The morning started with me sleeping through my alarm. I had to choke down instant coffee, pull on the first hoodie I could grab, and dash to the bus stop in the drizzling rain.
The bus, of course, pulled away right from under my nose, splashing me with a fan of dirty water from a puddle. I was late for my first class anyway — the professor glanced at the clock demonstratively and shut the heavy oak door in my face.
The day was only saved by the evening. Mike and I ordered a large pepperoni, cracked open some energy drinks, and argued until we were hoarse about the ending of the new anime season.
"You should go," Mike checked his watch at ten PM. "I just remembered I have an exam tomorrow. I'm dead."
I stepped outside. The autumn air pleasantly cooled my face. Some light jazz was playing in my headphones, and red leaves rustled under my feet. I had just reached the intersection by the old park when the familiar world cracked.
First, the sound. It was like a giant tearing a sheet of the thickest cardboard in the world in half. The air in the middle of the roadway began to ripple as if from unbearable heat. And then he stepped out of that ripple.
It wasn't like the movies. No grotesqueness, just unnatural anatomy: too many joints, gray skin resembling hardened cement, and absolutely empty, chalk-white eyes.
I froze, pressing my back against the cold trunk of a tree. My heart was hammering somewhere in my throat. The monster moved slowly, mechanically, as if surveying new territory.
"This isn't real," flashed through my mind. "Some viral prank. Props. Special effects."
The creature turned its eyeless head. Its neck made a dry click, fixing its gaze directly on me.
I did the only thing instinct suggested — I bolted back toward the archway of an apartment building. I ran, not looking where I was going, jumping over curbs. A sound came from behind — one no human could make. A low, vibrating hum shifting into infrasound. The ground trembled beneath my feet.
I almost made it. One jump was all that stood between me and the safety of the dark archway.
At that moment, he lunged. His arm stretched unnaturally far, piercing space. Fingers resembling rusty rebar clamped around my ankle.
There was no pain. Only a deafening, dry crack of a breaking bone and the sensation of absolute void where my foot had been a second ago. I was yanked back with monstrous force. I flew backward through the entire street, knocking over an old wooden bench.
The impact against the granite curb knocked the rest of the air out of my lungs.
I tried to inhale, but my chest wouldn't obey. My vision was rapidly darkening. I saw the creature approach slowly, without haste. It wasn't planning to finish me off. It simply leaned over my face, and from its empty eye socket, I smelled the cold of open space and the scent of ozone.
I wanted to scream, to call for someone's help, but only a quiet, gurgling rasp escaped my throat. The last thought that flashed through my fading consciousness wasn't regret for my life, but simply... nothing.
And then the light went out completely.
Consciousness returned not in a flash, but slowly, like a photograph developing in a tray of fixer.
First, there was a sensation of falling, even though I wasn't moving. Then — the realization that I had no body. No hands to feel myself, no legs to stand on. Only pure, cold self-awareness, hanging in absolute, chalk-white emptiness.
And then someone politely cleared their throat in that emptiness.
I spun around. In front of me stood a man in an immaculate white suit that seemed to be cut directly from that very emptiness. He looked disgustingly mundane, like an insurance agent come to file paperwork.
"You're surprised, aren't you?" he asked, brushing a non-existent speck of dust from his cuff.
I wanted to say something, but no sound came from my throat. Instead, I just nodded silently.
"Who are you?" — the thought sounded in the emptiness just as clearly as a voice.
"I am what you call a god. A local project manager. I'll explain what happened."
He snapped his fingers. Two chairs appeared in the emptiness. Somehow, unbidden, I sat down.
"See, there was a manufacturing defect. A technical glitch. The Junior God was supposed to just launch the System into your world tonight — you know, the interface, stats, all that. And the monsters were supposed to be fed in gradually, only in six months, to give the population time to adapt. But a sync error occurred. The Rift opened six months ahead of schedule."
"But the people..." — the thought was difficult to form. "Why didn't anyone else..."
"Because it wasn't an attack," the god cut me off gently. "It was a single glitch. An echo. A test impulse from an unstable portal that was supposed to activate in an empty sector of space. The creature that killed you is, essentially, a watchdog algorithm that got accidentally dragged into your world. It isn't programmed to hunt. It was just removing an obstacle that prevented it from returning to the Rift."
He paused, looking at me intently. "You happened to be the only human on its return trajectory. Geometric probability, multiplied by your bad luck. On a planetary scale — a statistical anomaly. On the scale of your life — an absolute end. The rest of your city's residents are home right now. Watching shows, arguing on the internet, and having no idea that reality had a micro-glitch tonight."
I fell silent, processing the information. So Mike is asleep right now. College, double pepperoni pizza, my unfinished term paper — they no longer exist for me. Just a file that was deleted due to a programmer's error, and the only surviving bit of that file is me.
"As compensation for the inconvenience and the loss of your native world, I'm sending you to another one," the god continued, pulling a tablet out of thin air. "A world of swords and magic. Unlike your world, this one is running on a stable build."
I gave a bitter chuckle. "What kind of 'goodies' am I getting? I hope it's something more useful than 'Resistance to Office Dust +1%.'"
The god squinted slyly. "That will be a surprise. I don't want to spoil your first impression of your new life. Let's just say your unique starting conditions directly stem from the circumstances of your death."
I sighed. Arguing with a reality administrator was pointless. "Alright. See you later."
He stood up, extending his hand. "Farewell. And good luck. You'll need it. You'll make it into that world's history, I'm sure."
—"Wait, what?" — I managed to think a thought, before he terminated the session.
The whiteness flared, shifted to absolute darkness, and then — a sensation of constriction.