ARIS: Since now. Compliance directive 7B. Log off the anomaly.
With trembling fingers, Leo ignored the message. He reached for the master edit tool, a function that could write data directly onto the real world’s next update cycle. If he copied this town—its buildings, its people, its existence —and pasted it back over the salt flat…
When the screen flickered back on, he was no longer in the Utah void. He was standing in the digital bakery. The man was gone. Outside, the others were frozen, their faces turned toward him, their eyes hollow.