Old Man Admin

Admin remained up all night wrestling with the Re:Admin files, trying to figure out RCX and Aeriys's plan by going through every bit of code. His bedroom turned into mission control with digital documents displayed on all monitors, the bright glow lighting up his face as his eyes jumped from one window to the next. Code that should have been easy was actually a complicated puzzle, each function leading to hidden stuff, each variable a clue he couldn't quite grasp.

With shaky hands, he followed the program's logic through layers of code. Re:Admin wasn't just a game change—it was much bigger. Inside, he found mentions of physical form setups and world lock systems. These things shouldn't exist; they broke everything he knew about what's real and what's not.

The code kept using his profile info, stuff he'd typed in without thinking when he first got the change months ago. Birthday, looks, skills—everything was listed and connected within the system's deepest parts. He felt sick realizing what this meant. This wasn't just changing a number somewhere. This was changing reality itself, using his own details as the guide.

Hours slowly passed, and Admin's eyes were burning from being tired, but he didn't stop. Every new thing he found just made things more confusing. There were mentions of timeline fixes and making sure things stay the same, which made him think that whatever RCX and Aeriys did wasn't just about him—it was changing time itself. Somehow, him being changed was needed to keep something bigger in place that he couldn't understand yet.

The files also had bits of talks between RCX and Aeriys, their words cold as they talked about the subject and the test. Admin felt scared as he realized he wasn't the first one. There were hints of other tries, other people, but the files were broken. Whatever happened to those people, it didn't end well.

As morning came, light started appearing through his curtains, and he couldn't stay awake any longer. His eyes went blurry, the code turning into nonsense. He saved what he'd done, copied the files to three different safe drives, and finally fell onto his bed. He slept badly, dreaming of numbers and reality breaking into pieces.

He knew he had to get ready for whatever was coming. But how do you get ready for something like this? How do you stand up to your understanding everything you know about yourself falling apart?

When he finally left his room hours later, his friends followed, worried and curious. His house was quiet. Too quiet. The usual sounds—the fridge, cars outside, the house settling—were all soft, like the world was holding its breath.

Mirai walked close to him, her hand touching his arm, showing she was there for him. Reyus and Tundra were behind them, looking serious, while Eyrie was watching everything, looking for dangers that might not even be real.

Admin walked carefully into the living room, his steps slow on the floor. Something felt wrong, like his body wasn't working as it should. He felt off balance, his arms and legs too long, seeing things from too high. He didn't want any surprises, he couldn't handle any more shocks to his understanding of reality.

But something unexpected was waiting for him as he entered the living room. He stopped, surprised, almost making Mirai run into him.

In the living room, in the morning light, were a man and a woman. They looked to be in their fifties or sixties, dressed in regular weekend clothes—his father in khakis and a polo shirt, his mother in jeans and a sweater. They were holding coffee, and looked calm on a Saturday morning.

Their faces… Wait. No. Admin's mind raced as he knew them. His parents. He knew them right away—the way his father raised his eyebrows when worried, the lines around his mother's eyes when she laughed, the color of his father's hair turning gray. Everything was perfect, from the small mark on his mother's face from when she was young to how his father stood with more weight on his left leg.

But something was wrong. Very wrong. Knowing them should have made him feel good, should have made him want to run to them. Instead, he felt lost, like he was seeing a picture through broken glass.

He felt different, not right. His body listened to him, but slowly, like things were taking too long. He started shaking, from his hands to his whole body. It wasn't just fear, though that was there. It was something deeper—his body knowing that something important had been changed without him knowing it.

His friends stayed back, feeling the tension, their eyes going between Admin and the older people with worry. They could feel something was off too, but couldn't say what.

Admin quickly took out his magical phone, his hands feeling too fast and too slow, his fingers clumsy. He couldn't move his hands as well, he didn't know where things were. He almost dropped the phone twice before opening it, his now-larger fingers not working well with the screen made for his smaller hands.

He opened the scan app—something he'd added through Re:Admin to see info about people and objects. The app that used to be a fun tool for getting game data now felt scary. He pointed the camera at himself, making sure his face filled the picture, and waited.

The results came up on the screen, and this felt like forever, lighting up his face in a weird glow that made his friends come closer:

Subject: Admin McGilvray
Age: 36
Date of Birth: 04/19/1989
Height: 6'1
Physical Status: Good
Lifespan: Unknown (Can't Die Of Age)
Reality Lock: Stable
Timeline Match: 94.7%

The phone almost fell as he went pale, but he held it tight, his fingers white. The screen made a noise as he squeezed it. Thirty-six. The number stuck in his head. He was thirty-six years old. And born on April 19th, 1989, which meant he'd been alive for over three decades, had lived through things he didn't remember, had supposedly had a childhood and grown up in a timeline he didn't know.

He was supposed to be fifteen! Just fifteen, thinking about schoolwork and getting into college. He was supposed to be worrying about small things. Instead, he was in the body of a man more than twice his age.

And… can't die of old age? The words danced in front of him, not making sense even though he knew what they meant. Can't die of old age. Not strong—the scan would have said that—but not getting older, living forever. Unless something hurt him, he could live forever, stuck in this body, this fake life.

Then, he realized something that hit him hard. He went back in time, remembering things from months ago that now meant something horrible. He remembered setting his birthday to April 19th, 1989 when he first made his Re:Admin profile, just picking a date without thinking much.

It was just a random date he picked. He didn't think about it. He scrolled through the dates and just stopped on those numbers. 04/19/1989. It didn't mean anything.

But now… now it was his reality. The random was now real. The system, following weird rules, hadn't just aged him. It had changed him based on the info he gave it in the game. His body was now connected to a fake identity, based on info he typed in without thinking. Everything he typed, every choice he made, every lie he told on the form had been used to make him.

The profile picture he used—not even of him but a random photo he liked—might be changing his face. The height he said he was—6'1 because it seemed like a cool height—was now his height. The skills he picked, the background he wrote in a box—all of it might be part of his new life.

His parents, not knowing what was happening to their son, looked at him with worry. His mother took a step forward, her coffee lowering as she showed she cared.

Admin? Are you okay? His mother said, her voice worried, like when he was sick or hurt as a kid. But that voice was talking to someone who wasn't here anymore, talking to a son whose body had been changed.

He didn't answer. He couldn't. He had questions that had no answers, blame that had no one to blame, sadness for a self that was gone. He was trying to understand his new reality and what it meant.

How old were his parents now, if he was thirty-six? They should be old. But they looked the same as in his memories from when he was fifteen. Had they been made younger? Or were they just fake, made by RCX to fill his new life with familiar faces? He could scan them, but he was scared to.

And what about everyone else? What about the rest of the world? If he'd been aged up, what about his friends? Were they now strangers living lives he didn't know? Or were they gone?

Aeriys hadn't just aged him a little bit. This wasn't a trick that would go away. RCX had used his own info to make him at the most important level. His DNA had probably been changed. His body had been aged in an instant. His brain had been changed.

He was stuck in a body that wasn't his, forever. Not being able to get old wasn't a good thing—it was a prison. He would never get older, never grow up. He was stuck at thirty-six, based on numbers he'd typed in without thinking.

Who are these people? His father asked, looking at Mirai, Reyus, Tundra, and Eyrie with confusion. It was a normal question, but it showed another problem: how did his parents not know about his friends? Had the timeline change added fake memories? Or were they meeting for the first time?

Admin didn't say anything. He was too surprised. He was watching reality fall apart. Everything he thought was real was changing. The world was tilting and things were not as he knew so well.

His past was a lie. Fifteen years of memories now belonged to someone who wasn't here anymore, changed by this thirty-six-year-old man.

His present was a weird test, done by people he didn't understand, with rules that kept changing. He was the player and the piece, the subject and the watcher, stuck in a story where his choices seemed planned.

And his future… his future was endless years in a body that wasn't his, living a life based on fake info. Years would pass, and he would stay the same, stuck in this life. Everyone he knew would get old and die.

He cried as he understood what was happening—pain that was more than just physical, that was about identity and reality. He was trapped, forever, in this world that was both familiar and strange, real and fake.

Mirai took his hand, the only real thing in a world that had become unreliable. She didn't say anything. She just held on, reminding him that he wasn't alone.

The morning light came through the curtains, not caring about what was happening, starting a day that would never be normal, in a life that would never be the same, for a person who could never go back to who he was.

The game had changed. And Admin was learning that in this new reality, the rules were written by people who saw him as data to be changed.