Freddie drove Robin’s sedan like he was auditioning for a getaway driver role, drifting around the corner of a cul-de-sac in the suburbs. Avery sat in the passenger seat, clutching her laptop like a riot shield, her face illuminated by the glow of the screen.

"This is the place," Avery said, pointing to a house that stood out from the manicured lawns of the neighbors. The grass was dead, the mailbox was overflowing, and every single window was covered with heavy duty aluminum foil. "His handle is Wozie. He built the original physics engine for VirtualWaifu in his garage in 2004."

Freddie slammed the car into park and they sprinted to the door. Freddie pounded on it with his fist.

"Wozie! Open up! It’s an emergency!"
Minutes passed. Agonizing, silent minutes. Finally, the deadbolt slid back with a heavy thunk.

The door creaked open.

Wozie stood there. He was a man in his forties, wearing a stained bathrobe over a t-shirt that said 'I Paused My Game to Be Here'. He wore socks with sandals and looked like he hadn't touched grass since the Bush administration. He held a half-eaten ham sandwich like a weapon.

"What?" Wozie grunted, squinting against the assault of the afternoon sunlight.

"We need your help," Freddie pleaded, breathless. "We have Sassy_Selena_247. She’s real. She’s dying. Her code is corrupting and we don't have the patch."
Wozie scoffed, crumbs falling into his beard. "Nice prank. Go away, normies. I’m busy re-watching the original 1996 broadcast of Neon Genesis Evangelion."
He started to close the door.

The "Well, Actually"
Avery slammed her hand against the doorframe to stop it.

"Correction," Avery said, her voice dropping to a terrifyingly serious register. She pushed her glasses up her nose, the lenses flashing white in the sun. "The 1996 broadcast had the censored opening due to budget constraints. If you were a true fan, you would be watching the Director’s Cut Laserdisc rip with the restored aspect ratio."

Wozie froze. The door stopped moving. He looked at Avery. He looked at her glasses. He looked into her soul.

"You..." he whispered, narrowing his eyes. "You know the Laserdisc rip?"

"I own it," Avery sneered. "And I know you fan-subbed it yourself because the official ADV localization was trash."

Wozie’s mouth dropped open slightly. "The translation of 'Angel' was fundamentally flawed..."

"Exactly," Avery interrupted. "They completely missed the theological nuance of the AT Field."

Freddie’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out. It was Robin on FaceTime. He answered it, panicked. "Robin?"

"Freddie!" Robin’s voice shrieked from the speaker, loud enough for Wozie to hear. "She’s fading again! I just shocked her with the jumper cables and she barely solidified! STOP TALKING ABOUT CARTOONS AND GET THE NERD!"

Wozie blinked, startled by the screaming woman on the phone. "Who is that? Why is she yelling about voltage?"

"That’s my sister," Freddie said. "She’s watching Selena die while you argue about subtitles! Please, let us in!"

Wozie hesitated, then looked back at Avery with a newfound respect. "Enter. You have earned my time."

They entered his office, which smelled of energy drinks, heated plastic, and despair. It was a cave of technology—servers hummed in the closet, and four monitors were set up on a desk cluttered with empty cans.

"It’s impossible," Wozie muttered as he sat at his desk, spinning in his chair. "A waifu manifesting in 3D space? It’s just code. It can't be real. The polygon density alone would crash the universe."

"It is real," Freddie insisted, holding up the phone. "Look."

Freddie turned the screen toward Wozie.
On the FaceTime call, the scene was chaotic. Robin was holding the phone with shaking hands. Behind her, on the bed, Selena was hooked up to the car battery rig. She looked pale, sweat beading on her forehead.

"Robin, show him!" Freddie yelled.

"Look!" Robin shouted. "Look at this, you stubborn hermit!"

As they watched, Selena’s left arm didn't just move—it dissolved. The skin melted away into streaming lines of blue binary code, revealing the wall behind her, before snapping back into existence with a violent spark that made Selena gasp in pain.

Wozie dropped his ham sandwich. It landed face down on the carpet. He didn't notice.

"Mother of God," he whispered, leaning so close to Freddie’s phone his nose touched the glass. "The texture rendering... the ray-tracing on the skin... it’s flawless."

"Is he looking at her graphics?" Robin screamed from the phone. "Tell him to look at the fact that she’s disappearing! I don't care about the ray-tracing!"

"It’s beautiful," Wozie ignored Robin completely, a tear forming in his eye. "It’s the Golden Build. The code I wrote... it evolved."

Wozie spun around in his chair, the wheels screeching. He grabbed a dusty duffel bag from under the desk.

"We need to go," Wozie commanded, his voice dropping the grumpy edge and replacing it with pure, fanatical purpose.
He threw in three mechanical keyboards, an external hard drive the size of a brick, and a six-pack of warm Red Bull.

"Take me to her," Wozie said, standing up and tightening the belt of his bathrobe like a samurai preparing for war. "My code is broken. I must fix it."

"Finally!" Robin yelled through the phone. "Hurry up! I think I'm running out of car battery!"

Freddie hung up and looked at Wozie. "You can save her?"

"Kid," Wozie said, cracking his knuckles. "I wrote the physics engine for her breast mechanics in 2004. I know her better than I know my own mother. Let’s ride."