. A sound like a junkyard falling down a mountain.”

I concentrated, tried to bring back the memory. That very real feeling of my flesh burning to vapor in a millisecond, my bones cooking to black charcoal. But I couldn’t, not really. The memory was hazy and unreal, like the memories of the hamster we owned when I was five, the one that escaped and then got eaten by a snapping turtle. I can’t picture it, but I know it was there. And that it wasn’t very fast.

“And then,” I said, “everything was back the way it was. I was standing there again, in the dark, shoes and socks soaked in that stinking, ice-cold liquid. To say it was a weird feeling doesn’t do it justice, because at that moment I had a distinct memory of the explosion happening and an equally clear memory of it not happening.”

This seemed to confuse Arnie, understandably enough. He said, “So, did the plane go down or not?”

“No.” I paused for a moment and said, “It didn’t. Not yet.”

This confused Arnie further, but he waited patiently for me to explain. A good reporter, down to the last.

I said, “And as I was standing there, in the stench and the darkness, a thought came into my head, perfect and clear. The voice of that thing, the shadow man. ‘This moment,’ it said, ‘is forever.’ And I understood right then that all moments are forever and that they can go back there to that spot at any time, in the wet, stinking belly of that plane. They can go back and short that wire or jam open some valve and blow Amy out of the air along with two hundred other people. But that ain’t so strange, is it? You drive to the doctor’s office to hear the results of your X-ray and you pray that it isn’t cancer. Isn’t that what you’re praying for, that God will reach back in the past? Back before the X-ray was taken, before you even saw the doctor. Months before, so He can stop that tumor from forming in the first place?” - John Dies At The End

Shadow Men exist everywhere, similar to electricity, and encounters are rare, causing you to lower your guard, until you actually encounter them directly...

SCIENCE AND THE BEYOND DR. ALBERT MARCONI

and I must emphasize that my encounters with the Shadow Men have been rare, in the sense that stepping in dog feces is rare. That is, the potential is always there, you never forget it when it happens, but you go just long enough between incidents to let your guard down. Yet, everyone has been in the presence of a Shadow Man, in the same way that everyone has been in the presence of electricity. It is all around you, invisible, tickling at the periphery of your perceptions. Then one day, you touch a bare wire … - This Book Is Full Of Spiders

A false child larvae hatches into a being very similar to a Shadow Man, and alters the past of an entire village and the surrounding landscape by reaching into the past, thousands if not millions of years (how it changes history is quite graphic, so I won't post it unless I need to).

Amy said, “Oh my god,” and I turned back to where the larva had been, now a shriveled husk. Blackness poured out, up and up into the sky, like the plume from an oil well fire. The darkness coalesced into a shape like a giant headless man with goat legs at least a hundred feet tall. I knew I should run but when I tried, my feet stayed planted as if saying, Are you seeing this shit?

John grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward the portal, but the moment I spun around, the shadow giant swept overhead, blotting out the sun.

It descended on the village. The tourist family didn’t scream. They didn’t have time, or a reason to. Neither did anyone in the village.

As the shadow swept over them, it did not destroy the village, it simply changed it. I knew the process from prior experience; it simply reached back in time—thousands of years, maybe millions—and tipped a series of events. As it passed overhead, striding on its goat legs, the village was replaced. And so were the people. - What The Hell Did I Just Read?

Shadow Men can move around inside a time stop.

And the moment was, in fact, endless, because time had stopped.

From behind me John said, “Finally. Jesus.”

It was dead silent all around us. The water at my feet had frozen. A spray of bits of mud hung in the air in the embankment above me, where a bullet had struck a microsecond before.

I turned to John, who had the Soy Sauce container in his hand. I said, “What the—”

“Oh, Dave! You’re here with me. I stopped time. I hope that’s okay.”

“You … you can do that now?”

“Yeah, ever since I took the Soy Sauce last night. I’m like Zach Morris in Saved by the Bell. The only catch is you can’t actually accomplish anything while time is stopped. You can move yourself but it’s, uh, mostly informational I guess.”

I climbed up the embankment, taking in the frozen battle all around me, like some sort of huge, open air, incredibly fucked-up sculpture in a museum. I looked back at Amy, a statue frozen with her mouth open, exposing her crooked incisors.

I shrugged and said, “Well, it’s actually not the weirdest thing that’s happened on the Sauce.”

John walked up behind me and said, “I wouldn’t even put it in the top five. And I know what you’re thinking, and no, we can’t push her out of the way. Nothing can be moved. And I don’t mean that in the sense that they tell you not to change anything when you go back in time, like it’s a rule or something. I mean literally nothing can be moved. I tried.”

I said, “I can move the furgun.” I still had it in my hand.

“Right, and you’re moving your pants when you walk. I think it’s anything you were touching when everything stopped.”

“How long does it stay like this?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only done it once before. I couldn’t intentionally make it start up again but … I got the sense that it lasts until you do what you need to do. Whether you know what you need to do or not. If that makes sense.”

“What do we need to do?”

I stared over at the column of smoke frozen over the burning truck, the still flames looking like orange-blown glass sculptures. Then, from the still, black column, a whisp of smoke moved.
At the exact same moment I thought it, John said it out loud:

“Oooooh, shit.”

The shadow men were here.

It started with that single, black shadow, hanging in midair. It was moving toward us.

Then I saw another one. And another. They grew out of the air, black shapes like holes burning in the white curtain of reality, revealing the darkness beyond. Three and four at a time they appeared, the darkness taking on the vague shapes of men. Each time my eyes focused on one spot, walking shadows would appear where I wasn’t watching. It was like trying to count snowflakes as they landed on a windshield.

John and I backed away from them, then realized they were behind us, too, on the other side of the ditch.

We were an island in a black tide of them. - This Book Is Full Of Spiders

 

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Korrok is a malevolent intelligence who manifests as a super organic computer in a parallel universe.

Korrok manifests as a great blue reptillian eye in the minds of others, and sees Dave when he's on the Soy Sauce between worlds/times in the void. Dave is just like a cell under a microscope before its gaze.

I realized the heat was gone. The sound was gone. Everything was gone. Just darkness.

That wasn’t right, darkness would have been something. This wasn’t even that. Was I dead?

It was the same detached sensation from before, the feeling of floating across worlds without my body. Only there was nothing to see here, nothing to feel. Only . . .

I was being watched. I knew it. I could sense it. There were eyes on me.

Not eyes. One eye. A single, reptilian, blue eye. I couldn’t see it, there was no seeing here. There was just the awareness of it. I was in the presence of something, an intelligence. I recognized it and it recognized me back. But not in the way a man sees and knows another man; it was the way a man sees a cell under a microscope. To this thing, I was the cell, insignificant under its vast, unfathomable perception.

I tried to sense the nature of it. Was it good? Evil? Indifferent? With my mind I reached out and—

RUN.

I ran. I had no legs, but I ran, I pushed myself away, willed myself to escape from this thing.

RUN.

I sensed heat. I was pushing myself toward an unimaginable heat but I welcomed it. I would throw myself into a lake of fire to escape that thing in the—

—DARKNESS. REGULAR DARKNESS now, the familiar back side of my own eyelids. Heat all around me, heat so intense I could barely recognize the sensation. - John Dies At The End

In this parallel universe, a man named Adam Rooney (who in our world was a Confederate soldier who died trying to crossbreed a bull and a clydesdale) invents a type of organic technology which even in the late 19th Century had self-sheering sheep, snakes which harvested corn and an insectoid flying machine. In 1902 he invented a primitive thinking machine with a pigs brain (which would eventually evolve into Korrok).

“Up until here,” said the man, pointing to the place where the trunk of the “Y” split into two branches, “our histories were identical. This spot represents the year 1864, as you would call it, or Year Minus Sixty-two, as we would call it. There was a man named Adam Rooney from Tennessee. In your world and ours. In your world, he was killed at age seventeen during the Civil War, gored while trying to crossbreed a bull and a Clydesdale. In our world, the man survived.”

The ranks of bugs on the wall changed colors again, turning shades of brown and tan and black, forming a rough portrait of an older man, smoking a pipe and looking out at the viewer through thick eyeglasses. He had a white Colonel Sanders beard. “Mr. Rooney,” he continued, “was a genius. He went on to perform experiments with what he would call beastiology.”

“Yes,” John said. “People from our South are into that as well.”

The large man skipped a beat and continued, “This is the art of transforming naturally occurring life into forms that can be used by man to better the world. By 1881 Rooney had a self-shearing sheep and a species of snake that could harvest corn. By 1890 his group had an insectile flying machine. In 1902, or Year Minus Twenty-four in our terms, he created a primitive thinking machine from the brain of a pig.” - John Dies At The End

By 1922, this universe had computers much more powerful than the plastic, metal and silicon computers of our timeline, just by modifying the organic computers made by nature. All the while, the first super computer continues to grow...

“I have studied your world for the last de cade, your language, your history. It is astonishing to me that you went to such unending lengths to build computation machines from metal and silicon switches when you have much more efficient versions inside your own skulls. Did this not occur to your scientists? By your year 1922, we had self-feeding, self-healing, self-growing and self-modifying computers, organic ones, that were approximately ten times as powerful as what you are using now in your world.”

The image shifted again, and this time a group of a dozen very proud-looking men were standing in front of a monster. The thing rose up behind them, no longer confined to a tank of fluid. It looked like a tree carved out of whale guts. It was a hideous twist of meat and fibers and strands that unspooled here and there like spiderweb. It stood as tall as a small tree, maybe twice as high as a man.

I got a dizzy spell, closed my eyes. A concussion? I clutched the kittens, one of them meowed. In just a few moments, I found I really did feel better.
- John Dies At The End

In 1926, at the same day that Rooney died, his first computer gained sentience.

“In 1926, or what we know as Year One, Mr. Rooney passed away. But something miraculous happened with the greatest of Mr. Rooney’s creations, the computation machine that had aided him with all of his other creations. On the very day Mr. Rooney passed, his creation became sentient.” - John Dies At The End

The creature names itself, expresses desires and emotions, and then continued Rooney's work to conform all living things to the "advancement of mankind".

“It gave a name to itself,” said the large man, “and expressed desires and emotions. This was an astonishing surprise. This creation carried on Rooney’s work and conformed all of living nature to urge forth the advancement of mankind.” - John Dies At The End

In the present day, Korrok is a monstrously huge entity the size of the Statue of Liberty.

I hesitate in the telling of the story at this point. When I try to bring up an image of Korrok in my mind I see only the glob of stuff that collects in the kitchen drain, the mass of grease and hair washed by years of filthy dishwater. It was like someone collected all the drain slime in the world and knitted it into something the size of the Statue of Liberty, then brought it to life with the psychotic energy that fuels lynch mobs. There was so much to Korrok that it was impossible to see it, a jumbled mess of exposed organs and fibers and dangling, club-ended limbs, of dripping orifices and slimy orbs and dark, black bulbs with colors that moved on the surface like the rainbows in an oil slick. Every inch of it was moving. I stared and stared and stared, found my brain couldn’t contain it all. - John Dies At The End

Korrok has psychic powers, and with just a few tweaks to someones brain chemicals can turn them into a radically different person (such as a murderer or a molesterer).

And then, in my head, I heard the high-pitched, cackling laughter of a child.

Welcome, said the alien voice in my head. It sounded like a toddler. Your wiener is even smaller in person.

It giggled. I thought, Is this Korrok?

With a tiny change in your brain chemistry, I could make you a child molester.

What do you want? I asked it, in my head.

Not big, black cocks. So we don’t have that in common. - John Dies At The End

Korrok says that there are a limitless infinity of universes, and that he exists in almost half of them, and it spreads to each one. The people in these different realities invite Korrok in and "give birth to it" (this will be important in later books). In Rooneys world, everyone bears the mark of Korrok (making them a creature made by Korrok).

Fuck off. You’re just something they grew. A big, fucked-up mess. You look like you were made by a committee.

Long, loud, childish laugh.

David Wong, son of an insane prostitute and a mentally challenged Amway salesman. There are worlds and worlds and worlds, an infinity you cannot grasp. You could travel from one to another to another and find me in thousands upon thousands, spreading like stars in the sky from reality to reality. They invite me in. They give birth to me. And soon, yours will do the same, men are working tirelessly toward it. They bring me into their world because they always want what only I can give. In this place, seven billion men bear my mark. And of the limitless infinity of worlds, I rule over almost half of them. - John Dies At The End

Korrok is surrounded by Shadow Men, who are refered to as "his dark disciples".

And then I saw, for the first time, the way the darkness in the chamber moved. The black shapes, the shadow men, the little slips of nothing swirled in this place, covering Korrok like smoke from an oil fire. They moved over and through him, in and out of every orifice and fold of skin. His dark disciples. I heard a sound and realized I was being talked to from the outside. I turned to face the large man. - John Dies At The End

They continue to make Korroks intelligence grow by feeding him geniuses and those with knowledge that it needs. Literally.

The man craned his neck, looking up in the darkness. He said, “You cannot begin to calculate the wisdom, the continued melding of a billion geniuses. You see, in our world, whenever a man is born with special wisdom and intelligence, he shares his wisdom with Korrok so that Korrok may be greater. Watch.”

A thin structure emerged from the wall about two stories above us. It tilted down and seemed to have no steps, as if it were a chute of some kind. An orifice that seemed to have something like a beak opened on Korrok at the end of the chute. A fat man came tumbling down the slide, his limbs flailing. He wore the same brown strips of clothing I saw in the video of the bug room. Korrok snatched the man into the beak, crunching his bones in a wet, red spray.

I heard a high-pitched laugh in my head.

Mmmmmm! Bacon!

In front of me a slit formed in Korrok and opened wide. An electric blue eye the size of a movie screen was peering out at me. A thin, black, vertical pupil.

I ran. - John Dies At The End

Korrok has computed everything in the universe down to the last atom and has left nothing to chance (keep in mind when David was on the Soy Sauce, he made a comparison with a super computer).

“The future is what it is,” said Largeman. “Your people have been poisoned with the myths of lone men turning the tide, improbable tales of heroes outrunning explosions with their feet. Such tales are forbidden here. Events are laid forth and they cannot be turned. There are no heroes, Mr. Wong. Korrok has computed it down to the atom and we have left nothing to chance.” - John Dies At The End

 

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With their organic technology, the people of Rooney's universe can split the atom and travel the stars (though they cannot yet travel between universes; keep this in mind as Korrok has conquered almost half of all universes).

The large man, intent on continuing the tour, said, “We are on the verge of entering Year Seventy-seven of our new era, the era of guidance and enlightenment. We have made great strides. There is little that we need that we cannot extract from the very living energy that is the most powerful force the universe produces. Life is the energy that controls all other energies. Living man can split the atom and travel the stars and, soon, move from reality to reality. But it is life that is the engine at the center of all.” - John Dies At The End

Giant spiders are used as cars in Rooney's universe.

Thin, black legs appeared over the edge, each as long as my body. I jumped back and heard a squeal as I stepped on a kitten, which was apparently following me. The large man put a calming hand on my shoulder.

The legs belonged to a spider.

A spider the size of a van.

It crawled up the opposite wall of the shaft, its mass neatly filling the entire space as if it were made for it. Its huge, bulbous back was facing us. A split formed in the spider’s body and it opened, revealing a rather clean interior that was a milky white. A light even blinked on in the cavity.

The large man walked inside the spider, there was room to stand up in there. He welcomed us inside and I decided on the spot that I wasn’t doing it, never, ever, ever. But John went in and then the dog and then the fluffy kittens, and at that point I didn’t really have a choice. I got inside the thing and the cavity closed and sealed us in. After a moment the spider jolted and we were riding down. - John Dies At The End

 

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Now, the connections between Korrok and Millibutts (which imply they're the same entity, and the super computer, as powerful and terrible as it is, is merely a manifestation).

In a local mine in 1881, a group of miners collapse a mine to stope the thing they found within from escaping. Only the youngest came out, and says he was sent by the others to stop a rescue for this reason, and asks them to cave his head in to get the "blue eyeball" out of his head (even in Rooney's world, Korrok wasn't first grown until 1902).

In 1881, a group of coal miners got trapped when an explosion caused the entrance of the mine to collapse. When rescuers showed up to the mouth of the mine, they found sitting in front of the rubble a coal-dusted kid, the youngest of the miners. His exact greeting to the men was, “Don’t dig ’em out. They sent me out here to tell you that. Them boys blew it themselves. Caved it in on purpose, to keep what they found in there from gettin’ out. So just leave it be. Now you there, with that pickax? I’d appreciate it if you’d go ahead and use that to cave in my skull, same as they did to that mine. Just maybe it’ll gouge out that blue eyeball that’s starin’ back at me from inside my own head.” - This Book Is Full Of Spiders

John headed for Mine’s Eye, a spot so scenic that couples actually hold their weddings there. Well, the ones who don’t know the backstory, anyway. The little church and several rental cabins sat up on a hill that encircled a small weirdly colored pond. At the base of the hill opposite the church was the entrance to what had been a coal mine back in the 1800s, before it collapsed in a horrific disaster. Nobody ever attempted to reopen it because, you guessed it, the circumstances of the disaster were creepy as shit. The miners had collapsed the shaft in on themselves with dynamite, supposedly in order to stop what was in there from getting out. They had sent out one guy—the youngest—to tell everyone else not to attempt a rescue. The town dealt with it in the usual way, which was to simply put up a sign warning people away and otherwise never think about it again. - What The Hell Did I Just Read?

The location of this mine is the same place in which the larvae are given birth to and enter the world of John and Dave.

 

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Millibutts is a mallicious entity from outside the Universe which is trying to break into the Universe (which is strongly implied to be the same being as Korrok).

Millibutts and other such beings exist outside the physical realm, and have no shape or size. Instead, they can only be measured in their ability it exert their will. Creatures like the larvae (and by proxy the Shadow Men) are thought to be the way in which these entities insert themselves into other dimensions.

Marconi nodded. “Well, there are no uninitiated in this conversation, correct? Behind the veil of this world is a realm beyond the physical. The undying entities that dwell there do not have a shape or a size, but can only be measured in terms of their ability to exert will. I have reason to believe that the physical offspring we’re encountering are one entity’s way of inserting itself from that dimension into ours.”

I said, “Sure, so it’s an evil spirit or whatever. I guess that means it’s not flammable?”

“Ask yourself how such entities would do battle with each other. The question is not merely academic within my school of thought—we believe we will find ourselves in just such a battle in the moment after death. Will versus will. Imagine a mortal body as an egg. When broken, what emerges might be a soaring bird or a runny yolk.”

“And here I thought it was just a monster that wanted to eat us.”

“In a sense, it is. Such a being would grow by subduing the will of others to its own ends. In our mythology, devils are always about possession and temptation—chewing up a human will until only a hollow puppet remains. You can decide for yourself at what point we can separate the symbolism from the reality.” - What The Hell Did I Just Read?

The birthing point of the larvae parasites is the place in which Millibutts intersects with reality, like two perfect spheres touching in one microscopic point. It is described as being a sprawling putrid nebula of dumb hatred and unfathomable cruel strength. If the entity could be expressed in a physical size, it would be big enough to swallow the entire Solar System whole.

Ravenous appetites and strange desires lurking just below, like I was bobbing on an inner tube in the middle of the ocean while below me swarmed the swift shadows of a vast school of Cthulhus. Despite Marconi’s speech, I had still been thinking of the creature as being physically located inside the mine. But now I understood—this particular spot was just where it interacted with our universe, like the microscopic point where two perfect spheres contact one another. This was where our universe touched a sprawling, putrid nebula of dumb loathing and unfathomable, cruel strength. I thought that if it could be expressed as a physical size, the entity would be large enough to swallow our solar system whole. This thing, I thought, had far more than a thousand butts. - What The Hell Did I Just Read?

 

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To counter Millibutts, Marconi is working for another entity, one which he will not even say the name of, as it does not wish to have its name spoken.

Marconi said, “Not in the least. To give you just a hint of the complexity of the task at hand, you will note that I have carefully avoided uttering the true name of the entity. It wants to be spoken of. I would suggest you do the same if and when you repeat this story to others.” - What The Hell Did I Just Read?

 

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Larvae can not only mimic any living creature, but any object in the environment in the entire Universe.

John said, “We actually already knew that. The first trick we saw one pull after we captured it was to mimic my cell phone. Sorry, I think I forgot to mention that.”

“That would have been useful, yes. To know that not only any person or animal we encounter could in fact be these creatures in disguise, but literally anything in the environment itself. Any object in the universe. The implications of that are almost beyond my comprehension.” - What The Hell Did I Just Read?