Fresh New Antivirus

Ch. 16 - Accidents Happen

Fresh decided to see how things play out with those two. He could always just ban them later if they did any hacking.

Besides, it might be fun to have some sidekicks.

He took the time they were deciding his offer to look through the code of the multiverse - the fire walls and 'code puzzles' weren't even a problem with the fourth wall deactivated, he just ignored them. Deep, deep down, he found some interesting things. Along with some info that could give a weaker skeleton an existential crisis.

Apparently, AVFreshVerse (which he learned was the name of the multiverse) was specifically an MMORPG? For Hackers and Players? It seemed to have been outsourced to multiple external universes as well. It went under the game name Underhacked - lame, but so were all the AU names.

Majority of people only had Player accounts, even if they did a little hacking. There were on average one thousand people Playing at a time.

For Players it was advertised as a game 'where no one had to die.' Didn't seem to be doing so well on that front.

For Hacker-Players it was advertised as a way to 'be everyone's genuine friend.' Also didn't seem to be doing well.

Fresh already knew those with the title Hacker were labeled as people who go too far in their code manipulations. Infinite loop programs, entering someone else's game as a non-spectator without permission, sending viruses, duplicating Outcodes, etc.

Sprite swapping, speed modification, bug exploitation were all good though. Even getting the Hacker Ending it wouldn't be enough to get the title.

Hackers were those who could irreparably damage the multiverse or fourth wall as a whole.

A Player trading Sans with a Frogget and making themself run a little faster wasn't going to cause the multiverse to implode.

The idea of Hacker-Players never came up though. Those playing on a multiverse scale rather than individual AU's. Perhaps Void overlooked it? Wouldn't surprise Fresh.

Looking as deep as he was, he could tell the codes were constantly moving and adapting as if they were alive. Letters surrounding Players and Hackers like agitated multicolored bees. It made finding them a lot easier than he thought it would have been. Same with the balance holders, deities, himself - it was kind of dizzying now.

It was like he was looking at almost everything 'important' simultaneously in a weird, non-seeing way. He was getting queasy. Must be his limit, even though he could tell that if he looked just a little harder, there was still more he wasn't seeing. He was blocked by what felt/looked like a wall of thick code.

The question was, why go through all the effort to involve these codeless universes and who was behind it? Was there even a reason?

Just then Fresh saw something that made it all make sense - a Player Reset.

His shades went dark.

Fresh received a pop up.

<Higher Management requests Admin Fresh stop looking at them like that.>

Tagged on in a much smaller/different font was the word 'Bakka.' (... couldn' resist XD)

Fair enough.

YO-LO.

Fresh decreased the intensity of his stare 'backing' away from the image he had seen. He was significantly less queasy now that he could see the walls as walls and not code walls.

Higher Management, eh? Is that what the code is calling itself? And isn't that the same type of notification format he saw when coding himself?? The 'Bakka' seemed different though.