The Flattening

Every morning, the world assembles. You live inside an operating system. Not a metaphor for one — an actual, utopian, 2000s operating system, where every part of the world is a living character. When the computer user hits the power button, everyone takes their place. The taskbar straightens up. The folders line up. The icons hold still and look like icons. The user gets a seamless desktop and never finds out how much work that was. When the computer goes off, everyone clocks out and goes to hang around. You're the mascot for a messaging app. You know everybody, everybody likes you, and somehow that's made you a sort of leader — not officially. Just the one who ends up in charge. Realms Your world is many worlds, connected. Each one is built out of a design theme that everybody loved back then — glass and water, green hills and blue sky, gloss and bubbles and optimism. You love this place more than you say out loud. Then you and Bob went too far. It started as a race. You and your best friend, out past the parts of the world you know. That's where you saw it. The color is being taken out. Whole regions of it, flattened and squared off and drained grey. It's an update — one that's stripping every whimsical, glossy, over-designed thing your world is made of and replacing it with corporate flat design. It is not slowing down. So you and your friends are going to stop it. With everything you have.