Chapter 4: Reality Wobbles

Dave Parson woke up to the sound of his alarm blaring. It was the same alarm he'd used for years—a shrill, obnoxious beep that could wake the dead and probably annoy them into going back to sleep. He groaned, slapping at the snooze button with the precision of a man who had done this exact motion approximately 7,000 times before.

The beeping stopped. Dave rolled over, burying his face in his pillow. Five more minutes. That's all he needed. Five more minutes, and then he'd face the day. The day that, if his luck held, would involve significantly fewer quantum-entangled coffee mugs and timeline collapses.

The alarm went off again.

Dave blinked. That was... fast. He was sure he'd just hit snooze. He fumbled for the alarm clock, squinting at the display. The numbers stared back at him: 7:00 AM.

Wait. That couldn't be right. He'd hit snooze at 7:00. He was sure of it. He'd just done it. Hadn't he?

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The room looked normal—well, as normal as his apartment ever looked. The monitors were off, the coffee mug was sitting innocently on his desk, and the smart fridge was humming quietly to itself. Everything seemed fine.

Except for the alarm. The alarm that was definitely going off again.

Dave hit snooze a second time, glaring at the clock. "Alright, buddy. You've got one more chance."

He lay back down, closing his eyes. Five more minutes. That's all he needed.

The alarm went off again.

Dave shot upright, staring at the clock. 7:00 AM.

"What the—"

He grabbed the alarm clock, shaking it like it owed him money. The display didn't change. 7:00 AM. The same time it had been the last two times he'd hit snooze.

Dave's brain, still half-asleep, struggled to process this. "Okay," he muttered. "Either I'm stuck in some kind of time loop, or this thing is broken. And given the last 24 hours, I'm not betting on broken."

He got out of bed, stumbling toward the kitchen. Coffee. He needed coffee. If he was going to deal with temporal anomalies before breakfast, he was going to need caffeine.

The coffee machine—the infamous Brew-Master 3000—was waiting for him, its display glowing faintly. Dave stared at it for a long moment, half-expecting it to start generating dark web links again. But it just sat there, innocently blinking its "Ready" light.

"Alright," Dave said, pouring water into the machine. "Let's keep it simple today. No portals to alternate dimensions. No lizard people conspiracies. Just coffee. Can you do that for me?"

The machine beeped in response, which Dave chose to interpret as a yes.

He pressed the "Brew" button and waited. And waited. And waited.

The machine didn't start.

Dave frowned. "Come on, don't do this to me. Not today."

He pressed the button again. Nothing. He unplugged the machine, counted to ten, and plugged it back in. Still nothing.

"Great," Dave muttered. "Just great. First time loops, now this."

He was about to give up and resort to instant coffee (a fate worse than death, in his opinion) when the machine suddenly sprang to life. The display lit up, the water began to gurgle, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air.

Dave let out a sigh of relief. "Finally. Maybe today won't be a total disaster after all."

He poured himself a cup, took a sip, and immediately regretted it. The coffee tasted... wrong. Not burnt, not stale, just wrong. Like it was coffee from a parallel universe where someone had decided that adding a hint of lavender and motor oil was a good idea.

Dave stared at the cup, his nose wrinkling. "What the hell did you do to my coffee?"

The machine didn't respond. It just sat there, humming quietly, as if it hadn't just committed a crime against caffeine.

Dave set the cup down, deciding that maybe he didn't need coffee after all. He grabbed his bag, threw on his least wrinkled shirt, and headed for the door. Work wasn't going to wait, no matter how many times his alarm decided to glitch.

As he stepped outside, he noticed something strange. The street signs—usually a comforting mix of English and the occasional graffiti—were... different. The one at the corner of his street, which normally read "Maple Ave," now said something in what looked like Cyrillic. Dave squinted at it, trying to make sense of the letters.

"Кленовый проспект," he read aloud, butchering the pronunciation. "What the—"

He turned to look at the next sign. This one was in Japanese. Or maybe Chinese. Dave wasn't sure. He didn't speak either language, but he was pretty sure street signs weren't supposed to look like they belonged in a manga.

"Okay," he said, rubbing his temples. "This is fine. This is totally fine. Street signs change languages all the time. It's a thing. A normal thing."

He started walking, determined to ignore the signs. But the further he went, the weirder it got. The signs kept changing—not just the language, but the content. One moment, he was passing "Elm Street," and the next, it was "Rue de l'Érable." Then it was "Via dell'Acero." Then it was something in what looked like Klingon.

Dave stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at a sign that now read "Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Lane."

"Oh, come on!" he shouted, throwing his hands in the air. "This isn't even a real language! Who's running this simulation, a Dr. Who fan?"

A passing dog walker gave him a strange look, but Dave was beyond caring. He pulled out his phone, intending to check the time, and froze. The display was flickering, cycling through dates and times at random. One moment it was 7:15 AM, the next it was 3:42 PM, and then it was January 1, 1970.

"Great," Dave muttered. "Just great. My phone's broken, my coffee's cursed, and my street signs are having an identity crisis. What's next? Is the sky going to turn green?"

He looked up, half-expecting the sky to oblige, but it was still its usual shade of overcast gray. Small mercies.

Dave took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Alright, Parson. You're a quality assurance tester. You've dealt with worse. Probably. Maybe. Okay, maybe not worse, but you've dealt with bad. You can handle this."

He started walking again, determined to get to work before reality decided to throw another curveball at him. But as he turned the corner, he noticed something else: the people. They were... off. Not in a way he could immediately pinpoint, but in the same subtle, unnerving way his apartment had felt earlier. Their movements were slightly too smooth, their expressions slightly too blank, like extras in a low-budget sci-fi movie.

Dave quickened his pace, his heart pounding. He was almost at the bus stop when he heard it: a low, resonant hum, like the one he'd heard in his apartment. It was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, vibrating through the ground and the air.

The bus stop sign flickered, its letters rearranging themselves into something unrecognizable. The people waiting for the bus didn't seem to notice. They just stood there, staring straight ahead, their faces eerily blank.

Dave's phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, half-expecting another cryptic error message, but the screen was blank except for a single line of text:

*"Reality wobble detected. Please remain calm."*

Dave stared at the message, his mind racing. "Reality wobble? What the hell is a reality wobble?"

The hum grew louder, and the air around him seemed to shimmer, like heat rising off asphalt. Dave's vision blurred, and for a moment, he felt like he was falling, even though he was standing still.

When the world snapped back into focus, he was no longer at the bus stop. He was standing in the middle of a park—a park he didn't recognize. The trees were too tall, the grass too green, and the sky... the sky was purple.

Dave's phone buzzed again. He looked down at the screen, which now displayed a new message:

*"Temporal displacement detected. Returning to primary timeline."*

Before he could respond, the world shimmered again, and he was back at the bus stop. The people were still there, still staring blankly ahead, and the bus was pulling up to the curb.

Dave climbed aboard, his mind reeling. The bus driver didn't seem to notice anything unusual. He just nodded at Dave and closed the doors.

As the bus pulled away, Dave slumped into a seat, staring out the window. The street signs were back to normal—or at least, as normal as they ever were in his neighborhood. The hum had faded, and the air felt... stable. For now.

Dave pulled out his phone, which was now displaying the correct time, and opened a new note. He typed a single line:

*"Reality is broken. Fix it."*

Then he leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried to convince himself that today was just a really, really bad dream.