Margot Kaylan sat in a reclining chair looking down at her creation. Fingers steepled, eyes narrowed. She didn’t look at the world. She looked at the code instead. Watching the trillions and trillions of 0s and 1s scroll through her vision. She was looking for bugs. For errors and possible errors. Her main concern was the world’s stability.

Her partner and husband Monty had created constructs both visible and invisible to assist her in her task. The constructs were each quite competent, their creator had instilled in them a fair bit of knowledge and equipped them with an ability to learn and improve at their tasks. All the same, she still liked to look things over herself. Just to reassure herself.

Right now, more than ever, Margot needed that reassurance. She and Monty had big plans for this world and according to those plans, there would be a big update. A subtle change that would have major effects on how things ran in Uhrwerk. Thus it became all the more important for Margot to be assured of the stability of the base world.

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Channel 5715 was one of the ten thousand channels of Null. It also happened to the channel that Alex’s hometown, Diz, was located in. Diz was a small town. Too fucking small, in Alex’s opinion.

It was a small town with a big opinion of itself, thus despite having only sixty thousand people living in it, a single mall, a single library, and barely rating its own depot in the state public transportation system, they still called themselves a city. Diz City.

Alex sighed, as she looked out the window and realized that she could see the entire “city” from where she was sitting in class. Her school, Diz City Preparatory Academy, was built on a hill and overlooked the city below. Any window above the ground floor would give one a clear view of everything within the city’s boundaries.

Alex couldn’t wait for the day she could leave this place. Like many teenagers her age, she couldn’t help but anticipate the moment where her boundaries would expand, and she’d free to go out into the world. Unfortunately, those thoughts were followed by more negative ponderings. Like Alex’s concern about her family’s considerable debt, and whether she could even afford to go to the convenience store after class, never mind going to college abroad.

“Miss Peterson? Miss Peterson?” repeated a firm, harsh, voice.

Alex startled, her reverie interrupted by the teacher. She sat up straight and shifted her attention to the front of the room where a peeved looking Ms. Garret was standing. Tapping her foot impatiently.

“Miss Peterson. Nice to have you back with us on Null. Perhaps you can tell the class what the answer to the problem on the board is?” said Ms. Garret. Using a tone voice that promised consequences if she failed to give a correct answer.

“Er...Ye-, yes, Ms. Garret,” said Alex. Standing because she was being addressed.

Alex narrowed her eyes at the board. Suddenly all business. She looked at the unfinished formula that Ms. Garret had written and panicked for a second as she struggled to make sense of the numbers on the blackboard.

She managed to pull together an answer, and by some miracle, it was correct. Thus she escaped without drawing more of the teacher’s ire and she was allowed to slip back into her seat.

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“*Snrkt*, you should have seen your stupid face,” said an obnoxious voice at Alex’s back.

Class ended, and Alex heard the sound of someone snickering behind her follow the sound of the school chime. She didn’t bother turning around to glare at the other person. She just shouldered her bag.

“Oi, don’t pout! Wait for me,” said a voice.

Alex ignored said voice. Just as she always did. Ms. Garret’s class was the last class of the day, and Alex didn’t really have any time to waste. She had a shift at the laundromat, where she worked, today.

“Oi, wait up!” said the voice.

Alex continued to ignore the speaker. Only deigning to give them her attention once she’d reached the bus stop to the side of the school’s front gates and she didn’t really have any choice.

Technically speaking, the speaker was a friend of Alex’s, Zara Serrano. A short and scrawny half-mermaid girl, with blue-green hair and scales showing at her temples. Alex and Zara weren’t really friends by choice so much as it seemed that fate, destiny, or whomever, had decided to tie the two girls together back when they met in the second grade.

Their mom’s worked and drank together, they lived in the same apartment block, and they’d been going to the same school for years now. They actually kind of hated each other a little, but after a brief experiment with hostilities during the ninth grade, they’d found that being half-assed friends was easier than being half-assed enemies.

“You’re a mean bitch, you know that?” said Zara. Huffing and puffing, because physical activity of any sort, had never been her bag.

“Nh...Sure. Why not?” said an apathetic Alex. Opening her interface to check the social media profiles of some of her favourite indie bands, while she waited for the bus to arrive.

“Okay, guess what!... I have got the biggest news,” said Zara. Spinning around her childhood friend to get the much taller girl’s attention.

“Hey, are you listening?!... This shit is huge!” said Zara. Waving her hand in the other girl’s face, purposely moving her hand through the area where Alex’s AR-window was being projected.

“Nhm, What is it? Did you spot someone else making out with Jessica Vincent behind the gym?” said Alex. Her tone still disinterested. Though her annoyance with the other girl was starting to leak through as well.

“No...And that’s not funny! You know my Jessy wouldn’t cheat on me!”

“....” Alex just looked at her friend. Her bored expression momentarily tinged with pity.

Zara frowned and looked to the side. Her hands clenching and unclenching.

“Again...My Jessy wouldn’t cheat on me again,” said Zara. Laughing uncomfortably.

“Look do you want to hear the big news or not!?” said Zara. Pouting as she forcefully changed the subject.

Alex sighed and then relented. Feeling chastened after purposefully stepping on a landmine.

“Fine, Fine...What is it?”

“I found the app…” said Zara. Her voice hushed and low.

Alex froze. Her boredom immediately vanishing as the urban legend the girls had been chasing since middle-school was mentioned.

“You mean…the app?” said Alex.

“Yes...the app. The app we’ve been looking for since we were kids. The app that’ll get us out of this shitty dead-end town,” said Zara. Her blue eyes filled with a faintly manic zeal.

“...Spill… Tell me everything,” said Alex. Her eyes glowing. Her desire agitating her imp ancestry.