Chapter 2 Part 7 - Remote Control

I'm having a dream, as per usual.

It's not as if it's a bad thing, in fact, dreams are good! Bad dreams happen, but not too often.

In this one I feel as if I'm flying, soaring high above the open ocean, maybe sometimes diving down and skimming the water with my fingers.

It's a freeing feeling, and all the while I don't even think about the notion of being…

Awake.

My phone alarm blares, thrusting me from my deep sleep. Such is the worst part of my day, the thought of getting up in the morning.

I slide out of bed, turn off my alarm, and turn to get some clothes out of my closet. After changing I walk over to a table and sit down, picking up some cereal before realizing I've yet to pick out a bowl.

I sigh and move to the pantry, taking a bowl. I quickly pick up where I left off, eating my breakfast.

After finishing I brush my teeth, insert my contact lenses, and leave my luxury studio apartment to begin my day.

I check my phone to see if I'm on pace to get to work on time.

7:28… Not too shabby.

I call my escort and let him know I'm good to go. They arrive after a few minutes and roll down their front window.

"Morning," I gesture.

The driver turns their head to face me. "Good morning, Wyatt."

…

After a short drive we arrive at the facility, and after a few long hallways and downward stairwells we arrive.

The facility in question is a large circular room, full of computer screens and monitors displaying statistics and video footage.

As per usual I'm the first or second person here, with the two people assigned night shift only now preparing to take their leave. As always I greet them and ask them about their night, to which they respond "Nothing much" and perhaps go into detail about some person or another's sleep pattern.

This time, though, they point out that they ran into some connection issues at one point in time, which while still something that can happen is a rather uncommon occurrence.

After a short exchange I traverse throughout the maze of computer monitors and office chairs and find myself at my own desk. I take a seat and begin setting up for the long workday ahead. Not long after I've logged into my work PC and booted up all of the applications I need to go about my day, though, I get a familiar tap on my shoulder.

I spin one hundred and eighty degrees in my chair to confirm what I already knew. "Hey Quandary," I say to greet her.

"You're here early, had a bad dream or something? Been a while since you beat me."

"Dunno, I was feeling awfully peppy today. Woke up on the right side of the bed, I guess."

Quandary shrugs off my statement and continues. "Anyways, did I miss anything?"

"Not really, I just got here. Night shift guys said there were some network issues earlier, though. Wonder what that's all about, everything else seems totally fine. Hardly a trace of it happening."

"Weird." She sits down at the desk next to mine and powers on her own computer. "So the sim's okay still?"

"Yep, everything's still working as intended. Stable as ever."

The girl beside me raises an eyebrow. "Stable as ever, excluding last Tuesday?"

"Hey, we don't talk about last Tuesday. Focus is on this Tuesday now," I say before realizing how stupid of a statement that was. Quandary seems to acknowledge this as well as we both share a laugh.

Quandary's a friend I've had for as long as I've had this job. Not sure what the story is behind the name, though, I guess her parents had a tough time choosing? Never asked about it, though, and I don't plan on it.

Before we know it the day begins for the people of the sim, or at least the ones we're focusing on most. We monitor the likes of high school students waking up and chuckle at the ones who sleep in. There's even one girl today who seems oddly disoriented for a second as she woke up, though that's not the most uncommon thing and she seemed to go back to normal quickly anyways.

I never likened myself to a people-watcher, but this line of work is actually something I enjoy a good bit. It's calming to spend my days watching teenagers go to school and leave and do whatever, even on a Sunday shift like today. The one thing that's always puzzled me, though, is…

Why Doki Doki Literature Club?

The core part of the simulation, for whatever reason, is some popular indie game. It always struck me as weird, like, why not just make the simulation its own original thing?

Whenever I've asked about it, people usually tell me it was something meta to the point that if we had someone leak the project to the public anyone sensible would think they were tripping balls rather than telling the truth, or that a popular, free indie game was a perfect device to distribute copies of the game that were used to bring real-world people into the simulation, back when that was a thing. I wasn't around at the time but that aspect of the project has apparently since been shelved, especially with Amazon going out of business for funding it.

Needless to say, this whole project is, in Quandary's words, a clusterfuck.

…

The day drags on without much fanfare, save a couple of the high school kids getting in a fight, Sayori trying to jump off of the school building a bit more often than most days and Monika making a few snarky comments that were almost definitely targeted at us. She's just as self-aware as she is in her source material, and it shows.

For some reason, though, she seemed a bit distracted today. No one's immune to simply having a tiresome day, but that degree of out-of-it in Monika is something that hasn't been seen since "The last vein of the project," as one of my superiors who was around at the time said earlier today. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but maybe it has to do with the network issue that the night shift people were going on about. There's obviously a ton of stuff going on below the surface, but at least the pay's good.

In other news the Literature Club has some other event planned. I was checking Twitter while it was happening but Quandary acted like it was a big deal.

Apparently it's planned for next week or something along those lines, and another coworker offered to make up a drinking game out of it or something. Again, though, I kind of tuned it out, I was still checking Twitter.

As the evening dials down, employees begin clocking out and the night shift employees come back to clock in, and the cycle continues.

As I begin to stand from my chair and leave, I begin to hear a murmuring that takes my face's attention away from my phone. I ask Quandary what I missed to see her face, frozen in shock. I've never seen her face contort the way it did in that moment. And as she answers my question, she shares the sensation that froze the whole room in shock with me, and I feel my face make those same contortions.

"Monika's having a sleepover."