Version 1.04.0

  Thursday October 6th

  Dawn came, eventually. Gray light filtering through windows I'd never bothered to put curtains on. I was still on the couch, still wrapped in my now brown blanket. I'd dozed fitfully for a few hours, but mostly I'd just lain there, running my fingers over the fabric like I could feel the change I'd made.

  My body felt hollowed out. Empty. Like I'd run a marathon and then been hit by a truck. Every muscle ached. My head was stuffed with cotton. But underneath all of that was something else… a strange, electric awareness. Like I'd been sleepwalking my whole life and had finally woken up.

  My phone had seventeen missed calls. Five from Kate, who'd apparently tried repeatedly before giving up. Three from an unknown caller. Various other numbers I didn't recognize, reporters, maybe, or lawyers from Holloway, or who knew what else.

  I ignored all of them. Instead, I forced myself upright, shuffled to the kitchen, and made the three-quarters cup of coffee my dying machine could produce. It tasted like salvation. Very bitter, wrongly textured sad salvation. I drank it standing at the counter, letting the warmth spread through my abused stomach, and tried to organize my thoughts.

  Facts. I needed to focus on facts.

  Fact one: I could see something in the walls and objects in the world. Something that looked like code, or programming, or some kind of underlying structure to reality.

  Fact two: When I concentrated hard enough, I think I could manipulate that code.

  Fact three: Changing the code came at a cost. A serious one. My body had violently rejected the process, and I still felt like I'd been wrung out and left to dry.

  Fact four: Every time I did something significant with this ability, a voice in my head announced "Level Up." Which implied that there were levels. That this was a system. That there were rules.

  Fact five: I had no idea what any of this meant, or why it was happening to me, or what I was supposed to do with it.

  The logical thing would be to go back to a doctor. Let them know about the voice. Check and make sure I wasn't having a psychiatric break. But I'd changed the blanket. I needed to write this down. Document it. Like a scientist. Or a serial killer. Same basic skillset, really.

  The blanket was real. The blanket was sitting right there on my couch. Whatever was happening to me wasn't just in my head. It was manifesting in the physical world. That changed things. I picked up my phone, ignored the missed calls, and texted Kate.

  Me: I'm okay. Can't talk yet. Processing. Will call tonight. I promise.

  Kate: Sam what the hell is going on. I haven't heard from you in two days.

  Kate: everyone's saying you stole designs from another company. Meridian is pissed. Daniel has a whole deck he wants to present to them but they are refusing to meet without answers about what happened to you.

  Kate: I told Priya this is bullshit but no one will listen. Everyone's just ignoring that somehow Daniel had a whole presentation ready to go.

  Kate: please call me

  Me: Tonight. I promise. I just need to figure some things out first.

  I put the phone down before she could respond and turned back to the wall. Time to figure some things out.

  * * *

  By noon, I'd made the following discoveries:

  The code was everywhere. Not just walls, everything. Furniture, appliances, the floor, pens. Once I knew how to look, I could see the faint shimmer of static over everything, waiting to resolve into patterns if I just let my focus soften.

  Different things had different code. The wall was relatively simple, big blocks of what I'd started thinking of as "structural code." My couch was more complex, with multiple layers that seemed to correspond to different properties (color, texture, firmness). My phone was almost incomprehensibly dense, code layered on code layered on code.

  Changing code took effort. The blanket had nearly put me back in the hospital, and it was a tiny change, just a value shifted. When I tried to do something bigger (turn the whole couch blue), the nausea came roaring back before I got anywhere close. I spent twenty minutes with my head between my knees, breathing slowly, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

  But I also discovered something else, it got easier. Not easy. Not comfortable. But each time I pushed myself to the edge and then backed off, I could go a little further the next time. The sickness was still there, but it was more manageable. Like my body was slowly, reluctantly learning to tolerate what I was doing to it.

  By mid-afternoon, I'd managed to change the color of a ballpoint pen without throwing up. A small victory, but I'd take it.

  And most importantly: every change seemed to teach me something. Make my perception a little clearer, my focus a little stronger. Like I was building up tolerance, or learning a skill, or... leveling up.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  That was the word for it. I mean even the disembodied voice had said it. Leveling up. Like in a video game, where each achievement made you a little more capable, a little more powerful, until you could tackle challenges that would have been impossible at the start.

  Except this wasn't a video game. This was reality. At least I thought this was reality. I sat back on my couch (still gray) and tried to process. Either I was having an elaborate psychotic break, complete with persistent hallucinations and false memories of changing physical objects...

  Or the world was not what it appeared to be. The world was, in fact, some kind of constructed reality. A simulation. A program. And I had somehow gained the ability to see the code behind it.

  The first option was terrifying. The second option was also terrifying, but in a different way. A less padded room and drooling into my pillow kind of way. And hey, the world being not 'the world' seemed more interesting than the former option. And I'd always been the kind of person who preferred interesting problems to boring ones, so I decided to embrace it.

  "Okay," I said to my empty apartment. Or maybe that voice that announced levels. "Let's assume I'm not crazy. Let's assume this is real. What do I do now?"

  The apartment, unsurprisingly, did not answer. Neither did the voice.

  But I thought I knew anyway. I needed to learn more. Test the limits of what I could do. Understand the rules of this new reality I'd discovered. And maybe, just maybe, find a way to use it to fix the mess Daniel had made of my life.

  * * *

  Late afternoon. I'd spent hours practicing, pushing myself to the edge of nausea and then backing off, making tiny changes to things around my apartment. A book whose cover had shifted from red to maroon. The walls of the apartment a nice refreshing ice blue. I'd tried to get rid of the E7 on my coffee pot but ended up frying it entirely as it no longer even turned on. Apparently "fix" and "destroy" were closer together in the code than I'd thought. Good to know. The E7 error had won after all.

  Each change left me dizzy and exhausted, but the recovery time was getting shorter. Whatever this was, my body was adapting. Learning. And from each change I was determined to learn something. The code had structure, syntax. There were rules, even if I didn't fully understand them yet. And I was getting better at manipulating it. Faster, more precise, with less physical cost.

  My phone buzzed. Kate again.

  Kate: it's 5pm. "tonight" is now

  Kate: I'm coming over if you don't call me in 10 minutes

  Kate: Knock knock. I'm coming up.

  I sighed and walked into my room to throw on a hoodie and the knocking was now at the door as I walked over to grudgingly let Kate inside.

  "Sam. Thank god. What is happening?"

  "I don't even know where to start."

  "Start with: are you okay? Because you look like total shit."

  "Gee, thanks, friend. That's what all girls dream of hearing when they grow up." I shot back maybe a little too harshly.

  Kate gave me a look and then noticed the walls behind me. "Did you paint? When did you have time to paint?”

  I looked at my apartment. At the brown blanket, the maroon book, the ballpoint pan that was now purple, the ice blue walls and finally at my own hands, which still trembled slightly from the strain of it all.

  "I'm okay," I said. "I think. I'm just... dealing with a lot."

  "No shit." Kate's voice was tight with worry. "Everyone at work is talking about it. Daniel's been walking around like he owns the place. Greg called a meeting to 'reassure the team' about 'maintaining ethical standards.' It was disgusting. Meridian is rescheduled for next Friday and Greg is trying to come up with some kind of story for them."

  "Daniel did this." I hadn't meant to say it so bluntly, but there it was. "The files on my computer, he must've stolen them. I don't know how, but it was him."

  Silence. Then: "I believe you."

  "You do?"

  “ Well no shit, Sam. I've known you for seven years. You once stayed until 2 AM to fix a kerning issue that literally no one else would have noticed. You don't cut corners. You've never cut corners. There's no universe where you stole designs from another company.” She grabbed her head while absently staring at my ice blue walls. “Ah. Headache. Must be all this stress. Do you have any headache medicine?”

  I nodded and fetched my handy bottles from the bathroom while something tight in my chest loosened slightly. "Thank you for believing in me Kate. Now which is your poison? Advil, Tylenol, or Excedrin?”

  She laughed and shook her head while grabbing 2 pills and walking over the to sink to fill up a glass of water. After gulping it down she sighed, “You do have all of your over the counter bases covered don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “You know me.”

  Kate smiled.”That, I do. So what are we going to do about it?"

  “We? About what exactly?”

  "Yes, we. You think I'm going to let that slimy little weasel destroy your career while I just sit there? Absolutely not. We're going to find proof. We're going to expose him. And we're going to make sure everyone knows what he did."

  I laughed, surprised by the warmth that flooded through me. "I appreciate that. I really do. But Kate, I need some time. To figure out my next move. Can you just... give me a few days?"

  "A few days?"

  "Just to get my head straight. I promise I'm not going to do anything stupid."

  More silence. Then: "Fine. A few days. But if you don't call me by Monday, I'm showing up at your door with wine and a detailed investigation plan. Non-negotiable."

  "Deal."

  "And Sam?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm sorry this is happening to you. You don't deserve it."

  I looked at the brown blanket. At the lamp. At the now ice blue wall that was just a wall, unless you knew how to look.

  "Thanks, Kate. That means a lot."

  * * *

  She insisted on ordering pizza and watching me eat a slice before she would leave. Afterward, I stood at my window, watching the sun set over the city. Orange light painting the buildings. Cars streaming past on the highway. Normal life, continuing on, completely unaware that reality had a layer underneath it that looked like scrolling code.

  I'd lost my job. My reputation. Probably my career in this industry. Daniel had done that to me, for reasons I still didn't understand, and the logical response was to fight back through normal channels. Lawyers. Evidence. The slow grind of proving my innocence.

  But I wasn't thinking about lawyers I wasn’t even thinking about my job or my career. I was thinking about the code. I could see it now, even without trying. A faint shimmer over everything, waiting to resolve into patterns. The architecture of reality, laid bare. And I was getting better at manipulating it. Stronger. More capable.

  Level up.

  The voice had said it twice now. Level one, presumably, when I first saw the static. Level two, when I'd changed the blanket. If this was a system, if there were rules, levels, progression, then that meant there was more. More to see. More to do. More to become.

  And Daniel, with his smug face and his complete destruction of everything I'd worked for, he was still operating in the normal world. The world he thought he understood. He had no idea what was coming.

  I turned away from the window and looked at my apartment. My empty, impersonal, furniture-showroom apartment. The place I'd lived for three years without ever making it feel like home. Time to change that. Time to change a lot of things. I sat down on my couch, focused on the wall, and let the static in.

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  Want to read ahead? My has the rest of book one and a bonus prequel chapter. Patience is overrated anyway.