The rain of apples didn't stop. It accelerated.
But then, the physics broke.
In the "Living Room" under the lunar surface, the lights flickered violently. The beige walls of the 1990s simulation tore open, revealing a void of screaming static behind them.
"Stop!" the Admin shouted, struggling against the Nintendo controller cords. "You're drawing too much RAM! The system can't render global abundance!"
"Let it break," Jake said. He was typing furiously at the console. SPAWN_ITEM: WINTER_COATS. SPAWN_ITEM: MEDICINE.
"You don't understand!" the Admin shrieked. His body began to pixelate. His arm dissolved into green binary code. "This isn't a game engine! It's a memory buffer! If you overload it, you don't get free stuff. You get a blue screen!"
On the monitor, the map of Earth turned a terrifying shade of crimson.
CRITICAL ERROR. REALITY SYNC FAILED.
"What does that mean?" Valentina asked, stepping out of the glitching hot tub. The water had turned into sand.
"It means the magic runs out," the Admin whispered. Half his face was gone now, eaten by the code. "Jake... listen to me. The Monolith isn't a generator. It's a terminal."
The Admin looked at Jake with his one remaining eye.
"You can't cheat the world from here. You have to install the patch manually."
"Where?" Jake demanded. "Where is the mainframe?"
The Admin tried to point, but his hand was gone.
"The Anchor," the Admin gasped. "Hoover's Anchor. The physical object holding the American Dream simulation together. It's in New York. The Statue... inside the torch..."
SYSTEM PURGE INITIATED.
The room imploded. The sofa, the TV, the Admin—everything swirled into a vortex of white light.
"Grab the drive!" the Admin screamed as he vanished.
Jake saw a black USB stick protruding from the console. It pulsed with a heartbeat.
He lunged. His fingers closed around it.
Then, the world slammed shut.
The Moon. Tycho Crater.
Jake hit the grey dust hard.
He gasped, his lungs burning. He was back in the pressure suit. He was lying in the regolith next to the Monolith.
"Valentina?"
"I'm here," she wheezed over the comms. She was face-down ten meters away.
The Monolith was dead. The door was gone. The message INSERT COIN had faded. It was just a slab of cold, alien stone.
Jake opened his gloved hand.
He held the drive. It wasn't a USB stick anymore. It was a shard of black crystal, warm even through the suit's insulation.
"Did we win?" Valentina asked, standing up shakily.
Jake looked at the Earth hanging in the sky.
"No," Jake said. "We just crashed the server."
Moscow. Red Square.
The miracle turned into a horror show.
The apples piled in the streets were rotting. Not naturally. Instantly.
One second, a child was biting into a crisp, red fruit. The next, her mouth was full of grey ash.
The millions of tons of food dissolved into sludge. It coated the cobblestones in a slippery, foul-smelling muck.
The people screamed. They spat out the ash. The joy of the "miracle" vanished, replaced by a hunger twice as sharp as before.
"It's poison!" a man shouted. "The Americans poisoned the food!"
Above them, the sky glitched.
The Aurora Dome, usually a stable violet shield, fractured. Shards of digital noise rained down—phantom images of cheeseburgers and cars that flickered and died before hitting the ground.
Yuri stood on the Kremlin balcony. He held his slide rule, but his hands were shaking.
"The variable collapsed," Yuri whispered. "The waveform failed to materialize."
Menzhinsky ran onto the balcony.
"Riots, Comrade! They think it was a trick! They think we mocked them!"
"It wasn't a trick," Yuri said, staring at the glitching sky. "It was a failed upload."
The boy looked terrifyingly old in the strobe light of the dying dome.
"Hoover is broadcasting," Menzhinsky said. "He says the apples were a Soviet bio-weapon that failed. He's calling it the 'Red Rot'."
Yuri's eyes narrowed. The blue light of calculation returned.
"He is weaponizing the glitch," Yuri said. "He is rewriting the narrative while the code is unstable."
Yuri tapped his headset.
"Father," Yuri transmitted to the Moon. "The magic is gone. The people are eating ash. Come home."
Lunar Orbit. The Orion.
Jake listened to the report. He slammed his fist into the bulkhead.
"I made it worse," Jake said. "I gave them hope and turned it into mud."
"We have the Crystal," Valentina said. She strapped into the pilot seat. "The Admin said it's a patch. A 'Root Access' key."
"He said the Anchor is in New York," Jake said. "Inside the Statue of Liberty."
"The Torch?"
"It makes sense," Jake said. "It's the ultimate symbol. The beacon of the West. If this is a simulation war, that Statue is the biggest antenna on the planet."
He floated to the navigation computer.
"We aren't going to Moscow," Jake said.
"Jake, we have fuel for one trip. If we go to New York, we can't get back to Russia. We'll be shot down."
"We won't be shot down," Jake said. "We're going to crash the party."
He looked at the black crystal in his hand.
"This drive contains the truth," Jake said. "It contains the raw data of reality. If I plug this into Hoover's Anchor... I don't just broadcast a movie. I overwrite his world."
"You want to terraform America?"
"I want to turn the American Dream off," Jake said. "I want them to see the grey paste. I want them to see the rot."
He strapped in.
"Set coordinates for New York Harbor," Jake ordered. "Liberty Island."
"This is an invasion, Jake."
"No," Jake said. "It's tech support."
Washington D.C. The Situation Room.
Hoover was laughing.
His voice was back. The "Duck" virus had been purged by a team of priests and computer scientists.
"Look at them," Hoover said, pointing at the screen.
The satellite feed showed Moscow in chaos. The grey sludge covered everything.
"Stalin tried to play God," Hoover sneered. "And he choked on his own apple."
"Sir, radar contact," General MacArthur said. "A launch from the Moon."
"The Orion?"
"It's inbound. Fast. Mach 25."
"Target?"
MacArthur hesitated. He checked the trajectory.
"It's not Russia, Mr. President. They're aiming for the East Coast."
Hoover stopped laughing.
"A nuke?"
"No warhead signature. But the ship itself... it's massive. If it hits a city..."
"Shoot it down!" Hoover screamed. "Launch the interceptors! Use the Nike missiles!"
"Sir, they're coming in steep. They'll be over New York in twenty minutes."
Hoover rubbed his arm. The phantom pain was burning.
"He's coming for me," Hoover whispered. "He knows about the Anchor."
Hoover grabbed the red phone.
"Activate the Torch Defense," Hoover ordered. "And tell the Navy to blow that ship out of the sky."
The Re-Entry.
The Orion hit the atmosphere like a meteor.
Fire engulfed the viewports. The ship shook violently.
"Heat shield at 80%!" Valentina yelled over the roar. "We have missile locks! Five bogeys launching from Jersey!"
"Jam them!" Jake shouted. "Use the Crystal!"
"How?"
"Connect it to the comms array! Broadcast the raw code!"
Valentina jammed the black shard into the radio slot.
SCREECH.
A sound like tearing metal erupted from the ship. It wasn't sound. It was data.
The Orion began to glow.
Not with fire. With pixels.
The hull shimmered, shifting between textures—steel, wood, neon, glass. The reality of the ship was fluctuating.
Below them, the American anti-air missiles lost their lock. Their guidance computers crashed, displaying the message: INSERT COIN. The missiles spiraled harmlessly into the Atlantic.
"It works!" Valentina laughed maniacally. "We are a glitch bomb!"
"Target the Statue!" Jake ordered. "We're going to land on her head!"
New York Harbor.
It was noon, but the sky turned purple.
The people on the ferry boats looked up. They saw a streak of fire descending from the heavens.
It wasn't a comet. It was a spaceship the size of a building, glowing with glitch-art colors.
The Orion fired its retro-rockets. The nuclear blasts shattered the windows in Manhattan.
BOOM. BOOM.
The ship slowed, hovering over Liberty Island.
The Statue of Liberty stood there, green and majestic. The Torch glowed with a fierce, golden light—the source of the "Soft Power" field.
"There's the antenna," Jake said, looking down. "The flame is fake. It's a transmitter."
"We can't land on it," Valentina said. "We'll crush it."
"That's the point," Jake said.
"Eject!"
"What about you?"
"I'm parking the car," Valentina grinned. "Go!"
Jake ran to the airlock. He didn't have a parachute. He had the thruster pack on his suit.
He jumped.
He fell through the smoke and the noise. Below him, the copper lady waited.
Behind him, the Orion cut its engines.
Fifty thousand tons of spaceship dropped onto the island.
It missed the statue by inches, slamming into the base. The impact created a tidal wave that washed over the Battery Park promenade.
Debris flew.
Jake fired his thrusters. He flared hard.
He landed on the Torch.
He grabbed the railing of the balcony around the flame. The metal was hot. Humming.
He looked at the "Flame." It wasn't glass. It was a swirling vortex of golden energy. A localized reality engine.
"Okay, Lady," Jake gasped, pulling a data cable from his suit. "Let's see what you're made of."
He jammed the cable into the base of the light.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.
The golden light flickered.
Then, it turned Red.
Jake looked at the skyline of New York.
"Do you want to see the truth?" Jake whispered.
He twisted the cable.
The sky over New York tore open.
The blue sky vanished. The sun vanished.
In its place, a massive, translucent image appeared. A live feed.
It showed the gulags. It showed the grey paste factories. It showed the starving children in Moscow wiping ash from their mouths.
But then it shifted.
It showed the American truth. It showed the segregated schools. It showed the hungry in Appalachia. It showed the blood on Hoover's hands.
The "Soft Power" filter dissolved. The glamour was gone.
New York looked grey. The colorful billboards faded to black and white. The makeup washed off the face of the city.
Jake stood on the torch, holding the lightning.
"Welcome to the Real World," Jake shouted to the city below.
"Now... let's negotiate."