I was standing on a white marble platform about five feet in diameter. The marble had long, dark veins running through it in a random pattern. Other than the platform, the place was completely empty. Ambient light suffused the space but I glimpsed no walls, ground, or sky. It looked like a minimal green screen setup. I looked down over the ledge, but nothing was holding up the platform. I swiftly stepped back. I did not look forward to falling down forever. This was getting, as Alice once said, curiouser and curiouser.
I sat down. If this was one of those player-looks-at-character-in-heroic-pose screens, they could CGI me standing up. I might as well get comfortable. I heroically gave the finger in the general direction of the sky for good measure.
A spreadsheet suddenly appeared in my view. It hovered in the air and moved with me when I moved my head. I checked if I had anything on my face, like a VR helmet or glasses, but only felt my nose. My hands didn’t block the spreadsheet, either. Closing my eyes just made the table show up on a dark background. This would make sleeping difficult.
What was going on? Advanced technology? Magic? Drugs? Was I going crazy?
The table had my name and indicated I was level 1, so apparently, I was starting at the bottom. The author guy did say something about a game, didn’t he? Is that what was going on? There was a weird mix of standard role-playing games and Machiavellian stats. It listed Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, but what were Political Potential and Political Savviness?
If I read the table correctly, the Health and Political Potential stats were consumable and could be refilled since they had a current and a maximum value. I did not want to find out what happened when Health reached zero. Some games had you respawn, and some games did not.
There was also a skills section that listed an Examine ability.
I needed Squeezimodo. I remember putting it in my pocket. Where was it? Patting my pockets, I noticed they were empty. Where was the “WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID WAS” note that the pretentious prick of an author gave me?
I needed Squeezimodo. If this was really a game, as the stats implied, would I have an inventory system? I concentrated, and a ring showed up at the bottom of my view, surrounding my field of vision as if I were wearing a large collar. Most of it was translucent and barely visible, but a few items were visible: Squeezimodo, The Mad Sad Bad Ad trophy, and the “WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID WAS” note were all present. This seemed a much better system than a large box showing up on the screen, obscuring the view like games typically had. I thought of Squeezimodo, and he materialized in my left hand.
I squeezed.
- Oh yeah, right there.
It was a high-pitched voice as if someone had taken a drag on a helium balloon before speaking. It was in my head, but I somehow knew it was coming from the stress ball.
I dropped Squeezimodo. It was good that I was sitting down, or it would have rolled off the platform. Instead, it just plonked down next to me.
- Hey, asshole, you look like a middle-aged has-been marketing wannabe.
It was speaking fast at that helium-high animated chipmunk pitch. I just looked at the ball in shock. I got Squeezimodo at a conference a few years back. It was a free marketing giveaway for some company, and it was dark blue with faded white wings stamped on one side. The company name was once written under the wings, but I’d squeezed it hard enough over the years that I’d smudged the name away. The other side had the writing “Squeeze Me” on it, and “MADE IN CHINA” was stamped on the bottom. Over the years, a hump developed where I pressed hard, and I jokingly started referring to it as Squeezimodo.
- Hey buddy, you have the grip strength of a claw machine built to drop feathers!
“Are you talking to me?”
- Yes, I’m talking to you. Do you see anyone else here? Your arm is so weak yo mama can
I slapped down on the ball with my palm.
- Oh yes, that’s the ticket. Now squeeze me some more.
My skills listed something called an Examine ability. I wondered if I could get it to work. I Examined the ball. A text bubble popped up above it in my field of view.
Squeezimodo; Emotional Support Stress Ball; Level 1
I gingerly picked it up in my hand.
“How are you a stress ball? You just insulted me.”
- That’s right. I’ll stress you, and you can squeeze me. Now squeeze. For someone with two hands you sure talk a lot.
This had been a hard day so far. I squeezed. Hard.
- Ohhhh. That’s good. Feed me your anger. Moaaaaar.
I squeezed some more. After a bit, I did feel better. I doubt there was any magic to it, but the act of squeezing Squeezimodo had become meditative over the years. I just wasn’t used to the verbal or mental feedback.
“So, what’s with the ‘Emotional Support’ part of your type?”
- Aren’t you less angry now? Tada! Emotional support.
Wondering how meta I could get, I tried examining the Examine ability.
Examine, Level 1
You wanted to give ME feedback? I’ll use this handy narrative device to give you my thoughts. Just examine things. I was debating calling it Cheap Exposition Device, but I wasn’t sure. You can send me your notes if you like.
That author was a ray of sunshine. True, I did try to throw my trophy at him, though he returned it. And I was still alive. Alive again. Don’t judge a book by its cover? Don’t judge an author by his haughty demeanor? I’d have to see where he was sending me.
I wondered about the inventory system. Thinking about the trophy, it suddenly appeared in my other hand. I found that I could make it disappear and reappear at will, which was very handy. To experiment, I tried putting my shirt directly into the inventory without taking it off first. It just disappeared from me.
- Woah. What are you planning?
“Relax. I’m just testing the inventory.”
- Oh, good. I thought you were like Jaxon.
“You remember Jaxon?”
- Yes. He used to come by your desk after you left and look at what you were writing, taking photos of your screen.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
The conniving backstabber! And I thought he was doing everything with AI. Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! Well, we’d see how he does now that there’s no one to copy from.
- Oh, that got you riled up. I’ll tell you more about what was going on there.
“Not right now. Also, why did taking my shirt off remind you of Jaxon? Never mind. Let me figure out what’s going on here first.”
Willing the shirt back on, I was able to dress myself without having to drop Squeezimodo from my hand. This was incredibly handy.
I returned to the character sheet, which was still open in front of me. The stats were strange for a game. For example, there was no Mana, which was the staple for fantasy games. I always liked magic-wielding characters. The political twist strongly implied that I was going back to an office environment, as the author hinted. Starting a new chapter in a game environment should be more interesting than this, shouldn’t it?
Still, these stats were easier to understand than those useless performance reviews my manager kept giving me. “Do better,” “Less plain vanilla,” “Collaborate more.” What did that even mean? These were at least clear and had numbers next to them.
A chime sounded, and a hardcover book appeared in front of me, standing up with its front facing me. It had a golden dust cover, and the label said, “Author Loot Box.” Author? Was this guy making things up as he went? I picked up the book and noticed it was one of those faux books that was actually a box. Inside lay a purple potion nestled among cotton cushioning. The bottle was simply labeled in white lettering, “Reagent.”
Exercising my new Examine ability, I saw the following.
Reagent.
Get it? Oh, just drink it.
I was getting that Alice in Wonderland vibe again, but I was stuck on this platform in the middle of nowhere, so… here went nothing. Unstopping the bottle, I sniffed. It smelled like grape juice. Purple grape juice. I drank it all down.
Nothing happened at first; then my stomach suddenly flashed hot, then cold. The character sheet disappeared, and a notification popped up in front of my eyes:
Current age: forty-three
What age do you want to set: ___
Well, this was interesting. Could I choose any age? This was as magical as potions got. Setting an older age was like failing an intelligence test. Who would decide to grow old and infirm? Being too young would also be a mistake. Wherever I was going, being a kid would likely be a problem. The early 30s, with enough experience but still fit physically? Late twenties? Maybe late teens? No, no, I didn’t need the hormonal changes again. Wait, would this reset my memories? The author, who I was coming to believe had a lot of power, just asked me about starting over. So, early twenties?
“Hey, Squeezimodo, can you see this prompt?” I squeezed him for good measure. I got back a mental image of a ball with four legs up in the air, the rear one scratching itself vigorously.
- Yes, I can.
“Got any advice for me?”
- I’m a few minutes old, and the world has been good so far. I’d go with one day.
“You do understand that babies have very little control of their hands, right?” I laughed.
I concentrated on the prompt and entered twenty-one. Just into adulthood, starting life, great health. That should be a good age. At that age, I was just finishing college, was in great shape, and hadn’t developed any health issues yet.
My body rose up in the air with my arms and legs outstretched, doing a Vitruvian Man impersonation. A mirror showed up in front of me, and I could see my naked self reflected in it, which was weird since I was still dressed. My somewhat flabby underarms flowed upwards and became muscular biceps. Feeling the fat move around and become muscle was initially uncomfortable but soon became painful. My body’s cells were being destroyed and recreated in front of my eyes. The pain was sharp, as parts of my body tore themselves from where they were and realigned internally. I tried screaming and pulling my hands in but found I was completely immobile.
My legs tightened, lines of pain running through my calves and thighs as muscles reformed and refirmed. My beer belly, ok, pizza belly, flowed upwards like a reverse melting candle and morphed into pectorals. I felt an intense stabbing pain on the lower right side of my stomach. I couldn’t move, but looking in the mirror, I saw my appendix scar fade away. A few tooth fillings suddenly ejected from my mouth, and a whole crown was pushed out as a tooth regrew. The whole thing was excruciating, but the result looked like I did in college. It was glorious. If a plastic surgeon could bottle this, they’d make a killing.
The image in the mirror rotated, and I could see that my ass had tightened into iron buns and my back was muscular. This wasn’t a fantasy-style Barbarian build but rather a college basketball player’s body. To top off this miracle, the hairs growing out of my ears retreated into my body, and instead, hair sprouted in that bald spot at the back of my head that had me doing comb-overs. I had the full, lush hair of a carefree twenty-one-year-old who couldn’t afford to see a hairdresser. I needed a comb. And some scissors. And a shave.
I dropped back to stand on the floor, and the mirror disappeared. The pain was mostly gone, with just the dull ache of a good workout and the accompanying endorphins coursing through my body. I’d need to do something about the hair, but other than that, I felt amazing. I had not been this ache-free in a long time. I jumped up and down a few times, remembering what it was like to be that young. I had forgotten how easy this was.
- Can I be twenty-one too?
“I don’t know if your kind survives to twenty-one. Maybe take it one day at a time for now.”
I looked at the bottle in my hand again. Reagent. Oh. So, he loves puns.
I put the empty bottle and faux book in my inventory.
A message appeared in front of me:
Entering in: five seconds
“Wait, I have questions!” I yelled at the sky.
I received no reply. The counter counted down. The message and platform disappeared when it hit zero, and I fell.
----------------------------------------
I was falling through empty space. I flailed and screamed.
- Joe! Joe!
“I don’t want to die!”
- You already died! Stop! You’re not falling!
I wasn’t hurtling towards anything. I stopped thrashing around and looked up. The emptyness was uniform. Even the sensation of falling disappeared. I just was.
Death had finally caught up with me. I read about people describing their lives flashing before their eyes when they died, but nothing like that scene with the author nor the character sheet. Was this some sort of purgatory? Was I being reborn? Maybe this was how I’d atone for my life of underachievement, just endlessly falling into nothingness. I had died. I was not going to see my family ever again.
“I should have—” I started screaming.
A podium materialized in front of me. Its wooden finish changed in rapid succession from black to white to light, settling on a cheap plastic laminate brown color. It was just me and the podium floating in space for a while.
A sign showed up behind the podium, where presumably a wall would be. It cycled through “Staffing Solutions,” “Company Seeders,” “Lots of Fish in the Sea,” “A Square Peg for Every Hole,” “Headhunters,” settling on “TODO: Identify Brilliant Company Name.”
The walls showed up, again undergoing this magic transformation of color. The designer’s limited imagingation exhausted, and they ended up Corporate White. To my utter relief, the floor showed up, cycling from marble to cement to a dark red, almost black carpet.
That inept Auteur was writing and revising the scene description while I was in it. Raising my gaze, I yelled, “Hey, em, Oh Great and Powerful Author, maybe the carpet should have their corporate logo?”
I could hear Squeezimodo snickering in my head.
There was no response, but the room was suddenly complete when I blinked. I was at the back of a conference room opposite the podium. In between were chairs with people already seated. Along the wall to my left was a table with drinks and snacks. People had plates with leftovers under their chairs. The feeble scent of cold, cheap catered food was mostly lost in the recently-renovated, new-paint smell of the room.
It took me a second to adjust to the sudden transformation. Rocking on my feet, I checked that the floor was solid. The carpet did…not have any logos.
A woman stood at the podium. She looked over and said, “You must be Joe. Welcome. You’re the last one. We need to get started. There is no time for you to grab food. Take a seat. We’ll have to do something about your hair.”
My hair? Oh right. The reagent had given me a case of the beards. Anyway, what did she mean I couldn’t grab a snack? I was famished. Getting re-aged would do that to you. I could listen while taking something. I pointedly walked over to the table and got myself a plate and something to drink. She hadn’t started talking yet, so I walked in front of the room to find the only chair still available and sat down in the front row.
As I walked, I looked at the people in the audience. If what I’d experienced so far wasn’t enough, the people around me convinced me I was no longer on Earth. At a quick glance, I would have sworn they were human, but then I saw elongated earlobes, rounder eyes, and even six fingers holding a cup. We were definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Julie stared daggers at me the whole time. I examined her, and a text bubble popped up above her in my field of view, just like it had done with Squeezimodo. It just said “Julie.” Julie? This definitely wasn’t the same Julie that just fired me. Was I cursed?
- I wonder if this Julie can squeeze me the way the other Julie used to squeeze Jaxon’s ass on your desk.
I almost dropped my plate. What the hell? I’d have to have a long conversation with Squeezimodo about what was going on there. Julie had started talking and I paid attention.
“Congratulations on being selected for this exclusive program.”