The Beginning of Everything

"Ah, there's jack shit to do. Content's dead. This game's trash."

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At a glance, it sounds like the ordinary griping of some shut-in gamer. But the source of that griping happens to be The Absolute — a being who can bend every last thing in this world to his will — and that changes the story considerably.

Money. Power. Women.

For the man who held everything this world had to offer in the palm of his hand, the end of the road was boredom.

"Every single day is identical. I'm going out of my mind from the monotony. Isn't there anything even a little fresh?"

Back when he first discovered this world's cheat codes and closed his fist around them, he had believed that nothing but eternal, undying happiness awaited him. But as time wore on, he couldn't quite call himself unhappy — yet happiness no longer struck him as anything special.

"I just have to think about what I want and it all comes true exactly as imagined. There's no novelty left in life."

Picture a desire, and the result materializes in your hands without fail. The tedious process of actually earning that result can be skipped entirely. Omnipotence had stripped the man of any sense of accomplishment, of the joy of effort itself!!

…Or so he could rant, if he felt like it. Of course it was all just an excuse.

If accomplishment mattered that much, he could simply seal his own powers and live without them. With the world's cheat key in hand and near-total omnipotence at his disposal, he could craft as many playgrounds as he liked — places where his own effort would let him feel achievement to his heart's content.

Build a fantasy world and become the hero. Build a martial arts world and become the greatest under heaven. If he wanted to, he could do any of it.

The reason he didn't was simple: he was lazy.

"Accomplishment… effort… sure, those are nice and all, but the second I picture myself actually doing the work… haaah. What a pain."

He wanted to be the hero the masses adored. But to genuinely become that, he'd need every kind of effort imaginable. He'd have to overcome trials, defeat enemies, endure suffering, and swallow his rage.

"Ugh, fuck. Just thinking about it exhausts me."

And if he skipped all that and simply sucked up the end result of being praised, nothing would be any different from now. He'd already gotten his hands on a life where a single click could grant him anything — and he was supposed to throw that away and grind through hell? Not an easy ask.

He was the type who sincerely believed that if short-form videos already guaranteed enough dopamine, what was the point of sitting through a feature-length film that demanded actual concentration? And at least a movie only required you to sit still and watch. Experience never ended that cleanly.

"Ah, I just want to sit on my ass and click-absorb whatever other people have already gone through."

He couldn't even be bothered to stop at that — he wanted to freeload off other people's experiences entirely. Pure nonsense. But this man had the power to make sure that nonsense didn't stay nonsense.

"…So I just do it, right?"

He was, after all, the man who held this world's cheat codes. For someone who could create a whole new world with a single click, freeloading on other people's experiences was almost trivial.

Once an idea took shape, progress came so fast he had to wonder what all his earlier fretting had even been about.

"Then the real question is where I source those experiences from."

Manufacturing humans to harvest experiences from would be simple enough. But then everything would fall right back inside the range of his predictions. He could postpone the boredom for a while — and that would be as far as it went.

"Better to set up just the basic environment and let them move on their own after that. But if I want to pull a lot of experiences worth calling interesting that way, I'm going to need a huge sample size."

Increasing the sample size itself was no trouble at all. The problem was the process of sorting through it all and plucking out the entertaining bits.

"…I'll need a system where they share and filter their own experiences without me lifting a finger."

And The Absolute already knew exactly such a system.

Before he'd obtained the cheat codes that decided this world's fate, the man had been buried in internet communities — those places where people spun stories for no real gain, dug up information, traded reactions, and posted creative work.

Once the cheat codes were his, he'd figured he was done sinking into communities ever again. And yet here he was, circling right back to the starting point?

"The community I used to haunt stopped being fun, so I quit. But then I can just make a new one myself, can't I? How did I not think of this?"

If he built a community, most of it would be worthless garbage posts. What got dragged in as "info" would often be stale tabloid trash, or outright fabricated. Ask people to share their thoughts and some opinionated assholes would just start infinite flame wars. A big-name poster dumping creative work might go full dictator and run the whole place into the ground.

But none of that mattered to The Absolute. Community management could be dumped on whoever was convenient. He only needed to skim the tasty parts.

Positive experiences were good in their own right. Even negative ones could be entertaining if you took a step back and watched. And the problem of the board filling up with nothing but trash posts? Irrelevant. Run even mediocre garbage through the lens of twisted common sense and a warped environment, and it took on an entirely new flavor.

Whenever he found an experience, a thought, a feeling that seemed worthwhile, he'd take it as-is and make it his own. That was how he would dissolve this boredom.

Choosing never, under any circumstances, to move himself was pure laziness — but it wasn't a bad plan. Plenty of people managed their desires through secondhand experience. It was practically wholesome.

The idea itself might ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have been wholesome. The world he was about to create for the sake of that idea, however, could not by any stretch be called the same.

"Back in the day, just reading the stories idiots posted was entertaining. I wasted so much goddamn time on it. Even the little stuff used to be fun."

When he'd first gotten the world's cheat codes, the man had decided that pleasure should be his alone, inexhaustible and exclusive. But that way, he got bored far too fast. Humans were, at their core, social animals — creatures who eventually wanted to share at least a little of what they enjoyed.

"Of course, understanding and savoring the true essence of it all is still reserved for me alone."

Even if you threw open the wine cellar for a party, you still sipped the truly precious top-shelf bottles by yourself. That much possessiveness was only natural for a human being.

"Hmm. And as for who to invite into the community… maybe I'll limit it to guys who don't seem particularly impressive. I don't really feel like handing something like this to the ones who already had it made."

Until he'd gotten the cheat codes, he had been a bottom-rung life in the country called South Korea. His life had completely turned around since then, but the baseless resentment he'd stockpiled toward people living successful lives still sat in his unconscious. And even setting that aside — what was fun about watching people who were already happy?

"I'll let them handle the small stuff among themselves, but the most basic premises I'll have to build myself, right? Respecting their autonomy should produce more interesting results, so I won't clamp down too hard…"

The world's fundamental shape would be the kind of male-dominant altered-common-sense setting he'd liked back when he was still an ordinary human — and right after he'd first gotten the cheat codes. Not male dominance in the social-class sense of Joseon Korea or certain Islamic societies, but something realized entirely through a completely different conception of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sex.

Set that one grand premise, and let everything else run itself. And he would look at the world through the eyes of the people living inside it.

"Yeah. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like it. Not bad at all. And if I end up not liking it, I can just change it later, right?"

The Absolute was satisfied with the blueprint of the community he had designed. And he decided to infect the entire world with this delightful new reality at once — through the unremarkable men scattered across it.

An unexpected miracle, handed to men who had never been anything special.

Not that they themselves would have the faintest idea what that miracle even was.