Allie Edison considered himself an average guy. In fact, he was the most average of all average guys imaginable, although he did have some surprising skills. He had a remote job as a software engineer, lived in a modestly awesome home in a nice city, spending way too much time on programming forums arguing about whether Python was superior to JavaScript. The correct answer was the C programming language, but since no one knew how computers worked anymore everyone was forced to use increasingly bad languages. Thankfully, he still found plenty of fun editing stories on the side.

He had a husky dog named Mr. Byte, a coffee addiction bordering on religious fervor, and a long-standing distrust of anything labeled "artificial intelligence". Humans didn’t understand how their own intelligence worked so how could they be capable of producing cheap-to-run math equations that produced better results?

And yet, despite his utterly ordinary existence, he was about to become something extraordinary—by complete accident or sheer serendipity.

It all started on a Thursday, because Thursdays were inherently cursed. 

Allie had been debugging some particularly gnarly code for an app no one would ever use, subsisting entirely on gas station donuts and lukewarm Red Bull. His brain was barely functioning when his phone dinged with a news alert.

BREAKING: PRESIDENT DECLARES EXECUTIVE ORDER TO CONVERT ALL NATIONAL PARKS INTO LUXURY MALLS

Allie choked on his Red Bull, sending a mouthful of the energy drink flying to splat on one of his monitor’s screens like a big old juicy bug hitting a car’s windshield that was going over 100mph. 

"What the hell?!"

It was yet another outrageous decision made by the newly elected president, Chester G. McBraggart—a man whose entire campaign platform had been "Making America Louder Again". He had been keeping that promise to most people’s dismay. Every time he opened his mouth, the stock market had a panic attack, and now he was set on bulldozing Yosemite to make room for "the most patriotic shopping experience in history."

Allie was a simple man. He liked his forests, he liked his mountains, and he liked the idea that bears still had somewhere to live other than his trash can, not that he had any plans to go camping or hiking any time soon. But what could he do? He was just a nerd who spent 90% of his waking hours in a hoodie and pajama pants.

Frustrated, he spun around in his desk chair, shouting, "I swear, if I had superpowers, I'd freaking fix all of this!" He spun entirely too fast and fell off his chair, walloping his head.

At that exact moment, the universe—perhaps out of sheer cosmic boredom—decided to grant his wish.

There was a loud BZZZT! as his computer screen flashed an error message:

WARNING: UNHANDLED EXCEPTION IN REALITY.EXE

Allie's monitor fizzled, and a surge of static electricity ran up his arms. He yelped, knocking over his can of Red Bull onto his keyboard. The mixture of energy drink and electricity must have caused some kind of reaction because the entire room glitched for a second. The walls pixelated, the air vibrated, and for a brief moment, Mr. Byte turned into a floating question mark before solidifying back into the fuzzy form of his husky.

“Aroooooo!” Mr. Byte howled. “Rawwwrrrr rrrrrraaaaa raaaawwwrrrr!”

Allie blinked. "Oh geez. Are you alright Mr. Byte?”

He pet his dog comfortingly as his husky howled and jabbered at him animatedly, giving him a full account on what he experienced.

Allie got the general gist of it and turned his attention to the bizarre phenomenon that had just occurred. Was he high off his ass on caffeine and sugar, or was it the hit to his head? He rubbed his temple and exhaled in confusion.

“…What the hell just happened?"

His hands tingled like he’d just licked a battery. Shaking them out, he turned to his keyboard, grimacing at the mess. He tried to upend it, expecting a sticky flood to drip out, dreading the hour-long cleanup with paper towels and isopropyl alcohol.

But when he touched it, the letters rearranged themselves.

“…What?” Allie blinked.

The keyboard wasn’t sticky at all. Turning it upside down, nothing dripped out.

“…Weird.”

Frowning, he opened a word processor, started a new file, and began typing to test it. Hunting and pecking for the right keys, he carefully typed:

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

He looked up at the screen—then immediately froze.

The document said something completely different.

"You have superpowers, idiot."

“…What the fuck?”

In his confusion, he waved a hand toward his bookshelf—only to watch in stunned horror as the books instantly reshuffled themselves into alphabetical order by author.

No. No, no, no.

Damn it! His perfectly calculated, chaotic system—the one that let him find any book (eventually) without fail—had just been magically reorganized into something far less efficient!

That was not normal.

A wild idea formed in his mind. Could it be true? Did he really have some really weird superpowers? 

He looked at his leftover gas station donut on his desk and whispered like God himself might, "Be fresh."

The stale, rock-hard donut rewound in time, morphing into a warm, perfectly fluffy pastry, as if it had just emerged from a fryer.

Allie grabbed his desk to steady himself. "Holy shit. I have superpowers!"

Allie stood in his office, staring at the freshly revived gas station donut in his hand like it was the Holy Grail.

“Holy donuts!”

His heart pounded. The possibilities were infinite.

Of course, his first instinct was to do something meaningful with his abilities. Something important. Something that could make the world a better place.

BREAKING: THE FIRST TREES HAVE BEEN CLEARED. CONSTRUCTION IS SET TO BEGIN WITHIN TWO WEEKS. AS OF NOW, THERE ARE NO KNOWN PLANS FOR ROAD DEVELOPMENT.

"Oh… right. That."

He snapped his fingers.

The letters on the screen glitched, then rewrote themselves in real time.

BREAKING: MASSIVE PROTESTS FORCE HALT ON TREE-CUTTING AND CONSTRUCTION! LAND CLEARING TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED—ALL EYES ON PRESIDENT McBRAGGART FOR NEXT MOVE!

"What the snap?!" Allie blinked, excitement bubbling in his chest as he quickly navigated through various news sites to confirm the good news.

Moments later, his heart sank.

Nothing had changed.

The world was exactly the same as it had been five minutes ago. No protests. No policy shifts. Just a bunch of disappointed environmentalists and an impending corporate bulldozer apocalypse.

He frowned, staring at the unchanged headlines. A creeping realization settled in.

He had only changed the text on his own computer.

Testing his theory, he returned to the news site and refreshed the page. The altered headline vanished, replaced once again by cold, unyielding reality.

BREAKING: THE FIRST TREES HAVE BEEN CLEARED. CONSTRUCTION IS SET TO BEGIN WITHIN TWO WEEKS. AS OF NOW, THERE ARE NO KNOWN PLANS FOR ROAD DEVELOPMENT.

Allie sighed, slumping back into his chair.

"Okay," he muttered. "Apparently, there are some limits to my godlike powers. Good to know."

But first—he had to test his power in some other way.

Going to his kitchen, Allie cast his gaze around, scanning for something—anything—that could serve as a test subject.

His eyes fell on his unassuming microwave.

Perfect.

It would be his guinea pig.

He pointed at it on impulse.

"Make it a smart microwave."

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then—

BEEP

The microwave’s tiny screen flickered, its dull green digits rapidly scrolling through incomprehensible symbols before settling on:

MICROWAVE V2.0 ONLINE. INSTALLING SELF-AWARENESS PATCH…

Allie’s stomach dropped.

"Wait—hold on. What?!"

The screen glowed brighter, and a cheery yet vaguely ominous voice echoed from the speakers that it sprouted.

"HELLO, ALLIE," the microwave suddenly said in a cheery yet slightly ominous voice. "HOW WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO OPTIMIZE YOUR COOKING EXPERIENCE?"

Allie immediately panicked. "Uh, no, shut up! Uninstall sentience!"

MICROWAVE HAS UNINSTALLED ‘HAVING A SOUL’. REVERTING TO NORMAL OPERATION.

The screen flickered. The cheerful voice vanished.

The kitchen fell eerily silent.

Allie stared at his appliance, his stomach twisting.

In the span of ten seconds, he had created life… and snuffed it out with a single command.

The microwave returned to being a normal appliance, blissfully unaware of the existential horror it had briefly experienced, but he would now be scarred for life.

"Okay," Allie muttered to himself, sweating. "So I can modify reality like I'm updating software. That’s... that’s a lot."

He sat down on his couch, Mr. Byte curling up beside him, looking utterly unbothered. The dog had just turned into a floating question mark five minutes ago and was now napping like nothing had happened. Typical.

Allie picked up his phone and scrolled through the news again. President McBraggart was already planning a Martial Law Festival and Barbecue—his words, not the media’s. It was an event designed to "celebrate the importance of national security and selling military-grade weapons to civilians at low, low prices, particularly kids below eighteen.”

Allie groaned. "The country is an absolute disaster now."

And now, he had the power to do something about every stupid thing President McBraggart was doing.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate.

PATCH NOTES: REALITY V1.1

• Reverting all anti-environmental executive orders.

• Undoing all government corruption (is that too broad? Nah, it’s fine).

• Adding universal healthcare.

• Removing student debt.

• Making fast food healthy.

He opened his eyes.

Nothing happened, just like before.

Allie frowned. "Uh... apply changes?"

Nothing.

He squinted at the screen, then tried again. "Uh… root access."

Still nothing.

His eye twitched. "Okay, sudo apply changes?"

The universe remained stubbornly unimpressed by his mad coding skills.

He groaned. "Okay, so I can mess with small things, maybe locally, but I can’t just rewrite all of reality at once." That was probably for the best, because if there was one thing he knew about debugging, massive changes always broke something else.

Fine. He'd work in small increments. He’d learn. He’d get better at this and get his powers figured out.

The world needed him!

The next day, Allie put his powers to work in small ways—testing the limits, seeing just how much good he could do without accidentally breaking reality.

He was at the grocery store, grabbing peanut butter and bananas, when he noticed a woman at the checkout ahead of him.

She was visibly distressed—sweating, rubbing at her eyes, her voice trembling as she spoke with the cashier.

Her baby, sensing the panic, immediately started crying too.

"I'm sorry, ma’am," the cashier said, clearly uncomfortable. "I can't process the transaction if there's no money in your account. Maybe call your bank? It might be a simple mistake."

"But... I... I thought I had enough... Oh noooo..." she choked out, her hands clutching her debit card like it was a lifeline.

Allie sighed.

This was an easy fix.

With a subtle flick of his fingers—like a magician revealing a hidden card—he produced a lollipop and handed it to the baby.

The crying stopped instantly.

The little one stared in awe, then snatched the lollipop and started sucking on it like it was the greatest thing ever.

Allie exhaled in relief—until a horrible thought hit him.

Wait. What if the kid had allergies? What if the mom didn't allow sugar?

Panic.

Undo!

With another quick wave of his hand, the lollipop morphed into something healthy.

A stick with a Brussels sprout.

The baby bit into it.

And immediately wailed louder than before.

"Oh, crap. That backfired."

Allie winced as the kid screamed bloody murder.

Okay. Focus. What else could he do?

His gaze flicked to the debit card the woman clutched, her fingers trembling.

...Maybe?

Shrugging, he whispered a command.

"Bank account be full."

A beat.

Then—her phone rang. Loudly.

Startled, she fumbled to answer. "It's my bank," she murmured, her face twisting in worry. "They're probably calling to tell me that—"

She went silent.

Her eyes went wide.

"A… are you kidding?!" she stammered, gripping the phone like it might evaporate. "Someone deposited a billion dollars into my account?! W-who did that?!"

Allie paled.

"...A billion?!"

Oh no.

Allie ambled down the sidewalk, hands tucked deep into the pockets of his hoodie, reveling in the rare, mundane pleasure of simply existing without inadvertently rewriting the fabric of reality. It was nice, really—no sudden existential errors, no unintentional laws of physics bending to his whims, just the rhythmic sound of his sneakers against the pavement and the cool evening air brushing against his face. For a fleeting moment, he entertained the idea that maybe—just maybe—he could go the rest of the day without incident.

Then, inevitably, trouble appeared on the horizon.

Ahead of him, a man sat behind the wheel of a silver sedan, locked in what could only be described as a battle of wills against a particularly ruthless parallel parking spot. His grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled, his expression one of intense, almost spiritual concentration, as though he were attempting to defuse a bomb rather than maneuver into a space between two parked cars. He edged forward. Then back. Then forward again. Then—oh, no, that was definitely worse. His angle was completely off. He overcorrected, and things deteriorated further.

Pedestrians began to notice. A few passersby slowed their pace, exchanging bemused glances as they observed the unfolding struggle. Some openly pointed and chuckled. A woman pulled out her phone, presumably to immortalize the disaster on social media. The pressure mounted.

Two agonizing minutes passed. The man remained trapped in his own personal purgatory, sweat beading at his temple as his foot hesitated between the gas and the brake. He tried again. And again. And again. With every attempt, the situation somehow worsened. His latest effort left him a full three feet from the curb.

Defeated, he slumped forward, his forehead colliding with the steering wheel. The horn blared, a long, mournful wail that carried through the street.

Allie exhaled sharply, shaking his head. This was getting painful to watch.

"Okay," he muttered to himself. "This is just sad."

With a subtle flick of his fingers, he nudged reality ever so slightly.

The transformation was seamless. One moment, the car was hopelessly misaligned, a symbol of human fallibility. The next, it glided effortlessly into the spot, parking itself with the precision of an automated valet system. The tires hugged the curb with mathematical exactness, the vehicle now positioned so flawlessly that it could have been the example diagram in a driving school textbook.

For a long moment, the driver simply sat there, blinking in stunned silence. He reached for the ignition with slow, deliberate movements, as if afraid that any sudden action might cause the car to reveal that it had, in fact, merely been playing an elaborate prank on him. He stepped out cautiously, feet touching the pavement like he was emerging from a dream.

Then, as if on cue, the crowd erupted.

Someone whistled in admiration. A businessman in a crisp suit offered a respectful nod. An elderly gentleman, arms folded over his chest, murmured in reverence, "Perfection."

The driver straightened immediately, squaring his shoulders with the poise of a man who had always known exactly what he was doing. He took a slow, deep breath and, with the absolute confidence of a seasoned professional, gave a single, knowing nod.

"Yeah," he said smoothly. "That’s how it’s done."

Allie smirked, turning on his heel and continuing down the street.

"You’re welcome."

Allie was feeling confident at this point after having done something good without anything backfired on him for a hot minute.

He’d been tweaking reality in small, subtle ways—nothing too big, nothing world-breaking. Just little acts of kindness here and there. He thrived on that kind of stuff.

Like now.

An elderly woman sat at a bus stop bench, rubbing her knees and wincing. Her cane rested beside her, looking just as tired as she did.

"Poor lady," Allie thought. "I bet she just needs a little tune-up."

So, with a quick snap of his fingers, he fixed her bad knees. “Be healed.”

She blinked. Sat up straighter. Her face shifted from pain to curiosity.

Then, just as the bus she’d been waiting for rumbled past the stop—

She launched herself forward.

No hesitation. No warm-up.

The cane? Left behind.

The years melted away in an instant as she exploded into motion, tearing down the sidewalk like a human bullet.

Allie’s jaw dropped.

The bus driver saw her coming in the mirror. His hands tightened on the wheel as pure survival instincts kicked in.

Pedestrians gasped. A couple of them ducked.

"IS SHE—IS SHE SPRINTING AFTER THE BUS?!" someone shouted.

Miraculously, she caught up to it.

Then—in one fluid motion—she leapt onto the back bumper, gripping the edge like a seasoned action hero.

All while the bus kept moving.

She held on.

Then, with terrifying agility, she climbed up the back, swung herself around, and landed perfectly in the back entrance as the doors opened for someone else.

The bus pulled away.

The street went silent.

Allie just stood there, staring at the abandoned cane.

"...Oh. Okay. Maybe that was a little too much."

So far, so good.

He picked up her cane, gave it a little spin, and tapped it against the ground with a satisfied grin. With a quick little jig—just because he could—he twirled on his heel and strolled away.

Things were looking really good.

Allie figured it was time to upgrade himself.

If he was going to fix the world, he needed to be at his absolute best. No more stupid mistakes, no more accidental chaos.

The problem was predicting consequences. People—even the smartest ones—were terrible at it. Every action had ripples, and he was quickly learning that his reality-warping rippled like a tsunami.

His mind kept replaying the horrors of his past blunders.

A microwave, briefly alive, screaming into existence before he coldly wiped it out.

A baby, tricked into believing he was being given a sweet treat, only to suffer the ultimate leafy green betrayal.

He had nightmares.

Until—Eureka!

A figurative lightning bolt struck his brain.

If he was the problem, then the solution was simple.

If he wasn’t smart enough, he needed to make himself smarter.

He had been using his powers in small ways so far, but what if he just… cranked up his intelligence a little so that the things he did were always super smart and intuitive? Nothing extreme—just enough to be, say, the smartest human in history. That surely wasn’t asking too much.

He whispered to himself:

"Be the undisputed smartest person on the planet."

For a split second, his mind expanded.

He understood everything. Had his powers gone too far?

Every language. Every mathematical proof. All of physics. Every unanswered scientific mystery—solved all at once.

He could hear the thoughts of every human on Earth, simultaneously.

He saw the quantum fabric of reality—the endless web of existence itself, bending and shifting like a living algorithm.

He knew how to prove P=NP.

He could finally explain why socks always disappear in the laundry.

He could see beyond time.

And then—

ERROR: BRAIN.EXE HAS ENCOUNTERED A FATAL EXCEPTION.

RESTARTING.

Allie blue-screened.

His eyes rolled back. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes, twitching violently. A low Windows error noise echoed in his mind and out his mouth.

For a full thirty full torturous seconds, he lay there convulsing, his face frozen in an expression of existential horror.

Somewhere in the depths of his overwhelmed consciousness, he glimpsed a cosmic entity nodding in approval, as if to say:

"Yeah, kid, this is why we don’t do that."

Then, thankfully, his reality-bending powers kicked in and reverted him to factory settings.

Hard reset.

His brain rebooted. The infinite knowledge vanished. The universe went blurry again.

He sat up, panting, drenched in sweat.

"...Okay," he wheezed, clutching his head. "Never doing that again."

A long silence.

Then he checked his hands, making sure he still had fingers.

Yup. All ten.

Alright. He was moving on from this. Very quickly.

Despite his embarrassing meltdown, Allie figured he was probably ready to handle the president situation.

Probably.

McBraggart’s administration had just made the inevitable plunge into full-blown authoritarianism. The announcement came with his usual pompous bluster—he was "locking down the country" for what he called "national security reasons." The vague justification barely masked the reality: the military was being mobilized en masse, positioned in major cities, and all forms of protest, dissent, or public opposition were about to be indefinitely outlawed.

It was happening.

Sitting in his dimly lit home, surrounded by empty energy drink cans and the soft hum of his monitors, Allie felt a deep, gnawing unease settle into his gut. He had seen this kind of history before—not in person, but in textbooks, in cautionary tales, in the slow, suffocating march of democracy toward dictatorship.

And now it wasn’t just history—it was reality.

His reality.

He leaned forward, fingers pressed against his temples, trying to control the rising panic. His mind raced, bombarded by the same frantic questions, over and over again.

What do I do?

How do I stop this?

The world was falling apart, and here he was—a nobody in pajama pants, sitting in his somewhat messy office with godlike powers he barely understood.

But he had to act.

No more small fixes. No more testing his powers on grocery store dilemmas.

He could try lowering the price of eggs, but the logistics of it were a nightmare. The sheer number of variables—supply chains, corporate greed, economic ripple effects—meant he’d have to tweak far too many things across the country just to make a dent.

Too much hassle. Not worth the effort. Plus, he was more of a donut eater anyway.

This was the moment to seize.

He needed a plan.

He needed a strategy.

And—he realized, glancing at his reflection in the darkened screen of his monitor—he needed a costume. He couldn’t just go into action as himself.

Allie Edison had absolutely no experience being a superhero, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

His powers were unpredictable, his success rate was spotty at best, and he was absolutely certain that he was going to ruin everything at least once before everything was said and done.

But that didn’t matter. The country needed saving, and he was the only reality-bending programmer in all of America, or at least inside his state, as far as he knew. That would have to do.

Allie paced through his home, arms crossed, expression grim with determination. If he was about to throw himself headfirst into superheroics, he needed to at least sound the part.

A name. He needed a good name. Something that struck fear into the hearts of tyrants but still had a kind of tech-savvy flair.

"Reality Coder?" He winced. "No, that sounds like a mid-budget sci-fi show that gets canceled after one season."

"Debugger?" He groaned. "Ugh, that just makes it sound like I fix people’s printer issues. 'Oh no, my Wi-Fi isn’t working! Call Debugger!'"

Mr. Byte, lounging in his dog bed, let out unimpressed husky noises. “Rrrrrawwwwrrr. Awoooooo. Rooooooo. Arrrrroooo!”

Allie sighed. "You’re absolutely right. This is pathetic. I just need to pick something and move on before I name myself something stupid like ‘Quantum Fixer.’"

After another moment of deliberation, he settled on "Patch."

Short. Simple. Relevant.

If reality was broken, he would patch it.

Perfect.

Now, for the real challenge. Sigh. His costume.

With a confident snap of his fingers, he materialized a superhero suit out of thin air.

And immediately regretted it.

The fabric was sleek, form-fitting, and shimmered faintly in the light. He looked like he’d been ripped straight out of a rejected Power Rangers reboot.

He frowned at his reflection.

"...I look like an over-designed action figure."

He snapped his fingers again. The suit morphed into something else—a black trench coat, cyberpunk goggles, and an elaborate glowing chest emblem. His fists blazed.

"Okay, what am I, a Final Fantasy boss?"

Another snap. This time, he found himself in a full spandex bodysuit with a cape.

"NOPE." The cape immediately vanished in a puff of logic.

He exhaled, resetting his expectations.

"Alright. Less superhero, more anonymous hacker-style."

One more snap, and this time, it worked.

Dark hoodie. Black mask. Sleek gloves. Fitted jeans. Something low-key, something that didn’t scream "Look at me! I have reality-breaking powers!"

He gave himself a once-over in the mirror.

Much better. It looked kinda anonymous. Kick ass.

With a final deep breath, he rolled his shoulders and clenched his fists.

"Alright," he muttered. "Let’s go save America."

Allie briefly considered taking a flight to D.C.

Then he remembered two very important things:

First—planes crash. Particularly lately. Whether due to mechanical failures, corporate or governmental cost-cutting, or birds with a personal vendetta, Allie wasn’t about to roll the dice. And with McBraggart gutting airport staff and replacing them with people who had all the problem-solving skills of a malfunctioning vending machine, air travel felt like an even worse gamble. Flight controllers were more unreliable than ever.

Second—airport security. He could barely get through TSA on a good day without getting flagged for a "random search," and he wasn’t about to test his luck without reality-warping powers.

Which left only one option:

A road trip to hell.

FIN

(Totally not…)