[SYSTEM ALERT] [CHASE MUSIC: BENNY HILL THEME (AUTO-PLAY)] [CURRENT VEHICLE: THE MILKY WAY] [TOP SPEED: 4 MPH (DOWNHILL)]

  The getaway was not going well. In the grand cinematic history of high stakes escapes, there are certain expectations. Engines should roar, tires squeal, gear shifts should be slammed with dramatic intensity.

  Kai was currently doing none of these things. He was gripping the thin plastic steering wheel of the electric milk float, his foot buried so hard into the accelerator that his foot was cramping, while the vehicle emitted a gentle, apologetic whirrrrrrrrrr.

  They were fleeing down a damp South London street at a brisk walking pace.

  "Must go faster," Kai muttered, sweating. "Must go faster." He glanced into the side mirror. Written on the cracked glass in small white letters was the warning: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSING THE DISTANCE AT 5 MPH.

  Directly behind them, Ken was in pursuit. The SysAdmin had commandeered a rusty, abandoned mountain bike. Thanks to the [SPEED HACK] he had applied, the bicycle’s wheels were an absolute blur of kinetic energy, kicking up sparks and smoke from the tarmac. Ken’s legs were pedaling so fast they looked like a tornado.

  Yet, his upper body was completely stationary. He sat perfectly upright, his grey suit unwrinkled, his expression a mask of bored, bureaucratic indifference. He didn't look like a terminator; he looked like a man enduring a very long commute.

  He reached out a single finger and flicked the little metal bell on the handlebars. Ding-ding. It was the most terrifying sound Kai had ever heard.

  "He's gaining!" Maya yelled from the cargo bed, wedged between two crates of empty glass bottles. "I am giving it everything she's got!" Kai screamed back. "It’s a milk float, Maya! It’s designed for delivery, not evasive maneuvers!"

  Grom stood up in the back of the float, his massive green frame swaying. He looked at the approaching SysAdmin with corporate disgust. "This is a hostile pursuit!" the Orc rumbled, his tusks glinting under the streetlights. "I shall initiate a leveraged buyout of his skull! WITNESS MY SYNERGY!"

  Grom grabbed an empty glass milk bottle. He roared, winding his arm back, and hurled the heavy glass projectile directly at Ken’s face with the force of a cannonball.

  The bottle flew true and it hit Ken squarely between the eyes or rather, it should have. Ken didn't flinch; he just tilted his head a fraction of an inch. The glass bottle phased completely through his face, clipping through his geometry with a faint buzzy sound, and shattered on the road behind him.

  "My projectile was invalidated!" Grom gasped, staring at his massive green hands. "He has rejected my physical assets!" "He toggled his hitboxes off!" Walter shrieked from the passenger seat, clutching his beige cardigan. "He’s in God Mode! Physical attacks will not register! He is literally untouchable geometry!"

  Ding-ding. Ken was now ten feet behind the bumper.

  "I shall deal with this foul cyclist!" Sir Gideon declared, hanging off the side of the float with his spoon shiv drawn. "Have at you, pedaling demon! Taste the wrath of the kitchen accessory!" "Gideon, get back inside before you fall under a wheel!" Maya grabbed the Knight’s cape and hauled him into the cargo bed.

  "Take a left!" Walter yelled, pointing a trembling finger. "Break his line of sight! The System struggles to render tight corners!" Kai yanked the steering wheel hard. The milk float didn't drift. It just turned, very sensibly and very slowly, into a narrow brick alleyway.

  The moment they entered the alley, Kai slammed on the brakes. There was no exit. The alleyway was a dead end, blocked by a solid, towering wall of red London brick.

  "It's a trap!" Pigglesworth cried out, his hands clutching his velvet smoking jacket. "We are cornered like common moles!"

  "Reverse!" Maya shouted. "It doesn't have a reverse!" Kai panicked, pulling levers at random. "It just has 'Forward' and 'Slightly Less Forward'!"

  Because they were only traveling at 4 mph, they hadn't actually hit the wall yet. They were just slowly, agonizingly rolling toward it. They had roughly thirty seconds before the front bumper made contact.

  Behind them, Ken stopped his bicycle at the entrance of the alley. He didn't ride in. He didn't need to. He unclipped the barcode scanner from his belt and raised it, pointing the red laser directly at the back of Kai’s head.

  A glowing red UI bar appeared in the air above Ken: [DELETION CHARGING: 20%...]

  "He's charging a wipe command," Walter whimpered, burying his face in his hands. "He's going to highlight all of us and hit Backspace. It’s over. I should have stayed in Accounting."

  "No," Maya said. She crawled over the crates, grabbing Kai’s shoulder. "Kai, you have Root Access! Walter said you're a Super User! You have Admin privileges!" "I don't know how to use them!" Kai yelled, staring at the approaching brick wall. Twenty seconds to impact. "It’s AR! Augmented Reality!" Maya shook him. "You built the engine! You coded the items! Open the console!" "I don't have a keyboard! I don't have a mouse! I have a steering wheel that smells like yogurt!"

  [DELETION CHARGING: 50%...]

  "Just focus on the wall!" Maya commanded, her gamer instincts taking over. "Look at it! Look for its properties! Change the state!"

  Kai swallowed hard. He stopped looking at the physical bricks and tried to look through them. He tried to remember the late nights at the studio, staring at lines of C# and object variables. It's just an asset, Kai told himself. It’s just a loaded object in the environment.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Suddenly, his vision flickered. The world washed out slightly, overlaid with a faint green grid. A holographic text box popped into existence, floating directly over the brick wall:

  [OBJECT ID: WALL_ENV_042] [MATERIAL: SOLID_BRICK] [COLLISION: TRUE] [STATUS: IMPASSABLE]

  "I see it!" Kai shouted. "I see the code!" "Change the collision!" Walter yelled, peeking through his fingers. "Set it to 'False'! Or type 'DELETE' to remove the asset!"

  [DELETION CHARGING: 80%...]

  Kai reached out his hand, tapping the air where the word [IMPASSABLE] floated. Instantly, a holographic keyboard materialized in front of him.

  Kai stared at it in horror. It wasn't a sleek, sci-fi hacker interface. It looked exactly like the default touchscreen keyboard from an outdated 2012 smartphone. The keys were tiny, crammed together, and slightly unresponsive.

  "Are you kidding me?" Kai yelled. "This is my God Mode interface? My thumbs are too big for this!" "Just type 'DELETE'!" Maya screamed.

  Kai looked at her in the rearview mirror. He looked at Grom bracing for the end, at Gideon raising his spoon in defiance, at Walter weeping softly into his beige cardigan. If Kai messed this up, they wouldn't just die. They would be uninstalled, erased from reality entirely, leaving nothing but empty disk space behind and it would be his fault.

  His chest tightened, jabbed his trembling index finger at the holographic air. [D] [E] [L]

  The milk float hit a pothole. The entire vehicle shuddered. Kai’s hand jerked.

  His finger slipped off the 'E' key and hit the 'I' key right next to it. [I]

  [DELETION CHARGING: 95%...]

  "Kai!" Grom roared. "The firing sequence is nearly complete!" Panic overriding his brain, Kai didn't hit backspace. He just slammed his palm against the holographic [ENTER] key.

  The system chimed. It was a cheerful, helpful little sound. A notification popped up on the screen in bright blue text: [TYPO DETECTED. AUTOCORRECT APPLIED.] [EXECUTING COMMAND: DELI]

  "Wait, what?" Kai blinked.

  The solid brick wall didn't disappear. Instead, the geometry of the alleyway violently spasmed. The bricks stretched, rotated, and folded in on themselves like an origami puzzle made of concrete. There was a flash of neon light, the smell of curing salts, and the sudden sound of a jazz radio station.

  The wall was gone. In its place stood a fully functioning, 1950’s style New York Delicatessen.

  It was wedged perfectly between the two London buildings. It had a massive glass double-door, a green & white striped awning, and a buzzing neon sign that read: THE CTRL-ALT-DELICATESSEN. Inside, behind a glass counter filled with meats and cheeses, stood an NPC wearing a white apron and a paper hat. He was halfway through slicing a massive block of corned beef.

  "What is this?" Walter gasped. "Autocorrect," Kai whispered in sheer disbelief. "I fat fingered the universe."

  "BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Gideon screamed.

  The milk float, still traveling at a relentless 4 mph, plowed directly through the glass double doors. The glass didn't shatter; it burst into a shower of blue pixels that chimed like dropping coins. The float rolled straight down the center aisle, knocking over a display of artisanal pickles.

  The NPC behind the counter looked up, completely unfazed by the vehicle driving through his shop. His programming was absolute. "Can I get you folks anything?" the NPC droned. "The pastrami is on sale."

  "TACTICAL PROVISIONS ACQUIRED!" Grom roared, grabbing a massive, hanging salami sausage as they cruised past the counter.

  "Keep driving!" Maya yelled, pointing ahead. "There's a back door!"

  Kai didn't hesitate. He steered the milk float straight through the rear fire-exit doors, leaving the bewildered NPC holding a slice of corned beef, and burst out into a completely different, sunlit London street.

  [LOCATION: THE ALLEYWAY] [STATUS: CONFUSED]

  Back at the alley entrance, Ken watched the milk float disappear into the glowing, neon-lit Delicatessen.

  The barcode scanner in his hand beeped: [DELETION CHARGED: 100% - TARGET LOST].

  Ken lowered the scanner. He stared at the Ctrl-Alt-Delicatessen awning. "A localized spatial rendering hack," Ken muttered, his voice devoid of emotion. "Clever. But unsustainable."

  Ken gripped the handlebars of his rusty bicycle. He engaged the speed hack to its maximum threshold. The tires smoked. He pedaled. The bike shot forward like a bullet, tearing down the alleyway at sixty miles an hour, aimed straight for the open doors of the deli.

  But the System was already reacting. The Earth Server’s "Garbage Collection" routine swept through the sector. It scanned the alleyway, checked the architectural master file for London, and found a glaring error. A 1950s New York Deli did not belong in a Bermondsey side street.

  [ASSET ERROR DETECTED] [REMOVING CORRUPTED FILES...]

  Just as Ken’s front tire crossed the threshold of the deli, the shop vanished. It didn't fade away. It simply ceased to exist, instantly replaced by the original, solid brick wall.

  SMASH.

  Ken hit the wall at sixty miles an hour. The sound was like a filing cabinet being dropped off a skyscraper. The rusty bicycle compacted into a cube of scrap metal. Ken peeled off the bricks and fell backward onto the tarmac. Because his physical hitboxes were disabled, he didn't bleed or break any bones. But his character model was severely compromised. He lay on the ground, completely flattened into a 2D pancake shape, like a cartoon coyote who had just lost an argument with a canyon.

  His barcode scanner clattered to the ground next to him. A little red prompt appeared above his crumpled, flattened body: [ERROR 400: BAD REQUEST]

  Slowly, with a sound like crinkling paper, Ken began to reinflate. His geometry popped back into 3D space, his grey suit snapping back into its crisp lines. He stood up, brushing a dusting of red brick powder off his shoulder.

  He looked at the solid wall. He looked at his flattened bicycle. His eyes twitched. It was a microscopic movement, but for a SysAdmin, it was the equivalent of a primal scream.

  "Ticket #404B," Ken spoke into his wrist-pad. "Update. Suspects have weaponized a legacy autocorrect bug and corrupted the map with processed meats. My pursuit vehicle has been deprecated."

  He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't have the permissions for this. I need a hardline."

  Ken turned and walked down the alleyway until he reached the main road. On the corner stood a classic, red British Telephone Box. Smashed glass, neon graffiti, smelling faintly of stale beer and regret. It hadn't housed a working telephone since 2008.

  It was perfect.Ken stepped inside, his polished shoes crunching on broken glass. He reached up to his tie clip and pulled it loose. It wasn't a clip; it was a USB drive. He looked at the ruined plastic casing where the phone receiver used to be. Stuck to the metal coin slot was a large, grey, fossilized piece of chewed chewing gum.

  Ken jammed the USB drive directly into the chewing gum.

  Instantly, the gum glowed with a pulsing, electric blue light. The graffiti on the glass panes shifted, the spray painted tags rearranging themselves into streams of scrolling hexadecimal code. The smell of stale beer vanished, replaced by the sterile scent of ozone and cooling fans.

  Ken pressed a finger to his earpiece.

  "This is Agent Ken," he said, his voice echoing in the sudden digital void of the phone box. "Connect me to the Regional Manager. We have an unauthorized sudo user altering primary code. We need to escalate the ticket. Yes, I'll hold."

  Ken stared out through the scrolling code at the grey London sky. High above the city, a single, massive grey loading bar flickered across the clouds. It was there for only a fraction of a second, accompanied by a low, subsonic hum that made the pigeons freeze mid-flight.

  [SYSTEM ALERT: SERVER ROLLBACK QUEUED]