Chapter 1

It had haunted him for months now, thoughts of it chasing around inside of his tortured mind. He could scarcely think of anything else; it had become his obsession, his one and only desire in life. It was consuming him, devouring his being from the inside out.

Master PC.

A simple universe online, in which tens of stories had been written within. A universe which thousands of young teens used to power their fantasies.

Yet, for one person, that universe was as real as the air he breathed. Of course, he also believed aliens abducted him nightly, and that the world outside of his mind did not exist. For Matthew Harris, a belief in a program that would let him control his reality was as normal as normal could be. He ran searches on the Usenet servers, peer to peer programs, and webpage search engines for it daily. He also offered to clean out people's attics and basements so that he could check around for left behind CDs, as well as buying any disc he spotted at a garage sale. He had spent thousands of dollars of his hard earned money trying to locate a copy of it, with absolutely no success.

Recently, he had been given extra incentives to search even harder for the elusive program. His psychologist was threatening to commit him if he kept throwing away his medications. Matt continued to persist in his refusal however; he firmly believed he was sane. After all, they had given him various doses of Thiothixene, Trifluoperazine, Fluphenazine, and Halperidol (to name just a few), and none of them had worked. If four antipsychotics didn't take care of his problems, then he obviously wasn't psychotic, right? If he could just get his hands on Master PC, he could set his psychologist and all of his doubters straight.

He was just beginning his fifth Usenet search of the day for Master PC when his phone rang. Annoyed that someone would dare to interrupt his important business, he grabbed the cordless off of its base station.

"Hello? Who is it?" He asked in a deep grumble as switched the device on. He held it just slightly away from his face, so that any low level mind control signals wouldn't affect him. After all, who knew when aliens or the government might be trying to get rid of him somehow?

"Matthew, I have what you're looking for."

Matt's blood began to run cold. Could it possibly be true, after all this time? He couldn't dare hope.

"Be more specific." He had meant to sound calm and rational, but judging by the very high pitched squeak in his voice, he had failed miserably.

"For years now you have desired Master PC. What would you do to have it?"

Matt could swear his heart had stopped, and yet he could still hear something pounding away inside of his ears. His stomach had dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of his groin, and he had no idea where his balls had scampered off to. Just a moment ago he had been perfectly relaxed, and now he was covered in cold sweat.

"Anything," was his simple answer, "anything."

"For your dear program, I will request only one thing. You see, I am the ruler of a section of Eternity... what you might call the afterlife. There are no gods, not really... but there are dynamics to this reality that you cannot understand. Currently, two factions... mine and another... are engaged in combat. One of the regions in dispute is your universe... therefore, we have agreed to let it handle its own affairs, so that we have less to worry about. But I do not wish to surrender all my power over your universe. So I need a loyal agent within it to help me... someone who owes me greatly. That is where you come in. I will give you absolute power over your reality... over your universe... in exchange for your aid. I might not need it for years... for thousands of years for all I know. I just need you to remember your debt to me."