You are finally awake! Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. So hard to tell what time it is when you’re locked in a tiny room with artificial light.

>inv

You are carrying: A loaf of bread, a battleaxe, armor, and night vision goggles, and a ladder. Your dolls are sure to want all this stuff back when you get home. Sorry… “Action Figures”

>real inv

You are actually carrying: Car keys, debit card, pocket knife, and an electric unicycle.

>look around

You are in your office. The clock on the wall reads 10:30am. Your computer has a lot of windows open and your browser has a lot of tabs, yet you don’t appear to be working on anything. You skipped breakfast or simply don’t remember it. You are hungry.

>eat

Eat what? There is a bottle of Tabasco sauce in your desk drawer. You have nothing to put under it. And before you ask, drinking it neat will cause problems for both you and future you. Let it go.

>screw it, then

You are screwed. Your leg begins to itch.

>scratch leg

You casually reach down without looking and gently touch the itchy spot on your leg. Two things happen instantaneously: You realize there is a small scab here from where you scraped your leg yesterday, and the scab explodes. The resulting mess looks like Baron Harkonnen just pulled out your heart plug, but on your leg.

>examine mess

You almost didn’t get your shoe and sock off in time. A steady red stream has gone all the way down and around your foot. You packed an entire box of tissues on to it one at a time, but dropped them on the floor and each one got soaked. It was a pretty good amount already, but you are really spreading it out! You don’t even feel any of this but it looks horrible. You are finally able to stop the bleeding by holding a large pad of tissues on with one hand.

>use other hand to send IM to your buddy two offices down to bring a bandage and some wet paper towers STAT

Fifteen minutes lapse. Nothing happens.

>send IM again

Two minutes later, your buddy walks in to what appears to be a reenactment of the scene where Gregory House does his own surgery. He asks what’s up. You read him his IMs through clenched teeth. He hurries out of the room. Good to see he finally understands the urgency of the situation! Fifteen minutes later, he returns with a bottle of alcohol. You make some muted grumbling noises and read him the IMs again. He leaves again and returns in only five minutes with the wet paper towels. He says there are no bandages.

>clean mess

You mop up as much as you can from your skin before going after the plastic mat under your chair. Now you’re eyeballing that bottle of alcohol.

>use alcohol

You pick up the bottle and begin to loosen the lid when you realize this is not alcohol from a first aid kit. This is the solvent they use to clean the magnetic ink out of the giant shredder downstairs. You begin doing a quick risk/benefit analysis in your mind.

>put the bottle down and cover the wound

You put the lid back on the alcohol and creatively bandage the site with tissues and packing tape. You are tired. You are hungry.

>go to lunch

But it’s not lunch time!

>sudo go to lunch

Logging out… You head downstairs. Should you take the car or the unicycle?

>unicycle

You are very brave. After a few false starts, you cruise down to the stop sign at the end of the block. You are doing quite well until you realize you won’t be able to carry your food this way. The trip back to the car seems much longer and you let the unicycle fall twice. You are tired. You are hungry. You are sweating.

>get in car

You sit in the driver’s seat of your 2010 Dodge Oven and start the engine. You nearly jump out of your skin when the radio comes on at full volume. You turn it down and plug your phone in to the aux cable. The phone is terribly quiet when you plug it in this way, so you turn the radio and the phone all the way back up, thus resetting the trap. Your heart is beating rapidly. You are hungry. You are sweating like a pork-beast in a high pressure suit.

>drive to a restaurant

Where do you want to go?

>I don’t know. Where do you want to go?

I don’t know. Where do… NO! STOP THAT! You just lost half of your lunch hour. PICK A PLACE NOW!

>save and quit

Saving game. Put a floppy disk in drive A:

>you’re kidding, right?

Yes. つづく