Chapter Three: I Accidentally Joined a Cosmic Group Chat (Help.)
So.
I accepted the friend request.
In my defense, I thought it was a glitch. The popup came in the form of a floating marshmallow that whispered, "Would you like to bond with a fellow Existential Anomaly?" I assumed it was some kind of post-apocalyptic Clippy situation.
It wasn't.
The moment I tapped "yes," the air crackled, my plushies formed a protective semicircle, and a new tab opened in the Destiny Router™ app: "Friends List (Beta – May Contain Enemies)."
There was exactly one name:
User: Gl!tchK!d_001
Status: Online. Chaotic. Possibly Ascended.
Then a notification popped up:
[Welcome to Thread #11: The Survivors Who Broke Reality (And Are Mostly Chill About It)]
My living room warped.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The ceiling blinked, the couch grew fangs (which it politely tucked away after sensing my aura), and my walls turned into windows—portals, really—each showing different versions of Earth. One was entirely underwater but with floating pizza islands. Another had sky hamsters. One just looked like Ohio but worse.
And then… the chat began.
It was like Discord if Discord had been coded by eldritch interns during a caffeine bender. Each message appeared in mid-air, narrated in different voices.
Gl!tchK!d_001: YO. Finally. Sleepyhead's awake. Took you long enough, NapsMage.
Me: …Napromancer.
Gl!tchK!d_001: Whatever, Pillow Pope.
Another bubble blinked in:
404SoulNotFound: Is this the one who survived the duck uprising via passive REM?
Karen.exe: I demand to speak to his system administrator.
BagelLord23: (unintelligible screaming in binary)
Me: Wait. Who are you people?
They responded in unison.
All:Survivors. System rejects. The ones who didn't reboot properly.
Gl!tchK!d_001 appeared in holographic form, pixelated and flickering like a bad YouTube thumbnail. He looked like someone spliced a skateboard, a teenager, and a corrupted JPEG into one chaotic entity.
"You and I," he said, pointing at me with a glitching finger that occasionally turned into a banana, "we're anomalies. System didn't know what to do with us. You leveled up by nap. I did it by corrupting a cosmic captcha and convincing a moon it was my mom."
"…what."
"Don't worry about it. Point is, the EtherNet™ system's loose. We're talking spaghetti-code reality, man. You're not the only one maxed out in weird ways. There are others. Some cool. Some... not."
As he spoke, a "User Status Update" popped up:
User: NightSnackTheEternal has consumed the Moon. Reality Shading reduced by 12%.
Coolcoolcool.
"So why the friend request?" I asked, cautiously wrapping myself tighter in my Snorlax hoodie.
Gl!tchK!d grinned, or maybe he just corrupted his face into a grin.
"Because we need a party. A squad. A guild of Weirdlings. Look, things are about to get unstable. The EtherNet™ is rebooting in stages, and it's not going well. Memory leaks. Reality loops. Someone turned Wyoming into a boss dungeon."
A crash from one of the portals. A huge metal squirrel with laser eyes screamed something about "nut taxes" and vanished.
I blinked. "And you want me in this squad?"
"You snored a god into nonexistence. Yeah. We want you."
I wanted to protest—but then the app vibrated. Another update:
New Skill Unlocked: Dream Sync.
Description: You can now link dreams with nearby entities for co-op naps and shared XP events.
"Oh no," I whispered. "You want to... co-nap?"
"Group nap farming," Gl!tchK!d corrected proudly. "Efficiency, bro."
I should've said no.
Instead, I blinked.
And the EtherNet™ interpreted that as a "yes."
The system went haywire. A glowing mattress-shaped portal opened in the center of my floor. It pulsed with ominous lullaby music and smelled like lavender and existential dread.
"Party formed!" chirped the app. "Mission: Secure the Glitched Zone and locate the Root Patch."
Gl!tchK!d fist-pumped. "Time to dungeon crawl, Sleep King."
"But I don't even have pants on," I protested.
"It's okay," the app replied soothingly. "Your aura counts as casual wear."
With a groan and a single resigned yawn (which briefly paused time in my apartment), I stepped into the mattress-portal.
Everything exploded into marshmallow stardust.
When I opened my eyes, we were standing in a corrupted version of my hometown mall—except it floated in space, the escalators moved sideways, and the Cinnabon had a nuclear glow.
The quest had begun.
And judging by the NPC standing in front of us—a floating vending machine with too many teeth and a name tag that said "Greg"—things were about to get... weird.
To be continued.