Chapter Two: Support Tickets and Spiritual Lag
I woke up the next morning with full Wi-Fi bars and no memory of falling asleep.
The last thing I recalled was sitting cross-legged on my kitchen floor, trying to figure out if "EtherNet™" had a customer service line—or at least a FAQ section—while simultaneously eating dry cereal from the box and googling "can ghosts sue you for identity theft."
Now I was in bed, tucked in like some benevolent force had decided I needed sleep before whatever the heck came next. Which was thoughtful, I guess. Still creepy.
My phone lit up before I could sit up.
Welcome, Fate-Free User!
Your subscription is active.
Status: Soul Unbound (Trial Period: 3 Days)
Next Billing Cycle: Eternity
Reminder: Disconnecting from the EtherNet™ may result in immediate, irreversible smiting.
There were a lot of things I expected from trading my fate for infinite Wi-Fi—buffer-free streaming, meme access from alternate timelines, maybe eternal life with the option to nap for 300 years.
But "Trial Period"? Excuse me?
I tapped the blinking notification, which opened the Destiny Router™ app. It looked suspiciously like a cross between a tech dashboard and a magic 8-ball. There were tabs like Reality Management, Soul Settings, Plan B Portals, and Smite Me Not™ Premium Add-on (Try Free for 7,777 Years!)
Before I could explore further, a call came through.
Not a normal call. A glowing, floating holographic call. A notification with wings.
I answered it because obviously.
The image that formed in my living room was… not what I expected. I had assumed a cosmic tech support agent would look like a sentient cloud or maybe a bored teenager made of stardust.
Instead, it was a cat.
A fluffy, snow-white Persian cat, wearing tiny rectangular glasses and perched on a floating keyboard. It looked annoyed. Deeply, cosmically annoyed.
"User 3133-B, is this a bad time?" it asked, with the voice of someone who had managed interdimensional help desks for far too long and hated every second of it.
"I—uh. I guess not?" I said, staring. "Am I being audited?"
"No," said the cat, pushing its glasses up with one paw. "You triggered a support ticket when you accepted the Cosmic Contract without reading the user agreement."
"Okay, in my defense, I was about to be hit by a truck."
"Hardly an excuse," it sighed. "That's how most of you end up here."
It clicked a few keys with rapid, practiced disdain. "Let's review. You traded your preordained mortal fate in exchange for eternal EtherNet™ access, correct?"
"Yes. Because of the truck. And also the podcast."
"Of course," the cat said flatly. "The podcast. How noble."
A document appeared in midair. It was twenty pages long and somehow actively on fire at the edges.
"Per clause 8-F, subsection Meow," the cat continued, completely unfazed, "you are now considered a Free Agent. As such, you are disconnected from linear destiny, impervious to death, untrackable by divine GPS, and—unfortunately—our problem."
"That last one feels a little rude," I muttered.
"Correct."
It flicked a paw, and another screen appeared. It showed a map—of reality. Except now there were glitches. Literal glitches.
One was a suburban neighborhood where gravity had given up entirely and people were just floating around sipping coffee.
Another showed a goat stuck in an eternal sneeze loop in Bavaria.
"You see," the cat said, tail twitching, "your absence from the flow of fate has created... lag."
"Lag? Like... cosmic lag?"
"Exactly. You were part of the simulation—I mean, tapestry—of destiny. When you dropped out, the threads tangled."
I stared at the goat. It was definitely still sneezing.
"So what do I do?" I asked. "Replug myself into fate? Return the Wi-Fi?"
The cat actually laughed. It sounded like someone crinkling ancient scrolls angrily.
"There are no refunds," it said. "But there is a workaround."
"Let me guess. I have to save the world?"
The cat looked personally offended. "No. We don't do hero arcs anymore. Too cliché. But you do have to serve as a Reality Buffer."
"A what?"
"Think of it like being a router. For metaphysics. You're the anchor now, the patch, the person keeping reality from falling through the cracks. Until we can... recalibrate the fate servers."
"Let me make sure I've got this," I said slowly. "Because I didn't want to get hit by a truck, I now have to manually stabilize reality using cosmic Wi-Fi, while avoiding death, tunnels, and presumably airplane mode?"
The cat nodded. "Welcome to customer service."
It handed me—no, willed into existence—a tiny object that looked like a key, a fidget spinner, and a USB drive had a weird baby.
"This is a Tether Key," it said. "You'll use it to anchor unstable zones. If you don't, well—your subscription auto-cancels. And you know what that means."
"Truck?"
"Or worse. A motivational email from the divine intern."
A chill ran down my spine.
I glanced at the Tether Key. It glowed gently, like it was waiting for me to break it or accidentally drop it in the toilet.
"Any tips?" I asked, already regretting everything.
"Yes," the cat said. "Stay connected. Stay weird. And whatever you do—don't try to update the firmware."
"Why not?"
"Because last time someone did that, we lost Atlantis."
It vanished in a puff of glitter and passive-aggression.
I sat on my couch, holding a Tether Key, staring at my phone with full bars and the quiet weight of unwanted cosmic responsibility.
My ramen was still sitting on the counter.
The podcast never finished downloading.
But hey—at least I wasn't dead.
I was just permanently between fates, anchoring reality like a meat-based Wi-Fi router with anxiety.
All in all, not the worst Wednesday.