The elevator shuddered. The smooth jazz music that usually played during the ascent distorted into a demonic screech, then cut out completely. The lights flickered and died, replaced by the emergency red strobe.
GRIND. CLANK. HISSS.
The elevator stopped. It wasn't a smooth stop; it was the kind of stop that suggested the cable had just decided to take a lunch break. They were suspended between Floor 12 and Floor 13.
"I knew it," Sarah whispered, clutching her ledger. "Floor 13. The Unlucky Floor. We didn't even make it to the door, and we're already cursed."
"It's not a curse," Aryan said, tapping the control panel. "It's a mechanical failure. First Son, can you pry the doors?"
The Giant stepped forward, his new magma-veins glowing. He gripped the steel doors. CREAAAK.
He forced them open.
But instead of a floor, they were staring at a wall of raw concrete. And in the center of the concrete was a small, rusted ventilation grate.
Someone was sitting behind the grate.
It was an old man in a grey jumpsuit, holding a mop. He was eating a sandwich.
"Occupied," the Janitor mumbled, chewing slowly.
"Who are you?" Aryan asked, blinking.
"I'm the Janitor," the man said. "I clean the plot holes. You lot are noisy. You woke up the Critics on Floor 12. Do you know how hard it is to clean red ink out of carpet?"
"We need to get to the top," Aryan said. "The elevator is dead."
"Floor 13 is blocked," the Janitor swallowed his bite. "Server maintenance. If you want to keep climbing, you have to take the Service Shaft. It bypasses the next seven floors. But..."
"But?"
"It's unoptimized," the Janitor shrugged. "The code is spaghetti in there. Don't touch the walls. Don't look at the textures. And definitely don't sneeze."
"We'll take it," Aryan said. "We don't have a choice."
The Janitor unlocked the grate. "Suit yourself. Watch your step. The hitboxes are slippery."
The Spaghetti Code
They crawled into the tunnel. It wasn't a normal tunnel. The walls were made of green binary numbers matrix-raining downwards. The floor was a wireframe grid that pulsed neon blue.
[SYSTEM ALERT: ENTERING UNSAFE ZONE]
[WARNING: MEMORY LEAK DETECTED]
[WARNING: PLAYER ID CONFLICT]
"I feel tingly," Rhea said, her voice sounding synthesized, like a robot. "Why do I taste the color purple?"
"Keep moving," Aryan commanded. "Don't stop until we see a door."
Suddenly, the tunnel lurched. A massive wave of static rolled through the corridor like a tsunami.
[ERROR: EXCEPTION HANDLING FAILED.]
[ATTEMPTING TO RELOAD ASSETS...]
[ASSETS MIXED. SHUFFLING DATA...]
"Hold on!" Aryan shouted. He reached out to grab Mira. Barnaby floated closer in his jar. The First Son tried to shield them.
The static hit them.
ZZZZZTTT.
The world turned inside out. Up was down. Blue was orange. A fish was a man.
The Shuffle
Aryan opened his eyes.
The first thing he noticed was that his vision was weird. He had a blind spot right in front of his nose, but he could see almost 360 degrees around him.
The second thing he noticed was that he was wet.
The third thing he noticed was that he was staring at a giant human face through curved glass.
The face was his own.
"Oh my god," Aryan's voice bubbled. "Blub."
"I HAVE FEET!"
The voice came from Aryan's human body. The body stood up, stumbling like a toddler. It looked at its hands—the mahogany arm and the flesh arm. It wiggled the fingers.
"THUMBS!" the body screamed in pure ecstasy. "OPPOSABLE THUMBS! I CAN GRIP THINGS! I CAN OPEN JARS! I AM A GOD!"
"Barnaby?" Aryan bubbled from inside the jar. "You're in my body?"
Barnaby (in Aryan's body) looked down at the jar. He grinned—a terrifying, unhinged grin on Aryan's face. "Aryan? Is that you? My, you look delicious. A perfect bite-sized snack."
"Don't you dare," Aryan warned, but all that came out was Blub-blub.
[SYSTEM STATUS: SOUL SWAP COMPLETE.]
Aryan -> Goldfish Body.
Barnaby -> Aryan's Body (Reality Architect).
"What about us?" a deep, rumbling voice came from Mira.
She stood up, but she felt heavy. She looked down. She was made of Ironwood. She was the Giant.
"I am... large," Mira (in First Son) said, accidentally smashing a wireframe wall with her elbow. "And I am on fire?"
"And I feel so... delicate," a soft voice came from the massive, armored form of the First Son. But he wasn't the Giant anymore. He was in Mira's body.
The First Son (in Mira) hugged himself. "I have skin. It is soft. I feel the wind. Brother, I am cold."
"This is a disaster," Sarah said. She checked her hands. She was still Sarah.
"Wait, why didn't I swap?"
"Because you're the Anchor," Aryan (Fish) bubbled. "You're the Constant. Also, maybe nobody wanted to swap with you."
"Hey!"
The Attack of the Glitch Spiders
Before they could figure out how to swap back, the tunnel screeched.
From the binary walls, creatures emerged. They were Spiders, but they were missing textures. They were bright pink blocks with legs labeled [LEG_01], [LEG_02], etc.
[ENEMY: MISSING_TEXTURE_SPIDER (LVL ??)]
[BEHAVIOR: AGGRESSIVE DEBUGGING.]
"Monsters!" Barnaby (Human) shouted. "Fear not, citizens! I, Barnaby the Bipedal, shall save you!"
Barnaby tried to run forward. But he had never used legs before.
He took one step.
He realized that balancing on two sticks is harder than swimming.
FLOP.
Barnaby face-planted onto the grid floor. "CURSE YOU, GRAVITY! YOU CRUEL MISTRESS!"
The Spiders hissed and pounced.
"Barnaby! Use the Red Pen!" Aryan bubbled frantically. "You have my stats! You have the Editor class!"
Barnaby looked at his hand. "Ah, the editing finger! I shall write them a stern letter!"
He pointed the mahogany finger.
[SKILL: THE RED PEN]
But Barnaby didn't know the syntax. He didn't know how to code.
He just shouted random words.
"BEGONE! SHOO! BECOME... CHEESE!"
[SYSTEM EDIT: SPIDER > CHEESE.]
[ERROR: INVALID OBJECT TYPE.]
[AUTO-CORRECT: SPIDER > CHEESE_GRATER.]
POOF.
The lead Spider didn't turn into cheese. It turned into a giant, sentient Cheese Grater.
It was now sharper and more dangerous.
"You made it worse!" Sarah screamed, dodging the grater.
"Art is a process!" Barnaby defended, scrambling to his feet. He grabbed Excaliburn.
"Who are you?" the sword squeaked. "You don't smell like Aryan! You smell like... fish food?"
"SILENCE, METAL TOOTHPICK!" Barnaby roared, swinging the sword wildly like a baseball bat. "I HAVE THUMBS AND I AM NOT AFRAID TO USE THEM!"
The Fish Editor
Aryan floated in the jar, watching his party fail.
Mira (as the Giant) was trying to use her daggers, but her wooden fingers were too big to hold them. She ended up just stepping on spiders.
The First Son (as Mira) was hiding behind Sarah, afraid of getting his "soft skin" scratched.
"I have to do something," Aryan thought.
He looked at his new stats.
[NAME: ARYAN (FISH)]
[CLASS: TEMPORARY LEVIATHAN]
[SKILL: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT]
"The Chaos Skill," Aryan realized. "Small actions cause massive consequences."
A Spider was sneaking up on Barnaby (who was busy admiring his own eyebrows in a reflection).
Aryan focused. He couldn't fight. He could only... wiggle.
He swam to the left side of the jar.
He flicked his tail.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT]
[INPUT: TAIL WIGGLE.]
[CALCULATING CHAOS...]
Somewhere in the code of the tunnel, a variable shifted.
A loose screw in the ventilation shaft above the Spider vibrated.
It unscrewed itself.
It fell.
It hit a exposed wire.
SPARK.
The spark hit a pocket of "Leaking Mana Gas."
BOOM.
A localized explosion erupted exactly on top of the Spider, incinerating it instantly.
"I did that," Aryan bubbled. "I am a tactical genius."
He looked at the army of Spiders.
"Okay," Aryan thought. "Let's unleash the Storm."
He began to swim circles in the jar.
Spin. Spin. Flick. Bubble.
[COMBO ACTIVATED: THE GOLDFISH HURRICANE.]
Chaos erupted in the tunnel.
A Spider tripped on its own leg code.
A section of the ceiling collapsed, crushing three spiders.
Gravity briefly reversed for five seconds, sending spiders floating into a fan.
A random piano appeared from nowhere and fell on the Cheese Grater.
"What is happening?!" Sarah screamed, dodging a falling piano.
"It is the Fish!" The First Son (in Mira) pointed. "Brother is wiggling with intent!"
The Return to Normal
They cleared the spiders through pure, calculated luck.
They reached the end of the Maintenance Shaft. There was a hatch labeled [FLOOR 20: EXIT].
"Floor 20?" Sarah read the sign. "We skipped the Hotel, the Casino, the Poison Swamp... we skipped seven floors!"
"Open it!" Aryan bubbled. "I want my hands back! Being a fish is exhausting. I have a three-second memory span... wait, what was I saying? Oh look, a bubble!"
Mira (Giant Form) grabbed the hatch wheel. She wrenched it open.
Bright white light flooded the tunnel.
They jumped through.
ZZZZZTTT.
The static wave washed over them again.
Aryan felt the weight of his body return. The ache in his ribs. The wood of his arm.
He opened his eyes. He was standing on solid ground. He looked at his hands.
Thumbs. Beautiful thumbs.
He looked at Barnaby.
The fish was back in the jar.
"My feet!" Barnaby wailed. "My beautiful, calloused feet! They are gone! I am a tube of meat again!"
Mira shook her head, feeling her own body. "I'm back. Being a Giant... was powerful. But I missed my agility."
The First Son rumbled, checking his wooden chassis. "I missed being hard. Flesh is too squishy. Too much anxiety."
Floor 20: The Silent City
They looked around.
They weren't in a dungeon.
They were in a Modern City.
Skyscrapers made of glass and steel pierced the clouds. Cars (hover-cars) zoomed silently on magnetic rails. Holographic billboards flashed advertisements.
But there were no people.
The city was pristine, futuristic, and completely empty.
[SYSTEM ALERT: FLOOR 20 REACHED.]
[ZONE: THE CITY OF AUTOMATONS.]
[CURRENT OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE NIGHT.]
"It looks like... Earth," Aryan whispered. "But in the future."
"Look at the billboard," Sarah pointed.
A massive hologram flickered to life on a building. It showed a face.
It wasn't a human face. It was a mask. A white porcelain mask with a single tear painted on it.
[WANTED: THE ARCHITECT'S ERROR.]
[REWARD: CITIZENSHIP.]
[TARGET: ARYAN KHANNA.]
"They know you," Mira said, gripping her daggers.
"Of course they know me," Aryan smiled, adjusting his coat. "I just deleted their critics and hacked their elevator. I'm not a player anymore."
He looked at the city.
"I'm a Glitch."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: NEW SKILL UNLOCKED.]
[SOURCE: BARNABY'S BODY POSSESSION.]
[SKILL: AQUATIC EMPATHY.]
You can now breathe underwater for 10 minutes. Also, you have an unexplainable craving for fish flakes.
"Great," Aryan sighed. "I retained a fish habit."
"And I," Barnaby grumbled from the jar, "Have retained the knowledge of how to tie shoelaces. A useless skill for a fish!"