“What do you mean it won’t work?”
“It tells me it's assigned to something else. I don’t understand what it meant.”
Camille thought for a few minutes. “Maybe you couldn’t change it because it was mine.”
“That might explain the coloring,” Colton said as he slapped his forehead with his palm.
“Coloring?” Colton told Camille about the color differences he noticed after lunch. “So, maybe the color shows items you can change?”
“It’s worth a try I guess.”
Colton grabbed the pen that started this mess and set is on the desk in front of him. “Okay, this is the pen that’s out of ink. Let’s see…” He focused on the pen, bringing up the pop-up box once again.
Brand: Zebra
Model: 22218 ⁕
Spec: … ⁂
Durability: 1/3 ⁕
Quality: Poor
Status: Low Ink ⁕
Focusing on the brand name Colton tried to get it to change. He didn’t know any pen companies other than BIC, so he tried to force the brand to change to BIC. After a few minutes of effort, an error message appeared.
ERROR: INSERT Statement Conflicted With the FOREIGN KEY Constraint
“Okay… Now I’m confused,” Colton drawled.
“What? What happened?”
“I just got an SQL error message, and it makes no sense. I mean… Am I tied into an SQL server? Honestly, I’m really confused.”
Camille sat back on the bed with her arms behind her to support her sitting upright. “So, Mr. Computer Nerd, are the messages tailored to you since you know what an EXTEL server is?”
“SQL… No… I don’t know.”
“So, what does the message mean?”
“Well… If this was a database… it means that the field I was trying to change is locked because it’s tied to a different database.”
“Was it? I mean, what field were you trying to change?”
“The brand name,” Colton grunted in frustration. He ran his hand through his hair as he tried to figure out what he was dealing with.
“So, try a different field that’s not locked.”
“How do I know what’s locked and not locked?”
“How would I know? I don’t see your imaginary box,” Camille gave him a shit-eating grin.
Colton laughed at the stupid look on her face. “Fine, let me think a little.” He looked back at the boxes and nearly slapped himself when he realized the asterisk gave him a clue which fields were modifiable. “I think I got it. Let me try changing the model number.” Camille shrugged since she had no clue what he was talking about.
Colton focused on the model number and thought about changing it and a new pop-up box appeared over the first with a list of model numbers. Unfortunately, none of the numbers had descriptions next to them. “Great… Let me try something…” He randomly picked model number 29811.
Camille gasped as the pen shimmered and morphed into a different pen. Colton let out a low whistle as he looked down at the pen that had was new, but not. Matter of fact, it had teeth marks indented exactly where he usually liked to chew on his pens. He pulled up the pop-up box and noticed the durability was still at one but the quality increased to ‘fair’ rather than the poor.
“Well, that was cool, and a tad frightening,” Camille mumbled so close to Colton’s ear that he jumped. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. So… what does this mean?”
“It means that I can change the model number of my pens.”
“No, Idiot! What does this mean? Are we living in the Matrix or something?”
Camille was referring to a movie made at the turn of the century where the characters broke out of the computer simulation they were living in. Colton had no clue what this meant. “I don’t know what it means. I’m not even sure what happened.”
“The pen changed…”
“Yeah, I got that, but why? I mean… It makes little sense. If the world is an illusion, then what are we?”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Humans plugged into a jelly-filled pod playing a video game?”
“Or NPC…”
“What?”
“Non-player character… They’re the characters you interact with that aren’t real. At least that was I believed 5 minutes ago.”
“So… you’re not real?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Colton stood up from his desk and paced the narrow space between the bed and walls. Camille pulled her legs onto the bed so Colton wouldn’t bump into her.
“Maybe life is an illusion. I know that people have wondered it and religion even supports the idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my parents have always said that God put our spirits into our body and when we die, we return to Him.” Camille shrugged. “That sounds like an illusion to me or at least a simulation. I know that the bible says Jesus changed water to wine… isn’t that what you just did?”
“Lightning will probably strike you down for comparing me to Jesus.”
“I’m not saying you are Jesus, I’m just suggesting that history has stories of people doing what you just did. You just broke every law of physics in the book. I mean matter can’t be destroyed or created and yet, you created a new pen where a different one existed. I don’t know how you did it, but it’s not normal.”
“No shit…”
“So…”
“So, what?”
“What’s the stats?”
“Of the pen?” Camille rolled her eyes and nodded. “Um. Durability is still at one and the ink is low. Quality and overall durability maximum improved. Other than that, I haven’t checked the specs but I’m pretty sure they all changed with the pen since it’s obviously a different pen.”
“Can you make it new?”
“Let me check… I still feel it shouldn’t be possible…” Colton focused on the pen once more and changed the durability to 5/5 and status too full.
“That’s a neat trick. It looks brand new.”
The teeth marks and scuffs were gone, and it shined as if he’d just taken the pen out of the package. “Yeah. It really does.”
Camille gave Colton another big grin and suggested they try it on more items.
###
They experimented with everything in Colton’s room over the next two hours before Camille had to call her night to an end. Colton and Camille spent a lot of time looking up model numbers for the different items in the room. Some serial numbers they could find, but most of them were not within Google’s database as far as they could tell.
They learned a few things, which luckily they learned it before Colton lost his data. When he updated his iPad it wiped its memory clean and gave him a brand new device. Luckily, once he logged into his device, it downloaded his data. It was a close call and made it so he didn’t want to mess with his MacBook until he backed it up. He also never messed with his textbooks or notebooks so his notes wouldn’t be cleared.
With that said, he changed out his Samarel poster with some very erotic art but eventually changed it back to his original piece in case his mother came in for a quick visit. Some items had more fields he could change than others. For instance, he couldn’t change his iPad to an iMac even though the brand was still Apple. The same FOREIGN KEY error message came up more than once as he learned what could and couldn’t change.
Colton could change things that belonged to him, but couldn’t change things that belonged to others. For instance, he couldn’t change his bed, but he could change his bedding since he bought those last year. He could change the durability and status of the currency in his wallet but could not change the denomination. That last bit disappointed Camille and him since they both hoped he could become stupid rich by changing one-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills.
In essence, they learned that if he owned the item, he could change it unless another database tracked it. He couldn't upgrade serialized items tracked by different databases. He wasn’t able to take his cheap Samsung J7 and turn it into a Samsung Galaxy or Note model since the serial number was tracked and belonging to a different model of the phone. In some ways, that made sense to Colton, but it still bothered him.
Colton was sitting back down at his desk finishing up homework when he received a text message from Maria asking if he could work in the morning. Lucy called in sick and wasn’t able to open the store and Maria had a doctor's appointment down in Denver that she had scheduled three months out for. Colton thought back to his class schedule and figured he could miss a class without too much damage being done and agreed to work.
Maria sent him a big XOXO text and Colton felt a little better about missing a class. They only had three employees working in the store and his dad would have worked for them, but he’s clueless as to the current product line-up. He snorted and wondered if his dad should work in the store once in a while, but glad he didn’t at the same time. His dad was a control freak in the store and he ended up cleaning more when his dad was there.
When Colton finished up his assignment, he emailed it off to his professor and let him know he’d miss class in the morning. He’d have to grab the notes from ReElle tomorrow. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and looked at his reflection while doing so. On a whim, Colton pulled up his pop-up. He honestly didn’t believe it would work and dropped his toothbrush when it did.
Name: Colton Bridges
ID: solearth8675309d42
Species: Homo Sapiens
Ethnicity:
76% Southern European
9% North African
8% Finnish/Volga-Ural
7% Scandinavian
Languages:
English - 89/100⁕
Spanish - 15/100⁕
Age: 21
Height: 177.8 cm
Health: 89/100⁕
Strength: 32/100⁕
Intelligence: 47.5/100
Dexterity: 23/100⁕
Agility: 15/100⁕
Endurance: 14/100⁕
Wisdom: 7/100
Charisma: 10/100
Luck: 3/100
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Explanations:
MECHANICAL: 15/100
You know when to use duct tape or zip ties. It might fall apart, but you know where things go in general
COMMERCE: 45/100
Congrats, you know how to count change and not overtly lie to customers.
COMPUTERS: 60/100
Humans! You think you know it all.
MATHEMATICS: 20/100
AS IF! You’re barely understanding the universe. For a human, you’re way above average.
CONSTRUCTION: 5/100
Enough said.
⁕⁕⁕⁕MORE⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕
⁂
After looking over his personal stats, the descriptions of his skill sets offended him and he was surprised to find that he could change some items.
“47.5 intelligence? That’s rude,” Colton mumbled, “I’m sure my IQ is higher than forty-seven…”
After a few minutes, he realized it wasn’t recorded as an IQ but a percentage between zero and one hundred. “Hmm… I’m no genius, but I thought I was smarter than the average. That sucks. And why the hell can’t I improve it?”
Of course, no answer replied to his complaint, but it still surprised him he could change some of his skills. With very little thought, he changed his Spanish to a 100/100 and promptly blacked out.