Jack fell to the wooden floor, gasping and crawling at his neck. The voices assailed him relentlessly, ringing his eardrums like an artillery barrage. Countless memories and sounds simultaneously played themselves with his own voice, all overlapping each other. Sounds combined, spoke over each other, voices jumped from one memory to another, colors were always changing, altering, flickering ceaselessly. Some memories played at different speeds, and others even played backward.

And it all, within the maelstrom of words and images and emotions, was the little voice that Jack thought he owned. The rope that tied his conscious to his voice began to wane and flatter.

Virtual screens threw themselves open and closing without Jack’s input. Books flew out the shelves, and the shelves themselves turned into tall buildings. The floor wooden floor suddenly vanished and was replaced by a pale blue sky.

Jack fell for a couple of seconds before he crashed into a floor made out of metal. The outside became an arctic mountain. Sub-zero winds struck Jack’s body, which also morphed incessantly, transforming his body into animals, aliens, tables, chairs, and even a fork at some point. Some areas of Jack’s personal space quivered, turning into corrupted lines of code before being deleted by the system.

Through the spasming world, Jack pushed on, bracing the onslaught of noise. He did not know where he was going, and what he was doing, as he could not differentiate between his voice and those of the others within him.

Void.

Nothingness.

Null.

It echoed below the thunderous clattering of his mind’s eye. A promise of peace, a promise of silence and an end.

Jack jumped into that fleeting thought with all of his beings.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

For the first time in his life, Jack was glad to see a loading screen. The shattered ground beneath him dug into his soles, and the black circle overshadowed his tiny body was for once a comfort.

It’s glimmers, however, were oddly spaced. The light escaping its edges froze at certain times, as if bugged, then resumed hesitantly, as if it was buffering.

Worry began to creep its way onto L’s back. The loading process was taking much longer than it should have. Seconds were usually enough, but a full minute nearly passed. The voices were but a shimmer now, an irritating echo that though he could not fully hear, still incensed him like the circling of an oblivious fruit fly.

Goodness did he want to smash them into little pieces.

Everything broke away, then. Light burned into L’s eyes as a heavy static noise sent L sprawling against the dirt.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

“Fuck, this is seriously getting old,” he groaned as Null’s voice blurred inside his mind. Blue, green, and red error screens opened and closed by their own design. His eye spied a few skills, titles, and achievements, but were quickly vanished into error signs and unreadable 1s and 0s.

Have you any ideas how many errors you caused? A quarter of the entire system’s processing network crashed because of you. Every AI is now working double time to fill in the backlogs. A major wide lag occurred because of you.

L shrugged. “One second? That’s not bad.”

Have you any idea how many processes the Null Online system handles in a single second? The butterfly effect, you fool. Until we taxed the system, parts of the world have been a second behind others. That caused errors, world building design, quests, skills, lore, history, and even a few Gods were created because of that one, short second. And each of those errors created more errors, which created more errors, which created even more errors!

“And is everything working now?” L said, picking himself up from the ground.

Yes, yes it is, no thanks to you.

“Great! Now it’s time high time I go back to the village and try to not get my head stuck on a pike,” L said, as his signature ‘time to get the fuck out of here’ smirk spread wide on his face.

His body, however, became restrained. Not even the wind ruffled his hair. He struggled against an invisible force for a moment or two, and then gave up with a lazy sigh.

Explain yourself. Why are their three...four minds inside you? Why is your brain structure so abnormal? The gray matter, neuron signals, and neuroan networks are all over the place.

L flinched at that. It seems, that until now, the Null Integration system does not read the biology of my nerves, but just the code it makes, L thought. He began to hope this was the same case for the Null Execution system, otherwise, he might run into trouble later on.

“I am what I am,” he answered. He felt the Null system gloom over him, unsatisfied by his answer. “Look,” L began, his voice throbbing, “I genuinely can not speak of it. The mere indirect thought and reference to it is going to-” L stopped, bitting his tongue.

It was more for his sake, than Null’s. Surprisingly, Null did not protrude his grasps further into L any longer.

I will speak no longer of it. From here on, however, you are placed on probation. Each bit of code that comes out of you will be verified before being Executed. Be aware that further measures will be taken if any more fallacies are observed in your code.

“Oh great, now I’m a ticking bomb! Thank you for your kindness,” L replied seriously.

I am afraid that this is the best I can do. You are the first of your kind. I somewhat understand the situation, now, and I will do my best to deter any type of system rewards from further harming you.

A slight pause passed before he responded L responded with the same tone. “Oh, thank you."

Thank my programming. If I had a choice in this, then things would have turned out very differently.

L's grim face suddenly flipped into chortles and giggles. “I guess we’re in the same boat,” he said, as he set forth to dig out his bounty and return to the village.