A blue screen pop up while Jake was jerking off.
Not his proudest moment but in his defense, it was 2 AM on a Tuesday and he had a monumentally shit day at work. His boss had spent three hours explaining why Jake's perfectly functional spreadsheet needed to be "synergized" and "optimized for cross platform integration," which was corporate speak for "make it pretty because I don't understand Excel." Then his lunch got stolen from the office fridge... again, and to top it all off his mom had called to remind him that his cousin Jeffrey "fucking Jeffrey" had just made partner at his law firm.
So there he was, alone in his cramped studio apartment in Queens with his laptop balanced precariously on his thighs, headphones in and pants drawn around his ankles, stroking his meat when reality decided to fuck with him in a whole new way.
The blue screen appeared directly in his line of sight.
At first, he thought it was some kind of Pop Up Ad that had bypassed his ad blocker. Some aggressive malware that had somehow injected itself into his browser but nope, the text wasn't on his laptop screen, it was floating in mid air between him and the wall, glowing with an ethereal blue light that definitely shouldn't exist outside of science fiction movies.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
Jake's hand froze. His brain was stuttering, trying to process what he was seeing as the text just... hovered there three-dimensional..
He waved his hand through the space where the screen floated, his fingers passed through the light like it was a hologram but he could feel something... a faint tingle, like static electricity.
"What the fuck," he whispered.
[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED!]
The words changed with the text flowing smoothly from one message to the next. Jake's heart started hammering in his chest, he looked around his apartment wildly, searching for cameras, projectors, anything that could explain this but his apartment was exactly as shitty as it had been five minutes ago. Water stained ceiling, Pile of laundry in the corner that was achieving sentience and a single window overlooking a brick wall.
No hidden technology. No explanation.
Just a floating blue screen that shouldn't exist.
"Okay," Jake said to himself, his voice shaking. "Okay... This is... this is a stroke, I'm having a stroke or a brain aneurysm. That's what this is."
He'd read about that once, how people experiencing neurological events would see things that weren't there... visual hallucinations... that had to be it. He was twenty-five, but strokes could happen to young people right? Especially stressed, sleep deprived people who lived on instant ramen and energy drinks?
[ANALYZING USER COMPATIBILITY...]
"No no no, stop that," Jake said, pulling his pants up with swiftly. "Stop... doing whatever you're doing."
The screen didn't stop, If anything, it seemed to brighten as if responding to his attention.
[SCANNING RECENT ACTIVITY...]
Jake's blood ran cold. Recent activity? What the fuck did that mean? He looked at his laptop, at the browser window still open then at his hand that had been in a very compromising position thirty seconds ago.
"Oh no. Oh no no no..."
[PERFECT MATCH FOUND!]
"PERFECT MATCH FOR WHAT?!" Jake shouted, then immediately clamped his hand over his mouth. His walls were paper thin. Mrs. Chen next door was probably awake now, he'd have to avoid her in the hallway tomorrow... Again.
[YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED: THE DEGENERATE POPULARITY SYSTEM]
Jake stared at the words and read them again. Then a third time, because surely he was misunderstanding something.
Degenerate. Popularity. System.
"I..." he started then stopped, what was he supposed to say to that? Thank you? Fuck you? His mind was completely blank.
[CLASS: ADULT CONTENT CREATOR]
[SUBCLASS: SHAMELESS PERVERT]
For a moment Jake didn't move, just sat there on his bed with pants hastily pulled up and laptop slowly sliding off his thighs, staring at the words "SHAMELESS PERVERT" floating in his bedroom.
Then something inside him broke.
He grabbed his pillow and screamed into it. Not a short scream, a long, sustained scream that contained every ounce of frustration, confusion and existential horror he was currently experiencing. His lungs burned, gis throat hurt but he screamed until he had no air left, then took another breath and screamed again.
When he finally stopped, the screen was still there. Waiting patiently.
Jake threw the pillow at it, the pillow passed right through the holographic text and hit the wall with a pathetic thump.
"Okay," Jake said to the empty room. His voice was hoarse. "Okay, I'm having a mental breakdown. That's what this is, too much stress, too much Excel and not enough therapy. This is just my brain finally giving up."
He stood up and walked to his tiny kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap, and drank it in one long gulp then filled another one. The cold water helped, made him feel slightly more grounded in reality.
Except reality apparently included floating blue screens now.
Jake set the glass down and pinched himself. Hard. Hard enough to leave a red mark on his arm.
He was awake.
"Fuck," he muttered.
He walked back to his bed, keeping his eyes on the screen the whole time, like it might attack him if he looked away. It just floated there, patient and implacable.
"Right," Jake said slowly. "So... Let's say, hypothetically that you're real and this isn't a hallucination or a breakdown or some elaborate prank."
The screen pulsed once, as if acknowledging him.
"What... what do you want from me?"
[INITIALIZING TUTORIAL...]
"No! No tutorial! I didn't agree to anything!" Jake backed away from the screen, bumping into his desk. "I don't want a system! I don't want to be a... a..." he gestured helplessly at the words still floating there, "...that!"
[SYSTEM ASSIGNMENT IS NON-VOLUNTARY]
[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED BASED ON COMPATIBILITY]
[REFUSAL IS NOT POSSIBLE]
Jake's legs felt weak, he sat down heavily on his desk chair. "Non-voluntary, right. Of course it is, I mean why would I have a choice in this?"
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He ignored it but It buzzed again and again and again.
With numb fingers Jake picked it up.
Seventeen messages from Marcus, his coworker. Jake opened them with a growing sense of dread.
Marcus (Work): JAKE
Marcus (Work): JAKE HOLY SHIT
Marcus (Work): ARE YOU SEEING THIS
Marcus (Work): DID YOU GET ONE
Marcus (Work): I GOT A SYSTEM
Marcus (Work): A FUCKING SYSTEM JAKE
Marcus (Work): ITS REAL
Marcus (Work): THE RUMORS WERE REAL
Marcus (Work): I CAN SEE MY STATS
Marcus (Work): IM A WARRIOR
Marcus (Work): JAKE....
Marcus (Work): DUDE CHECK TWITTER
Marcus (Work): CHECK THE NEWS
Marcus (Work): EVERYTHING IS INSANE
Jake's hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped the phone. With his thumb hovering over the Twitter icon, he hesitated because did he really want to know? Did he really want confirmation that this was real?
But he opened it anyway.
The app loaded, and Jake's entire worldview shattered.
#SystemApocalypse was trending number one worldwide with over 15 million tweets in the last hour.
He scrolled through his feed with growing horror.
A video of a woman in London creating a forcefield of shimmering blue energy around herself, the video had 30 million views.
Footage from Tokyo of someone, he couldn't tell if it was a man or woman shooting actual fire from their hands. They were fighting something, but the camera was shaking too much to see what.
A news headline: "MYSTERIOUS 'SYSTEMS' APPEAR WORLDWIDE - GOVERNMENTS URGE CALM"
Another video: a massive hole in the ground in Central Park. Something had crawled out of it, something with too many legs. The video cut off when the screaming started.
A tweet with 500k likes: Got a Healer System! Anyone else? What did everyone get?
Thousands of replies. People comparing systems. Mage Systems. Warrior Systems. Archer Systems. Crafter Systems. Tank Systems.
And buried in there, a few people admitting they got "weird" systems. A Cooking System. A Musician System. A Dancer System.
Nobody mentioned getting a pornography system.
Of course they didn't, because Jake was uniquely fucked.
He kept scrolling, each tweet making the situation more real, more undeniable.
A scientific article being passed around: "Preliminary Analysis of 'System' Phenomenon - Affects Approximately 0.01% of Global Population"
That was... Jake did the quick math in his head. About 800,000 people worldwide, out of eight billion.
He'd won the worst lottery in human history.
Another video: someone using what looked like a video game interface, swiping through menus that floated in the air. The comments were full of people confirming they could see the same thing.
And then Jake found the thread that made his stomach drop.
A video from Mumbai of building with a massive hole in its side and people running. Someone with a sword, an actual sword was fighting something that looked like it came straight out of a nightmare. All teeth and claws and wrong angles.
The caption: "Dungeon Break in Mumbai - At least 50 dead - System holders responding to threat"
Jake's apartment suddenly felt very small. Very fragile.
Dungeons. Monsters. Systems. They are all fucking real