Carl O'Harris was your average college senior. Good-looking, partying every week, and always a pretty chill guy to hang with. He was rather short at 5 foot 5, but was built pretty wide and muscular, which made up for the lack of altitude with the ladies (and occasional guys). Carl was also pretty hung, though he always joked that was to balance against his curly red hair and freckles. He was also a business major, thought wished he wasn't, as his real passions were in people, namely anthropology... but his overbearing mother said otherwise, so here he was.
It had been a wild rager then night before, leaving Carl to wake up at nearly 11 in the morning, alone in his apartment just off campus. His roommates, Hiro and Tyrone, were likely also waking up around this time, but from what he could remember, were probably doing so in the beds of the ladies they had been flirting with the night prior.
"Ugh, lucky bastards." Carl mumbled, covering his eyes with his blanket as the light peered inside.
After a few minutes to gather his bearings, he popped out of bed, slipped on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and walked out towards the kitchen.
With coffee in hand, he plopped himself on the ratty couch they had found at the dump two years prior, kicked his feet up, and began to browse the internet on his laptop. He would've used his phone, but in his drunken state he had forgotten to plug it in, so it sat in his bedroom currently charging.
A few minutes online had given him parts of his memory back. The lights, music, and drinks all came rushing back. He laughed at a shot of him and his roommates. Hiro was being squished by Carl, who in turn was being squished by Tyrone, as the three multicultural roommates were all trying to tackle each other in height order. A shot of him jumping into the pool with all his clothing on explained why he had woken up in bed naked. Another shot of a cute blonde tossing a drink in his face also queued him in to why he had woken up without a partner this morning.
He sighed aloud before muttering to himself. "Dammit why do guys gotta ask out the girls, it's so much harder." He said before adding "God, sometimes I wish I could change the world."
Just like that, the ads on either side of the website changed to that of a purple, glowing orb. Weirded out, he went to a different page, but all the ads were the same, purple orb. Now more curious than creeped out, he decided to hover over the ad. The orb vanished, exploding into purple and pink mist, with text appearing which read:
"Do you wish to warp the world itself?"
"Stupid fucking Jeff Bezos ass A.I. bullshit." He muttered aloud.
He then meant to click backspace, but accidentally clicked the ad. In a flash, all the ways out vanished, as a purple and pink mist affect flashed on his screen. A text box appeared, simply prompting him to input a name. Not wanting to have to restart his computer, he hoped that simply giving a name would bring him to a different screen where he could leave. He also knew his buddy Hector hooked him up with some killer malware protection, so he'd be safe to do so.
"Fuck it." The still hungover Carl muttered, deciding to simply input his own name into the prompt.
Suddenly, his eyes grew wide. What was presented before him was... interesting. It was an image of the world with lists of categories on the side. One section had things like "Individual" "Groups" "Countries" while another section had "Physical characteristics" "Mental Criteria" and so on.
He was about to click on something when a prompt appeared.
"Welcome new user, Carl, to The World Warping Website! You are one of the rare once in a generation users granted access to the magical gateway to changing anything. For ease of first time use, would you like to switch to the swap feature for world warping instead of free-warp? For new time users, swap is a quicker, more digestible way to alter reality. Such an action can also be undone later in the 'options' menu."
Carl had to reread the passage twice, his head spinning both from the information and the alcohol. World warping... there's no way this thing could like... change reality, right? He laughed at first, but as he kept laughing, the laughing turned uncomfortable as a thought entered his mind. What if it was real?
After a few seconds of staring at the screen.
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