The D-Bug

You know those stories about regular, ordinary people? Probably not. They're just regular, ordinary people. If their lives were interesting enough to tell stories about, they wouldn't be regular, ordinary people. But you throw in anything extraordinary, and they're the latest sensation of the world. This one kid that lived in an abusive family, until they learned they could use magic. This other kid that chanced upon powerful technology out of the trash can. They're still regular people, so you could still relate to them, but the things that happen to them are anything but ordinary.

That actually used to be my favorite kind of book to read. The closet wizards and accidental adventurers of the world were my every day fantasy. I'd prayed every day that something would happen to me that'd put me in their ranks. But every day I'd wake up, eat breakfast, go for a walk, and find that all the interesting events of the day had just missed me. It wasn't a problem with where I lived - my city was well known for its prevalence of Weird Stuff - but maybe I either wasn't looking hard enough, or it's one of those "watched pot" things, and it'll never happen if you expect it to. Such was the life of an unemployed college grad, I supposed.

I rolled out of bed at about 9 in the morning. I was tired of the daily grind, of applying for work and idly maintaining my various journals and micro-blog accounts. Nothing was happening, online or off. As I closed my five year old laptop (hey, it'd gotten me through a four-year degree at least), I swore I saw something flickering out the corner of my eye. Did that wall just turn black for a split second? No. Walls don't flicker. I even said this to myself. "Walls don't flicker," I declared, staring at the painted slab of drywall next to my door. Sure enough, it didn't. Not while I was watching it, anyway.

The call of food beckoned me, so I stepped out the door and headed for the building's dining room. This wasn't really an apartment complex, or at least, it didn't used to be. At one point this was part of a major hotel chain, but it'd gone bankrupt about a decade ago, and the buildings were all sold off either as office space or for redevelopment. This was one of the few that, more or less, remained as it was. It didn't operate as a hotel anymore, though...more like super-economy micro-flats. For those underprivileged losers who can't afford to rent an apartment that has more than two rooms in it. But amazingly, most of the old hotel amenities still operated. Rooms didn't have kitchens or that sort of thing, but the hotel got cable TV, wireless internet, and the "continental breakfast" part now operated as a low-cost diner. Residents only, but you still had to pay for food. Just not as much, because part of it came out of rent. And even then, rent wasn't that hard.

I didn't get much for food. I didn't feel like I needed that much. My stomach was probably going to try to eat itself someday, but my appetite was probably as big as a thimble, so I just grabbed a banana, paid the fifty cents for it, and munched on it as I hiked up the stairs back to my room. As I carded the door open (the new building owners never changed the old hotel key card locks), I could have sworn I saw the thermostat by the door giving off a faint white glow. On closer inspection, it wasn't glowing at all. I rubbed the boogers out of my eyes and started walking towards the bed, but felt something small clip me in the arm. Probably a bee or something, I figured, and made to keep moving, but the buzzing noise that was now hovering behind me was annoying enough that I forced myself to deal with it.

I grabbed wildly at the air, somehow convinced that this was the way to deal with buzzing insect annoyances. I mean, it'd been working for most of my life. I'd only been bitten by a mosquito maybe...once a year? But this wasn't the time of year for mosquitos to be around, and whatever this was felt larger. Something almost the size of a Lego dude. And, if my ears weren't mistaken, it was squeaking. My hand closed around it at last. I still didn't know what I was holding, but I was going to let it outside. If it was that big, it was probably a protected species. I reached the sliding glass door that led to my tiny apartment's balcony (deceptively listed as part of the overall square footage, despite being barely large enough to place a chair and small table), but a pang of guilt stopped me from opening the door and throwing my catch out. I opened my hand slowly, careful not to let my prisoner escape.

Inside was not an insect or action figure, but what looked like a tiny girl. I could only barely make out any detail (I rubbed my eyes again to make sure I wasn't just sleepy), but her clothes looked like nothing I'd ever seen a real woman wearing outside of the local sci-fi convention, and her fairy-like wings made me wonder if I was dreaming about my old teenage anime obsession again. I opened my hand all the way, allowing her to get to her feet. She brushed herself off, then gave me a polite bow. "I apologize for the inconvenience. There has been an error." Her voice was sort of mouse-like...or at least, it sounded like cartoon mice tended to sound.

"An error?" I must have had a really dumb look on my face. What kind of facial expression was I supposed to have? I was pretty sure nobody like me had ever seen this before, so it's not like there was any kind of precedent I was supposed to follow.

"A small, correctable glitch in collision just beneath the thermostat. It is unlikely to be exploited, but I have been dispatched to correct it nonetheless. It should only take a few minutes." She bowed again. "Then I'll be on my way, and you can continue doing what you were doing."

"I'm sorry, but...what? Collision?" It was too early in the morning for this. "Am I still asleep?" I hadn't meant to say it out loud.

"No? Not unless there's a glitch in your consciousness. Would you like me to run a scan?" She flitted out of my hand towards my head, startling me enough to make me walk backwards into the thermostat. "Oh! Oh, my, please don't do that," she continued, now hovering in front of my face. "That's not recommended."

Now more awake than I was, on account of the bump, I needed some damn answers. "What are you?"

"Oh, someone asked! Now I get to do this!" She performed an elaborate mid-air pirouette. "I am an agent of the Holy Algorithm, tasked with the upkeep and maintenance of the underlying code of the universe. I am...a D-Bug!" She held her triumphant pose for a moment, but looked a bit unsure of herself. "Did I do that right? ...Oh. I wasn't supposed to do that at all."

"You're not in trouble, are you?" Why I was asking that, and not "what the hell is the Holy Algorithm?", was beyond me.

"I'm sorry! Please don't report me!"

"I'm not gonna...who would I report you TO?"

"I-I can't tell you!"

"What do you think I'm gonna do? I'm just...some guy! I'm not...hell, I don't even know what you're doing."

"Just don't tell anybody you saw me!"

I frustratedly pinched my cheek, convinced that this was a really annoying dream. Well, it wasn't. But the momentary pain brought me some much-needed focus. "No, I'm not gonna...I'm not sure anybody would believe me if I told them."

"Then, please step back - I'm sorry, step AWAY, not back - and stand by while I apply an update to local collision geometry." I followed her direction, carefully stepping in any direction other than backwards. The D-Bug, taking similar care, slowly hovered over to the bit of wall below the thermostat, extended both arms toward the wall, and began to...I'm not sure, it looked like she was talking to the wall, but so fast that I couldn't understand what the words were, let alone what language it was...if it was even a language that was meant to be spoken. The wall seemed to flicker a bit, disappearing for just a fraction of a second, with the thermostat remaining exactly where it always was. When the flickering stopped, I wasn't convinced anything had changed. But maybe I wasn't meant to. The fairy-like D-Bug returned to the airspace in front of my eyes. "Installation was successful," she said.

"What did you do?"

"I downloaded and installed an update to local collision geometry."

"No, I got that part, but what did it do?"

"Local physics calculations have been generating undefined behavior. If you had tried to stick your hand in there, it would have tried to pull you through."

"Sounds...unpleasant?"

"Between you and me, it's just another day at the office." She looked at me expectantly. "But before I say anything more, I need you to accept an agreement." She whipped out an old-looking paper scroll. To my scale, it looked like a rolled-up strip of masking tape.

"Accept a...I'm sorry, that doesn't sound right to me. A promise, you mean?"

"The legally-binding terms of this non-disclosure agreement provide that under no circumstances is the information divulged to be recorded, repeated, remembered, or..."

"So, don't tell anyone? Yeah. Fine. I agree."

"Huh?" She seemed surprised. "Usually people don't...just accept it right away."

"I've been blindly accepting license agreements for basically everything I do, for most of my life. It's not like I have friends I can go tell."

"You...really don't? That's so sad."

"Look at this place." I gestured around the two rooms that made up the little former hotel room that was my apartment. There was a bed, too short for me; a desk, just a repurposed table out of the dining room; an armoire, with half the hangars missing; and the bathroom, basically a small closet with a toilet and a shower that was never hot enough. "Would a guy who lives in a room like this have friends?"

"I would imagine it's not the home that matters," she suggested.

"Well, the point is, I don't know anybody to tell. And like I said, who would believe me?"

"Maybe I can be your friend. Then you can tell me!"

"But...you already know all of that stuff, because you're the one that told me."

"Oh. Whoops!"

"In any case, though, if you really wanted to be my friend, what's your name?"

"I am D-Bug Agent number zero-three-nine-five-nine-seven-nine-two," she announced excitedly.

"Just a number? Not a name?"

"We don't really use them. The Holy Algorithm dispatches us by memory address."

"Well, let's see...my parents had the bright idea to name me Raphael, but I go by Raf." I suddenly remembered I still had a banana in my hand that I hadn't even unpeeled yet. "Did you just not have a name at all, or something?"

The D-Bug looked embarrassed. "No."

"Well, maybe we can work on that later." I finally pulled the peel on the banana. It wasn't quite ripe enough yet, so it required some effort to get off. "So, uh, what exactly does a D-Bug do?"

"Like I said, our job is to maintain the universe, correct errors and glitches, and perform general upkeep."

"What kind of errors? You said something about me getting pulled through the wall..." Only now did I really grasp that that'd be a bit painful. Even though she fixed the wall, I felt a need to be somewhere away from it, so I sat over at my table and started to munch on the banana.

The D-Bug landed on my laptop and continued explaining things. "Well, there's collision glitches like that, but those are easy to fix. The real ones you want to watch out for are integer overflows, underflows, sensations or emotions being more powerful than they should be..."

"Is that why I cry in the shower sometimes?"

"...No? I don't think so, anyway...I could go backtrace your shower stall and see, though, if you wanted me to."

"No, no, it was a joke." It kind of wasn't.

"Okay, so, you know those times when something gets really popular and nobody knows why?"

"What, like POGs, or fidget spinners, or something?"

"Exactly those," she said. "The reason they get popular isn't because they're in the right place or anything. It's because someone chanced upon a glitch. People feel like they need these things and can't imagine a life without them, because somehow these things have become variables attached to them instead of just being, well, things." I started thinking about all the useless fads I'd ever been a part of. Trading cards, stupid poses for photos, that one video game where you collected all the stuff... "But if you're thinking about what I think you're thinking about, just because you like something doesn't mean you weren't supposed to. It's when these things start getting hold of people who, by all rights, would never be interested in them. Or when some random guy makes millions of dollars off something dumb. Or someone becomes so hated that his reputation rolls over and he becomes venerated as a religious figure."

"So it's the outliers, then, that are your problem."

"I mean, we do have to go through the process of backtracing and figuring out which memory values were being touched that weren't supposed to be..."

"People do this on purpose?"

"I don't think they realize they're doing what they're doing. They might figure out the pattern or something, but it's not like regular people can just peek into the source code and change things."

"And what about me? Am I a threat? Is it a glitch that I'm not getting anywhere? Something you can correct for?"

"You don't have the required permissions for me to tell you that." The D-Bug faced away from me and folded her long-gloved arms.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make demands."

"No, no, I understand where you were coming from, Raf, but I can't tell you anything about yourself or where you reside in memory. That information is for administrators only."

"Okay, this is actually starting to bother me...you're talking about all this as if we're all living in a computer. Is this a simulation? Am I living in...oh, what was that movie?"

"No," she said. "Well, yes. And no. Um...both?" She turned back around. Going by her face, she was as confused as I was, now. "I don't really know how to put it without telling you information that you're not privileged for."

"What's the Holy Algorithm, then?"

"I can't tell you that, either."

"You can't just drop terms on me and not tell me what they mean."

"If you knew too much, you'd be as bad as...THEM." She was restraining herself from naming names, I was pretty sure.

"Alright, alright, fine," I concede through a mouthful of banana. "Well, if you're done here, I can't imagine I'm gonna be much of a problem for you, so you can go on home or whatever."

"No!" she burst. "I can't leave you now!" She took a few steps closer and leaned in as if to whisper. "Because I told you all this stuff, it is now my task to monitor you."

"But...I thought you said I wasn't a threat?"

"I said nothing."

"Well, whatever...I should be going for a walk today, though, so if you're supposed to be keeping tabs on me, as per your...Holy Algorithm, you said?" I saw her nod at me. "You're probably gonna want to come along."