Dave tumbled through the kaleidoscopic vortex, a scream ripped from his lungs only to be replaced by the synthetic jingle of the Web of Fate App's premium subscription ad. He landed not with a bone-jarring crash, but with a soft, deeply unsettling plop, like a dropped pudding, onto a surface of unnervingly smooth, pearlescent white.
<< DIMENSIONAL TRANSITION COMPLETE! WELCOME TO: THE SYSTEMATIC ORDER! DOMAIN OF PROCRUSTES THE PRUNER! >>
Dave blinked. The world wasn't wrong, it was aggressively, terrifyingly correct. The sky was a uniform, featureless gray. Buildings – impossibly geometric cubes and perfect spheres – lined streets laid out with Euclidean precision. The air hummed with a low, constant frequency, like the drone of a perfectly tuned engine. There were people, moving with synchronized steps, their expressions blank, their clothes identical shades of beige and slate. No laughter, no shouting, not even a stray pigeon. The silence was deafening.
<< ANALYSIS: REALITY STRUCTURE: RIGIDLY DEFINED. ENTROPY LEVELS: ARTIFICIALLY SUPPRESSED TO 0.03%. LOCAL TROPES: 'UTOPIAN CONFORMITY', 'LOGICAL EXTREMISM', 'ABSOLUTE NARRATIVE COMPLIANCE'. THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME. USER'S IDIOCY FIELD IS... VIBRATING. AGITATED. SYSTEM EXCITEMENT: MAXIMIZED. >>
"Threat extreme?" Dave whispered, trying to stand on the frictionless floor and failing spectacularly, landing back on his borrowed waiter pants. "Where are the talking pigeons when you need them?"
<< UNIT ALPHA STATUS: DIMENSIONALLY DISPLACED. LAST KNOWN COORDINATES: ENTANGLED WITH MALAKOR'S HELMET. PROBABILITY OF REAPPEARANCE: UNPREDICTABLE (BUT INEVITABLE). FOCUS, USER! PROXIMITY ALERT! PRUNER PERSONNEL DETECTED! >>
Two figures rounded a perfectly square corner. They weren't guards; they wore crisp, gray uniforms with angular insignias resembling stylized scissors. Their movements were unnervingly synchronized, their faces devoid of any emotion beyond mild disapproval. They stopped precisely three meters away.
"Intrusion Detected," they spoke in unison, voices flat and toneless. "Entity: Designation 'Dave Miller'. Reality Distortion Coefficient: 147 Standard Deviations Above Norm. Classification: Narrative Anomaly. Priority: Immediate Pruning."
They raised their hands. Not weapons, but sleek, chrome devices that hummed with contained energy. Beams of pure, coherent white light lanced out – not to destroy, but to measure. They swept over Dave, leaving trails of cold numbness.
<< PRUNING BEAMS ENGAGED! FUNCTION: REALITY CONFORMITY ENFORCEMENT! EFFECT: TEMPORARY NEURAL PARALYSIS AND NARRATIVE ALIGNMENT! USER, MOVE YOUR SUBOPTIMAL BIOMASS! >>
Dave, paralyzed by sheer terror and the beams' chilling effect, could only flop like a fish. The beams missed his core but clipped his foot. Instantly, the frayed edge of his waiter trousers dissolved, leaving a perfectly straight, laser-cut hemline. The lingering "Eau de Dumpster" was replaced by the sterile scent of ozone and disinfectant.
"MY PANTS!" Dave yelped, the absurdity momentarily overriding fear. "Those were borrowed!"
<< PRIORITIES, USER! THEY ARE ATTEMPTING TO 'EDIT' YOU INTO COMPLIANCE! NEXT BEAM WILL TRIM YOUR PERSONALITY! SUGGESTED EVASION: AWKWARD ROLLING! >>
Dave rolled. He rolled with the grace of a concussed walrus, colliding with a geometrically perfect potted plant (plastic, naturally). The pruning beams sizzled past, slicing a nearby bench into two perfectly identical halves.
<< INEFFICIENT BUT EFFECTIVE! GENERATING DISTRACTION! DEPLOYING 'ANALOG NOISE BURST'! >>
The System emitted a sound. Not a digital beep, but a cacophony of pure, chaotic dissonance: a dial-up modem screech mixed with nails on a chalkboard, a burst of static, and a startled goat bleating. It shattered the oppressive hum of Systematic Order.
The Pruner personnel flinched, a crack in their perfect composure. Their synchronized movements faltered. Their blank eyes flickered with something like… digital pain.
<< EXPLOIT DETECTED! PRUNERS VULNERABLE TO UNSTRUCTURED SENSORY INPUT! DATA ACQUIRED! AP AWARDED: 50! TOTAL AP: 96! >>
Seizing the moment, Dave scrambled behind the bisected bench. "Okay, System, who is this Procrustes guy? And why does he hate fun… and slightly uneven trousers?"
<< PROCRUSTES THE PRUNER: SELF-STYLED LORD OF NARRATIVE COMPLIANCE. ORIGIN: UNKNOWN (PROBABLY BORING). MOTIVATION: ELIMINATE ALL 'NARRATIVE ANOMALIES' – ACCIDENTS, COINCIDENCES, HUMOR, UNPREDICTABILITY – TO FORGE A 'PERFECTLY ORDERED REALITY'. METHOD: DIMENSIONAL INVASION AND FORCED CONFORMITY. >>
<< THREAT ANALYSIS:
INTELLIGENCE: CALCULATING. RUTHLESS.
POWER: REALITY EDITING ON A LOCAL SCALE (PRUNING BEAMS, STRUCTURAL ENFORCEMENT).
RESOURCES: AN ARMY OF FANATICALLY OBEDIENT 'PRUNERS'.
WEAKNESS: OBSESSIVE HATRED OF CHAOS. POTENTIALLY, AESTHETICALLY OFFENDED BY USER'S GENERAL STATE OF BEING.
SYSTEM'S PROFESSIONAL OPINION: ABSOLUTE MENACE. ALSO, PROBABLY HAS NO FAVORITE COLOR. MONOTONE BASTARD. >>
Suddenly, the ambient hum shifted. It deepened, becoming a resonant vibration that seemed to emanate from the buildings themselves. The gray sky darkened fractionally. A figure materialized on a raised platform at the end of the street, not with a flash, but with the seamless transition of a slide changing.
Procrustes.
He wasn't physically imposing. Tall and lean, clad in a suit of articulated plates that seemed forged from solidified shadow and polished bone. No helmet obscured his face, which was chillingly ordinary – sharp features, cold gray eyes, and short, perfectly ordered black hair. It was the absence in his expression that was terrifying. No anger, no malice, just the absolute, sterile certainty of a scalpel hovering over diseased tissue.
"Anomaly," his voice was quiet, yet it cut through the air like the snick of shears, resonating directly in Dave's skull. "Your chaotic resonance pollutes the ordered fabric. Your very existence is a statistical error demanding correction."
He didn't gesture. He didn't need to. The street beneath Dave changed. The frictionless surface became sticky, viscous tar. The geometrically perfect buildings lining the street leaned inward, forming a crushing tunnel aimed directly at him.
<< REALITY EDITING DETECTED! PROCRUSTES DIRECTLY MANIPULATING LOCAL PHYSICS! USER, INITIATE 'PANICKED FLOUNDERING' PROTOCOL! >>
Dave screamed, trying to pull his legs from the tar. It was like struggling in hardening concrete. The crushing walls groaned closer. Procrustes watched, his expression unchanged, a scientist observing an experiment reaching its inevitable, terminal conclusion.
<< DEPLOYING COUNTERMEASURE: 'SEMIOTIC JAMMER' (COST: 90 AP)! EFFECT: TEMPORARILY OVERLOADS NARRATIVE SIGNALS! >>
Dave hit 'Y' just as the tar reached his waist. A burst of nonsensical symbols – emojis, mathematical equations, cartoon bananas, and fragments of bad poetry – erupted around him in a shimmering, chaotic halo. The tar flickered, its consistency shifting momentarily to something resembling lumpy custard. The crushing walls stuttered, their movement jerky.
Procrustes's brow furrowed. Just a millimeter. A tiny crack in the glacial facade. "Semiotic static? Crude. Inelegant." He raised one hand, fingers poised as if to pluck a discordant note from the air. "Pruning Protocol: Absolute Sanitization."
The chaotic symbols flickered and died. The tar solidified back into cold, unyielding obsidian. The walls resumed their crushing advance with renewed, silent purpose.
<< JAMMER OVERWHELMED! AP DEPLETED! USER'S PANICKED FLOUNDERING: INSUFFICIENT! SYSTEM EMOTIONAL STATE: CALCULATING OPTIMAL EPITAPH... >>
Despair washed over Dave. This wasn't Malakor's cartoonish evil. This was cold, efficient extinction. He closed his eyes, waiting for the crunch.
SKREEEEE-AUTOTUNED-BLURRRRT!
A familiar, iridescent green cannonball slammed into Procrustes's raised hand with the force of a feathered meteor. Unit Alpha, feathers sparking with residual dimensional energy and bits of Malakor's helmet still tangled in one claw, latched onto the Pruner's wrist, pecking furiously with its autotuned squawks (<<< (AUTOTUNED COO) CONFORMITY-SCORN! ORDER-BOREDOM! GIVE-SEEDS! >>>).
Procrustes recoiled, not in pain, but in profound, aesthetic revulsion. "Avian biological contaminant! Disengage!" He tried to shake Unit Alpha off, but the pigeon clung with the tenacity of duct tape on velvet.
<< UNIT ALPHA INTERVENTION! CHAOTIC VARIABLE INTRODUCED! EXPLOIT PROCRUSTES'S DISGUST! USER, ATTEMPT SOMETHING PROFOUNDLY MESSY! >>
Profoundly messy? Dave looked down. He was still waist-deep in solidifying obsidian. His only weapon was… his borrowed waiter's jacket, smelling faintly of ozone, dumpster, and now, terror-sweat.
Inspired by sheer, desperate idiocy, Dave wrenched his arm free and flung the jacket with all his might. It sailed through the air, flapping pathetically, and landed directly over Procrustes's impeccably groomed head.
Silence. The crushing walls halted. The Pruners froze. Unit Alpha paused its pecking.
Procrustes stood utterly still, the stained, ill-fitting jacket draped over his head and shoulders like a shroud of indignity. A single, damp sleeve dangled over one eye. The sterile perfection of Systematic Order fractured around the image of its overlord wearing a slightly smelly, mid-calf-length waiter's jacket.
<< ... >> The System's text was blank for a long, pregnant moment. Then: << AESTHETIC VIOLATION DETECTED! PROCRUSTES'S REALITY CONTROL PARAMETERS: CRITICAL OVERLOAD! USER'S 'IDIOCY FIELD' HAS ACHIEVED MAXIMUM POTENCY: UNSOLICITED FASHION ADVICE! AP AWARDED: 200! TOTAL AP: 206! RESEARCH CONCLUSION: THE ULTIMATE WEAPON AGAINST ORDER IS ABSURDITY! >>
A low, inhuman sound emanated from beneath the jacket. Not a roar of rage, but a shuddering, static-laced screech of pure, undiluted offense. The obsidian trapping Dave cracked. The crushing walls trembled. The very air seemed to recoil.
Procrustes ripped the jacket off, his face contorted not with anger, but with a look of utter, universe-shattering disgust, as if he'd been handed a moldy sock by God. His perfect composure was obliterated. "THIS... THIS SQUALOR! THIS DISORDER! IT WILL BE PURGED! YOU WILL BE ERASED DOWN TO YOUR LAST STRAY ATOM!"
He raised both hands, reality warping violently around him. But the moment of perfect, terrifying control was gone. Shattered by a pigeon and a smelly jacket. Dave, freed from the obsidian, scrambled backwards.
<< WARNING! PROCRUSTES ENTERING 'FINAL SANITIZATION' MODE! REALITY COLLAPSE IMMINENT! SUGGESTED ACTION: FIND ANOTHER PORTAL! PREFERABLY ONE LABELED 'EXIT'! >>
Dave didn't need telling twice. He spotted a shimmering anomaly near the base of the platform – another unstable vortex, likely Procrustes's personal entrance. He sprinted towards it, Unit Alpha abandoning the Pruner and dive-bombing after him with an autotuned warble.
Procrustes's scream of absolute, sterile fury followed them as Dave plunged into the swirling light, leaving behind a dimension in chaos, a Pruner Lord aesthetically wounded, and the System frantically logging the discovery that sometimes, the most dangerous weapon in the multiverse is a well-aimed piece of laundry. The real danger wasn't gone... it was just really annoyed. And possibly dry-clean only.