August 10th. 7:29 AM.
Magnus woke one minute before his alarm sounded off. The moment it did, he sighed, grabbed his phone, and stopped the alarm.
He changed for work, caught the subway, and opened the store for customer entry as he did five days a week. Tomorrow would be the start of his weekend.
'I can't wait.'
He started counting the seconds until the end of his shift.
As the first customer entered, he said his usual greeting:
"Welcome to WcNonald's! What would you like to order today?"
The customer barely reacted, ordered their food, and waited for their number to be called.
WcNonald's was a fluorescent-lit purgatory as always. The fryers hissed and the customers hissed louder. The series of beeps and boops became the background music.
A man yelled about cheese ratios. A woman threw a drink because her vanilla thickshade tasted "too vanillary", whatever that meant. Magnus barely blinked. He handed out passive-aggressive coupons and told his coworkers to "maybe try giving a crap today."
Newsflash: They didn't.
Sometime during the lull between complaints and burnt fries, the door chime jingled again. A girl stepped in, the sound of her footsteps completely drowned out by the noise of the people and machines.
She was his age, maybe a year or two younger than him, but composed herself like she had centuries on him. Long violet hair shimmered down to the middle of her back, fading at the tips into a soft, celestial blue. Her eyes were an unnatural shade, blue-violet, like a mixture of dusk and space caught in glass.
She wore silver earrings shaped like crescent moons and constellations, glinting with every tilt of her head..
A dark shawl clung loosely to her shoulders, its fabric embroidered with the faint outlines of roses, barely visible unless caught in the light. Beneath it, a fitted black tank top traced the shape of her beautiful form, simple yet striking. Around her neck, a choker of dark leather sat snug, accented with a single crimson gem that gleamed like a drop of blood.
Twin pendants hung from a delicate chain at her collarbone, one an orb of swirling silver, the other a blue crystal etched with mysterious sigils, swinging gently with her every step.
Her skirt flared in soft folds of wine-red fabric, cinched at the waist with elegant structure.
She didn't approach the counter so much as drifted toward it.
Magnus peered at the girl from behind the counter. "Hi, welcome to WcNonald's. What can I get you?"
Instead of looking at the menu above him on the screens, or pulling out her phone for an order number, she stared at Magnus.
Or rather, instead of at him, he felt her stare go through him.
It was as if there was something behind him or even inside him that caught her attention.
The girl at the counter smiled faintly. It was polite, but distant. "Oh, it's still not ready?"
He blinked. "Waiting on your order?"
She tilted her head. "No. Not food. Something else. Someone else, actually. Just… waiting for them to be ready."
There was something unsettling in the casual way she said it. Like she wasn't making small talk, or being cryptic for drama's sake. She just knew something that nobody else did.
Magnus squinted at her, unsure whether she was messing with him or just a little weird.
"We can't serve anything unless it's ordered, and we don't take orders from people here. You need to use the app or one of the kiosks. Are you waiting for someone to finish their shift? I can let them know."
"No, it's alright."
"Well, I can't help you unless you tell me what you want. You'd have to be a psychic or telepath, otherwise." Magnus laughed to himself.
She looked at him with a discerning expression that eased into a smile.
"Psychic… not quite, but you're close."
She turned away from the counter without saying another word, as if her part in this play was over. Then she stopped, glancing over her shoulder.
"You should drink something. It's hot out. Heat like this makes the veil thinner."
"Uh. Right," Magnus muttered, eyes narrowing. "You… sure you don't want anything, though?"
"No. I'm just checking in on the progress."
And with that, she walked out. No food. No drink. No receipt.
He caught a final glimpse of her through the smeared glass doors. She stepped into the sun-drenched street and, without pause, opened a pale purple umbrella to shield herself from the light. It wasn't the oversized, cute kind either, it was more like something from an antique collection. The contrast against the modern street made her seem… displaced.
Like she was visiting this time, not living in it.
Magnus watched her disappear into the crowd, a single ripple in a static day.
'What a waste of time... But... She was cute, even if a little weird. I didn't even get her name.'
At closing time, he sent the last of his staff home, finished balancing the earnings, and left the store. As always, he walked to the neighbouring business for his usual order.
"One Gym Rat Extreme, please."
"Sure, Magnus!" the girl at the counter replied.
He'd worn his nametag after work enough times for each staff member to know him by name, and they all treated him well.
Magnus paid, and a few moments later, the girl handed him a red cup with a purple smoothie within.
He turned towards the direction of the subway, but a commotion came his way.
The street buzzed with low-level chaos. One person in green and purple skating gear did extreme tricks on a skateboard while streaming. He yelled and laughed louder than the crowd that watched. As he moved, so did they.
Magnus took a slurp of his smoothie and smiled.
'A nice refreshing drink after a long shift.'
The skater clipped his shoulder, and shouted a lazy "yo sorry!" before the crowd swallowed them both. Magnus's smoothie fell from his hand and he watched in slow-motion as it hit the ground and was gone forever.
'After the shift I just fucking had?! I can't even enjoy this one thing. The hate I have for this world seems to be mutual...'
He breathed deeply, still able to smell the fruity flavours in the smoothie.
Just as he resigned the smoothie to its fate and turned around to get another, someone bumped him hard from behind and suddenly, he was off the main road.
In an alley. Half-lit.
He paused. He'd never bothered looking down the alleys on the route to and from home, let alone entering them.
Graffiti lined the walls in hieroglyphs of rebellion. After a couple of steps, on another wall behind a ripped advertisement for SkillSphere Premium, a torn poster peeked through like a whisper from the past.
~~~
Cult Management Simulator
NOW AVAILABLE ON GLEAM, 2015. CONTROL. CONVERT. CONQUER.
"Your followers aren't sheep. They're wolves waiting for a voice."
~~~
He blinked. That game hadn't been mentioned in over ten years. It never made it big. At least not big enough for him to remember it until now. Rumours said it got pulled because the AI started learning from players. Nowadays, it was normal, but back then, it scared people.
A world with creepy mythos garbage. And the best part, it looked like it was mostly about resource management.
"A little different from my usual," he said to no one, eyes narrowing. "But maybe it'll give me that boost I've been looking for."
He took a picture of the QR code half-visible on the bottom corner and let the scan take him wherever it wanted.
Something shifted in the air.
Lazlo, back home on his bed, lifted his head and hissed once, softly, like something in the world had tilted a few degrees off-axis.
Unaware of the implications, Magnus had already paid for and was downloading the game onto his system at home.
'This should be good!'