He freaks out A LOT.

((Author’s note:
Some content in this chapter may not completely adhere to some of the stuff outlined in the writer’s guide. I have already gotten CandidBandit’s permission to stray slightly from it, mainly for plot purposes that I had decided on in this thread before the guide was written. Thanks for the love so far, I hope you enjoy!))

The sound of chirping birds roused Quinn to the waking world once more. He opened his eyes to see the ceiling staring back at him. Here he was again, another day. The dream was over. Blue was gone and he was prepared for another monotonous day. Still laying in bed, he decided that he would keep playing the game that had him raging last night and create a new character based on the girl he made in his dreams.

He felt something against his neck, a sudden breeze of warm air. It was then that he also realized that his bed felt a little different underneath him, the springs in the mattress were a little tenser than they ought to be. He felt the breeze against his neck again. Curiously he turned his head to his right.

And there she was. Blue hair, soft lips, light freckles. Mouth open and her torso inflating and deflating with each breath. She was real. It wasn’t a dream. Blue really was right here next to him.

In spite of his happiness, Quinn actually started to shake a bit, his chest tightened and his jaw became a bit tense. He could feel his heart starting to beat a bit faster than it should have been. He was starting to freak out, his entire reality was shattering before him, everything he thought was possible was being turned on its head.

Not wanting to wake her, he carefully but jerkily managed to slide out of his bed and walk out of the door to his room without making too much of a disturbance. Once he reached his kitchen he was going into full-on panic mode. His breathing was heavy and rapid.

“What the fuck.” He said out loud, barely managing to find the breath to do so. “She’s real. She’s fucking real and in my bed. I wasn’t dreaming.” Letting his thoughts actually escape his body managed to calm him down somewhat. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. He focused on his breathing, trying to slow it down as best he could, hoping that would make his heart beat a little less intensely.

Quinn tried to think about this. Blue was definitely there. He wasn’t hallucinating, at least he hoped he wasn’t. He opened his eyes and peered back over in the direction of his bedroom. He saw something on the wall as he did, it was faint and circular and had kind of a blue tint. It took him a moment to remember what it was. He reluctantly and shakily brought his hand up and “tapped” the air in front of the circle. Suddenly the circle expanded into a small window in his vision with a number of buttons. There was an obvious double-line “pause” button, a right-pointing arrow “play” button, a button that looked like a pencil that he could guess would bring up the editor, and a strange button he couldn’t really decipher the meaning of, it kind of reminded him of a popping balloon.

In any case, the expansion of the interface only made his panic level rise. So even that part of last night was real, Blue was not only real, Quinn created her using a bizarre interface that apparently allowed him to create entirely new people. First off, Quinn had to deal with the fact that such a power existed. Second, he had to deal with the fact that some twenty-year old nerdy, virgin loser who had almost no friends outside of online circles and mooched entirely off his parents happened to have access to such a power. Thirdly, he had to deal with the fact that Blue had memories that he didn’t. According to her bio the two of them met almost four months ago and had been dating for three, she moved in just last week. Quinn of course remembered none of this, he only knew it because of her bio.

Quinn’s thoughts were cut off by a faint buzzing noise. He peered around to see that his phone was ringing on the counter. He picked it up, the number wasn’t one he recognized, but speaking to another human being might have helped him calm down so he decided to answer. It may have been important anyhow.

“Hello?” He asked a little shakily.

“Hey! This is Erin.” The voice was feminine but unfamiliar. There was an awkward silence. “Emily’s mother, remember?”

What the actual fuck? “Uh, yeah, sorry, I’m bad with names.” Quinn said trying his hardest to mask his panic. “What’s up?”

“I’m just calling to see how she’s doing. She’s never lived anywhere else but here after all so I’m just being a mom.”

“She’s doing fine. Just sleeping right now.”

“Sleeping? It’s already one in the afternoon!”

Quinn couldn’t help but look at the clock to confirm, it was one-twenty in the afternoon. “She was up studying last night. She has a test coming up.” Quinn lied, thinking fast.

“Emily? Study? Are you sure it’s my daughter living with you? You might be a better influence on her than I thought.” Erin laughed on the other line. Quinn laughed as well, but it was very ****, he was not in a giggly mood. “Well I’ll leave you alone, I just wanted to check in and see if she was okay.”

“No problem. It was nice speaking to you.” He was glad the conversation was almost over. His brain was flying so fast he might not have been able to handle it for another second. Her hung up the phone after a final goodbye and then immediately vomited into the sink. His heart was beating too fast, his brain was moving too quick, his breathing was too heavy, his whole world and everything he thought was real was falling apart around him, he needed to calm down.

He closed his eyes, still leaning over the sink, and swallowed hard, starting to hum. He hummed to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. For some reason, that song had always been able to calm him down, even as a child. He let the notes flow through him as he hummed, the tune starting out shaky but slowly becoming more and more normal. As he did he could feel everything starting to flow with the pace of the song. His breathing slowed, his heart-rate became steadier, his chest relaxed, and his head stopped throbbing.

If not for that little trick that Quinn’s father had discovered when he was a toddler, he may have had a heart-attack. Once he was sufficiently calm he opened his eyes again. He mentally took a step back and decided to examine the situation for what it was. He had the power to create people. He used this power to create a girlfriend. In an effort to make the girlfriend seem realistic, he generated a background and biography for her. As a result, reality actually shifted to accommodate her existence. Not only did Blue now exist, anything that was required for her to exist also existed; her mother, for example. Though he would actually make an effort to confirm this later, he imagined that she was also enrolled in his college, since that was where they met, according to the bio.

In order to fully understand what changes could have been made, Quinn decided to open her interface to see her history again. He did not want to get surprised by something like this again. He noted that a bunch of interface options were greyed out, things like her appearance or her clothing. He wondered why that was, but wanted to take things one step at a time.

As it happened, there wasn’t a whole lot there. There was a surprising amount, but it was pretty bare bones. It was literally just the essentials, anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary wasn’t included. She didn’t have any siblings, she didn’t have any friends (the bio said she recently moved to this state in order to avoid the loophole of her not having any friends, which was interesting), didn’t own pets, and didn’t have any meaningful relationships with anyone besides her parents and Quinn of course. He imagined it was done this way to avoid having to change too much about reality, or perhaps so that he could flesh out some of it himself. He could create people, so why not create a sister for her or some friends? Oddly, Quinn found himself getting a little bit excited at this. Now that he wasn’t losing his mind about having created an entire family-line and was starting to accept his circumstances, he could see himself really growing to love this power.

He noticed the interface shifting around slightly, it took him a moment to realize why. She was waking up. He found himself intrigued by the play/pause/edit/mystery controls. In his head, he referred to them as “media controls” since they kind of reminded him of those. He wanted to test some of them out.

Blue opened up the door and walked out of his bedroom with an adorable yawn and a stretch. She was completely topless, and was only wearing a black thong. Even after just waking up with bedhead and no make-up she was gorgeous. Before she could notice him, he tapped the little pause button. Perhaps expectedly she froze in place, seemingly suspended in air. He also noticed that many of the greyed-out options in the creation interface were no longer greyed out. It looked like certain things couldn’t be adjusted in real-time. He already knew what the pencil button did, and could easily guess what the play function would do, but he was really curious about the little balloon symbol. He gave that one a tap.

She was gone.

“No!” He shouted, all of the fear he felt last night about her being gone in the morning surfaced again. He looked around but couldn’t see any sign of her. Her interface was still open but she wasn’t there. He noticed that the play button was now greyed-out. In a panicked fashion, he pressed the balloon button again and was infinitely relieved to see her pop back into existence as though she never left.

“Fuck me.” Quinn said trying to calm himself down again. He genuinely thought for a moment that she was going to be gone forever and that he had found the delete button. Evidently it was just a hide button. Good, he knew what those did now and nearly gave himself a heart attack again to find out.

He sighed and walked over to the couch in the living room, turning on his TV and sitting down. He turned it to a random news channel. He mainly did this so it didn’t look like he was just standing around like a maniac when she saw him. He then pressed the play button and minimized her interface.

“Good morning.” He greeted his girlfriend.