The universe was vast, mysterious, and full of infinite potential. But for Li Wusheng, the universe currently consisted of a five-by-five-foot glowing yellow square projected onto the floor of the Meow & Bow.
Inside the square, the air was thick with the smell of lavender and condescension. Outside the square, life went on, but Li couldn't reach it. He was blocked by an invisible wall that hummed with a soft, helpful chime every time he punched it.
[OBJECTIVE: USE THE LEFT STICK TO MOVE.]
The text floated in the air in a sleek, sans-serif font.
"I do not have a stick!" Li roared, kicking the invisible barrier. "I have legs! I have used them for three millennia! I walked across the Gobi Desert before maps were invented! I do not need instructions on locomotion!"
A holographic projection of Canon-Li—the floating, pristine sage from the Gold Master timeline—hovered just outside the barrier. He looked at Li with a serene, pitying smile.
"Agitation is the first symptom of poor mechanics," Canon-Li intoned. "You are struggling because you lack the fundamentals. In the Patchwork Reality, you relied on 'glitches' and 'sloppy coding.' Here, we value precision."
"I value my fist in your face!" Li shouted. He tried to lunge, but his feet were glued to the floor.
[MOVEMENT LOCKED. PLEASE COMPLETE THE TUTORIAL.]
"Just do it, Li," Jen sighed from behind the counter. She was currently trying to calibrate the espresso machine, which had started demanding a 'User Agreement' signature before dispensing steam. "If you don't walk forward, the text box won't go away, and it's blocking the menu board."
Li grumbled—a sound of deep, tectonic frustration. He looked at the floor. A glowing dotted line appeared, leading to a green circle three feet away.
"Fine," Li spat. "I shall walk. But I shall do it with extreme resentment."
He took a step.
DING.[GOOD JOB! YOU HAVE MASTERED: WALKING.]
"I mastered walking when I was one year old!" Li yelled at the text.
[NEXT OBJECTIVE: LOOK UP.]
"Why?"
"To calibrate the camera," Canon-Li explained gently. "We must ensure your neck is functioning within standard parameters."
Li looked up at the ceiling fan (which was still dripping coffee beans from the previous battle).
DING.[EXCELLENT! Y-AXIS INVERTED: NO.]
[NEXT OBJECTIVE: JUMP OVER THE OBSTACLE.]
A small, wooden crate materialized in the center of the square. It was six inches high.
Li stared at it. "I am the General of the Five Storms. I can leap over pagodas. I can run on clouds. You want me to hop over a... box?"
"Foundational skills are key," Canon-Li nodded sagely.
Li hopped. It was a pathetic, six-inch hop.
DING.[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE NOW READY FOR ADVANCED COMBAT.]
"Finally," Li growled, cracking his knuckles. "Now release me so I can dismantle your smug projection."
[LOADING COMBAT TUTORIAL... PART 1 OF 50.]
Li froze. "Fifty parts?"
"One cannot rush the path to mastery," Canon-Li smiled. "First, we shall cover 'Light Attack.' Then 'Heavy Attack.' Then 'Blocking.' Then 'Parrying.' Then 'Dodge Rolling.' Then 'Stamina Management.' Then—"
"Elara!" Li screamed, pressing his face against the invisible wall. "Save me! He is going to explain the entire control scheme! I will die of old age before I reach the 'Ultimate Move' section!"
Elara Vance stood by the window, watching the street. She looked back at Li with sympathy.
"I can't hack it, Li," Elara said, tapping her tablet. "The tutorial is running on a localized server. It's sandboxed. If I try to interrupt it, it might reset your progress to the beginning."
"Do not reset!" Li gasped. "I cannot jump over the box again. It demeans my soul."
"Just speedrun it," Rex Chord suggested from the patio, where he was trying to tune his ukulele (which kept auto-tuning itself to a perfect C-Major). "Mash the A button. Skip the dialogue."
"There is no A button!" Li yelled. "And the dialogue... it is unskippable!"
As if to prove his point, Canon-Li began to speak.
"Now, before we strike the dummy," Canon-Li said, summoning a straw target dummy into the box, "we must understand the philosophy of violence. Violence is not merely force. It is a conversation between two souls..."
Li tried to punch the dummy. His hand phased through it.
[PLEASE WAIT FOR THE DIALOGUE TO FINISH.]
Canon-Li continued. "...a conversation that began at the dawn of time. When the First Weaver picked up the First Pen..."
Li sat down on the floor of the box. He put his head in his hands. He began to rock back and forth.
"He is talking about the lore," Li whispered. "He is doing a lore dump. In a combat tutorial."
Across the Street: The Gold Standard
Elara turned back to the window.
Directly across from the Meow & Bow, the new building stood like a monument to sterile perfection. The Gold Standard was all white marble, glass, and gold trim. There was no graffiti. There were no pigeons. Even the sidewalk in front of it seemed to repel dirt.
Through the massive glass window, Elara could see Elara-Zero.
The Canon Elara was moving with terrifying efficiency. She wasn't just making coffee; she was performing a symphony of optimization. She poured three lattes simultaneously with one hand while accepting payment with the other. Every customer who walked in—mostly High-Res NPCs from the Gold Master timeline—left exactly 45 seconds later, smiling a perfect, vacuous smile.
"She's crushing us," Jen said, standing beside Elara. "I've been counting. Her table turnover rate is 300% higher than ours. And her customer satisfaction rating is locked at 5 Stars."
"Of course it is," Elara said bitterly. "She's not serving coffee. She's serving 'Content.' It's perfectly calibrated to be inoffensive and pleasant. It has no soul, but it has great mouth-feel."
"We have soul," Jen said. She gestured to the Meow & Bow. "Look at us. We have grit. We have character. We have..."
She pointed to a table where a Glitch-Cat was currently vibrating through a plate of biscotti.
"...we have collision errors."
"People like consistency, Jen," Elara sighed. "In the long run, most people would rather have a boring, perfect latte than a chaotic, magical one that might explode."
"Speak for yourself," Ignis mumbled.
The former dragon was sitting at the counter, wearing his high-def orange tracksuit. He was looking at a plate of 'Gold Standard' pastries that Elara had bought for "Research Purposes."
"Look at this croissant," Ignis said, picking it up. "It is geometrically flawless. It is a perfect crescent. But taste it."
He took a bite. He chewed. He frowned.
"It tastes like... geometry," Ignis said. "It tastes like the idea of butter, without the cholesterol. It is a lie."
He grabbed a Meow & Bow scone—a lumpy, burnt thing that Jen had made in a rage earlier. He took a bite.
"This," Ignis declared, crumbs falling on his tracksuit. "This tastes like anger and nutmeg. It is real. I prefer the anger-scone."
"Thanks, Ignis," Jen said, strangely touched.
"We need to shut her down," Elara said. "If she keeps overwriting the neighborhood, the tutorial zones will expand. Eventually, the whole city will be locked in a 'Mandatory Onboarding' process."
She looked back at Li.
Canon-Li was still talking. "...and thus, the third dynasty of the martial arts realized that the elbow is merely a knee of the arm..."
Li Wusheng was lying on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling fan.
"He's broken," Aldren said, walking over. "His spirit has shattered. I recognize the look. It is the look of a man who has watched a cutscene for twenty minutes and realized he forgot to save."
"We need him," Elara said. "We can't fight Elara-Zero without our Tank."
"I have an idea," Rex Chord said, stepping inside. "Li! Hey, Li! Can you hear me?"
Li didn't respond. He just blinked slowly.
"Li, listen to me," Rex said, pressing his face against the invisible wall. "You can't skip the tutorial. The code is bulletproof. But... every game has a flaw. Every map has a seam."
Li's eyes focused slightly. "A... seam?"
"A clip point," Rex grinned. "You're a speedrunner, right? What do speedrunners do when they hit a long cutscene?"
Li sat up. A spark of life returned to his eyes.
"They... they find a corner," Li whispered. "And they jump into it. Repeatedly."
"Exactly," Rex said. "Look at the box, Li. Look at the geometry. It's a perfect square, right? But the Meow & Bow isn't perfect. The floorboards are warped."
Li looked down. Rex was right. The glowing yellow line of the tutorial box crossed over a slightly raised floorboard near the back corner.
"Collision mesh mismatch," Li breathed. "The tutorial assumes a flat plane. The reality is uneven."
"If you hit that corner at the right angle," Rex said, "you might be able to clip out of bounds."
Li stood up. He didn't look at Canon-Li. He looked at the corner.
"I shall not walk," Li declared. "I shall oscillate."
He ran to the corner. He jammed his face into the invisible wall where the floorboard rose.
And he began to jump.
Hop. Hop. Hop. Hop.
"What are you doing?" Canon-Li paused his lecture. "That is not the correct input. Please return to the center for the 'Heavy Attack' demonstration."
"I am exiting the narrative!" Li shouted. Hop. Hop. Hop.
He turned his body sideways. He crouched. He stood. He crouched. He stood. He was vibrating against the wall.
[WARNING: COLLISION ERROR DETECTED.][RESETTING CHARACTER POSITION...]
"Faster!" Rex yelled. "Overload the physics engine!"
Li began to spasm. He wasn't jumping anymore; he was glitching. His high-definition texture began to stretch and tear.
"I... AM... SPEED!" Li roared.
He hit the jump button (his legs) one last time.
POP.
With a sound like a cork coming out of a bottle, Li Wusheng vanished.
He didn't walk out of the box. He fell through the wall.
Out of Bounds
Li opened his eyes.
He wasn't in the cafe. He wasn't in the street.
He was in the Blue Void.
Above him, he could see the Meow & Bow floating in nothingness. He could see the bottom of the floorboards, the pipes of the espresso machine, and the soles of Elara's shoes.
"I have clipped," Li whispered, floating in the endless blue. "I am Out of Bounds."
He looked around. The Gold Master reality didn't extend down here. This was the "Under-Map." It was a place of unfinished textures, developer cubes, and discarded assets.
Floating nearby was a giant, untextured grey cube labeled [TEST_CHAMBER_01]. And further down... was something else.
Li squinted.
Floating deep in the void, connected to the world above by a thick, glowing gold cable, was a massive server rack. It hummed with the same perfection as Elara-Zero.
"The Universal Wiki," Li realized. "The source code."
He couldn't reach it. He was falling. But he noticed something else.
The cable wasn't just connected to the Gold Standard cafe. It branched out. One branch went to the Meow & Bow. One went to the Space Needle.
And one branch went... nowhere.
It trailed off into the darkness, plugged into a black, jagged tear in the reality. A tear that looked suspiciously like a Plot Hole.
"Interesting," Li murmured.
He looked up at the floating cafe. He needed to get back. He couldn't fly—his Cloud Leaper engine didn't work in the void.
But he saw a way.
Sticking out of the bottom of the cafe was the drain pipe from the sink.
Li grabbed his foam-rubber tail (which had clipped through with him). He spun it like a propeller.
"Helicopter Glitch... activate!"
He spun upward, defying gravity because gravity was a law, and Li was currently an outlaw. He grabbed the drain pipe. He squeezed himself into it.
The Cafe
"He's gone," Jen said, staring at the empty yellow box.
"Did he die?" Ignis asked, pausing mid-chew.
"No," Elara said. "He skipped."
Suddenly, the sink behind the counter exploded.
Water and sludge sprayed everywhere. And shooting out of the drain like a cannonball was Li Wusheng.
He landed on the counter, covered in slime, panting heavily.
"I have seen..." Li wheezed. "...the underneath."
The yellow tutorial box flickered.
[ERROR: USER NOT FOUND. TUTORIAL ABORTED.]
The box vanished. Canon-Li's hologram dissolved, looking confused.
"You did it!" Rex cheered. "The Speedrun Strats!"
Li slid off the counter. He looked at Elara. His eyes were wide.
"Elara," Li whispered, gripping her arm. "I saw the cables. The Gold Master... it is not just overwriting us. It is feeding from somewhere."
"Feeding?"
"There is a cable," Li said. "Going into a dark place. A place that does not render. I believe... I believe Elara-Zero is drawing power from the 'Deleted Scenes'."
Elara looked out the window at the pristine Gold Standard across the street.
"She said she finished the story," Elara murmured. "But you can't have a Gold Master without cutting content. She cut the 'bad' parts out to make her world perfect."
"But energy cannot be created or destroyed," Aldren said. "Where did the bad parts go?"
"She buried them," Elara realized. "And if we can find them... if we can find the 'Cut Content' of the Gold Master Timeline..."
"We can re-integrate it," Jen finished. "We can introduce 'Bugs' back into her system."
Elara grabbed her apron. She took it off.
"Team," Elara said. "We're not running a coffee shop anymore. We're going dumpster diving."
"Where?" Ignis asked.
"To the one place a perfect protagonist would never look," Elara said. "The Recycle Bin."