Leaning back in my seat I feel the
world spin, my stomach sinking as I feel the tall wooden stool threaten
to tip over. My hazy and dazed mind barely has enough time to release
what is happening, my hands snatching out to grasp at the bar as I pull
myself back into a seated position.
It
had been a long week, interview after interview that had seemed to go
nowhere and amounted to little more than a time waster. My time in
academia hadn't done much for my corporate prospects and without going
back for more study I doubted that would change any time soon.
It
was the last interview of the week that had led me here, a small little
dive that seemed to cater to the various workers who streamed out of
their offices once the clock hit five.
Being
alone at the bar I had taken a seat both out if the way but also by the
bar, my lonely wallowing in pints and highballs giving me a great
vantage point of the group's shuffling in and stumbling out as the hours
rolled on and on.
Office workers
stumbling in as they loosened their ties, high-heeled women getting
shots before mincing out the moment happy hour ended, uproarious
laughter erupting from booths and tables as rounds of drinks were downed
and spilled.
Men in high-priced
suits eyeing up the back bar for the most expensive whiskey soon being
juxtaposed with nervous-looking groups of introverted IT workers trying
to navigate the crowded room in order to get their cheap and basic
drinks.
Each
time I looked up I found the room had shifted as large swathes of
tables and booths would shuffle about rapidly as the start of the
weekend rolled on. The only group that seemed to remain constant we what
seemed to be a team of janitors sitting only a few feet from my own
perch at the bar.
The group of
three men had arrived only shortly after I had, two older gentlemen
along with what looked like their latest hire. Over the course of the
night their table had quickly filled with empty glass after empty glass,
the two older men laughing heartily as they watched their younger
colleague attempt to keep pace.
Each
time the young man, barely being old enough to legally drink, would
finish one of the older men would immediately order a round. With each
passing round of beers the older men only seemed to grow redder in their
faces, foam accumulating in their facial hair, while the younger lad
seemed to turn pale and sickly green.
The
three, all dressed in grey and somewhat dirty jumpsuits, each carried a
small device from their belts. The thick heavy-duty shock case seemed
to clip to their uniform, the small tablet/large phone inside occasional
jostling as they tormented their new coworker.
While
waiting between rounds the older men would fiddle with their tablets,
snickering as they glanced around the room and seemingly took pictures
of those around them. The screens looked like a jumble of command
prompts, the fine white text meaning little to me from my distant
vantage point.
The older men
failed to restrain their laughter more and more over the course of the
night, always quickly turning away once they had done whatever it was
they were doing.
No matter how
hard I tried I couldn't work out what the hell they were laughing at, my
eyes trying to follow theirs through the crowded bar. From the finely
dressed women trying to find the most expensive champagne at the bar to
the nerdy cuties trying to muster the courage to get to the bar it all
just seemed like they were laughing at nothing.
Little
did I know at the time but I had incidentally stumbled across the
guardian angels of our day, the Metaphysical Maintenance Service.
These men and women in gray jumpsuits had one all-important job, to fix and repair subtle breaks in reality.
The
universe as we knew worked much like a tree, branching out and growing
evermore as time stretched on into infinity. While there was a perfect
and pristine way for this great being reality to grow the very action of
nature taking its course and the sheer number of actions taking place
often left it growing in odd or strange ways.
While
these changes from the perfectly aesthetic universe were mostly
harmless others required more attention. These were more akin to rotting
leaves or branches that stole the light from other. These could be
immediate or compounding problems as it didn't matter either way, these
limbs of the universe would need pruning.
The
Metaphysical Maintenance Service traveled the world, finding the causes
of these most detrimental breaks in reality before ending them
forcefully. Genders flipped, wealth added or drained, ages shifted and
nationalities altered, anything and everything was on the table to
correct the inevitable and devastating path these people were on.
The
incompetent engineer who leads to the worst nuclear power plant
meltdown in history can't make their mistake if they're some applied
heiress who never applied themselves in the first place, the corrupt
politician that allows millions of acres of land to be poisoned can't
sign the law if they're some rural poor in some far-flung country.
While
the members of the Service had final say on the changes being made, so
long as they fixed the temporal and metaphysical issue at hand, doing so
was more difficult than one would think. Once scanned a target would
merely appear as lines upon lines of spaghetti code, each variable
leading to some factor of the individual's reality.
To
a lay person, or even a new recruit to the service, this meant nothing
but to a veteran this code painted a rich tapestry to be unwoven and
altered as they saw fit. For those new to the service, or the lazy few
who just wanted to meet their quota, there was an automatic option 'Synchronization'.
Upon being selected, 'Synchronization'
would begin to interpret the immense amount of code before coming up
with an internal score. As the errors needing correcting by the
Metaphysical Maintenance Service were seen to be caused by compounding
errors, the 'Synchronization' option would score the code and attempt to
automatically correct what it saw as elements that were bringing down
that score.
This of course leads
to wildly differing results, sometimes even making the problem worse.
However, as each change was played out the system would learn more and
make further changes in the hopes of getting its synchronization score
to 100%, a life that fits perfectly for the target.
These
changes, whether manual or automatic, rewrote reality as we all knew
it, those poor saps being targeted by the Service only having a few
moments of lucidity and terror before their memories would be overridden
by the service member manually once all was said and done.
Each
change of course led to more and more alterations in reality, leading
to the Service only being a last line of defense to prevent disaster.
However, this didn't stop the staff from using it personally in their
spare time.
From fun little
alternations whole out and about to fiddling with friends and family, so
long as things were put back to normal by the start of their next shift
or were seen as a 'better fit' in their internal system then it would
be a matter of 'no harm, no foul'. Where the system didn't detect the
changes it would simply be impossible for anyone besides the one who
made the change to detect it, while if the change was detected there
would be hell to pay for the employee whose tablet actioned the change.
Of
course this only mattered for small and single changes, ones where the
device was still in the Service member's possession. While largely
unheard of in the Metaphysical Maintenance Service there had always been
a concern as to what would happen if someone not of the service used
the device.
Of course, if they
used it on others it would only be a matter of time before the
Metaphysical Maintenance Service would find them and exact as terrible
vengeance for the transgression as they could muster.
However,
what worried those in the know more was the thought of swine
accidentally using it on themselves. Late night conversations and
contemplations abounded of what could happen, would anyone be able to
make sense of the code without training? Would they be able to detect
the change without the constant of the service member behind it? What
would happen to the tablet in that scenario?
While
many felt safe and secure knowing it had never happened before they
were sadly mistaken. These sorts of transgressions and alterations to
reality had happened many times since the Metaphysical Maintenance
Services' founding, unfortunately with each rewrite it became all that
much harder to find the source even if they knew to look for it in the
first place.
After
a few hours of uproarious laughter from the older men, and pained
gagging at the now foul-tasting beverages by the younger man, the three
stand up to leave. As the younger of the three pushes up from the table,
his white-knuckled hands gripping the sides for support, the whole
thing buckles.
Partially filled glasses come falling down around him as he topples to the floor, the sound of shattering glass filling the bar.
"Taxi!"
call the older men in near unison, the two bellowing with laughter at
the sight of their inebriated and clumsy compatriot.
As
the young man scrambles to his feet, struggling to avoid the large
shards of glass scattered across the hardwood floor around him, he sways
and bobs in place. His face turns ever more green as the alcohol
coursing through his blood and agitating his stomach only seems to make
the vertigo and nausea from his fall that much worse.
The
two older men quickly right the table, patting down their young
coworker to get any dirt of glass off the uniform. Suddenly one of the
older men winces, gritting his teeth as he looks down at the young man's
belt. Without a word he snatches some serviettes from a nearby table,
the young man only then noticing the droplets of moisture on the screen
resting at his hip.
In a fit of
panic he pulls it free from his belt, burying it in the tiny paper
towels like one would do with a phone and a bag of rice.
The
sudden movements seem to catch up with him though. The young man's eyes
going wide as saucers, his lips sealing shut as he races to the back of
the bar and towards the bathrooms much to the delight of his older
coworkers.
The commotion soon dies
down as the minutes passed. The older men, standing around the table,
soon grow restless as they wait for their young friend to 'finish his
business in the tiny bathroom. One fiddles with his pocket, fishing out
some crumpled cigarettes and a beat-up lighter.
As
the staff arrived to sweep up the glass, gesturing for the men to stand
aside, they simply leave with a nod to the bathroom and to the exit.
"Be outside Doug" shouts one, his deep voice struggling to carry over the resurgent noise of the bar. "Just need some air."
As
the men reach the short set of stairs leading into the bar and out to
the street beyond the sound of flushing struggles to make itself heard
over the din of the crowd. The young man, slouched and drained, with
various foul stains clinging to his one pristine uniform, appears to
shuffle out in a fugue state.
His
glazed-over eyes dart lazily around the room looking over the table he
had been sitting at before searching the small space around him for his
coworkers. As he spies the two older men climbing the stairs he bolts,
bumping into damn near everyone and everything between the bathroom and
the exit.
After
a short pause my own addled mind catches up to the world around me, my
eyes turning to the pile of serviettes still resting on the table.
"H...Hey!..." I call out, watching as the young man clambered sloppily up the stairs and out into the street beyond.
Easing
up from my seat, wobbling slightly after hours of sitting as the liquor
seems to finally hit me, I slowly approach the now abandoned table. I
quickly move the sudden white paper towels from the piles, finding the
outer ones reasonably dry with only a few near the middle having any
amount of liquid soaked into them.
It
all looked like a bit of an overreaction, the small tablet in the hard
shell case seeming to be untouched and unmarred by its owners fall.
Without
much though I reach out for the hefty device, turning it over in my
hands as ai search for a company name or phone number. Despite my best
efforts I find no identifiers on the outside, the secretive group
unfortunately not advertising themselves on their products.
With
a little huff of frustration, and feeling my own bout of liquor-induced
nausea sinking in, I quickly pace back to my seat at the bar. Fiddling
with the large black cases tablet in my hands I quickly turn it on,
hoping to find something more useful inside.
Unfortunately,
the moment I turn it on I'm met with the sight of lines and lines of
code. Each string is absolute nonsense to me, the gibberish combinations
of numbers and letter all color coded in a manner that made it all more
confusing than less.
No menu or
phone number make themselves known as I scroll through, just more and
more of the dense code. As I sway on my seat, the tablet's rear camera
moving with me, I watch as the code shifts and changes. Massive sections
of the jumbled letters and numbers quickly change as I point the camera
at different people, a small button at the bottom appearing once I have
someone centered
[LOCK TARGET]
For a moment I pause,
fidgeting and playing with my lower lip and kicking at my chair
absentmindedly as I try to work out what to do next.
"Surely they'll come back for... Whatever this is"
I think to myself, aiming it around the bar as though I was taking a
video. With each passing group the code shifts and mingles, the lock
button flashing on screen only once things settle before leaving once
more as I pass over the crowd once again.
Eventually,
as I reach the end of the bar I have a thought. Positioning my finger
over the [Lock] button I spin the tablet around, facing the camera with a
weak smile as I blindly tap at the unseen screen.
Spinning
the device back around I'm met with an un-moving block of nonsense text,
numbers and letters all meaning nothing to me as they display my entire
reality in digital form.
As I
swipe up and down, looking over the weird coding language and searching
for some change or menu in the damned thing, I finally find something
new. In the top right-hand corner sits a new button, separate from the
now altered [LOCK TARGET] turned [UNLOCK].
[SYNCHRONIZE]
Looking up from the
tablet, my eyes darting to the door in the hopes of seeing the worker
once again, my mind begins to wander. How the hell was I going to get
this back to them? Should I just leave it here? What the hell is this
thing anyway?
As the last thought reverberates through my intoxicated mind I find my thumb gently gliding to the new button. "Maybe this does something" I think to myself, justifying my curiosity.
As
I tap the tiny text I watch as the code on screen begins to race past.
Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of lines of codes whiz by in a
flash and faster than my eyes can even hope to keep up with. On
occasion the device seems to seize up, the code suddenly getting
highlighted before it returns to the high-speed scrolling.
Suddenly, it stops as it reaches the bottom.
A
blinking dot at the bottom of the screen appears to await input, as
though I had finally reached a command line of some sort. However,
before I can type anything myself I watch as the command line is
suddenly filled out by itself.
...Executing Synchronization...Error Codes (Y)...Sync Score<100... Running Test...
Before
I can do anything more I watch as the world around me slows to a halt,
people stopping mid-stride and beers freezing as they pour from the tap.
Looking up I see the three men frozen by the door, one of the older men
simply staring at me in shock while the other appears stuck midway into
pointing at me.
Glancing back down at the tablet I watch as the command line quickly types out...
