Based on a writing prompt about the no-clip glitch happening in reality.
I climbed along the Great Web, guided by my new friend.
“It's a pretty long term task.” He was telling me. “But it gives us something to do. Lotta rules don't apply here, ken? We don't age anymore, and the kids need something to keep from getting bored”
His words occasionally slipped back into older dialects or slang. I was sure I'd get used to it eventually.
Raising one hand up in the low gravity, I grasped the next bound cord of this part of the Web, and pulled myself forward. We were on the outer shell, and below, I could see a few layers down through the criss-crossing ropes to where people had made themselves homes and kitchens and rec rooms. “Must have taken a while” I prompted.
“Ah, boggle ya.” He replied, waving a hand side to side. “It's been a few years, I admit. But I'm having the time of mine life. Learned a new language or two, met some right fun peoples. Better here than starving up there.” He pointed up.
Well, not “up”. But back through the level boundary. That's what I called it, and that's what my friend here told me all the newer kids agreed on too. It wasn't in any one direction, but you could always find it if you looked. Like there was an extra five degrees that you could turn your eyes.
It was a set of wavy slash lines. A blurred boundary. A closed door that was left open. It was a lot of things to a lot of people. But what mattered was, things could come through. Not back; never back. I was here for the long haul now, and coming to terms with that would be hard, but people lost things all the time, and many of them ended up here.
Catching my hesitation, Gil clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Come on, you laze!” He cheerfully smiled at me. “Lets go show you the farm. You'll like it. It's like Minecraft, but dirtier.”
“You've played Minecraft?” I couldn't suppress a chuckle.
“Ah, nah nah. But we had a young one come down a while back, and she did. Told us all about it. Been trying to get hold of some old fuel cans for our generators. It's been a while since we've had a good Smash Bros party.”
Somehow, that was one of the last things I expected from this seven foot tall hunk wearing a braided beard, a dress shirt over torn jeans, and a claymore made out of old car parts.
This was going to take some getting used to.
I broke my gaze away from the hole in reality and looked around at the artificial horizon. We were on a roughly ball-shaped object, floating in one of the many places where there was no gravity. Some places had gravity, and that was almost always instant death, so you had to be careful when wandering unmarked territory. Or so I’d been told. I hadn’t figured out how to tell when my guide was messing with me, or just running into a language barrier. But we weren’t the only ball out here. There was the Danger Orb off in the distance, where hazardous materials were tossed. There were a few dozen small dots that, when I’d asked, had been pointed out to me as hermit huts; places where people who just wanted to be alone would go to live, until they couldn’t anymore.
Gil tried to visit them sometimes. “They just need a good friend!” He said. He said it with cheer, but there was a sad note to his eyes that made me not push it.
There was a flat plane that sometimes came into view, and from where I sat, I would swear I could see trees. There was a misshapen glob of grey dust, ash, that seemed to float of its own accord. I didn’t get the story behind that one.
There was so much here. All the lost little things added up over thousands of years of human history.
“Alright, lets go.” I settled on, still keeping half an eye on the barrier. As we restarted our stroll, movement caught my eye, and I caught Gil’s attention. “What's that? Is that normal?” I asked, pointing at something falling through toward us.
He only looked for a second before giving a deep belly laugh.
“Ah, yeah, yes. Happens all the time! Probably the most common thing to fall in here. Where do you think we got all the socks to make the Web?” He slapped the corded cloth that we were currently climbing across the surface of.
In that moment, I made a pledge. If I ever got out of here, got back to Earth, I was going to find whatever moron engineer built a dryer that could noclip through reality, and give them a hug.
And then file a bug report.