Old Rule: Devin Washington has the right to have sex with any woman he wants

You write the words in the notebook, your hand moving steadily across the page. The rule joins the others, ink drying on paper that looks completely ordinary. You set the pen down and close the notebook.

The change is instant but imperceptible. There's no sensation, no shift in the air. Reality simply adjusts itself around the new rule. You stand up from your desk and walk to the window again, looking down at the street below.

The women are still there, still beautiful, still going about their lives. But now something fundamental has changed about your relationship to them. You have a right now. A right that didn't exist before. You try to process what that means.

You pick up your phone and look at Marcus's text again. 'Hey man, you coming tonight? Riverside Gallery, 7pm. Could be good for networking.' The gallery opening. You wonder what that world will look like now—a room full of beautiful women, and you with this new right written into the fabric of reality itself.

You walk to your bathroom mirror and study your reflection. You're still you, still part of that 2 percent. But now you're part of a 2 percent with a power that extends over the 98 percent. The thought should probably disturb you more than it does, but mostly you feel a rush of possibility.

Your phone buzzes with another notification. Instagram. You open it and scroll through. A local artist you follow has posted a photo from her studio—she's stunning, wearing paint-splattered overalls, her hair tied back. You wonder if she knows. If any of them know. But of course they don't. This is just how the world works now. How it's always worked, according to reality.

You think about the gallery tonight. About Marcus, who you're pretty sure is now a woman even though some part of your memory insists otherwise. About all the women who will be there, networking, discussing art, living their lives completely unaware that you've rewritten the rules of existence itself.

The notebook sits on your desk, closed now, its pages holding three rules that have fundamentally altered reality. You've had it for just over two hours and you've already transformed the entire demographic composition of humanity and given yourself rights that make you pause when you think about them too directly.

You look at the time. It's getting late in the afternoon. You could go to the gallery opening. You could write more rules first. You could test this new rule, see how it actually manifests. The possibilities spread out before you like paths in a maze, each one leading somewhere different.