Chapter Three:
The Glitch
I really had no other choice but to return home. As I opened the door, I noticed the lights were out and the house was empty. “Alex? Mom?” I looked around but there was no sign of them. I walked down the hall to look in the bedrooms. Each door was replaced with the same blue void as the driveway the other day. This time I could get a clear view of it. It looked just like the sky, with clouds and everything. In fact, it was the sky. Just like the void outside of the map in video games. I walked to my bedroom, and the door was still there. I opened the door and looked around carefully. Everything was intact. I tried to start my computer. I pressed the button, and nothing happened. I took out my phone. It wouldn't start. In a last ditch effort I opened the strange book we were given. Each page was filled with strange black lines and marks, completely illegible. And it was at that time that the phone rang.
I didn't know what to expect. I picked up the phone. “H... hello?” “Ash?”
“Felix?”
“Yeah. Things got rough. Could you come by the New Infinity town hall? And- and hurry. This is importan— Actually, never mind. Run. Get away from here, as far away from the town hall as possible. This could turn south at any moment. I’ll take the blunt end here, I just don’t want you or anyone else getting hurt. I already called a couple people, but almost nobody answered. Doing a hard reset and patching things on my end. Just run.”
As I set the phone down, I ran over to the counter and took the keys to our van. I opened the garage door, got in the van, backed out, and drove. In the mirrors I could see all sorts of terrible shapes and lines, something so unnatural. A low roar filled the air, which quickly escalated into a high sort of scream and static noise, and suddenly I got up in a panic, hearing my alarm.
What happened? Was I back at home? I looked around the room to realize that no, I was still in New Infinity. But what happened? Was that some nightmare? Did Felix's plan work? Was I dead? Was the world corrupted? I looked over at my clock. 6:46 AM. I watched it intently, and after a whole minute, it finally rolled over to 6:47, so yes things were working fine. I got up and pressed the power button on my computer, and it whirred to life. “Don't ever scare me like that again.”
In a fit of curiosity, I looked at the welcome book. The first page was the same as always, but now the second page read: “Everyone deserves a second chance! Never forget!” That was the last page, too, so it seemed that things had been changed. I logged into Steam to check if I still had Internet and if an of my friends were on. Isaac was on, and he'd logged in yesterday, so it seemed that yesterday did just restart. I sent him a message anyway. “Hey, my phone's not showing the right date. Today's the 20th of July, right?”
This was, of course, a lie. But if yesterday had been the 20th and the day before the 19th, then the day did reset. I awaited a reply. “Yeah. 20 July, 8:51 AM, but you're in a different time zone, so it's probably almost 7:00 over there.”
“Alright, thanks. We can play TF2 later, if you want.”
“That'd be nice. I think I like Soldier the best now.”
“Good to hear!”
I got ready for the day, and finally opened my curtains. And thus began another interesting adventure. The town outside still looked like New Infinity, but everything was different. We were no longer three houses from the corner, but instead the house on the corner. The park was now further down the road, and the Burger Planet building was replaced with a Pizza Palace (which depicted a king holding up a pizza on large sign instead of featuring a statue). Things had changed, but I'd figure out what happened later. Isaac was eager to get into another game.
RED had worked very hard up to this point to protect the Builder's League United, BLU, from taking another point. RED was using the abandoned mines in Dustbowl to house their ultimate weapon, and BLU had received intel that it was here just recently. A pyro, who worked for RED, was sitting idly on the platform that housed the fourth point. They had gotten into a particularly nasty scrape with a demolitions man, and were waiting for the team engineer to construct his dispenser. Once it was up, he put his wrench into the pocket on his overalls and stepped aside. The pyro stepped towards the machine, and was filled with health and vigor as the machine's medibeam fixed the demoman's damage. The pyro refueled the tank on their flamethrower, and headed off to go fight more BLU members.
As they arrived, they were immediately faced with a wall of bullets. The heavy weapons guy had been firing off his minigun to scare off RED agents as he made his way through the mining tunnels, with a medic in tote right behind him. The pyro took out their flare gun; this was their only option. Yes, they could go around and sneak in from behind, but then the team risks letting a heavy and medic right beside the point. Would the engineer's sentry hold up? Probably not. The pyro quickly stepped into view and shot the flare. It sailed right over the heavy's head... and nailed the medic, lighting him ablaze. The doctor remained cool under all of this; his healing properties would stop him from taking too much damage from burning. But what he forgot was that flares are more dangerous when used against an already burning target.
AshLand97 has killed Dr. Doktor with Flare Gun.
AshLand97's Strange Flare Gun has reached a new rank: Server Clearing!
Unfortunately, that upset the heavy. That medic had been storing up charge for a damage boosting Kritzkreig, and now that charge was gone. The heavy spun the barrel of the minigun up, and was about ready to macerate the pyro that stood in his way, when suddenly...
TheMaskedMan has killed Benadryl Overencumbered with Liberty Launcher.
TheMaskedMan's Strange Liberty Launcher has reached a new rank: Scarcely Lethal!
The RED Soldier, a crazed yet powerful man, stood before the remaining bits of the heavy. He looked up at the pyro whom he had saved, and saluted them. “Nice work!” He shouted as the pyro ran off.
“Mission ends in 30 seconds!”
The heat was on. A BLU scout, who was upset with losing this round, took off with a sawed-off shotgun, known as the Force-A-Nature, in tow. It was obvious he was on a quest to capture this final point and extend the game, and it showed.
DucksGalore has killed Stanley[427] with Force-A-Nature.
DucksGalore has killed TheMaskedMan with Force-A-Nature.
DucksGalore is dominating TheMaskedMan.
DucksGalore has killed Old_Memes with Force-A-Nature.
DucksGalore is on a KILLING SPREE.
“Mission ends in ten seconds!”
The scout approaches the point, ready to capture it. But then he hears a collection of chirps. A sentry. A RED sentry. It begins firing at the scout, and he suddenly takes off. But his progress is interrupted when a compressed burst of air from a flamethrower sends the scout back on the platform and within firing distance of the sentry.
Another_Bad_Joke and AshLand97 have killed DucksGalore with Sentry.
“Victory!”
RED has won!
RED MVPs:
AshLand97 (12 kills)
Old_Memes (5 kills)
TheMaskedMan (4 kills)
Killstreak MVP: AshLand97 (6 kill streak)
“That was fun,” Isaac sent in a message shortly after.
“You saved my life a couple times there. That was awesome.”
“So how are you guys?”
“Doing well. Why?”
“Nothing big, you just seemed out of it earlier. I'm going to play another round. See ya.”
As I headed outside, I noticed Felix outside walking down the street. “Felix, what happened?” I asked as I headed towards him.
“Hello, Ash! I’d love to chat, but… I kinda got paperwork to do. I just needed a moment to clear my head, y’know?
He started walking back towards the town hall, and I decided to follow from a safe distance. The town had absolutely changed shape. Instead of a straight road up to the hall, it had quite a few turns. But the town still looked familiar. White houses with their bright red roofs and doors, apple trees shading the sidewalk, children playing in the streets, it was all normal. He entered the building, which looked normal, but then walked to a desk right up front and dialed a long number on the phone. A bookshelf along the wall there slid down, revealing a staircase. As he walked in, I quickly entered the staircase, and quietly followed him down. The stairs had a few turns in them, and I stopped by the last of them, just out of view from whatever was down there. “Well, I hope this works. Real humans, and I don’t know how resetting works. Hope they're alright after that.”
Felix sighed, and turned and walked away from the stairs to go check something in the back. As he did that, I hurried into the main room and hid in the corner waiting for him to walk back up the stairs. He never noticed me and headed back up, leaving me in this room alone. Once I heard a door close, I decided to look around the room. The room was nothing like the rest of New Infinity. It was a dull gray with a few computers and other sorts of terminals. One in the middle was a little old computer, but hooked up to a large, old server. The power button was glowing; it had to be on.
I walked up to it and stared at the little black screen. “New Infinity 13.1.1.1”, the display read. I pressed enter and a whole new set of commands appeared.
>New Session
>Edit Current Session
>Help
>Product Information
>(There was a fifth arrow, but it was blank)
I checked the help section and was greeted with a quick paragraph. “InfinitiCity is the world’s first Digitized Civilization, produced by the [STRING_COMPNAME]. Digitized Civilizations take up much less space, and are a safer alternative for testing humans than using a mock civilization made of real materials. Version 13.1.1.1 was developed by User Felix on Server _______. This update features multiple memory leaks and fixes, and hopefully makes things a lot more stable.”
I checked the current session just out of curiosity. A number of stats on the town appeared, all organized very carefully. The number of residents, the number of trees, each and every street, profession and detail you would want to know. One that caught me off guard, though, was incredibly interesting: “Simulation duration: –.” There seemed to be space for a duration, but I couldn't alter it in anyway. It seemed endless. Now, this wouldn't be too much of a problem given that I had no intentions of leaving, but what about everyone else? Did anyone know this was happening? I decided to test something real quick. I went over to where all the variables for trees were kept, and changed the fruit from apples to cherries. There, maybe someone would notice and bring attention to what is going on here. This was absolutely a simulation at this point; Felix had no way to dodge the question. How else could exactly 247 apple trees suddenly become cherry trees? And that's when I noticed, at the bottom of this page, a variable.
P_TEST: EXPERIMENTAL ITEMS AND TOOLS LOCKED: TRUE
I changed it to false and heard a door slide open. I looked off to the left and saw that a door had opened, and a thick book sat in the room, along with several other items. I hid a number of the items (the book, two gun-looking items, a tablet device and a number of miscellaneous items) in my jacket and began to walk back to the stairwell.
And just then I felt something against my forehead. I looked up and saw Felix, visibly startled, holding one of those gun-like things to my head. “What are you doing in my workshop?”
“Oh, Felix, I just accidentally—“
“I don’t see how someone like you could accidentally end up here. Tell you what. I’ll let you ask three questions, and that’s that.”
“Okay? So, this was a simulation?”
“Yes, moreso earlier than now. It’s all actual people now instead of a lot of simulated people, and will behave just like any other city you can think of.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“To help people. I mean no harm, Ash, but I can’t let people know.”
“But wha-- nevermind. Third, what’s that gun for?”
“I didn't want to do this,” he replied as a bright flash filled the room.
To be continued
ns 15.158.61.36da2
