My name is John and I spend most of my days at work at a pizza joint and the evenings in front of my PC. I am an avid gamer, by avid gamer I mean that I only play one game, an MMORPG , the same one which I played for the past 5 years, Chaos World.

I once had a impressive physique which came after years of playing sports, and practicing Krav Maga, a hand to hand self defense art which is awesome and brutal. I also used to adhere to a strict gym regime. It was all gone now though.  I am tall, 6 ft 1  so at first the weight I gained was not that noticeable but as time went on you just couldn’t ignore my man tits.

I still lived at home with my parents, not willingly mind you. Living in new york is very expensive,  renting an apartment would have cost me an arm and a leg with my measly salary.

I woke up at 9:30 am. The sound of my alarm woke me up from the most amazing dream I had. I don’t really remember what it was about though, all I remember is a gorgeous women and the fact that she was naked.

I went to grab a quick shower and got dressed quickly in jeans and a black T-shirt. I wanted to play Chaos world for a short while before heading to work at 12 am.

While killing my 30th wolf in the game as part of my a daily quest the game suddenly shut down and the screen was pitch black.

I was startled, I thought that maybe the power went out , I turned my head and saw that the the computer had power and the light from my fridge was on. I waited for a few minutes and when nothing happened, I restarted the computer manually and launched the familiar Icon for Chaos world to start the game.

Nothing happened… I waited for a few more minutes. Nothing was happening beside me getting irritated and smacking the keyboard as if that would magically make the game start.

A familiar bell like sound came from my computer and a notification window popped up on the screen.

  [ World Merge in Progress ]

That’s weird I thought to myself, maybe there was an update while I slept ?.

No , that couldn’t have been the case, there were no updates or patches scheduled to be released today. While waiting there for the game to finish whatever it was doing I wanted to smoke so I reached for the cigarette pack but it was light. Too light. Opening it and seeing there was nothing inside just got me even more frustrated so I decided to go buy some cigarettes from the store downstairs.

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I checked my phone while going down the stairs and noted that the time was 10:34 am and that I had no signal..wierd. I made my way to the store and went to the cashier to ask for my usual brand of Madburo cigaretes. The cashier in front of me was a cute middle eastern girl in her late twenties I assumed. Her name tag was showing and the name Yamin was written on it.

I went to her and asked for 2 packs of smokes… Nothing. I repeated myself, “ Can I please have 2 packs of Madburo please?”….still nothing.

I was getting irritated so I decided to raise my voice a little and repeated myself…yet again nothing. I was annoyed at this point so I waved my hand in front of her but it was weird, she did not seem to notice me at all.

At this point I noticed that her eyes were glued to the screen and they were not moving. In fact she was not moving at all. I looked around and realized that the 2 other customers in the store were not moving at all.

They were all frozen in place.

I did not know what the hell was going on. I ran outside and realized that other people were frozen everywhere, people were frozen mid walk, another balding guy was frozen whilst getting out of his car and another young blonde women was frozen while she was probably in the middle of her morning run.

I was stunned, I did not know what to do or how to feel about this weird situation that apparently caused everyone to freeze in time .  I decided to call my mother to see if she was ok, I took out my phone and while looking for her name on my contact list I realized that I still did not have a signal..but what was even weirder was the fact that it was still 10:34 am.

That did not make any sense what so ever.. I must have spend at least a few minutes in the store and a few minutes out here staring at people.

I suddenly  felt a hand on my shoulder, when I turned around I saw in front of me a gorgeous half naked women staring at me. She seemed  puzzled and before I could say anything she opened her mouth and all I heard was a shrill sound, the same sound you hear when you call a fax or the same sound old dial up modems used to make.

The noise was loud and overbearing. I put my hands on my ears in an attempt to block the noise. The mysterious half naked women saw my actions and closed her mouth. It seemed that she was thinking to herself when all of a sudden she came towards me and put her thumb on my forehead.

My view went black for a second and when the vision came back I was staring at a notification window in real life.

[ Initializing Information, this will take a few moments]

The half naked lady in front of me kept making that awful sound with her mouth and I was starting to get a massive headache and my vision was getting blurry. What I just saw couldn’t have been real, it must have been some sort of a hallucination caused by this headache for sure.  I was trying to find a place to sit when suddenly I fell down and passed out. 

[ Initialization complete. Welcome to Chaos Earth Adventurer]