Sitting on an overly worn out desk chair sat what appeared to be a man. With every subtle shift, the chair squeaked out in protest. It was not that the man was particularly heavy, in fact he seemed almost to be nothing but skin and bone, just that the chair had borne his presence for so long without any sort of maintenance or upkeep.

The man’s face was gaunt, with deep, dark bags under his eyes. His mouth mostly hung open, though moved as though he was speaking whatever words were passing through his mind. A pair of glasses, also not properly cleaned, were so far down his nose at the moment that they were in danger of slipping off.

The man was illuminated by the glow of a holographic display sitting just in front of him, across which countless lines of computer code in a multitude of languages, both coding and spoken, streamed. His skeletal-like fingers flew across a holographic keyboard with purpose.

“Send,” he murmured in a tired voice, finishing the message reply.

He opened the inbox of messages, which now showed there were 84756 waiting for a reply. It was only 848 more than when he had started working on the one he had just completed.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I’m going to need more coffee.”

He stretched out his hand to the left and grasped at the empty air. As he pulled his hand back in, a steaming cup of the stimulant drink was held firmly within. He took a sip and let out a sigh. Then flexing his body, there was the sound of each joint giving a satisfying pop that would surely have concerned any chiropractor. Looking at the inbox again, an additional 357 new messages had entered in just the brief moment.

“There has to be a bug I’m not seeing. The System was functioning just fine until recently. Now everyone is having the same type of bug at the same time? I’m so behind that I can only patch each one individually. Wish they would give me more support.”

The System was on Maintenance Mode though, so the likelihood of getting any additional assistance was a grand total of… zero. The man let out another sigh as he pulled open the next request.

“Multiverse System Implementations… yadda yadda yadda… the hero I summoned to my world… your System… broken everything… Yep. Same sort of bug.”

The poor lesser deity began working on a new patch.