System Programmer - 39 Apocalypse

There have been many discoveries in the history of mankind that completely overhauled the way people see things. For example, the fact that Earth is a round planet and not a flat surface. Joshua smiled as he remembered what his history teacher once said while talking about prehistoric humans.

“If tomorrow someone discovers a skeleton that proves mankind is actually a few million years older than we currently know, we’ll just scratch the pages in your notebook and start over.”

His situation was similar, he had built his soul world based on Catherine’s instructions. However, with his newly acquired knowledge, could he still use the same method to proceed?

Unfortunately, before he could start making a hypothesis on the situation, the ground abruptly started to shake. Joshua lost his balance and fell down. Suddenly, he grabbed his head in pain as he was overcome by a terrible headache. He recognized the phenomenon instantly. Part of his world was being damaged. Gritting his teeth, he stood up and took a look around. Cracks were starting to appear at every corner of his world.

“LUNA! WHAT’S GOING ON?” he yelled.

A blue screen of death appeared in front of him.

[FATAL ERROR!]

“WHAT ERROR?!?”

[System Hardware has been damaged. Emergency maintenance required! System is shutting down.]

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Seeing Luna shutting down like this made Joshua panic for a second. However, it’s not like he had never experienced a system crash before. He looked around, everywhere he saw the cracks spreading. Meanwhile, his headache kept getting worse. Before he could figure out what to do, the door to Catherine’s world slammed open and she rushed through it. She looked around and seeing all the surrounding damage, gave him a furious look and yelled:

“What the hell are you doing? I told you to consult with me before attempting to evolve your world!”

“I didn’t attempt to evolve my world, the process started on its own,” he answered.

“What? How the hell did you do that?” she replied, her anger being replaced by surprise.

“I don’t know! How do I stop this?”

Catherine bit her lip as she thought for a moment. After what seemed an eternity for Joshua, she finally said:

Before Joshua could reply, she sprang into action. She brought out five fragments that circulated around her. She then waved her hand and they all dispersed. The pieces were made of water energy so Catherine easily manipulated them to cover all the cracks in the world before freezing them. This seemed to do the trick, frozen in place the various fissures no longer expanded.

While she had contained the outburst, this was temporary. She looked at Joshua. Even though he was just a soul projection, he didn’t look healthy. She placed her hand against his cheek and asked:

“How are you feeling?”

Joshua did a quick check up. His headache was still present but was slowly fading away. He placed his hand on her shoulder and smiled.

“A bit better. Thanks a lot, I owe you one;” he answered and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Good. Now that the crisis has been averted, can you please explain what happened?”

He nodded and began to tell her the events of the day. He went over the various experiments he had performed and that he finally found a way to inspect a rune’s content.

“That’s where it gets strange… You see when I examined the runes, I realized something about how the energy is handled within them. But before I could start doing further tests, I was suddenly overcome by a monstrous headache and my whole world started to fall apart.”

“Hmmm… this could be a big problem… Tell me, that discovery you made, would it impact how you build your world?”

“Probably, now that I know of it, I would use it to evolve my world further. That’s what you advised me to do.”

“Indeed, but remember: a soul world is the representation of its user inner world. If somehow the way you see things would drastically change, the world could be damaged and even destroyed in some extreme cases. Such an event is rare, but based on what you told me, that’s most likely what happened to you.”

Joshua considered that explanation for a second and replied:

“So, basically, I thought 1+1 was 3. I discovered it was actually 2 so my entire knowledge of maths collapsed on itself.”

“That’s more or less what happened, yes,” she sighed for a second and then smiled.

“I have to say, having you as my partner is never boring. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I entered the place and you turned into a three-headed cow or something.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. That would be terribly inefficient. A three-headed cow would need to eat thrice as much but would still only produce a single batch of milk every day,” he replied.

Catherine giggled as she rolled her eyes and gently struck him on the head.

“More seriously,” Joshua said,” I’m afraid I can’t share my discovery with you for the time being. If I did, the same thing would happen to you.”

This annoyed him more than his damaged soul world. What good was discovering something if he couldn’t share it with anyone?

Catherine was disappointed hearing this but Joshua was right. Each rank up on a soul world was based on the user’s perception of their world. Each level was built on the previous one. Therefore, should a drastic change occur that that destroys a world basic component, the higher one’s rank is, the worse they would be affected.

“I hope Luna is still usable…” Joshua said while booting the system. To his delight, it actually started.

[System shut down incorrectly, a scan will be performed.]

[Damaged hardware found, 15% of capacity is currently unavailable. Please replace the broken pieces.]

A loss of 15% wasn’t too bad, his maximum capacity was pretty high anyway. He could probably fix all the damage within a day. But Joshua feared new cracks might appear if he didn’t do something first.

Luna wasn’t done with its announcements and soon stated:

[Due to newly acquired data about runes, a major upgrade is possible. Do you wish to perform the update now? Please be sure to save all your work to not lose any data.]

‘NO! HALT THE PROCESS!!!’ he ordered.

[Update delayed. Please select a new date for the upgrade.]

“I don’t know yet. Just don’t do anything without my permission!”

[Aknowledged.]

Performing a random upgrade while not having finished investigating every angle of his discovery was dangerous. He didn’t want to evolve in the wrong way so he abstained for now. Besides, it wasn’t wise to evolve with broken parts in his world.

Catherine agreed with his choice and told him:

“Wise decision, we need to figure out a safe way for you to evolve. If you just ask Luna to resume it now, who knows what would happen, your rank might even drop.”

“If I get you right, my perception has changed so much, I need to revise the very foundation of my world.”

“Exactly, but that’s easier said than done. Then again you were able to establish a soul world pretty quickly. You’re probably the ablest person I know to adapt your world in such a way.”

Joshua nodded and closed his eyes. He imagined himself alone on a beach with a giant tsunami rushing toward him. As the wave smashed into him, he opened his mouth and drank it all up. It was salty of course, the taste of having months of work ruined in a flash. That didn’t bother him though. When a major discovery is made, you either adapt or are washed away by the tide of progress.

Joshua extended his hand. A notebook appeared in it. He opened a random page which had a drawing of his current soul world in it. A pen materialized in his other hand and he just scratched the entire drawing.