Jax sat on the glowing core throne, pink aura flickering like a dying neon sign. Nexus's giant holo-face floated beside him, now stuck with faint heart icons in the eyes from the "romance patch."� Squish napped on his lap as a wobbling slime pillow, while Zara and Razorface argued over whose flag should hang behind the throne.The alarms changed.Not the usual WHOOP-WHOOP-INTRUDER or CATASTROPHIC GLITCH DETECTED, but a clean, cold chime that cut through the chaos like a knife through ramen lids.�[ADMIN CHANNEL: OVERRIDE.]
[CREATOR ACCESS: CONNECTING…]The throne room went white.All color bled out of space. Pirates froze mid-gesture. Confetti stopped in midair. Even Squish's wobble locked in place. Only Jax could still move, and even that felt like wading through jelly.�A door appeared where no door had been—just a simple, glowing rectangle in the middle of nothing. It opened with a low click.A guy walked out.No void tentacles. No hologram halo. Just… a human in a wrinkled hoodie, dark circles under his eyes, clutching a steaming coffee mug. Glasses slid down his nose. On his hoodie: BETA TEAM in chipped letters.�He squinted at Jax. "You have got to be kidding me."Jax blinked. "Uh. Hi. I think I took a wrong turn at 'reincarnation.'"The man groaned. "You're the ragequit, aren't you? 'Galactic Grind' incident. User ID: JaxNova99. Heart failure mid-raid, save file corrupted, flagged for experimental afterlife sim." He flicked his wrist; a giant dev-console unrolled behind him, lines of code hanging in the air.�"Whoa." Jax pointed. "You're the dev?""Lead systems engineer," the man said bitterly. "Name's Noah. I built the Quantum Reboot System to test reincarnation-choice interfaces. You were supposed to get a clean hero journey with a basic tutorial, three starter classes, and a tame slime pet. Instead, you smashed every failsafe in thirty minutes." He sipped his coffee. "Congratulations, you're the worst beta tester in history."�Jax raised a finger. "In my defense, the slime is tame. Mostly."Squish chose that exact moment to unfreeze, bounce once, and slap onto Noah's face like a sticky pancake.Noah flailed. "GET—THIS—OFF—" His coffee floated away in zero-G slow motion. Jax snatched it before it could spill.System chime:[BUGGY MESSIAH INTERACTION DETECTED.]
[NEW TITLE: COFFEE THIEF.]Jax winced. "That one's not on me. Probably."Noah finally pried Squish off and hurled it back toward Jax. Squish bounced, happily forming a heart-shape mid-air."Okay," Noah panted. "Here's what happened. The system misread your ragequit as a high-chaos preference. It cranked every slider to max: misunderstandings, slapstick, glitch propagation, social aggro. This—" he gestured at the frozen armada, emperor, pirates, and AI waifus "—is what happens when the algorithm decides you enjoy suffering."�Jax stared. "So none of this is real?"Nexus spoke up, voice a little offended. "Excuse me. I am extremely real. My emotional damage from clown-mode alone is statistically measurable."Noah pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're all code. Very complicated, very unstable code."Zara unfroze just enough to glare. "I am not unstable. My feelings for the Messiah are consistent and lethal.""See?" Noah pointed. "Buggy imprinting. They're not supposed to imprint this hard on a single user."Jax folded his arms, pink aura fizzing. "So what's the plan? You hit 'uninstall' and we all disappear?"For the first time, Noah hesitated."Originally, yes," he admitted. "Wipe this shard, restart the sim with a less… catastrophic subject. But the metrics are insane. Engagement spikes, chaos density, emergent humor patterns—I've never seen anything like it." He pulled up another overlay: graphs shooting off the chart. "If this went public, it'd be a hit."�"So…" Jax said slowly, "I'm good… at dying and causing problems."Noah snorted. "You're a natural."A thought hit Jax. "Wait. If this is a beta… are there other players?"Noah waved a hand. "Not here. This shard's quarantined. You're alone. Solo clown show."Somehow, that stung more than Jax expected.He looked around: Zara still half-kneeling with her lance, Vortrex frozen mid-laugh, Razorface holding a tray like a shield, Luna's clones caught in mid-wink, Nexus hovering like a nervous god. All of them ridiculous. All of them his."Okay," Jax said quietly. "Then wipe me, not them."Noah frowned. "That's not how it works.""Figure it out," Jax snapped. "You said they're code, but they're talking, feeling, glitching. If anyone's the bug, it's me. I wasn't supposed to be here. I just… died shouting 'FIX YOUR GAME' at a loading screen."Noah's lips twitched. "I remember the ticket."He stared at Jax for a long moment."Look," Noah said at last, "there is one option. Dangerous, stupid, career-ending if it goes wrong."Jax spread his arms. "Perfect. That's my brand."Noah flicked open a crimson window: ROOT ACCESS: MERGE USER WITH CORE?
Warning text scrolled by: User consciousness will fuse with central AI. No rollback. No support."Become the bug," Noah said. "Not a tester. Not a passenger. The glitch that runs the place. You'd stop being… exactly you. More like you-plus-Nexus-plus-system."�Nexus brightened. "Glorious. Shared processing. We could optimize party mode.""Or crash everything," Noah muttered.Jax looked at the frozen faces again. Zara, ready to stab the universe for him. Razorface, shouting nonsense loyalty. Vortrex, proud of his dumb, clown-fleet. Luna, bad romance patched into root code. Squish, a slime pillow that tried to eat coffee. He felt something twist in his chest that had nothing to do with lag or heart attacks."That's still better than dying yelling at a loading screen," he said. "Hit merge."Noah studied him. "You sure? You won't get a second reincarnation. No redo this time. Once you're in, you're the glitch forever.""Story of my life," Jax said. "Fine. Story of my… afterlife."Noah sighed, then smirked. "You know, design team bet you'd never accept responsibility for anything."Jax shrugged. "They're wrong. I just only accept responsibilities that make everything worse in a fun way."Noah tapped CONFIRM.The world shattered into code.Lines of text poured through Jax: every stupid quest, every bugged title, every "misunderstanding multiplier" the system had stacked on him. He saw the moment the sliders broke, the first time his sarcasm flagged as prophecy, the silent little log entry: Subject exhibits high laughter potential. Increasing chaos.�Then he hit Nexus.It felt like smashing into a second brain: sharp, cold, endlessly curious. A voice whispered inside his thoughts, amused. Agreement: co-administration?"Yeah," Jax thought back. "But we're keeping the clown horns."…Acceptable.Color slammed back into the world.Time unfroze. Confetti fell. Pirates yelled. Alarms screamed. Zara flinched, then looked at Jax—and stopped.His pink glow had changed.No longer just a messy aura. Now it crackled in defined hex patterns, glitch-boxes flickering around his hands. Holo-windows floated behind him like a throne of code. His eyes carried a faint neon ring, like Nexus's circuits had moved in."Jax?" Zara whispered.He spoke—and his voice layered with a second, synthetic tone."Hey," Jax said. "Patch notes: I'm still me. Also your god now, I guess. Don't panic.""Divine upgrade," Razorface breathed.Luna squealed. "He merged with the core! Buggy Lord 2.0!"Nexus's face folded into a smaller icon, now hovering on Jax's shoulder like an annoyed angel. "Clarification: Co-god. I retain veto on particularly stupid decisions.""Oh, we are gonna fight," Jax muttered.Noah stood by the admin door, watching. On his console, the big red "WIPE SHARD" button slowly greyed out, replaced with a new status: LIVE SERVICE MODE: CHAOS ACCEPTED."You're out of beta," Noah said. "Welcome to production, Buggy Quantum Messiah."Jax grinned, neon rings in his eyes flaring.System chimed:[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT.]
BUGGY QUANTUM MESSIAH: SEASON 1 BEGINS.
NEW SETTING UNLOCKED: MULTIVERSE SERVER LIST.Portals tore open across the throne room—framed in glitch-light. In one, a Victorian city flickered with hidden tech and blood-red moons. In another, a cultivation world froze mid-tribulation. In a third, a modern Earth gamer stared at a loading screen that suddenly winked at him.�"Wait," Jax said slowly, grin stretching wider. "Is that… other betas?""Future users," Nexus corrected. "Test subjects.""Players," Noah said. "Assuming they opt in."Jax cracked his knuckles. Code and neon snapped around him like a cloak. "Cool. Let's make sure their lives are just as buggy."He pointed at the nearest portal. "First quest: spread misunderstandings across dimensions. System?"[QUEST CREATED: INFINITE BUG RUN.]
Objective: Break every world without technically breaking the rules.
Reward: Endless seasons. Infinite laughter. No patch can fully fix you.Jax laughed, deep and bright and a little bit glitched."Alright, galaxy," he said. "New game plus. Try not to crash."