BY JOHN-PAUL COTE
Copyright is held by the author.
EVEN THE sky had gone blue.
Not sky-blue, but flat, dead, screen-blue.
Across it, over everything, the same message repeated in stark white blocks:
Your device needs to be repaired.
A required file is missing or corrupt.
\OSC\system 414\xxxxx.xx
Error codes stacked over one another. Multiplied. Repeated. Until there was nothing else.
***
Only minutes before, Michael had been studying in his favourite coffee shop.
Finals were here. The last of them. He knew the material. He just needed to feel like he knew it. The coffee was hot. The smell settled him. The low hum of conversation filled the room without demanding anything from him.
Dark wood. Soft light. A place that didn’t change.
He had been starting to feel it, the confidence, slow and steady.
Then everything went blue.
The table. The walls. The floor.
The people.
All of it drowned under that same message, repeated, layered, unavoidable.
Michael froze.
The customers still sat where they had been, but they weren’t right anymore. Their shapes held, but their bodies broke into shifting blocks of colour, flickering in and out, as if they couldn’t decide what they were supposed to be.
Michael screamed.
Heads turned.
Faces tried to focus on him. Failed. Reassembled.
He looked down at his hands.
Still flesh.
Then not.
Then flesh again.
He grabbed the table.
It was there, solid but wrong, coated in blue, text crawling across its surface. His coffee tipped. The liquid that spilled wasn’t brown anymore. It was blue. The message moved through it as it spread across the floor.
The table flickered.
His hands slipped through it.
It snapped back.
He hit his head hard, mouth opening in a silent gasp.
No sound came out.
Around him, people spoke but their voices were flat, mechanical, stripped of tone.
Michael pushed himself up and ran.
He hit the door hard enough to send it flying open.
Outside, nothing was better.
The sky was layers of blue screens, overlapping, endless. Buildings wore the error message like skin. Cars moved through it, their shapes intact but wrong, as if they were only pretending to exist.
People walked past him, human-shaped but broken into colour and light.
No one stopped.
No one reacted.
Michael ran.
He didn’t choose a direction. He just moved.
A truck, or something shaped like one, cut across the parking lot. It missed him by inches.
“What are you doing? I almost hit you!”
The voice came from a shifting figure behind the wheel.
Michael barely registered it. He pushed off the vehicle and kept going.
“Mike! What are you doing? Stop!”
He knew that voice.
He turned.
Lexi stood there. Or something wearing her shape. Colour flickered across her face. Her outline broke and reformed.
“Mike! Stop!”
He didn’t.
She ran after him, but he ran harder.
The world stretched out ahead of him in endless blue and white repetition.
Then…
Something moved.
Not a glitch. Not text.
A void.
Black. Absolute. It swallowed everything it touched. Buildings, cars, people—gone without sound or resistance.
And it was moving toward him.
Michael turned and ran the other way.
Past Lexi. Past the coffee shop.
The sounds behind him sharpened, popping, clicking, folding in on themselves.
Faster.
Closer.
No one else reacted.
People walked. Talked. Lived.
As if the world wasn’t ending behind them.
Ahead, something changed.
The blue stopped.
Not gradually, just… stopped. Like a line drawn across the world.
Beyond it, the sky was uneven again, real blue with thin clouds drifting. Buildings had edges that made sense. Cars moved cleanly. People didn’t flicker.
The error text didn’t cross that line.
A car rolled forward, touched it and vanished.
No crash. No sound.
Just gone.
He didn’t slow. He couldn’t.
Behind him, the void was close now. He could feel it, like pressure at his back.
He ran harder.
The ground stuttered. The sidewalk broke into blocks, reformed, failed again.
His foot caught.
He went down hard.
He tried to stand.
His leg wouldn’t come free.
Behind him, the world was disappearing.
Closer.
Closer.
He tore his foot loose, leaving the shoe behind, and stumbled forward.
The line was only a few steps away.
He crossed it.
And the world snapped back.
Sound rushed in. Wind. Traffic. Voices.
Weight returned to his body all at once.
His legs folded.
He hit the pavement. Real pavement. Rough. Solid.
For a moment, he just lay there, staring up at a sky that wasn’t trying to tell him anything.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Michael turned his head.
A man stood over him. Solid. Unbroken. Real.
Michael reached up and took his hand.
Warm.
Firm.
“Th-thank you.”
“Mike!”
Lexi ran up and dropped beside him, grabbing his arm.
“Mike, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
He stared at her.
She wasn’t glitching.
“I . . . I don’t know,” he said. “I just need to get home.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That crash was wild.”
Michael blinked.
“What?”
“The system crash. Everything lagged. I thought it froze.”
Michael said nothing.
She watched him, confused.
“You should switch,” she added. “Get A Life’s been way more stable lately.”
Michael pulled away.
“What are you talking about?”
She frowned.
“Mike . . . are you serious?”
He backed up, then turned and jogged away.
He didn’t look back.
The house looked normal.
It stayed normal.
He touched the porch post. Solid. Smooth.
Again.
Still real.
Inside, his parents sat at the table, coffee between them.
They looked up.
“Oh my God,” his mother said. “Michael, are you all right?”
His father pulled out a chair. Guided him down.
Michael flinched at the touch.
Everything felt real.
Too real.
He reached for a cookie. Bit into it.
Crisp. Sweet. Solid.
“I think I’ve . . . I think I’ve lost it.”
He told them everything.
When he finished, they exchanged a look.
“Have I?” he asked. “Have I lost it?”
His father stood. Returned with a glass.
“Drink this.”
Michael took it.
It tasted wrong.
The world tilted.
Darkness closed in.
Michael’s body straightened.
His eyelids fluttered.
Then he relaxed again.
“I think I’m going to lie down,” he said quietly.
His mother nodded. “Of course. Go rest.”
He went upstairs.
David watched him go.
“I’ll contact the administrator tomorrow,” he said. “That’s the third time we’ve had to wipe and reboot him.”
Cheryl didn’t look away from the stairs.
“We knew this could happen,” she said. “Running him this long . . .”
“He’s our son, program or not.”
She nodded.
“Yes. He is.”
A pause.
“My partner’s starting to ask questions about the time I spend in the game,” David said. “I’ll have to take another ‘business trip.’”
Cheryl let out a quiet breath.
“Mine too.”
They sat in silence.
Upstairs, a door closed.
They listened to it longer than they should have.
Cheryl finally spoke.
“Do you think he knows?”
David didn’t answer right away.
“No,” he said.
A pause.
“Maybe we lower his awareness settings.”
***
John-Paul lives in St. Catharines, Ontario with his wife and two children. He’s been writing for years and is a fan of Sci-fi and fantasy. He is a person of few words, so he enjoys writing short stories and novellas the most.
