Marke opened his eyes to see the inside of a stone cave. I have been opening my eyes way too much recently. Thought Marke. He glanced around, but the cave was completely bare. Sunlight shone through an exit at the end of a short tunnel. A blue rectangle popped up right in front of his face. Marke gave a small scream before reading it. It had a short prompt followed by two buttons.
> Welcome Hero! Enter your name:
>
> Ok ---- Cancel
“My name? I guess… Wait no I’m supposed to break things. Cancel. Cancel.” The rectangle did not respond to his words, so Marke tried tapping the ‘cancel’ button with his finger. The rectangle disappeared. Marke took a step forward.
A second box popped up, just as blue as the first.
> Please enter your name:
>
> Ok ---- Cancel
Marke pushed cancel again. The box reappeared a moment later. Marke pushed cancel a few more times, then just walked out of the cave. The blue rectangle floated along in front of him, blocking much of his view.
Marke walked out of the cave. Turning around, he saw that the cave was in the side of a tan cliffside that stretched up higher than he could see. Around him, he saw a forest of thin brown trees.
“Wish I had someone to talk to. This is gonna get boring all by myself, walking in the wilderness.” Marke walked forward into the forest with no particular urgency. As he walked he took a look at himself. He seemed human, and in a body mostly like the one he remembered from his most recent life. He wore plain brown clothing and thin brown shoes. “Guess I better start to love brown. Wish I had a mirror. What if my face is different? Will I go nuts trying to make my face fit my memories? Or maybe it will just be like when I save off a long beard and look goofy for a few days.”
Marke stepped around a tree and slid carefully down into a gully. A clump of brown mushrooms grew on a fallen branch in the bottom of the gully. Marke poked one of the mushrooms.
> You have been poisoned
>
> ERROR no status sheet
The realm shattered.
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Marke kept his eyes closed while he dealt with the aftereffects of breaking a whole realm. The shock of having an adrenaline spike due to the end of the realm clashed horribly with the shock of waking up in a fresh body which had no adrenaline. Marke’s mind told him he should feel terrible, but he felt fine, which made him feel terrible.
With a sigh, Marke opened his eyes. He was in a different cave. This cave was very dark and full of stalactites. A drop of water splashed him in the eye right as another rectangle appeared. This rectangle was also blue.
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> Welcome Hero! Please enter your name:
>
> Ok ---- Cancel
“Wow, it’s exactly the same as the last one. Can I just push cancel again?” Marke pushed the cancel button. The realm shattered.
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Marke opened his eyes. “That was even worse than the last one! Who is building these realms?? Another rectangle, another dollar, am I right?” Marke looked around to see a pine forest around him. The rectangle- “Rectangle is too long. I’m a busy man. You are a box now.” The box popped up with the same message as before.
> Welcome Hero! Please enter your name:
>
> Ok ---- Cancel
Marke pushed the cancel button. The realm shattered.
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“This is the easiest job I’ve ever had.” Marke opened his eyes to a cave. This time, he was laying on his back, staring up at a sandstone ceiling. He sat up. A grey box appeared.
> Welcome. Enter your name:
>
> _______________________
“That’s innovation right there folks, a text field. Um, how do I type though?” Marke looked around as though maybe a keyboard had been carelessly dropped in the cave somewhere. No keyboard, but Marke found the cave exit tunnel. He stood and tried to walk through the exit but bumped his face on an invisible barrier blocking the tunnel. “Ow.” The grey box pulsed, drawing his attention back to it.
“Hmph. Enter. Ok. Accept. Skip” The text box did not respond to these commands. “Ah, finally a foe worthy of my skills. One two three four five six seven eight nine zero.” The text box populated with the characters: “1234567890”. “Oh hey that worked. Wait no.”
> 1234567890 Accepted
>
> Choose your class
“Dang it.” Marke blinked as a box popped up with a list of class names. The list faded at the bottom of the box, showing that it could be scrolled. Marke scrolled to the bottom of the list then tried to scroll past the bottom. He tried little wiggly motions to try and fake the list into scrolling “up” but actually scrolling “down”. None of that worked, so Marke tried it at the top of the list. Nothing unexpected happened. “Bummer. Ok, what are these classes?” Marke tapped on the first class.
> Aardvark Tamer
>
> A specialist in capturing and training mystic aardvarks. Gains advantage against formic opponents
>
> Select ---- Cancel
“That’s it? No stat updates or whatever? Ok I guess ‘cancel’.” Marke tapped the cancel button, but the box did not return to the class list. The box changed to a familiar message:
> Welcome. Enter your name:
>
> _______________________
Marke adopted an over-the-top villain voice. “Ah ha! Now I know your weakness, box… elder. No that’s dumb. Man, I really need a keyboard.” A second box popped up around waist height with roughly a hundred little squares on it, each with a character in the center. “Oh nice. Alrightydoky here we go.” Marke winced a little at his increasingly unhinged commentary. He took a breath and focused on the keyboard. Many of the characters were the ones he recognized but a few were completely unfamiliar to him. He tried pressing “delete” and then “enter”. The box did not accept this. Marke tried typing every single character on the keyboard, but nothing went wrong.
“Time to pull out the big guns.” Marke sat down to see if the keyboard would follow it. It did, so he lay down on the floor to be more comfortable. Marke pressed the ‘a’ character and held it down. The text field filled up with ‘a’s and then scrolled its contents off to the left. Marke intended to hold down the character until he fell asleep, but the text field stopped accepting more characters after about 10 minutes. “Size limit. Kind of a big limit but whatever. Let’s try it.” Marke pressed “enter”. The box changed to just show a wall of ‘a’s. Marke figured this was the “choose your class” box and the list would pop up next. The next box might have been the list of classes, but it the text on it was all just junk characters with a bunch of ‘a’s mixed in.
“Gotcha.” Marke said. He reached out to scroll the list and the realm shattered.