Hole in Reality (Working title)

Foreword: Not ready, just need to show some peeps so I can get any feedback!

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I was laying on my bed, awake, staring at the ceiling. My mind was wandering from my negligible knowledge of physics to my vast knowledge of programming to my somewhat adequate understandings of biology. I was trying to create a mix that would make me understand why we think. What is the meaning of consciousness? Why does it seem to benefit a species to be able to communicate abstract concepts to other members of the species? Sure it makes building space shuttles easier, but before that, there are many steps that could be seen as having very little need for more communication. Hunting can be done using only simple hand signals, stories can be exchanged in a dance, and socialising can be done by picking ticks from the other monkey's back.

I was thinking these things, and somehow I wandered on to the essence of our reality. I guess I thought the wrong thoughts or something, because the next thing I knew was that I had torn a hole into space-time. I could see all the little things going on around me, behind walls, in other homes. I saw the "code", so to speak. I could zoom in to the loops of the forces of nature and to the routines of single lifes. It was amazing and mind-blowing, and I was sure I had went insane.

Because there is nothing as interesting to a person than himself - I know, I checked, it's written right there in our class definition - I soon found my own representation in this sea of code, that I found I could navigate in four dimensions. It was tough trying to get a hang of moving in time, when I'm not accustomed to moving in time in any other way than forwards, at the speed of one second per second. But once I found my code, I of course examined it. I found out I had a high chance of giving life to a baby girl - or several, would there ever be women willing to procreate with me enough times. I also had a very low chance of pancreatic cancer, which was nice to know. I would start balding at age 35. My heart would give out at 96, were I to live that long. All that information made me hungry - which I checked from my active code.

Next I checked my fridge - the physical one - and was unimpressed by the noodles and the cucumber I had there. But hey, I had just opened a portal to our reality's source code. If this wasn't the time to test if I was having a psychotic breakdown or a truly divine moment, what would be? So I searched for sandwiches in the code. It was hard to try to find something so specific, and I soon settled on a steak. A nice T-bone steak taken from just the right part of a cow - or, in this case, from the fridge of a local restaurant. It took some tries, but I managed to move the object of the steak from the fridge to the plate in front of me. A whole, bloody, cold steak suddenly just existed in front of my face, laying on the plate like it had always been there.

The steak was raw, of course, but it was really a trivial problem to change its molecular consistency from raw to medium cooked. I enjoyed my ill-gotten steak with milk and without much thought to if it was really that ill-gotten or not.

*

During the next weeks I learned to use the code to my advantage. I also learned that other people couldn't see it. For me, it appeared like a ripple in water was exposing a part of the ocean floor, so I could see the sand and the little creepers living there going about their business, not caring that air was getting where air was not supposed to get. For the other people it appeared like I was crossing my eyes very weirdly at inappropriate moments. I learned to value privacy.

I stopped paying for food. I started learning about cooking, so I wouldn't have to steal from patrons of the restaurants in France to get a decent crème brûlée - I could just steal the ingredients and assemble it in front of me. Once I had mastered that, the thought of copies occurred to me, and I ate my last meal of stolen ingredients in shame.

Whatever I needed, whatever I wanted, I could have it. It was amusing to be able to have any clothes I wanted, any furniture I wanted, any meal I wanted - but the human body desires the flesh of another human. So I looked into the little lines of script that make people attracted to other people. It was more complex than I had thought. I didn't want to manipulate the people I already knew, in case I screwed them up somehow - I was tampering with people's genetic expressions, after all. So I went to a night club and did my magic.

First I just used the code to see if someone was interested in me or not. As is so common in night clubs, none of the ladies that I had my eye on had their eye on me. My next logical step was to change that. Once it worked, I fully embraced the reality, which was now the one where I had all the control. Whatever I wanted to do, the women wanted me to do to them. Whatever I wanted them to do to me, they just discovered their lifelong earning to do just that. When I didn't want them anymore, they instantly felt the same.

*

I kept myself busy for a whole year. I had absolutely everything I wanted. I didn't have to exercise to be fit. I didn't have to cook to be fed. Nobody questioned anything I said or did, since no matter what happened - what I made happen - to them the 'why' was blatantly obvious. I had become God, and I was bored.

Then I woke up one morning, and when I opened the portal to the code, there was a message in plain English.

TAKE A CAR TO THE LOVERS' EDGE

The Lovers' Edge was a known cuddling spot in the mountains just outside of town. I had witnessed the sunset there many times, never twice with the same woman. In the midst of my remembering the serenity of the place, a creeping feeling caught up to me. I had not felt that way in a long, long time, so it took a moment to search for the right words. I was scared.

This void, this code of the reality, had enabled me to do as I wished for so long I had stopped questioning my right to use it. I had started to believe that I had found a loophole to take advantage of - that no one was watching me, judging me, keeping a tab on my actions. Now the evidence to the contrary was staring me in the eye in big, bold letters. What were I to do?

Obviously my curiosity wanted me to go. But since curiosity is a very peculiar animal, it also asked: What would happen, if I didn't go? Would the message still be there tomorrow? Would something happen? Would I lose access to the code and never be able to hear why, because I missed my chance?

I stayed home from work - of course, my boss thought, today's the seminar in Minnesota - to ponder on the message's implications. When the sun was starting to set I had come to the conclusion that I had to go.

I sat in my car, which was, at this point, a very nice car from the '70s. I turned on the radio to ease my nerves and headed for the Lovers' Edge. I got there just as the sun was setting behind the treeline. When I turned off the engine the music from the radio stopped and I started hearing cicadas. I was so tense my insides were turning inside out - figuratively, I at least wanted to think. As I took a deep breath, I stepped out of my car. The warm and welcoming air caressed my face and my body. I closed the door behind me and started to walk towards the edge.