The Kernel of the Universe smelled like ozone and burnt toast.
Elara Vance stood on the golden motherboard, her Lightsaber Baguette humming with a chaotic, yeasty energy. Looming over her was The Final Draft—the twenty-foot-tall Raid Boss amalgamation of Elara-Zero and the Canon Team.
The Boss was a terrifying monument to high-budget game design. Her armor was made of plot holes filled with gold. Her wings were made of perfectly rendered apples. And protruding from her shoulders like boil-monsters were the screaming heads of Canon-Aldren and Canon-Li.
"YOU CANNOT MERGE US!" The Final Draft boomed, her voice a chorus of three distinct egos. "WE ARE OPTIMIZED! YOU ARE BLOATWARE!"
"Bloatware has more features!" Elara shouted. She tapped her tactical vest (still textured like a pepperoni pizza). "Team! Pick your targets! Force the update!"
"I claim the Sparkle Prince!" Aldren Vance yelled.
The Patchwork Vampire Lord leaped into the air. He wasn't gliding; he was being launched by a Jump Pad that Rex Chord had modded into the floor. Aldren soared toward the Boss's right shoulder, where Canon-Aldren's head was currently checking its reflection in a floating piece of debris.
"Get away from me!" Canon-Aldren shrieked, firing beams of pink light from his eyes. "You smell like old library books and depression! Do not ruin my texture resolution!"
"I am going to ruin your whole aesthetic!" Patchwork-Aldren roared.
He dodged the pink beams by turning into a swarm of low-poly bats (which looked more like flying triangles). He reformed on the Boss's shoulder, grabbing Canon-Aldren by his ruffled collar.
"This body is not big enough for two vampires!" Patchwork-Aldren hissed.
"Then leave!" Canon-Aldren cried. "I am the protagonist of a Romance Novel! I have plot armor!"
"And I," Patchwork-Aldren smiled, revealing fangs that were definitely not vegan, "am a satire. And satire bites."
He bit Canon-Aldren.
It wasn't a blood-sucking bite. It was a Personality Injection.
"ARGH!" Canon-Aldren convulsed. "What is this feeling? It burns! It... it feels like Sarcasm!"
"Accept the cringe!" Patchwork-Aldren whispered, sinking into the golden armor like a virus. "Let the cynicism flow through you! Realize that your poetry is derivative!"
"No!" Canon-Aldren wept, his sparkles turning into jagged, black lightning. "The sonnet! It doesn't scan! The meter is... clunky!"
The right shoulder of the Raid Boss began to spasm. The golden armor cracked, revealing a messy, plaid flannel shirt underneath.
The Left Flank
On the left side of the arena, Li Wusheng was engaging the Canon-Li head.
"Surrender, Glitch-Monk," Canon-Li intoned from the Boss's left shoulder. He summoned a giant, golden hand to swat Li away. "Perfection is the only path. Your movements are inefficient. Your rhymes are atrocious."
Li Wusheng dodged the hand by glitching through it. VIBRATE-CLIP.
"My rhymes are bad, it is true," Li shouted, landing on the Boss's elbow. "But they are mine, through and through!"
"Stop rhyming!" Canon-Li commanded. "The patch is unstable! You are creating syntax errors!"
"I will stop rhyming when you stop loading!" Li retorted. "Your wisdom is boring! It is time for... decoding!"
Li ran up the Boss's arm. Canon-Li fired beams of pure Exposition ("Did you know that the history of this arm dates back to..."). Li ignored them.
"You have never felt frustration," Li shouted, reaching the shoulder. "You have never lost a save file. You have never hit a lag spike. You do not know the Dao of the Rage Quit!"
"Rage... Quit?" Canon-Li blinked. "That concept is foreign. One should accept all outcomes with serenity."
"Serenity is for cutscenes!" Li roared.
He slapped Canon-Li's forehead with the Palm of the 404 Error.
SMACK.
"Data not found!" Li yelled.
Canon-Li's eyes went wide. "I... I feel... annoyed. I feel... irrational anger at the game mechanics!"
"Yes!" Li cheered. "Let the salt consume you!"
"This boss is cheap!" Canon-Li suddenly screamed, his voice losing its reverb. "The hitboxes are broken! I blame the controller!"
The left shoulder turned grey. The golden robes dissolved into sweatpants.
The Center Channel
Down on the ground, Jen was fighting the Boss's torso—specifically, the wings made of Canon-Jen's apples.
"I sell apples!" the wings chanted. "I sell apples!"
"You don't sell anything!" Jen shouted, firing her T-Shirt Cannon (loaded with actual T-shirts that said I SURVIVED THE REBOOT). "You are a bad NPC! Your pathfinding is garbage!"
The T-shirts hit the apple-wings, tangling them up.
"Error!" the wings cried. "Cannot compute clothing physics!"
Jen threw her Barcode Scanner like a grappling hook. It latched onto the Boss's chest.
"I'm authorizing a return!" Jen yelled, climbing the cable. "Reason for return: Item is defective and lacks personality!"
She reached the center of the chest, where a glowing core pulsed. She jammed her hand into the light.
"Canon-Jen!" Jen screamed. "Listen to me! You don't want to sell apples! You want to manage! You want to organize! You want to yell at subordinates!"
The glowing core flickered. A voice whispered from inside. "But... the apples... they are crisp..."
"Apples rot!" Jen yelled. "But anxiety? Anxiety is eternal! Come join us in the stress!"
The core turned from gold to the color of lukewarm coffee.
The Main Event
Elara Vance stood on a floating platform of code, face-to-face with the main head: Elara-Zero.
The Raid Boss was faltering. Her shoulders were arguing about poetry and lag. Her chest was trying to organize a union meeting.
"Stop it!" Elara-Zero shrieked. Her eyes were scrolling text screens. "You are corrupting the integrity of the file! The checksum is failing!"
"The checksum was rigged," Elara said, raising her baguette. "You tried to overwrite us, Zero. You thought we were just a messy draft. But you forgot one thing about writing."
"What?" Elara-Zero hissed. She summoned a keyboard made of light. "I have the Admin codes! I can still revert!"
She typed furiously.
> git revert HEAD
The world shimmered. The "Patchwork" elements began to fade. Aldren's flannel shirt turned back to gold. Li's sweatpants turned back to silk.
"No, you don't!" Elara shouted. She didn't type. She slashed the air with her baguette.
> git push --force
"You can't force push!" Elara-Zero screamed. "It's dangerous! You'll overwrite the history!"
"I'm not overwriting history," Elara said, parrying a deletion beam. "I'm creating a Merge Conflict."
She thrust the baguette into the virtual keyboard.
CRACK.
The keyboard shattered into keys.
"We are the same person, Zero!" Elara yelled. "You're the version of me that gave up on fun to be perfect. You're the 'Portfolio Piece.' I'm the 'Passion Project'."
"Passion is messy!" Elara-Zero cried, firing a beam of pure Canon Energy. "It has plot holes! It has typos!"
Elara caught the beam with her bare hand. Her hand flickered—Low Poly, Wireframe, High Res, Real Skin.
"I like typos," Elara gritted out. "They show a human was here."
She lunged forward. She didn't strike Elara-Zero with the weapon. She hugged her.
It was a tackle-hug. A glitchy, violent embrace.
"Get off me!" Elara-Zero shrieked. "Your texture resolution is incompatible!"
"We're merging!" Elara shouted. "Rex! Drop the beat!"
Rex Chord, floating on his guitar fish, strummed a chord that vibrated the entire Kernel.
[SYSTEM ALERT: MERGE CONFLICT DETECTED.][FILES: ELARA_ZERO vs. ELARA_VANCE.][RESOLVING...]
The golden light of Elara-Zero battled the messy, pizza-stained energy of Elara-Vance. They swirled together, forming a tornado of code.
"You will ruin everything!" Elara-Zero wept. "The world will be ugly!"
"It will be ours," Elara whispered.
She accessed her 12th Life: The Tyrant. But she didn't use it to command. She used it to Commit.
> git commit -m "Merged branches. Added chaos. Fixed bug where world was boring."
She slammed her fist into Elara-Zero's chest.
> git merge
The universe went white.
The Compile
There was no sound. Only the feeling of a million loose threads being tied together at once.
The Kernel dissolved. The Debug Room dissolved.
Elara felt herself unraveling. She felt Elara-Zero's memories flooding into her—centuries of perfect days, of flawless victories, of crushing boredom. And she felt Elara-Zero feeling her memories—the taste of burnt coffee, the panic of the Critic's arrival, the joy of a stupid joke landing perfectly.
It hurts, Elara-Zero's voice echoed in her mind. It's so... jagged.
It's texture, Elara replied. You'll get used to it.
The light faded.
The New Build
Elara opened her eyes.
She was standing in the Meow & Bow. But it wasn't the Patchwork version, and it wasn't the Gold Standard version.
It was... both.
The floor was polished mahogany, but it was scuffed by dragon claws. The espresso machine was gold-plated, but someone had stuck a googly eye on it. The menu board listed both "Perfect Latte" and "Anxiety Juice".
"Did it work?" a voice asked.
Elara turned.
Standing behind the counter were two Elaras.
One was wearing the Weaver's Robes, but the hem was torn and she was wearing combat boots. Her hair was messy.
The other was wearing the tactical pizza-vest, but she had a golden comb in her hair and her posture was perfect.
"I..." Elara looked at her hands. "I don't know which one I am."
"We are both," the other Elara said. She picked up a towel and wiped the counter. "I am the Editor. You are the Author. Or maybe it's the other way around."
Aldren walked in. He looked... stabilized. He wore a sharp black suit (Canon style), but he had a ketchup stain on the lapel (Patchwork style).
"I feel incredible," Aldren announced. "I have the dignity of a prince, but the cynicism of a blogger. It is a potent combination."
Li Wusheng floated in. He was wearing pristine robes, but he had a gaming headset around his neck.
"The drivers are updated," Li nodded. "But I have retained the 'Rage Quit' emote. It is useful for ending conversations."
Jen walked out of the kitchen. She was holding a clipboard.
"Inventory is balanced," Jen said. "But I yelled at the milk delivery guy for being two minutes early. It felt good."
And Ignis...
Ignis walked in. He was a human in a tracksuit. But the tracksuit was made of gold scales. And he had wings.
"I am the Dragon-Man!" Ignis cheered, flapping his wings and knocking over a chair. "I can fly AND eat kebabs! I have won the game!"
Elara looked out the window.
Seattle was there. The Space Needle was a Wizard Tower, but it had a satellite dish on top. Cars shared the road with horses. A Glitch-Cat walked by, flickered into a high-res tiger, and then back to a cat.
"It's a Hybrid," Elara realized. "We merged the branches. We kept the assets we liked and trashed the rest."
"It's a Modded Server," Rex Chord said, strumming his guitar (which was now a normal guitar, but glowing). "Best of both worlds."
Elara-Zero (or the part of Elara that was her) picked up a cup of coffee. She took a sip.
"It's bitter," she said.
Elara (the other part) smiled. "And sweet."
"It needs sugar," Elara-Zero decided.
"It needs whiskey," Elara countered.
They looked at each other. They laughed.
"We have a lot of work to do," Elara said. "The lore is a mess."
"I'll handle the Wiki," Elara-Zero said, pulling out a golden pen. "You handle the customers."
The bell chimed. A customer walked in. It was a Cyber-Orc wearing a business suit.
"Welcome to the Meow & Bow," both Elaras said in unison. "Where the coffee is canon, but the service is glitchy."