Server bez konca, časť 3: Prvý glitch

The Endless Server, part 3: The First Glitch

The Story Begins

The virtual evening in the lobby of the Endless Server was just ending. Blue light bands were flowing over the roofs of the starting zone, shops with cosmetic skins were closing their holographic windows, and players were disappearing into gates that sent them back to their own maps.

Nox stood by the main fountain made of pixel glass and checked the list of new quests. His blue neon jacket glowed even brighter than usual because he had just upgraded his badge for fast decisions.

"Zero normal quests," he muttered. "Either the server is boring, or it is planning something."

"The first option is less likely," said MiraByte. She had her purple visor pulled low over her eyes, and layers of the map were moving on her tablet. "This server does not know the word normal. Last time, it made us search for an exit that only appeared after we stopped fighting for first place."

SamZero leaned on a low railing panel. His white mask reflected the lobby lights, but he was not looking at the fountain or the map. He was looking up, into the space above them.

Then all the sounds stopped.

The lobby music cut off in the middle of a note. A рекламное drone froze in the air. Even the fountain stopped falling, and its drops hung there like tiny crystals.

Above the fountain, a system window opened.

UNPLAYED TRACE DETECTED.

Below it, a second line appeared, but the letters formed slowly, as if someone was choosing them one by one.

THE EDGE OF THE LOBBY IS WAITING FOR… AN HONEST ENTRY.

After that, the window showed a direction. Not an arrow to the usual gate, but a thin broken line leading behind the last buildings of the city, to the place where the map usually ended in a smooth gray wall.

Nox straightened. "Edge zone. Fine. We go."

"Fine is not really fine here," MiraByte corrected him and switched her tablet to recording mode. "The system wrote honest entry. Not a code, not a level, not a number of players. That is a very strange kind of condition."

"That voice was strange too," SamZero added quietly.

Both of them looked at him.

"Voice?" Nox asked. "It was just a message."

"It was not." Samuel rubbed the edge of his headphones. "When the second line appeared, there was a click. Like the system was confirming something. But between the words there was silence. Not lag. More like… it did not know what to say next."

MiraByte stopped typing for a moment. "The recording might have caught it."

But Nox was already walking along the broken line. "Great. We’ll find out on the way. If something is waiting there, I do not want it to disappear before we see it."

They followed him. Behind them, the fountain started moving again, but the water no longer fell straight down. Small lights turned toward the edge of the lobby, as if even the fountain was showing the way.

At the last street of the city, the normal map ended. рекламные panels disappeared, the floor was less shiny, and the buildings had empty windows where gray grid lines showed instead of rooms. At the end stood a gate with no name.

When Nox opened it, there was no dungeon or arena behind it.

There was a street.

It looked like part of a digital city, only a little quieter. The houses were narrow and tall, covered with neon signs. One offered virtual bikes, another repaired avatar animations, and a third had ten identical golden trophies in its display. Thin streams of light ran across the pavement like roads on a circuit board.

When Things Start to Change

"This was not here yesterday," said MiraByte.

"We were not here yesterday," Nox answered.

"That is exactly why I said it was not here."

The boy smiled. "Is that your analytic logic?"

"It is my exact logic."

The street moved.

Not all at once. First the sign above the bike shop changed. The words FAST RIDE broke into squares and came back as: ALWAYS FIRST?

Nox stopped.

A few meters farther, the turn to the right disappeared. In its place, a path opened along a wall where a purple symbol appeared, looking like Mira’s visor. Under it glowed: PROOF IS NOT THE WHOLE STORY.

MiraByte frowned. "Okay. This is not random terrain generation."

Samuel noticed the last change. By a bench made of clear panels, a small arrow lit up and pointed into a narrow side street. Above it, letters appeared one by one.

DID YOU NOTICE?

SamZero said nothing. He only pointed at the arrow.

"The map remembers our decisions," MiraByte said slowly. "Not just the big ones the server saves in the results. Also the way we make them."

"So the street is judging me?" Nox looked at the sign above the shop. "Great. It will probably leave me a review too."

"Maybe it is not judging you. Maybe it is giving something back."

That sentence hung between them. Then, in the distance, there was a soft crackling sound, like a skin loading in too slowly.

At the crossroads, a figure appeared.

It was taller than Samuel, shorter than Nox. A translucent hoodie fell around its shoulders and changed color between light blue and almost white. Its face was not fully fixed. One moment it looked like a smooth mask, then the hint of eyes flashed across it, but never stayed long enough to remember.

There was no name above the avatar.

Nox immediately lifted his hand to the quick actions menu. "Unknown avatar in a closed zone. I can mark it and send a report to the system."

MiraByte was already scanning its profile. On her tablet, however, there were only three empty fields.

NAME: —

SCORE: —

HISTORY: —

Under them, an error blinked that they had never seen before.

CATEGORY UNAVAILABLE.

"It has no profile," she said. "Not even a temporary one. That makes no sense."

The avatar did not move. It stood a little to the side at the corner, as if it wanted to leave the crossroads open. Then it tilted its head.

"Unknown avatar in a closed zone," it repeated.

Its voice was not metallic. It sounded almost like Nox’s, but a little slower. And there was something else in it: not the confidence Nox had just shown, but uncertainty hidden under a calm surface.

Nox lowered his hand.

Echo, though they did not know his name yet, turned toward Mira.

"That makes no sense," it said in her voice.

The sentence sounded different from before. MiraByte had said it sharply, because she wanted things to be clear. The avatar repeated it carefully, almost sadly, as if it really wished things did make sense.

Samuel held his breath.

When the translucent figure turned to him, he expected it to repeat something he had just said. Instead, it whispered, "Did you notice?"

It used his exact tone. Not loudly. Not like a challenge. More like a question someone asks when they are not sure anyone heard it.

"He is not only copying words," Samuel said.

Nox took a half step forward. "Then what? Is he reading our sound traces?"

"Maybe," MiraByte said. "But without a profile, he should not even have access to basic interactions. The system should move him out of the map automatically."

An Important Moment

The avatar spoke again. "Out of the map."

This time, it shivered on the last words. The light blue of its hoodie turned gray for a moment.

Nox frowned. "Okay. We do not know what he is. That does not make him a friend."

"And it does not make him a threat either," MiraByte replied.

"We do not need to argue. We just block him, leave by a safe route, and let the system handle the rest."

He pointed to the wide street behind them. A green line had appeared there with the words SAFE RETURN. But when Nox tried to step that way, his foot hit an invisible wall.

A system window popped up so fast that they all jerked their heads.

PROGRESS STOPPED.

CONDITION: HONEST ENTRY.

"Of course," MiraByte sighed. "A glitch in the rules. The map is not moving by the road, but by what we say."

Nox tried to go around the wall on the left. Then on the right. He picked up a pixel stone and threw it over the green line. The stone flew across, but his avatar did not.

"That is not a mechanic," he said, annoyed. "That is a stupid personality test."

"Maybe the server reads decisions, not just scores," MiraByte reminded him. "This fits too well."

"So what does it want? Our secrets?"

No one answered. The street waited. Store windows slowly darkened, and the light streams in the pavement stopped at their feet.

Echo watched them. It did not look happy, and it did not look dangerous. It looked confused, as if it did not understand why everything had stopped.

MiraByte walked to the nearest panel and studied the small signs near its edge. "Maybe any honest sentence will work. Not a command. Not a tactic. Something personal."

"You go first," said Nox.

The girl shot him a look through her purple visor. "Of course. I always love testing new rules on my own dignity."

She paused. Then she sighed, quieter than the others should have heard.

"I hate it when I do not have enough proof," she said. "Then I feel like if I make a mistake, it will not just be a mistake. It will be my fault, because I decided too early."

At that moment, a narrow crack opened in the wall behind her. The hidden panels slid apart and showed a new side road. It was not wide, but it was passable.

MiraByte stayed still. "So yes. It works."

Echo repeated her sentence. The first words sounded almost exactly like her voice. But in the last part, it slowed down, and its face cleared for one second. An expression appeared there that was neither a smile nor fear. It was an attempt to understand.

Nox looked at the open path. "Fine. We have a passage. We take it."

But when he stepped forward, the road instantly narrowed to a strip barely wider than his shoulder. The system added another line.

INSUFFICIENT ENTRY.

"You have got to be kidding me," Nox said, turning around. "We already gave it truth."

"Maybe not yours," Samuel said.

The air went silent. It was offline silence, uncomfortable even without chat and notifications.

Nox folded his arms. "What do you want from me?"

MiraByte said nothing. Samuel kept looking at the streams of light on the ground.

Finally, Denis lowered his gaze. For the first time since entering the zone, he did not look like someone who already had a plan in his head.

"Okay," he said. "I do not want to block it just because it is unknown."

The road did not move.

What Comes Next

"That is true," he added quickly, "but maybe not the truth the server wants."

He took a deep breath.

"I hate not knowing what will happen. When I do not have control, it feels like everyone is waiting for me to mess it up. So I rush. If I decide first, at least it looks like I know what I am doing."

The green line of safe return vanished. In its place, the street opened into two more blocks. The buildings moved aside, the pavement reassembled itself, and lights came on above the new road.

Nox frowned, but he did not look angry. He looked more surprised that the map had reacted so simply.

Echo repeated: "At least it looks like I know what I am doing."

There was more than Denis’s uncertainty in its voice now. Something small and new had appeared there. As if the avatar had found itself in that sentence, in something it still could not name.

Samuel noticed it. He also noticed that the cyan light around Echo changed the most during Mira’s confession and then again during Denis’s words. When they spoke about doubt, the color shifted from cold blue to a gentler, almost green shade. When Nox talked about blocking, the light only blinked.

"Wait," Samuel said.

Nox was about to move on, but this time he stopped.

The youngest member of the team pointed at Echo. "He does not change with every sentence. Only when someone says they are afraid, or when they are unsure. For the other ones, he just repeats them. For these… it is like he is trying to feel them."

MiraByte turned fully toward the avatar. "That would explain the delay in emotion. It copies the words right away. But the meaning catches up later."

"Meaning?" Echo asked.

Samuel nodded. "Yes. What is between the words."

The avatar tilted its head. "Between the words."

"Like… when you say you are fine, but you are not," Samuel explained. Then he stopped, because he knew exactly what that felt like.

The street still did not move. But when he spoke, the system did not ask for anything. On the pavement in front of him, a small white dot pulsed once.

Samuel looked at it. Then he finally said out loud what had been bothering him for a while.

"Sometimes it annoys me when I notice something and do not say it right away. Because I feel like you will still deal with your own stuff, and I will just be the younger one standing next to you. And then it is already too late."

It was not loud. That was exactly why it sounded so strong.

Nox’s face softened. MiraByte slowly lifted her hand away from the tablet.

In front of them, the last part of the map opened. It was not just a road. At the end appeared a platform at the edge of the lobby, and beyond it a new direction marked with an unknown symbol.

Echo stepped one move closer to Samuel.

"Then it is already too late," it repeated.

This time its voice was not Samuel’s voice. It had its own tone. Still more uncertain than a human voice, still a little broken, but its own.

MiraByte looked sharply at the tablet. "I got it. The voice trace detached from the original source. It should not be able to do that."

"So it is a glitch?" Nox asked.

"I do not know. It is evidence, but it is incomplete." She looked at Echo. "And for the first time, that does not bother me as much as usual."

The End of the Story

A new system window lit up on the platform. This time it was small and made no usual sharp sound.

UNKNOWN SUBJECT DETECTED.

Nox reached toward the quick action menu. Next to BLOCK there was now REPORT. Both icons glowed red.

Echo watched them. Its light faded.

"Out of the map?" it asked.

It was only a short sentence. Even so, Samuel heard the strange little piece of fear hidden between the words.

Nox’s hand stayed in the air. Then he slowly lowered it.

"We will wait," he said. "At least until we know more. This time I will not decide alone."

MiraByte nodded and saved the map recording, the system reactions, and Echo’s voice trace. "We give it a chance to speak. But we stay careful. Those two things do not cancel each other out."

Samuel turned to the avatar. "Can you say who you are?"

Echo did not move for a long time. Its face shifted between shapes, but then clear eyes appeared for one second.

"I…" it began.

A system window suddenly blinked above them.

PROFILE NOT FOUND.

The second line came together more slowly than all the others.

STATUS: NOT EMPTY.

No one moved.

Beyond the lobby’s edge, a new road lit up, thin as a line on a map. Echo stood between them and that direction, not fully on the team, but not fully outside it anymore either.

Then it looked at them and said very quietly:

"Not empty… does that mean stay?"