Reality Code
Jack's eyes opened, and his awareness snapped back to him instantly. He gasped, jolting upright.
"What - where-?"
He looked around wildly, losing it.
I died. I know I died.
The ground beneath him was a flawless plane, impossibly smooth. It stretched on forever into the distance, crisscrossed with glistening lines, like he sitting on some giant mirror. Above him, the not-sky shimmered with soft blue pulses, rippling like a giant screen.
Jack blinked rapidly and his throat tightened.
…Actually what the hell is happening!?
The air around him gave off a gentle hum, and thin lines of light crawled along the horizon, glitching like half-written code.
Am I dreaming? Did I respawn? Is this some stupid afterlife cutscene?
His thoughts where whirling around and tumbling over each other.
No, no way. I remember the gunshots, and the feeling of them hitting my body. Did the warehouse explode as planned?
He slowly drew in a breath, the emptiness echoing faintly in his ears.
Dead.
He was dead.
So why was he awake?
His pulse thudded in his ears, too loud in a place with no walls to hold the sound. For a moment he just sat there, shaking, trying to remember how to breathe. Panic was rising in his chest.
He pressed a palm to his body. No blood. No holes. No shattered ribs grinding together. Just warmth and the steady beat of a heart that had absolutely no right to still be beating. Slowly, he calmed down, and the fear and confusion cleared, after nothing had happened for what felt like an age.
Alright… okay… think. You're here. Whatever 'here' is. Freaking out isn't helping.
He pushed himself shakily to his feet. His legs felt weirdly light, like gravity couldn't make up its mind, if there was any here in the first place. He looked down, and saw his terrified expression reflected in the endless glassy plane.
"Fine," he muttered, swallowing hard. "Standing still isn't answering anything."
He gingerly took a step forwards, sending tiny ripples across the smooth surface, like he was walking on water. Nothing else happened. He kept walking.
If this place existed at all, then something had to be in it. Something had to explain it. And if not he'd find something anyway, like he'd always done.
His breathing steadied. His heartbeat slowed. And the fear, although still omnipresent, had largely shifted into curiosity.
If he wasn't dead, or wasn't staying then what the hell was this place waiting for him to see?
He kept walking, and soon he'd lost track of time. He didn't feel hungry, or thirsty, or tired, but he was starting to get really bored, until…
Is that…?
Something had appeared a couple hundred feet in front of him, a small tiny speck in the distance that appeared to be some sort of plate on the ground. It was his first time seeing anything at all in this weird space, so he jogged over.
It was a laptop. A sleek, silver, unbranded laptop.
He stood and looked at the laptop for a while. Nothing happened.
I'm so lost. A few moments ago I was getting shot to death by my lifelong enemies. Now I've suddenly just stumbled across this. It doesn't feel real, like I'm going to wake up any second in a comfortable bed and just laugh and say it was a dream.
But Jack knew that wasn't what he felt at all, that was he secretly, deep down, wanted.
What he felt was excitement. Finally, something interesting had happened, something different.
He knelt down, and gingerly opened the laptop. It switched on instantly, bathing his face in a familiar glow of a screen.
This is more my speed.
On the screen, there was nothing but a single file in the centre.
What is this…?
[Reality Code]
[File size: 3.4 GB]
'Reality Code'? Sounds ominous… but also exciting…?
He opened the file, and a small window popped up, with lines of code scrolling over it. As he read them, processing them unnaturally fast as a result of 0xJ's brain… his eyes grew wider and wider. When he finished reading, he sat back on his heels, panting, breathing hard.
Reality Code.
He understood now.
It's like… Kolmogorov Complexity. A whole universe - no all of reality - is generated from just this one three and a half gigabyte program. And here it is. Right in front of me.
His fingers trembled. With fear or excitement he did not know.
What if? What if I changed the code that writes reality…?
He scrolled further down, searching for anything, and noticed a small footnote he'd missed.
[You may edit the Reality Code once.]
He swallowed.
If this was real, if he wasn't getting pranked by some celestial being, then right here, right now, if he did it right…
…he could become a god.
The air, if there was any in this space, seemed to thin. Either that or his lungs had forgotten to work. A buzzing was crawling up his spine and into the back of his skull, rattling his brain back and forth.
He felt it building in him, an unfamiliar, forgotten spark. A spark that all the missions he'd run, databases he'd cracked and problems he'd solved had never ignited.
Well that was obvious.
This wasn't a coding problem or a digital database.
This was the source code of all existence, just right there in front him, and it was telling him he could edit it.
His hands hovered over the trackpad, trembling slightly, but now he was sure he wasn't afraid. Instead, he was filled with something else, something yearning, hungry and stimulating.
For the first time in forever, Jack felt awake.
He swallowed hard.
One edit.
Just one.
A single alteration to the program that breathed life into galaxies, moulded physics, dictated causality. A butterfly effect so massive it would remake the blueprint they were built from.
He clenched his jaw, breath shaking as a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"Damn it…" he whispered under his breath, "this is insane."
What else could he have said?
"But… this is… super, fucking fun."
His mind flooded instantly with possibilities - too many to count. He could erase pain. He could end death. He could bend time. He could shatter entropy. He could rip open infinity and fold it like paper.
But none of those felt right.
They felt… small. Sure, by regular standards, they were huge and reality-breaking, but now that he could do anything he wanted they just felt pointless. Cheap, almost. Cliché.
And somewhere deep inside, the part of him that had always chased the thrill, the challenge, the unsolvable puzzle, whispered to him:
Why would I break reality just once… when I could play with it forever…? Surely… there has to be something…
Jack exhaled slowly, letting the idea settle.
He didn't need to remake the universe. He didn't need infinite wealth, immortality, or cosmic dominion.
He wanted to live for one thing, and that was fun. Pleasure, infinite joy and satisfaction.
His cursor drifted down, past the logic trees, past the constructs describing quarks and consciousness, until he reached a user block. His user block.
ENTITY {
id: "JACK_EVEREST_MERCIER",
class: "Human",
permissions: ["standard_user"]
}
His heart kicked hard in his ribs. That was it. That was the boundary.
That tiny line was the difference between being limited by reality and holding it in his hand.
His heads sweat viciously as he tapped on the keys.
{ permissions: ["operator"] }
His hand froze over the keyboard.
A wave of heat flushed up his neck as the magnitude of it hit him.
He had just given himself root access to the universe. He was God.
He burst out laughing, rough, breathless, disbelieving. He pressed a fist to his forehead, trying to hold himself together.
"I'm actually doing this," he whispered shakily. "I'm actually - holy crap - I'm OP-ing myself."
The window flickered and a final confirmation line appeared.
[Apply change?]
[YES] [NO]
Jack drew in a slow, steady breath, feeling his heartbeat settle.
Any lingering thoughts dissolved completely.
Only anticipation remained, crazy excitement.
[Yes]