Zoostuck 2

well, whatever you answer, make sure you accidentally mix them up and tell the seagull about whether or not to resolve the time paradox and the time traveler whether or not they should eat the crab

Mix them up? You can't do that in your very first column! Your reputation would suffer and then there's no way you'd bring civilization to this endless void you're falling through. They'd probably all go to that other civilization those arms are making that you somehow know about.

Anyways, you begin drafting your responses.

Dear Struggulling,

Believe me, I've seen some really bad sitcoms. But none of them were worse than the destabilization of the entire universe. It's probably worth the risk to preserve the timestream.

Dear Troubled,

I don't really know what it's like to have trouble with your diet, not needing to eat and all, but my advice is to forget the crab and take a big chunk of lard and put it in a sandwich. Preferably a chunk falling through an infinite void.

There, it's done... Wait a minute! Drat, you mixed up the answers after all! After you specifically said you weren't going to do that! And you already submitted them to your mind so it's too late to fix it! Your advice column, and hence your civilization, are going to be a total failure!

You're going to need some help here. Maybe you can write in to that Dear Lard advice column you've heard about.

You are now another version of that guy building a sandcastle - no, not the one who sent a letter to that advice column, you aren't that version yet.

You are, by sheer chance, on the same beach because you solved all the problems your other selves created and are treating yourself to a break. Unfortunately, you somehow forgot that this was the beach where, when you were another you, you built a sand castle - which has now gotten large enough to actually block out your sun - and started bothering a crab and turtle and seagull and a big fight started, and ugh this is just a pain.

You try to distract yourself by reviewing your solution to all the various problems. The first key was reprogramming the game to use a first-person interface. This actually wasn't very useful in and of itself, but the process of reprogramming the game required you to come up with several reality-bending programming languages, based on such things as electrical currents in the universe, which of several different varieties of potato dishes you prepared last night, hedgehogs moving at various high speeds, the fiber intake of a large number of people, the mass of an assortment of objects, your future coding plans over an entire year, carving words into backpacks, and every piece of speculation about a mascot crossover game that didn't end up going into the game itself.

By doing that, you developed the tools you needed to fix the other problems, so now the universe is fine except for the existence of a really terrible sitcom, which you're taking care of by making sure nobody watches it. While you were at it, you also disproved every myth in the entire history of the universe, which turned out to be pretty simple with the new tools at your disposal.

Still, you can't help but feel that it's all too neat, that you cleaned it up too tidily. What problem do you still need to solve, and what does it have to do with this stupid fight getting in the way of your perfect beach experience?