Chapter 2: Eviction from Reality
Percy had been chased before—mostly by overzealous library patrons demanding late fee forgiveness—but never by a floating bureaucratic drone hellbent on erasing him from existence.
He dashed between bookshelves, clutching the impossibly illegal book to his chest, while the orb (which he had mentally named The Worst Customer Service Representative Ever) pursued him with a determined, bureaucratic whirr.
“PERCY FOGG,” the orb droned, “PLEASE STOP RUNNING. YOU HAVE BEEN FLAGGED FOR EXISTENTIAL CORRECTION.”
Percy did not stop running.
“You see, that sounds an awful lot like erasure,” he called over his shoulder. “And I’d really prefer not to be corrected out of reality today, if it’s all the same to you!”
The orb beeped impatiently, then emitted a strange, high-pitched ZAP. The floor beneath Percy glitched, flickering into a pixelated mess of missing data. Suddenly, gravity became optional, and Percy found himself floating—his legs kicking uselessly in midair.
“Ah,” he said, flailing. “That’s not ideal.”
“PLEASE HOLD STILL,” the orb continued, “WHILE WE PROCESS YOUR DELETION.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Percy muttered.
With sheer, panicked determination, he pushed off the nearest bookshelf, propelling himself forward like an uncoordinated astronaut. His fingers caught the edge of the circulation desk, and he swung himself back toward solid ground. As soon as his feet hit the floor, he ran straight for the exit.
It was a brilliant plan, really. He would escape, call someone (the authorities? a librarian union? a customer service hotline?), and figure out what, exactly, had gone wrong.
Then the front doors of the library disappeared.
Just—gone. One moment, they were there. The next, only blank wall.
Percy skidded to a halt. “Oh, come on.”
“EXIT DENIED,” the orb announced. “YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO LEAVE THIS REALITY.”
Percy turned, backing against the now-nonexistent exit. “Look,” he said, holding up his hands, “I don’t know what kind of bizarre clerical error this is, but I am very much supposed to exist. I have a birth certificate. A driver’s license. A collection of novelty bookmarks. I am, if nothing else, a deeply unremarkable person. So why is reality trying to fire me?”
The orb’s red eye flickered. “YOU CHECKED OUT A RESTRICTED BOOK.”
“I work in the library! That’s literally my job!”
“THE BOOK IN QUESTION IS NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST.”
Percy hesitated, glancing down at the cover. The golden letters were shifting again.
CURRENTLY READING:
HOW TO ESCAPE REALITY IN THREE EASY STEPS
“Well,” Percy muttered. “That’s not ominous at all.”
The orb whirred louder, its red eye glowing as it prepared another correctional pulse.
“BEGINNING REALITY RESTRUCTURING IN THREE… TWO…”
Then, just as the floor began flickering beneath him again, Percy did something extremely reckless.
He opened the book.
The moment his fingers flipped the first page, the world lurched.
A strange, swirling vortex of colors and sound erupted beneath his feet. A feeling—somewhere between falling and being violently reorganized—rushed through him. The library, the orb, even the walls themselves stretched and warped—
—then reality snapped like a rubber band.
And Percy Fogg was somewhere else entirely.
He landed face-first in what appeared to be a marketplace suspended in midair, floating above an infinite sky.
Percy groaned, pushing himself upright. He was now sitting in the middle of a street made of clouds, surrounded by floating vendor stalls, where creatures of all shapes, sizes, and tax brackets were haggling over items that should not, by any reasonable definition, exist.
To his left, a sentient mustache in a tiny suit was arguing with a moss-covered lizard about the price of a bottle labeled “Distilled Regret.”
To his right, a three-headed platypus in a top hat was attempting to sell a device that, according to its label, could “edit your past mistakes for a small but increasingly dangerous fee.”
Percy blinked.
“I have made a grave error.”
Before he could begin to process his surroundings, a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Ah-ha!” a voice said. “New arrival! And you still have all your limbs! That’s rare!”
Percy turned to find himself face to face with a man (probably?) wearing a long, iridescent coat, purple-tinted glasses, and an expression that suggested he was either a con artist or someone who had invented con artistry and was immensely proud of it.
“Welcome to the In-Between, friend,” the man said, grinning. “Name’s Xyphlox Trelmor—but you can call me Zippy. And I do believe you’ve got yourself in a bit of a predicament.”
Percy exhaled sharply, adjusting his glasses. “Understatement of the century, Zippy.”
Zippy’s grin widened. “Oh, I like you. Now, tell me—what exactly did you do to get yourself misplaced from reality?”
Percy hesitated. Then, deciding honesty couldn’t possibly make things worse, he held up the book.
Zippy’s eyes widened. Then he laughed.
“Oh, you absolute madman!” he wheezed, clapping Percy on the back. “You checked out the wrong book, didn’t you?”
Percy groaned. “I work in a library!”
“Well, in that case,” Zippy said, dramatically flipping his coat, “you might just be the most accidentally dangerous person in the multiverse.”
Percy buried his face in his hands. “Fantastic.”
Zippy grinned. “Don’t worry, friend. Lucky for you, I specialize in helping people who’ve fallen through the cracks of reality. For a very reasonable fee, of course.”
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