How Lacy Accidentally Broke the World

Author’s Note: This story was originally a submission for the CHYOA 10th Anniversary contest, where it was an “Honorable Mention.” I thought folks might have a hard time finding it there so I got permission to repost it. Hope you enjoy!

Lacy just felt like it was time for a change. She and Eric had gone on a couple of dates, and they’d gone OK, sure. They’d talked about some TV shows they both liked, he’d made some dumb jokes and paid for dinner, it was fine. But she wasn’t feeling that deeper connection. And if they didn’t have that connection, what were they even doing?

Not to mention that he clearly wanted to go further than a good night kiss, and she… didn’t. She wasn’t a huge fan of sex generally, actually, at least not to the degree everybody else seemed to be, and the thought of being naked in front of another person at all made her feel very self-conscious. She had frizzy red hair she’d never been able to do anything with, two mosquito bites for breasts, and she thought she had too much flab around her waist. She’d done things with guys before, sure, but she’d always regretted it. She felt like she had learned her lesson.

Experimenting was fun, but she had come to college for one reason: to become a nuclear physicist. If she was going to take time out of that for a guy, he needed to be a home run. And Eric just…wasn’t.

And now he was sending her urgent text messages asking to come over to her apartment at ten o’clock at night, when he knew her roommate Chloe was at work? He clearly just wanted to get her to fuck him. No, that didn’t work for Lacy. When Eric got here, she was just going to tell him that she didn’t want to see him anymore.

Except that when Eric arrived, he barged right on in as soon as she opened the door. “Lacy, thank God!” he blurted out. “I’ve really gotta show you something.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and waited nervously. “OK, what is it?”

“I got this text out of the blue today from a number I didn’t recognize. I assumed it was a scam, right? But then I accidentally clicked on the link and it sent me to a page where I could download… well, take a look.”

He held up his cell phone, and she squinted at the screen. It just looked like a Notes file with a bunch of text. The first sentence she could make out was, “All cats are green.”

She sighed and put a hand to her face in frustration. “Eric, I swear to God, if you came over here late at night to tell me you have malware on your phone, I’m gonna… I have class in the morning!”

“No, you don’t understand,” he insisted. “Everything I’ve typed here has happened. It’s been changing the world. The whole world, Lacy!”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Like what, all cats are green? Everyone knows that.”

“No, see, this morning, cats weren’t green,” he said. “They were lots of colors, but none of them were green. Then I wrote that, and everybody thought they had always been green.” He started laughing, not entirely sanely.

“Why would you change what color cats were?” Lacy asked flatly.

“It-it was just a test. I can tell you don’t believe me. I think that, uh, the only person who remembers how things used to be when they make a change is the person named as the user of the App. What if, um, I sent you a link? Then you could see for yourself?”

Lacy sighed again. He clearly wasn’t going to leave until she humored him. “OK, fine.”

The two of them both finagled with their respective phones for a couple of minutes, until finally Lacy had the App open on her phone. As far as it went, anyway. It was just a blank screen with a blinking text cursor.

She looked over at the old, ratty couch she and Chloe had grabbed off a curb one day, then typed, “Lacy has a new couch.”

Nothing happened. She looked expectantly at Eric. “See?”

“Actually, I tried that, too,” he said. “It can’t make rules about specific people, as far as I can tell. It has to apply to the whole world, somehow.”

Lacy rolled her eyes, then typed, “Most universities provide all students with new couches.”

She looked over at her brand new couch. “Holy shit.”

*****

Eric sat on the same couch, watching Lacy pace back and forth. “We-we can’t do anything else. Right?” she stammered. “Not until we understand what this is, right?”

She was a physicist. Or she was studying to be one, anyway. She could figure this out. At least, she knew enough to know how incredibly dangerous this could be. Whatever this was.

“OK,” Eric agreed. “Sure, that makes sense.”

“The littlest changes can have huge consequences, we could break the whole universe, are you getting that?”

“I get it, I get it,” he said. “Just relax and come sit here with me.” He patted the couch next to him. Reluctantly, Lacy walked over and sat down.

“This is serious, Eric,” she said. “You have to tell me, did you change anything else? Just–”

Lacy was cut off by Eric leaning over and trying to kiss her. She immediately pulled back.

“What the hell? You really think we’re going to, what, make out right now? Your phone could blow up the Earth, are you getting that?”

“I just wanted to, y’know, release some tension,” he insisted.

Lacy looked away and licked her lips. “Eric, I, uh… I actually wanted to talk to you, when you came over. I don’t know if this is–”

“I, uh, I have to go to the bathroom,” he said suddenly. “If that’s OK.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Lacy said.

She watched her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend walk away, her fists balled in anger. That asshole really had come over here looking to have sex, even with the entire world turned upside down. God, men were so…

She blinked.

When Lacy opened her eyes, she was still on the couch, but she was laying across it, naked. God, what was taking Eric so long? She just wanted him to come back and fuck her. They’d already banged on the last couple dates, and honestly it wasn’t anything special. She’d been with a lot of guys, and Eric was just the latest. She was starting to think that she needed a change.

Then Eric came back from the bathroom. He stopped hard in his tracks, staring at her.

“What, you’ve seen me naked before,” she said. “Now bring your cock over here. I’ve got to take my mind off of this stupid app.”

Eric didn’t need to be told twice. He wasn’t the greatest, honestly, but a dick was a dick, and his was fairly decent-sized. Once he was inside her, she moved her own hand down to her crotch to rub her clit. If she could at least get off, everything would be OK. Everything would be…

“What the fuck?”

Of course Chloe had walked in on them. Eric and Lacy pulled away from each other, and Lacy grabbed one of her new throw pillows to partially cover herself. Eric was loudly apologizing as he desperately tried to put his pants back on.

“Goddamnit, Lace, can we talk in private?” Chloe growled. “Maybe after you put some clothes on?”

*****

Chloe still seemed angry when Lacy joined her in her bedroom. The two of them had met in their high school science program, and when they both got into the same school they thought that maybe they should room together. But the housing situation in this town was insane, and they were lucky to get this tiny off-campus apartment together. Lacy had always thought her friend was the better-looking one, with her short, platinum blonde hair, and her actually knowing how to put makeup on, and her figure… and yet Lacy was always the one ending up in bed with random guys. They both knew why, too.

“Look,” Chloe said, “I know that the nerdier a girl is, the more likely she is to put out on a first date, but this is the sixth time in the past couple months, Lace!”

“You’re right,” Lacy agreed. “Nerd girls always put out. It's, I dunno, a rule? So you can’t blame me, right?”

“But I don’t have to live with it,” Chloe insisted. “I deserve to be able to walk into my own living room without worrying about there being some naked guy there. You guys couldn’t even go in your room?”

“I know, and I’m sorry…”

“Look, you know I care about you, but if this happens again, I’m leaving,” Lacy said evenly.

When Lacy walked back out to the living room, Eric was now fully dressed. “I should go,” he said. She just nodded. When he was gone, she sank down on her new couch, next to her phone, and put her head in her hands.

If Chloe left the apartment, Lacy couldn’t afford even this place on her own. There wasn’t anything else open at this point in the semester, either. But she couldn’t guarantee this wouldn’t happen again. Even if she broke up with Eric, somehow she always ended up putting out anyway. She wasn’t sure how that kept happening, but it did. What was she going to do?

She glanced at her phone. In all the hubbub, she had almost forgotten… No, she couldn’t. It was too dangerous! And she couldn’t make rules that only affected one person, anyway. Still, she thought, maybe she could find some innocuous way, something that definitely couldn’t break anything, that could solve her problem. She had already given herself a couch, and the world was still here. One more small thing couldn’t hurt anything, right?

After a few more minutes of consideration, Lacy picked up her phone, opened the App, and typed, “There are no taboos against seeing two people having consensual sex in public. It’s totally normal and nobody gets angry about it.”

She put her phone down. There. Everything would probably be fine, right?