By David C. Daoust
Chance was having a hard time concentrating. A lot had changed over the past few days, ever since he went loony-toons and told everyone he knew about what he had experienced in the game, Arachnoid. Now he was just trying to figure out, for one, how he could have gotten so crazy, and two, why it mattered so little.
Chance had gone completely nutso— it didn’t matter, it didn’t change anything. He wound up talking to one of his oldest friends, just trying to convince him not to worry about him. ‘Cause he knew– Chance knew games weren’t real. It wasn’t all happening somewhere on some distance moon. He just got confused is all.
Ultimately, he just did not know how to handle the situation. At first, when he first got logged-out of Arachnoid, he thought, he should call the Constables in, right? But then he was like, nah. I don’t want to get their attention. Not just me alone. He felt like if he could be part of a group that called them, he may not get any unwelcome attention. Cuz, look, the thing with those guys, is that once you have their attention, they get to decide whether they like you or not. If they don’t, well, they can make things harder for you. Yet even if they do like you, well, then they’ll just keep coming around ‘til they wear out their welcome. Once they feel like they are not wanted, well, they aren’t going to like you anymore. Either way, opens the door to harassment. This is pretty much true for anybody, but these effen Constables of the Royal Alliance, they are all about authority, and exercising that authority. Chance, knew, he did not want their attention, so he tried to find out if anyone else had seen what he had seen, when the illusion had dropped away and Chance witnessed the legion of battle drones swarming through the skies on that strange moon. Really, Chance just hoped he could be a member of a group that had called in to report it to the authorities. He texted -everyone- he knew… not a one. He was the only witness… it must have been a prank! That was what he had told himself.
Penn and Colbert had really trolled him good. Right out of his mind!
Chance thought his whole life was over after having fallen for such a ridiculous ruse; spent a couple days like a doe in headlights. Nope. No one cared, no one even noticed. He tapped the Numskull down tighter, popped it in his mouth and lit it. Chance420 had lost access to Arachnoid, didn’t mean there weren’t still other games out there. He fired up his system seconds after firing up the joint, leaned back and tried to figure out what he should spend his time on…
By the time the lightshow started, Chance had passed out in his chair.
The glowy woman appeared over him just as she had appeared in every other anomaly across the Onion; all happening in that exact moment.
“How can this not be the last place I look?” she said aloud before collapsing back into a swarm of Sun Particles and vanishing.
Lucky for Chance, he’d missed the whole thing, les he’d have a whole ‘nother ‘episiode’ to try and find someone to report it to.
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