There was a flash of light and once again Tim was standing back in the factory, now missing the parts cart and covered in blood. He looked around wildly as the rest of the employees stared at him.
“What the fuck?”
He nodded at the first to speak. “Hey, Jimmy. Been a weird fucking day. How long was I gone?”
“Gone? Dude you never left. Where’s my sample cart and what the hell was that light? Are you okay? Is that red paint?”
“Pretty sure it's blood.”
A ton of thoughts were chasing themselves through Tim’s head. The missing cart was proof this was real though, and the first actionable item that occured to Tim put a smile on his face.
“Hey, Jimmy. Tell Dan I fucking quit. I’ll pick up my check later.”
He pushed through the gathering crowd of employees, ignoring the questions that followed him. Quickly leaving the commotion behind, he speed walked through the factory floor. He did take a second to flip the bird to the parking Nazi in the little shack at the gate, but pretty soon he was in his beat up truck and driving away. Tim didn’t know all the ramifications of some kind of multiverse changing the fundamental laws of reality, but he was pretty sure his job at the factory had just become a lot less useful. He was halfway back to his trailer park, when another of those large text screens appeared in front of him and completely blocked out his view of the road.
“Whaaaah!”
His hands jerked the wheel as he flinched back from the sudden apparition and suddenly all of his attention was focused on keeping all four wheels in contact with the ground as he fought desperately to regain control of the speeding pickup. As he skidded to a stop on the shoulder, his heart pounding, he finally focused on the text.
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“Rewards from the Beta Trial have been calculated. Immersion with multi-verse will commence shortly. Geographical displacement pending, travel is not recommended. Menu has initialized.”
Tim recognized all the words used, but wasn’t sure they made sense strung together in that order. Indulging in a habit left over from grad school Tim tried talking it through aloud.
“Rewards are calculated, that’s nifty. Shortly, does that mean 5 minutes or 48 hours from now? Fuck either way, it would be nice to know.” Tim started drumming his fingers on the wheel of his truck as he continued to process the message.
“Displacing geography, moving people across the world, or moving the world around underneath people. Either way that is going to suck. Menu has initialized. Clearly some guy named Menu has signed for something. Either that or they turned some kind of menu system on. Why tell me, unless I can access it? Uh. . . menu”
Tim hadn’t really expected it to work, and it didn’t. He tried other options to access it, until eventually he gave up. It was like he was living in one of those webnovels he’d read, but as one of the throwaway early casualties instead. Staring at the traffic passing him by from the shoulder of the road, Tim felt himself running down a dozen rabbit holes in his mind. Should he go home or try and stock up? What did geographic displacement mean? Was this all some kind of detailed hallucination or was it really happening? In the end he decided to just roll with it. Tim would accept it as real, and table the reward for now. Instead he’d take real world steps to prepare for an apocalypse. Tim eased the truck back onto the road and went shopping.
He moved down the grocery aisle, stocking up on non-perishables that would be high calorie and low cost if not exactly nutritious. A few cases of ramen, a truly absurdly large bag of rice, and a couple of 5 pound bags of sugar and even more of flour were first on his list. Plenty of salt and assorted spices went into the cart,then he wandered over to home and garden and stocked up on seed packets, making sure to get heirloom varieties for the long term. There were tons of additional items that he should probably purchase, but inspiration struck and he loaded down every inch of additional space in his cart with toilet paper. No matter what the new world looked like, Tim was pretty sure the ability to wipe his ass with something other than leaves would be a good idea.
He came fairly close to emptying his checking account when it came time to pay, and like always Tim got irritated when they checked his receipt as he approached the exit. He didn’t appreciate the implication that they thought he would shoplift given the opportunity, but he’d given up bitching about the lack of customer service here. After putting all the mom and shop places out of business, it wasn’t like there were a lot of other options. He was still in a surly mood as he started loading his purchases into the Ranger.
TIm sighed, he’d drained his checking account to buy groceries, but he still had some room left on his credit card. Too bad he couldn’t just run by Guns R Us and pick up a couple dozen claymores and a ma deuce to defend his trailer park with. He’d have to settle for the next best thing. There was no help for it but to hit Atwood’s and pick up some shotgun shells and maybe some tannerite for a redneck IED. As he walked through the aisles of the farm supply store, another dozen things jumped out to him as useful. He bought a couple of 50 pound bags of sweet feed, basically oatmeal covered in molasses but way cheaper than food marketed for humans. Veterinary supplies like antibiotics and sutures went on the list as well, plus a couple of the big but still portable propane tanks. His card hit its limit at roughly the same time the bed of his pickup did, and he finally called it a day.