THE_AUTOCOMPLETE_GOD

Chapter 6: The Autocomplete God

The top of The Spine was not a peak. It was a plateau.

Elara pulled herself over the final iron rung and collapsed onto the surface. It was smooth, cold, and white—like polished plastic. She gasped for air, clutching her pen, which was now vibrating violently in her hand. The "stolen ink" was restless; it wanted to be used.

"We made it," Elara wheezed. "Where is He? Where is the Author?"

Unit 734 buzzed up beside her. "Scan complete. Biological lifeforms detected: Zero."

Elara stood up. The wind here was silent. There were no clouds, no sun, just an infinite, flat whiteness stretching in every direction.

Except for the center.
Fifty yards away sat a desk.
It was cheap, particle-board furniture. On it sat a laptop. The screen was glowing.

Elara walked toward it, her boots squeaking on the white plastic floor. The Librarian followed, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression unreadable.

"He is very quiet today," the Librarian murmured.

Elara reached the desk. The laptop was ancient, the keys worn down. She looked at the screen.
It was a word processor document.

She read the text on the screen.

> She began to climb the iron rungs, leaving the screaming draft behind. The Librarian watched her go...

"It's us," Elara whispered. "It's this moment. Right now."

She looked at the end of the text. There was no person typing. There was just a blinking vertical line.
Blink. Blink. Blink.

The Cursor.

"Where is the Author?" Elara screamed, spinning around to face the Librarian. "You said he lives here!"

"He did," the Librarian said softly. "But Authors... they get distracted. They go get coffee. They go to sleep. Sometimes, they start a story and then... they just walk away."

The Librarian walked over to the laptop and gently touched the screen.

"He hasn't been here in a thousand years, Elara. This document has been open the whole time."

"Then who is writing the obstacles?" Elara pointed at her burned hand. "Who sent the Editor? Who made the Scorpions?"

Elara felt the blood drain from her face.
There was no God. There was no plan. There was just a machine guessing what a story should look like.
They were trapped in a run-on sentence.

RUMBLE.

The floor beneath them shook. The white horizon began to dissolve. The high-pitched whine of The Editor returned, louder than ever.

"The logic is failing," the Librarian said, stepping back. "The story has reached the climax, but there is no resolution. If you don't provide an Ending immediately, the Autocomplete will crash. And when it crashes... it deletes the file."

"I can't write an ending!" Elara yelled. "I don't know how it ends!"

"You have the stolen ink," the Librarian hissed. He pointed at the laptop keyboard. "You are the protagonist. Protagonists act. Type."

The Whiteout appeared at the edge of the plateau. It was moving fast, erasing the floor, erasing the sky.

Elara looked at the giant keyboard. The keys were the size of paving stones. She looked at her pen—full of the dead hero's ink.
She didn't need to write on paper anymore. She needed to interface with the Source.

She smashed the pen down onto the laptop's 'Enter' key. The plastic cracked. The black ink poured out of the pen and seeped into the circuitry of the computer.

The screen flickered. The Cursor stopped blinking. It turned red.

"Unit 734," Elara commanded, her voice steady. "Interface with the ink. Hack the narrative."

"Affirmative," the drone buzzed. It dove into the pool of black ink on the keyboard. Sparks flew.

Elara looked at the screen as letters began to appear—not typed by the Autocomplete, but forged by her own will.

Elara realized that to leave the story, she didn't need to finish it.
She needed to break the fourth wall.

She grabbed the edge of the laptop screen.
"Librarian," she said. "I'm not writing 'The End'. I'm writing 'Escape'."

She pulled. The screen began to tear. Not the glass—the reality behind it. A rip in the universe opened up behind the laptop, revealing...
...a blurry, pixelated image of a human face looking at a screen.

Our face.