Glitch Slapped

Sam’s hand moved through the air with all the elegance of a drunken conductor leading an orchestra in his sleep. He tried again, one more desperate swipe, waiting for the familiar interface to pop up...the logout button, the settings menu, anything. But there was nothing. No escape, no HUD, just more trees and the eerie, suffocating silence of a game world that felt a little too real.

He stared blankly at the horizon, eyes wide as the sinking feeling in his gut settled in. “Okay... deep breath, Walker. You can figure this out.”

Sam wasn’t the type to panic easily. It took a lot to rattle him. He was the kind of guy who stayed calm while his apartment caught fire because, you know, “insurance will cover it.” But this? This was a whole new level of What the actual fuck.

He swiped his hand again, waving it in front of his face. Still no menus, no logout, nothing.

"Goddammit!" He yelled into the quiet forest, his voice echoing back at him. “How the hell do I log out of this thing?!”

"Yeah, that's not gonna work," said Glitch, the smartass inventory bag hanging from his side, its zipper mouth curling with that signature smirk Sam was already growing to hate. “You can wave your hands around all you like, but let me spoil the ending for you...there’s no menu.”

Sam’s breath hitched. “What do you mean, no menu? There’s always a menu!”

“Not here,” Glitch said with far too much nonchalance. “Beta-Brain’s got bigger problems than no logout button, buddy. But hey, at least you’ve got me for company, right?”

“Oh, fantastic,” Sam muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m stuck in some half-baked, broken VR nightmare with a bag that never shuts up. Great.”

“Hey, it could be worse,” Glitch offered cheerfully.

“How the hell could this be worse?”

“You could be dead.”

Sam threw his hands up. “Oh, wow. Thanks for the uplifting pep talk, bag of wisdom.”

He needed to think. This was just a game, right? Sure, there was no menu, no HUD, and a talking bag, but there had to be a way out. Sam had been in plenty of buggy betas before. He’d even been soft-locked in a few games where he couldn’t move or interact with anything until the devs patched it. This was probably just like that, right? A weird glitch in the system.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “Alright, alright. Let’s just… find someone who can fix this. Maybe there’s an admin or some NPC who can help.”

“Good luck with that,” Glitch quipped. “This place isn’t exactly crawling with players...or anyone, for that matter.”

Sam frowned, glancing around at the dense forest. The world felt too empty. In a game this realistic, there should have been other players running around, completing quests, slaughtering monsters. But all he’d seen so far was trees and silence. The usual hum of bustling NPCs or other players was absent.

It was unsettling.

“Where the hell is everybody?” Sam asked, more to himself than to Glitch.

“Good question,” Glitch said. “Maybe the devs forgot to load them in, or maybe they just decided to leave you all by your lonesome.”

Sam sighed. "That's comforting."

He started walking, hoping that movement would give him some clarity or at least lead him to something resembling a solution. The forest seemed to stretch on forever, trees blending into each other like a never-ending loop of badly rendered backgrounds. For all he knew, the game had soft-locked him into a forest purgatory where he’d wander forever.

And then, something strange started happening.

It began with a lightness in Sam’s steps. At first, he thought he was just imagining it, but then he realized his feet were barely touching the ground. It was as if the gravity in the game had decided to take a break. His body floated an inch or two off the ground, and he flailed his arms to keep from floating away entirely.

“What the hell?!” Sam yelped, trying to steady himself.

“Looks like gravity’s drunk,” Glitch said, sounding far too amused for Sam’s liking. “It happens sometimes. You’ll get used to it.”

“Get used to it?! I can barely keep myself on the ground!”

As if on cue, gravity came roaring back with a vengeance. Sam slammed into the dirt, the force of it making him groan in pain as he tried to push himself up. The weight was almost unbearable, like the game had decided to crank the gravity up to eleven just to fuck with him.

“For crying out loud,” Sam growled, pushing himself to his feet, his legs straining under the newfound heaviness. “Why is this game such a goddamn mess?”

“Beta, buddy. Bugs are part of the charm,” Glitch said with a chuckle. “Though, I gotta say, you’re handling it better than most would. I’ve seen players rage-quit over less.”

“Rage-quit?” Sam let out a bitter laugh. “I wish I could quit. I’ve been trying to quit for the last ten minutes!”

He kept walking, struggling under the shifting gravity, hoping that things would stabilize eventually. He needed to find someone...anyone...who could help him figure out how to get the hell out of here. But the more he walked, the more bizarre things became.

A few minutes later, Sam came across an NPC...or what he assumed was an NPC. The guy was standing in the middle of the path, staring off into space like his brain had just blue-screened. His movements were jerky, his limbs twitching every few seconds as if the game couldn’t decide where to place him.

“Do… you… quest?” the NPC asked, his voice robotic, as though his dialogue tree was stuck on repeat.

Sam narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong with this guy?”

“Meet Loop,” Glitch said dryly. “He’s stuck. Probably has been for a while. All he does is offer you the same quest over and over again. He’s not broken, exactly...just poorly programmed.”

“Do… you… quest?”

“Yeah, no shit,” Sam muttered, waving a hand in front of Loop’s face. The NPC didn’t even flinch. “This is just sad.”

“Well, it’s a good representation of the entire game,” Glitch quipped. “Broken, repetitive, and only half-functional.”

Sam sighed. “Might as well see what this ‘quest’ is about.”

He reluctantly accepted the quest, watching as Loop handed him a scroll with robotic precision. The moment Sam grabbed it, the NPC froze, his arm still outstretched, his eyes vacant.

“Do… you… quest?”

“Christ, this guy’s more useless than my last boss,” Sam muttered, unrolling the scroll.

The quest text was as generic as it could get:

“Find the thing. Bring it to the place. Get the reward.”

Sam stared at the scroll for a long moment, his disbelief turning into a slow-burning frustration. “That’s it? That’s the quest? Find what thing? Bring it to what place? What the hell is this garbage?”

“Welcome to Beta-Brain,” Glitch said with a snicker. “I’d give you a tutorial, but there isn’t one.”

Sam rolled up the scroll and stuffed it into Glitch’s open zipper. “This game’s a fucking joke.”

“Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just here to carry your shit.”

Speaking of which, Sam’s inventory suddenly flooded with random items...stuff he hadn’t picked up. One second his inventory was empty, the next, it was filled with the most useless collection of junk he’d ever seen. A rusty spoon, a stack of rocks, a bottle labeled “Mystery Liquid,” and… cabbages?

“What the hell?” Sam grumbled, pulling out a rusty spoon. “Why do I have a spoon?”

“You’d be surprised how many uses a spoon has in the heat of battle,” Glitch said, clearly enjoying himself.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do with cabbages? Feed a village?”

Glitch snickered. “You’re overthinking it. They’re probably just there to mock you.”

“Wonderful,” Sam muttered, shoving the spoon and cabbages back into the bag. “Is there anything in here that’s useful?”

“Not really,” Glitch replied, his zipper curling into another one of his sarcastic grins. “But don’t worry. I’ll keep all your useless junk safe.”

Sam clenched his fists. “This is bullshit.”

“Beta-brain, baby,” Glitch said, zipping open and closed like he was cracking a joke. “Glitches are part of the charm.”

Sam couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh. “If by ‘charm,’ you mean ‘hellish nightmare,’ then yeah. Super charming.”

He kept walking, trying to ignore the random items that kept popping into his inventory, the flickering trees, and the occasional NPC who appeared and then glitched back out of existence. The world felt broken, like it had been cobbled together by a team of developers who had given up halfway through and decided to leave everything on autopilot.

It was becoming painfully obvious that the game didn’t work. But worse than that, Sam was trapped in this mess with no way out.

He tried again to access the logout screen, waving his hands in front of his face, trying to call up a menu, a map...anything. Still nothing. Just the empty forest, the flickering glitches, and the increasingly annoying presence of Glitch at his side.

“Alright, Walker,” Sam muttered to himself. “Think. You can figure this out. There’s gotta be a way out.”

Glitch’s voice cut in. “You really think the devs are going to fix this? You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. There’s no magical patch coming to save your ass.”

Sam’s heart sank. He knew Glitch was right. This wasn’t just a bug or a glitch. This was something much worse. He wasn’t just stuck in a game...he was trapped in a world that didn’t even function properly.

Panic started to bubble up in his chest, but he shoved it down, forcing himself to stay calm. “I’ll find a way out. I always do.”

“Sure, keep telling yourself that,” Glitch said with a dry chuckle. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the devs will magically fix everything.”

Sam didn’t respond. He just kept walking, hoping that the further he went, the more sense things would start to make. But as the forest stretched on and the glitches grew worse, one thing became painfully clear.

He was stuck.

And there was no way out.

“Fuck,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“Yup,” Glitch said cheerfully. “Welcome to Beta-Brain, where everything’s broken, and so are you.”

Sam groaned. This was going to be one hell of a nightmare.