Dave was not a God. Dave was a Junior QA Tester on a zero hour contract, and currently, he was vibrating with enough caffeine to power the entire London Underground.
The office was empty. The Senior Devs had left at noon for "team building" (which meant the pub), leaving Dave alone to monitor the servers over the weekend.
"Please don't crash," Dave whispered to his computer. "I can't afford to lose this job. I still owe them for the photocopier incident."
The computer hummed aggressively. It sounded less like a machine and more like a jet engine trying to take off from a swamp.
Dave sighed and picked up the crumpled receipt sitting on top of his keyboard. He had run out to Tesco’s earlier because his head felt like it was being squeezed by a vice.
He uncrumpled it to check it
Tesco Express
- A dozen eggs
- 1x Ibuprofen(Max Strength)
- 1x Meal Deal: Chicken Caesar Wrap
- Total: ￡8.00
He went to toss the receipt into the bin, but his hand spasmed as a side effect of his fourth espresso. The paper ball flew out of his hand, arced through the air, and hit the monitor.
But it didn't bounce off. The screen, currently displaying the Oakhaven Town Square, seemed to ripple like water. The paper ball hit the glass, dissolved into a burst of blue pixels, and vanished inside the monitor.
Dave blinked. Inside the game world, a giant, jagged sheet of paper the receipt was now fluttering down from the sky. "Lag," Dave rationalized, sweating. "Definitely just... optical lag."
To Dave’s right lay the source of his misery: a box of "Ergonomic Mouse Pads" filled with static-charged styrofoam packing peanuts. A draft from the AC caught a handful of them. They drifted through the air, floated toward the cracked monitor... and kept going.
They passed through the glass without a sound. On the screen, the peanuts materialized as massive, white boulders, tumbling down onto the terrified NPCs.
"Huh." Dave poked the screen. His finger sank into the glass like it was thick jelly. He yanked it back, wiping 8-bit dirt off his fingertip. "Okay. Do not touch this. Got it."
"Prrrrup?"
Dave froze. Standing in the doorway was a massive, fluffy orange tabby cat. Her name was Phish. The Senior Security Architect had named her that because, as he put it, "She looks innocent, but she will steal your credentials and ruin your life."
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Phish, no," Dave warned. "Go away."
Phish did not go away. She saw the floating peanuts inside the screen. Her hunter instincts activated. She launched herself onto the desk.
CRASH. An empty mug went flying. Phish batted at the screen, missing the peanuts but landing heavily on the keyboard. Her butt settled firmly on the Spacebar.
[GRAVITY: OFF]
On screen, the entire town of Oakhaven chickens, stalls, and the screaming party lifted weightlessly into the air. "Get off!" Dave shoved the cat. Gravity slammed back on. Everyone fell. The Viscount bounced. "Okay, I need to fix this before the logs flag a physics anomaly." said Dave
Dave grabbed his mouse. The cursor on the screen was a giant, glowing white arrow. "I just need to delete the receipt and reset the physics," Dave muttered.
He moved the cursor toward the party. But the mouse sensitivity was set to high Dave sneezed. His hand jerked violently to the right.
The cursor flew across the screen. It missed the receipt. It slammed into the small, hoodie wearing figure standing nearby.
Kai.
The cursor didn't just click him. It hooked him. The white arrow impaled Kai’s model, lifting him off the ground. "Whoops," Dave said. "Unstick. Unstick!" He shook the mouse frantically.
On screen, Kai was whipped back and forth through the air like a ragdoll. He smashed through a chimney. He was dragged through the fountain. And then with a final, violent spasm of Dave's wrist the cursor flung him.
Kai flew. He didn't just fly across the town square. He flew past the walls. Past the rendered forest. Past the mountains.
For a split second, the camera tried to follow him, and Dave saw the world from Kai's perspective. The sounds of the town, the screaming party, the fire, the wind—didn't fade away. They were cut. One moment, there was noise. The next, absolute, digital silence.
Kai’s tiny figure tumbled through the air, arms flailing. He passed the edge of the map. The blue sky ended in a sharp, black line. Beyond it, there was nothing but grey.
"Oh god," Dave watched as the little dot disappeared into the void.
Dave scrambled to pan the camera. He scrolled right, dragging the map view frantically over the mountains, past the 'Under Construction' signs, until he found where Kai had landed.
It was the "Project: Dustbowl" server test zone.
Kai was lying face down in the sand. Except, it wasn't real sand. The ground was a flat, infinite grid of beige and orange squares. There were no dunes, just sharp, angular polygons where the terrain mesh hadn't been smoothed yet.
[Gameworld]
Kai pushed himself up, coughing out pixelated dust particles. He looked around. To his left was a green cylinder standing upright, labeled in floating white text: [CACTUS_ASSET_04]. To his right, a wireframe sphere … aka tumbleweed slid across the ground in a straight line. It didn't roll; it just skated over the floor, silent and eerie.
The sky wasn't blue. It was a flat, unmoving Sepia tone. A yellow circle in the sky acted as the sun, but it had no glow effects. It just hung there like a sticker.
Kai stood up. He looked terrified, alone in the heatless sun. He reached for his hip, as if checking for a weapon he didn't have.
[ZONE CHANGE DETECTED] [USER 'KAI' HAS ENTERED: THE DEPRECATED DESERT] [WARNING: PHYSICS ENGINE: BETA v0.1]
[Real world]
Dave slumped in his chair. The silence in the office felt heavy. "
He looked back at the Town Square on the screen. The rest of the party (The Knight, a woman who was pointing and shouting at the screen, and a weird NPC) were standing there, staring at the empty sky.
Dave felt a pang of guilt. Then he saw Phish eyeing the mouse again. "Don't you dare," Dave pointed a shaking finger. "I'm going to get a sandwich. Don't touch the universe while I'm gone."
He left the room. Phish sat on the desk, staring at the screen. She purred, and placed one paw gently on the Delete key.