Chapter Text
You’re not supposed to know what happened here. Frankly, it’s best if you don’t and assume this is fiction. It’s better that way.
Who am I? I was an author. Some would say that I was good at what I did. When I first started, my name was Edituser2.0. It became Edit because of my friends who nicknamed me that. It seemed to fit my username. It also fit the looming destiny of my life, as I held a weapon that shaped the world around me.
This, my friend, is the story of the Media Manipulator’s rampage.
——
It started on August 4. I remember that much. I was seventeen now, and that meant my second year at UST. I had chosen general Computer Science, and so far it was relatively smooth sailing. I also began to scan the social scene for rivals, enemies, friends and lovers alike using the same algorithmic scan that a program would have on an insanely large dictionary. So far, I had quite the selection of the first three, but none of the fourth. I lost an hour of sleep over that per week.
But my writing? It was brilliant. I was a small-time AO3 and Wattpad regular who had the time to jot down several universes and post them. I was something of a rising star. I even put in the effort of printing posters for new releases. I made sure to keep a schedule of release. Every week, two or three universes updated with new chapters, each pulling everyone who set their eyes on it into worlds of high-tech fantasies. The attention I had was actually nice.
Then I announced on my birthday that I would be releasing a special work; not for any of the eight universes under my belt, but a stand-alone birthday-dedicated oneshot. That oneshot gained quite a lot of attention. I was a micro-celebrity within the campus.
The following day, I was loaded with creative energy. So, when I headed back to my dorm room, I fired up my trusty Google Docs and opened a new document. I had ideas bubbling in my head, but one stood out. A man that could reach beyond the screen and use the metadata of reality itself to rule the Metaverse. I was only missing a name.
——
My fingers hovered cautiously over the keyboard, as if wary about coding a 500-line program in two minutes without fail. I mentally ran through names. Considering each. Then dropping them. It was almost routine. Then, a name popped in my head.
The Media Manipulator.
I quickly analyzed it. Describes the character very well, considering his powers. Alliteration is a bonus. Nice-sounding words add aura to the character. Gives an ominous, almost dangerous, edge to the character.
I smiled. That’s our name.
I began to write furiously, as if possessed by my own power. In a way, I was. The words flowed out of me more naturally than others. This is how I managed to compress the complicated feelings I harbored for some special people into a one-page letter. It was like the gates to my soul were open and I was pushing out everything I had to say. I was more honest on paper because paper was my world. It always has been. Not quite literally; I also ruled over the IDEs in what I fondly called my Brick Sur. The Mac I was now typing on had been produced in late 2014 and could run up to Big Sur. I had to force an update through technical methods. Now it ran Sequoia pretty okay, and I could do anything I wanted there. Including writing in languages both human and machine.
Five hours pass. I managed to pull out an excessively long chapter, around 2.5k words or so. It described Media in detail and how he had annihilated several universes with the snap of a finger because they lacked guardians. It was like a horror story for reality-hoppers. Bump into him, and how you’d die was entirely up to him. He could change how things happened in real time by looking at its universe’s so-called “real-time book”, which documented everything relevant that happened in prose, and rewriting reality itself, so to speak.
He was the Metaverse’s No. 1 Public Enemy. He could not be stopped.
Then I looked at my watch. 11…? I distinctly remember it being 6. I better go to sleep. There’s like five quizzes tomorrow. I’ll have to go over linked lists yet again before the exam. At least I ate my dinner…
I flopped on the bed, tugging the blanket over my head and removing my glasses. Already sleep was taking me, and I fell asleep to visions of the Media Manipulator on rampages of destruction. Ripping through universes like a hot iron through sticks of butter.
If he was real, would he come for me?
——
The Metaverse is a complicated network of universes represented by glowing neon cyan lines of energy, each line a timeline. Enclosing this is its first protection sphere; the border of the Metaverse and the In-Between that surrounds it.
The In-Between is where ideas come to life. Its widely accepted depiction is of an ambiguous word processing interface wrought into the third dimension. A blinking cursor, like a faulty wall that couldn’t decide where it wanted to be in reality. Another, bigger wall right above, spanning across for miles and miles. When one reached its summit, the Home Row could be accessed. The characters wrote their own stories, through the people that had thought of them. A character that has successfully been created is then beamed up into the center of the Metaverse, creating a new timeline. This precious world is then surrounded by its second protection sphere: the border of the In-Between and the Void.
The Void is the cesspool of the Metaverse. It is where ideas die. Some would say that the yawning chasm of infinite shadow is how we got the term “dropping an idea”, because characters were literally dropped into the Void when the author stopped working on them. It often happened quickly; yanked through the plastic-like floor and left to die staring at the outer sphere of the Metaverse. People would argue that the Void is actually the residing place of not one Metaverse, but multiple. This conveniently explains DC, Marvel and Gundam multiverses, alongside others, so it is the widely accepted theory.
In the In-Between, a swirling mass of glitched-out lines and image artifacts began to form. An impossibly thin stick figure rose out of it, almost like a framework, immediately engulfed by the glitchy mess. It took form, gripping its hands. The world around it began to rumble.
“The Metaverse,” it uttered with a voice that sounded like a JPEG artifact would look. Harsh, gravelly, glitchy. “It is mine to rule.”
It raised a hand, palm outstretched to the ceiling. Lines of energy began to flow straight to it, covering the area around it in a messed-up aura of pure error. As if the Metaverse thought it an error before it was even sent out.
“The author,” it uttered again. “I must kill it. The Metaverse is mine to rule.”
And so it began charging up whatever it was about to do.
And through all this, Edit was still reviewing how to reverse linked lists. Their exams would now include how to troubleshoot a real-life bug.