Chapter 1: IRL

The day was dragging by, the clock ticking slowly to 4:14 PM, cursing Jimmy Buffett for constantly reminding me that it IS 5 O'clock somewhere, just not here. My boss walked by and noticed my lack of open spreadsheets on my monitor where my desktop sat, simply stating "Hey. Listen!" Bossman leaned over my desk, and yelled in my ear, "Hey asshole, Do you have that report of the software installed on the computers yet?" Sitting down on the side of my desk without so much as checking if I had done the work already.

"Yeah! I got that done about three minutes after you asked me about it last time, but you had already left for the day, so I didn't think I would waste an email when you would see them this morning." Or I thought you would, but seeing as you walked in at 4:19 PM, presumably higher than a junkie in an underground heroin factory. I thought at him angrily as he began to rant at me about all of my duties as his underling and how I should be lucky to work directly under king prick himself.

"And have you done anything else to earn my respect today, kid?" I felt like the midget from the princess bride, because that was the most inconceivable statement that I had ever heard.

Of course my liege, my mind thought as my mouth spoke. "I also set up the company with a new, higher grade of encryption that will…" he cut me off with his signature sigh/eye roll that everyone in the office knew meant "Continue talking about boring shit and I swear I will find a reason to fire you." mostly because he had fired Tim for continuing to tell him important information right after he had said that exact statement. And that, after rolling his eyes this way about twice. It was like his own little warning system. Poke the asshole and he manages to tear you a new one.

"You play videogames, right?" he asked, my face lit up just a little as he continued. "I just found this great game, it's pretty intense and I can't really get into it, but you seem like the type to waste hours and hours" his eyes rolled over and over in emphasis "of free time playing games instead of working towards useful goals like being the best boss ever."

His statement was so backhanded that it both made me want to laugh and punch the fucker in the jaw hard enough to cut his tongue off with his own teeth, but instead I held my composure and replied "Sure do. You really got me pegged! What was the name of the game? I probably already beat it, knowing me and my lack of a life." I spoke with such a genuine tone that he just smirked at me.

"Its called Pony Island." he said, all my excitement about the possibility of a crazy new first person shooter crushed. "And it's actually much more intense than the name sounds. Some people sell their soul for that shit."

The joke made me uneasy. Are you saying that I should scour the internet in search of… Pony. Island. How dumb do you think I am? I thought while my mouth translated it into a more work appropriate "I'll look into that! You should probably check your messages before its time to go home, Jack." I finished, letting my tone insinuate the importance of his tasks, over my own. He smiled and walked away with his last words to me were simply: "See ya, shitbag!" the office chair that I sat in became noticeably more plush than it had 30 seconds before as I sunk into the soft padded pleather.

"I really hate that guy. He's seems like he's always on my case because he feels important when he bosses people around." I said.

"Well he is your boss you know, just try to respect him more and he might see who you really are! I know that when he sees you like god made you, he's going to beg for forgiveness." my mom blurted in her own quirky way of trying to make me feel better.

"That isn't how people work mom." I stated plainly. That isn't how people work at all, but it's most certainly how my mom does. She grew up in a rural area in a different era, when the words you spoke meant something special. I am honestly a little jealous of her for that. I miss the times before I was born when Honesty and Loyalty were still alive. A time when potato chip bags had a lot less air, and when the government was only as big as the city you were in. I would have loved a time like that.

"You just need to get off your ass and get to work. If you wouldn't slack off, he wouldn't come after you. It's all about work ethic in business. I don't know what you did to piss off your boss so badly that he has to-" a low, booming voice made my dad's opinion blatantly clear as the phone switched hands.

I dropped my phone on the ground, directly where the microphone hides, causing a loud crack to go right into my darling father's ear before I reached down and hung up on them. I would text them later saying something about my phone not working right. It may be true that it's not working after that drop, but it felt necessary. I reached for my vape, screwed the wax tank on and started hitting it. I sank into the computer chair at my desk as my cat ran between my legs and pulled the plug of my computer straight out of the wall in one light tug on the cord. My baby came to a crashing halt as the LEDs went dead instantly.

"I feel like you do that to get my attention, but it's more of a nuisance than anything else, Dragon." The small white creature looked up at me, rearing its beautifully tan marked furry face as he hissed furiously. I don't get him. I really don't. One minute I can see him running and jumping and climbing all over the house, destroying anything in his path, and then by minute two, he is asleep behind my head on the couch like nothing happened at all. Well as he finished his laps around the house, only managing to tear up a piece of receipt paper while on his miniature rampage, he laid down right at my side. His purr made my whole body vibrate as he shook the chair. He may not be very polite, but he is such a sweetheart when he wants to be. I usually just wish that he wasn't such an asshole before the every time he decided to be a sweetheart. I pushed the power button and watched once more as Shelby began her booting up stage.

A few hours of gaming later and once again I was bored of playing the games by their rules. I had also been kicked out of most of my favorite servers for the day for being a prick again, so there was not really much to do with my best games. I thought back about my horrible day and remembered that I had been recommended a game. Sure the guy was an asshole, but he also told me to look into the last of us, and damn was that the best game I ever played. I opened up a chrome web page and typed Pony Island into the search bar, then clicked "Feeling lucky!" I found myself staring at a screen of black with white text, an 8 bit blob with four legs and another blob of a head almost in the shape of a pony began to flash at me. The URL for the page was /Downloads. I had never seen a .grob website so I became a little bit skeptical of the whole site. I backed out and began researching the game to see where the official site was located and what the game was about. I quickly realized that the game everyone was explaining in all of the comments was simply "A cool game." "Really intense." and "Something to really get into." There were no other descriptions of the game besides those. I decided that it was worth the risk to see what the game was, if it was a virus that typed all of those messages, someone would have called it out and left a warning on at least one of the sites, so I went back to and clicked on the download link. The exe file popped up on my downloads bar and slowly filled up until about 20 minutes later, it was done.

A fairly large file at 30GB, it was the full offline installer for the program, carrying all of the information that I could possibly need to run the game. I usually tended to download the offline installer for applications that I think might be viruses, because then I can disconnect the ethernet and keep it from spreading, then reformat my computer and reflash from a backup.

Yes. I talk like I work in IT. This is no surprise for those of you paying attention, because I do in fact work in IT. Sorry if you need to look up some things to keep reading, this isn't the kind of story that I can just turn off certain parts and have the main concept still work. This is a crazy story really, and it goes into some… Well it goes into something really intense, to be vague.

I felt my tension rise as I awaited the results of my download. Would I spend the rest of the night setting my OS back the way it was, or would I spend it playing a game beyond my expectations? I began to get excited as I pulled the ethernet cord from my dear baby and prayed that I wouldn't fry her today. One double click later and the application was running. One. Two. Three. The install is finished. Four. Five. Six. The application is launching. Seven. Eight. The OS and Game installs being on separate SSDs meant waiting for 10 seconds for a game to install instead of 10 minutes, so almost as soon as the application opened it was flashing an 8-bit blob at me once more. This time accompanied by a matching 8-bit flashing text that read "Pony Island! Click here to play!" Nine. Clicked to start the game. Ten. I was no longer in my chair.