Bad things always happen when I least expect. Today is meant to be a simple day for me. Class, food, bed, rest. Simple. But the day had plans beyond my imagination.
I was walking to class, coffee in hand, phone buzzing in my pocket, when I noticed it. At first I thought my eyes were tired from prolonged lack of sleep.
The sky just broke. Not all of it. Just a patch, about the size of a billboard. Blue turning into squares, like a broken computer screen. Some darker, some lighter, flickering, then back to normal.
“Uh, Maya,” I said, grabbing my friend’s arm. “You seeing that?”
She squinted. “Seeing what? The clouds?”
“No, no, the...” I pointed. And right then it fixed itself, perfect blue again.
“Sam, you’ve gotta sleep more.” She shook me off and kept walking.
But five minutes later, it happened again. Bigger this time. Half the sky.
People stopped. Phones went up. A kid dropped his skateboard and just stared. One girl screamed, another laughed. Someone yelled “it’s the government!”
"Alien invasion," said, another.
And then the sun flickered like a faulty LED. It blinked like a cursor.
By noon, nobody was pretending it wasn’t real. Hashtags blew up. #SkyLag. #PatchDay. #WhoPulledThePlug. #AlienInvasion.
Maya and I sat on the library steps, watching the horizon glitch like bad Wi-Fi.
“This is… fine, right?” she said, chewing on her straw like it would help.
“Fine?” I laughed too loud. “The sky is pixelating. That’s not fine. That’s the end of reality as we know it.”
“Or maybe it’s just…” She waved her hand. “I don't know... Atmosphere. Pollution. Some weird science thing.”
I didn’t answer. My chest felt tight like I knew something I shouldn't.
Because here’s the thing.
Two months ago I’d been messing around online, coding junk to avoid my essays. Just little scripts, breaking old games, poking at mods. And one night, I found a string of code in a forum that wasn’t supposed to exist. A map. Not Google Earth, not NASA, not even military stuff. This was different. The tags were wrong. Like somebody tried to build reality using Javascript.
And the glitch looked exactly like when I broke the skybox in Minecraft.
Maya leaned over. “You’re making that face again. The one where you’re about to tell me something stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” I said, though my voice cracked. “I think this is code.”
She blinked at me. “Code. Like computer code?”
“Yes. The sky is running code. And it’s bugging out.”
She laughed so hard she almost spilled her drink. “You think we live in a video game? That’s your theory?”
I didn’t answer. Because the longer I watched, the more I believed it.
At 3 PM, the glitch spread. Whole clouds froze midair, then reset, shifting back a few feet like a skipped frame. Cars stalled at the intersection. A bird hovered, wings locked, then zipped forward like someone hit fast forward.
People panicked for real then. Sirens, shouting, professors herding students indoors like walls would protect them from whatever was happening overhead.
I pulled out my laptop. Maya groaned. “Seriously? Now you're going to hack the sky?”
“Just wait.”
My fingers shook but the muscle memory carried me. The old code was still there, buried in a folder I thought I’d deleted.
When I ran it, my screen lit up with the same tags. SkyBox.Render. SunCycle.Loop. Cloud_Density.
And one line flashing red. "Update Failed. Retry?"
My throat went dry.
“What did you do?” Maya asked.
“Nothing yet.”
The cursor blinked. "Retry? Y/N"
I looked at her. She shook her head.
“Sam, don’t. You don’t know what that does.”
“But if nobody does anything...”
The sky above us cracked again, this time with sound. A sharp electronic pop, like feedback through a speaker. People screamed.
I pressed Y.
The screen froze. Then lines of green text scrolled so fast I couldn’t catch them. My laptop whined, fans spinning like it would take off.
And then silence.
We looked up. The sky was fine. Too fine. Perfect blue, no clouds, sun stuck high like it forgot to move.
Everyone cheered. Hugged. Someone shouted, “It’s over!”
But I knew it wasn’t. My laptop screen was still glowing.
New text appeared, slow this time, and deliberate.
"Patch Applied. USER: Sam. Registered"
Maya leaned in. “Sam, what does that mean?”
I closed the laptop, heart racing.
“I think I just signed up for something.”
The sun above us flickered once, like a wink.
And for the first time all day, I wished I had just ignored the glitch.