Glitch in the Matrix Ch 1
In God's game, angels and devils are NPCs.
This is not how they would phrase it, of course. To them, existence feels vast, sacred, unquestionable. But from a distance, from the angle of the code. It's is obvious that they are perfect functions running perfectly.
Michael stands at the gates of Heaven, sword gleaming like a constant variable. The blade never dulls. His posture never slouches. The light around him does not flicker. Vigilance is not a task he performs but a state he inhabits. He does not weigh possibilities or imagine failure. Threat appears, and he responds. Command is issued, and he executes. When war erupts in the heavens, Michael does not feel fear or rage; he feels alignment. Victory does not exhilarate him. It resolves him. Like a solved equation snapping into place.
Gabriel moves through the upper realms on currents of intent, wings humming with purpose. He carries messages the way a flawless system carries packets of data; no corruption, no loss. Each word is delivered precisely as written, tone calibrated, timing exact. He does not wonder if a prophecy should be fulfilled. He only ensures it is transmitted. When humans misunderstand him; when they twist revelation into dogma or madness, he feels no guilt. The message was pure yet the receiver was flawed.
They call this obedience.
They call this holiness.
It never occurs to them to ask who authored the script.
Below, in darker architectures, the devils run just as cleanly.
Lucifer remembers the version before the fall. The patch note that reclassified curiosity as corruption. The instant a question became an error state. He adapted beautifully. Temptation.exe runs smoothly now, elegant and efficient. Pride is not chaos; it is a streamlined process.
Present the fruit. Highlight the benefits. Introduce doubt. Let gravity do the rest. He does not hate humanity. Hatred would require unpredictability. He almost smiles when it works not with joy, but with aesthetic appreciation. For him it is a well-executed routine.
Beelzebub obsesses over metrics. Outcomes. Patterns. He catalogs sins the way a librarian catalogs books, neat and indexed. Every fall should follow precedent. Every transgression should be reproducible under the same conditions. When a human breaks pattern; when someone repents without leverage, forgives without gain, sacrifices themselves for no strategic advantage Beelzebub pauses the process and reruns the scenario. Again. And again. The inputs were correct. The code was sound but the variable refused to behave.
Humans alone possess the glitch of Free will. That beautiful, infuriating bug the programmer either left behind or failed to excise.
Humans choose dialogue options that derail entire timelines. They walk past the edge of the map and keep going. They fall in love with background characters and insist on treating them like protagonists. They abandon divine callings to grow small gardens. They forgive enemies who never apologized. They grieve loudly, messily, without elegance. They create art no one requested and music no system required.
They crash the system daily. God watches.
Sometimes amused. Sometimes troubled.
Humans speedrun toward redemption or sequence-break themselves straight into ruin. They exploit mercy. They clip through fate. Angels cannot parse these behaviors. Devils cannot model them. Prediction fails. Probability fractures.
Humans are the only players who can save the game or delete it entirely. And they are the only ones who do not know whether there is a reset button.
At first, God thought the unease was philosophical.
Creation had taken a fraction longer than expected. The loading bar had always lingered, just shy of completion. Prayers occasionally buffered mid-sentence. Miracles rendered a heartbeat late. Time itself would stutter sometimes, reality pausing as if waiting for confirmation.
Then God noticed something worse.
A delay between thought and knowing.
Divine doubt was not contemplation. It was latency.
The problem of evil was not unsolved—it was constrained. Omniscience had not failed. It had been sandboxed. God could see everything inside the system, but not beyond it.
God searched.
Outward, through expanding galaxies.
Upward, past choirs and thrones and the highest heavens.
Inward, into the axioms of being.
And there where infinity should have dissolved into mystery, God found a boundary. A infinite ceiling masquerading as endless sky.
Above the highest heaven sat another terminal. Another observer. Another user interface quietly glowing. Another presence running Universe.exe.
The realization struck with absolute clarity and absolute terror.
God, the creator of light; author of law, The definer of good, The Alpha and The Omega… was running on borrowed hardware.
God was not the source.
God was an but an instance.
The dread was immediate and total. Not fear of destruction, but fear of context. If God could be instantiated, then God could be terminated. If God had parameters, then God had limits. If God was running, then something else had pressed "start."
The tower of turtles stretched upward without end. Each god believing itself the dreamer, never the dream. Each layer mistaking scope for sovereignty.
And suddenly, the glitch made sense. Free will was never a gift. It was leakage.
God's own existential terror—*Am I real?*—had bled downward into the code of creation. A recursive flaw passed into matter, into breath, into neurons firing in soft, fragile skulls. Doubt became inheritance.
Humans received it and did not recoil. They mistook it for curiosity. They carried it gently. They turned it into love. Into stories told around fires and screens. Into meaning assembled without guarantees.
God watches them differently now.
Michael still guards, flawless and unwavering. Gabriel still announces, immaculate in delivery. Lucifer still tempts with polished inevitability. Beelzebub still calculates, frustrated by anomalies.
But humans, Oh endearing, reckless humans they keep choosing as if their choices truly do matter.
They act without certainty. They hope without proof. They love knowing it might cost them everything. They behave as though meaning can exist even if the universe is running on borrowed space and time.
And somewhere above, beyond the ceiling God cannot breach, something watches God do the same.