Code # Broken

Chapter 4

Number 01000010 01000111 00100011 01100110 01100110 00111001 00111001 00110000 00110000 has been activated - Preparing divertissement... Character complete; simulating now.

My code forces me awake at 5:30am. Great, I think, another boring Tuesday morning of word-by-word, letter-by-letter code that I have to follow. I get up and follow my programming.

"First: take a shower." My least favorite part, because all the showers in this stupid town are made for people who are five-foot eight at most, so being six feet tall causes a great deal of struggle just to get ready.

"Second: pull on clothes, grab backpack and exit house." This isn't that bad because everything in the house is coded personally for me, even though I'm just a character in the background that isn't crucial to the game. I suppose it makes me feel a little important.

Whenever I'm outside the code gives me a small choice of where I want to go. "The café / The square / A merchant's stall."

I decided a long time ago when I first came to exist in this town I would never find any enjoyment anywhere; mainly due to the fact that I'm a thief, and nothing new ever even happens here. There's so little excitement in day-to-day life.

I decided that I would try the café today, just because there was always a poorly-scripted character I could steal a bit of money from.

On the way there I decided to check my stats, as it had become a habit for me, even though I knew nothing about them would change.

ALex

Age 18

BG

Level: #<%^?

Everything was normal until I noticed the level stat I never had before today, which seemed broken and out of place. Just that one simple line of buggy coding caused me to hesitate and start thinking about what it could mean.

Eventually, though, I just shrugged it off, thinking a developer tried implementing something new and just left a little bit of unfinished coding in place. Background characters are often overlooked when it comes to updates.

After my walk, I finally arrived at the café and took a seat. The code for me here was to observe people around me and try to pick out a target to make an easy steal on.

Even though I am a background character, I have the "thief" class. My theory is that while one of the developers was working on classes for the main character, they first experimented with background characters, one of whom was me. It gives me the ability to see the basic stats of people, as in their age and level.

While I was sitting in my chair looking around, I realized that two other characters stood out to me more than any others. One just sat staring into space with a piece of cake in front of her, while the other started freaking out slightly and looked like she was about to faint.

I decided to check the stats of the girl that almost fell out of her chair.

Age 16

Level: <?//%.;

I did a double-take and almost fell, too, when I looked through her stats, because she had the same buggy level coding that I did.

I started thinking again, but this time I knew this could mean the one thing I wanted more than anything else. I could finally break free from this stupid routine.

So naturally, when the day was done, I was practically elated to find out what the next would bring.

When Wednesday finally rolled around, I wasn't even bothered by the too-small shower and the trouble that it caused me each and every morning.

I decided as I was going out the door that today was going to be the day that everything was going to change. I didn't realize at the time just how true that would be, or how different things would seem.

Instead of even looking at my choices, I ignored them and went directly to the square because a small part of my code always tells me where something important is going to take place. I would call it a "gut feeling" of sorts.

When I walked into the square I instantly noticed three girls behaving rather abnormally. Two of them I remembered seeing from the café the day before, and one that I realized I've only ever seen here in the square on Wednesdays such as this.

They all appeared to be walking towards the center of the square, so I decided to follow suit. As I did, two other guys joined our little stroll before we all broke into a sprint simultaneously.

I realised this was the moment that I had been waiting for all my existence, and at that moment I didn't care about anything else in my superficial life, even with the tug of my programming pulling me back to the normal activities of my everyday "life."

Today with, these five others, I realized that we were all going to break free.

So I prepared for the collision.