Flash Fiction: World of Earth

The following is a piece of flash fiction I wrote for this week’s Flash Fiction Challenge over at Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds.  The challenge is to create a new take on the apocalypse in 1,000 words or less.   Here is my entry:

—

Rosetta Stone by Elisabeth Skene

Karen Graves was cleaning up after breakfast on a Thursday morning when the toaster disappeared.  She blinked twice and looked again.  Still gone.

Karen screamed and dropped the glass she was in the middle of drying.  The kitchen towel hung limp from her hands.  It felt like air was being sucked out of her lungs, but Karen forced herself to take a half-dozen deep breaths.  The strange thing wasn’t that the toaster was missing.  It wasn’t even that part of the counter under the toaster was also missing.  No, the strangest part, the part that made the fine hairs on the back of Karen’s neck stand up, was the flickering… things floating in the space where the toaster had been.  They were like some kind of hieroglyphs, like something on the Rosetta Stone.

Karen walked around the spot where the toaster had been and looked at it from the other side.  She could still see the flickering hieroglyphs, now reversed, floating where the toaster had been.  There was a jagged hole in the counter filled with them.

No, Karen thought, it wasn’t a just a hole in the counter, there was a hole in the world.

As strange and alien as this was, Karen had the distinct feeling that she had seen it before.  It was a strong sense of déjà vu.  Truth was, she’d been having those feelings more and more often lately.  And they were becoming more vivid.

Watching the floating hieroglyphs carefully, Karen made her way back across the kitchen.  The hole was changing shape.  Even worse, more small holes were beginning to appear.  Another spot that included the corner of the microwave winked out of existence and was replaced by the strange floating characters.

Karen screamed again and ran upstairs to check on the baby.

**

Q’althrexx made some movements with his right hand and the holographic projection stopped moving.  He turned to a small display of letters and numbers floating in the air above his workspace and remained motionless for several minutes.  He made some rapid motions with the fingers of his right hand and finally a stabbing motion before studying the display again.  One more move of his hand and the holographic image of Karen Graves started moving again.  Q’althrexx watched her enter the kitchen.

There it was again.

Q’althrexx stopped the program again and sighed.  No matter how many times he went over the code, the bug kept popping back up in exactly the same place every time.  He was almost sure the problem started with the code for the toaster, but rewriting the toaster’s code countless times didn’t seem to fix anything.

The toaster was just the beginning.  After that, everything started to fall apart.  Every time the program went past the point where the “toaster bug” appeared, the problems started spreading to other objects and gradually making the environment more and more unstable.  Whole locations started to drop off the map.  Then, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing crashed.  Q’althrexx and his co-workers were on their third week of constant slaving over this problem and they were no closer to fixing anything.  He knew a decision would have to be made.

**

Mars the Mysterious, NASA (1997)

The meeting started on time.  Holographic projections of the executives and programmers took their places on dozens of displays throughout the universe.

Kthuan cleared his throat.  “I’m afraid the outlook is bleak.  Q’althrexx and his team have not been able to solve the problems with the code.”  His face showed the strain of dealing with the problem, with dark circles under all six of his violet eyes.

“What are the scenarios at this point?”  Hrroah’s mandibles moved nervously.  His people, the insectoid Bivittatus, were known for their impatience.

Q’Athrexx swallowed hard.  That was his cue.  “I’m afraid the problem has grown beyond the talents of even the most gifted programmers in the universe.  We feel that the best course of action… the only course of action at this time is to permanently shut down the servers.”  The cacophony from those assembled on the holographic display field was tremendous.

Kthuan cut them off.  “Over the thousands of years that World of Earth has been in existence, we have developed the reputation as the best massively-multiplayer simulated reality game in the universe.  Our more than seven trillion current subscribers have been without service for far too long.  Q’althrexx is right.  Our only option at this point is to shut down the servers and close the game.  Thankfully, we feel that our latest game, World of Mars, is ready to leave the beta-testing stage and open for full public release.  The Mars name is already familiar to World of Earth players.  Each of our current subscribers will receive a free subscription to the new game for one full simulated World of Earth year.”

Hrroah interrupted his boss. “You’re right Kthuan.  There will be some disappointment of course, but this is a perfect opportunity.  We may lose some subscribers initially, but we stand to gain many new subscribers.  It’s possible that players who left when the latest expansion went live will have incentive to play again.”

“This is too much.” Thelax, a young executive from Crethuvia, shook his head. “Many of our players do nothing but play World of Earth.  How will they handle this?”

“My team has already turned their attention to writing some endgame content for World of Earth that will use the ‘toaster bug’ as an attack on the planet by an alien species.  This ‘attack’ will require players to migrate their characters to the World of Mars if they wish to continue playing.” Q’althrexx was feeling confident now.  Those assembled in his display area were showing signs of agreement.  “We will turn the World of Earth servers on tomorrow for one final week that will end with the glorious destruction of the planet as the survivors, those who are migrating to World of Mars flee their exploding planet for a new life.”