The Interview

  “That’s it for today. I’ve got an interview to get to. Have fun at preschool today, kids.” John said.

  “Going to try to break out of the dementia ward?” “Careful. Don’t break your hip.” “I’ve seen that look. He’s fiending and needs to get his metamucil fix.” “Bingo early today?” John chuckled as he saw the usual insults from the peanut gallery stream across before he logged off the stream. Another 2 hours of grinding and he still didn’t find the upgrade he needed. He was determined to make his frog spam shaman build work. No matter how many times some little shit pops into his stream and says, “Frogs…why are you playing frogs? I can do 9 levels higher with my whirlwind barb.”

  John grabbed his keys and headed out. Blizzard never stopped amazing John. They were on Diablo XI and since Diablo III it’s followed the same script. Hire people who never played the original game (or possibly not even any ARPG game) to make the new one and somehow manage to make the same mistakes that were made on the previous 5 versions. Then they bring in the people who fixed the previous version and by the 2nd expansion the game was pretty good. John didn’t mind though. He only thought about it because it constantly dominated his newsfeed. John wasn’t one of those guys who needed perfect gear asap and always used the most efficient method. He was more of the type of player who thought of a build he wanted to try and then tried to make it work. He avoided videos and guides like they were the plague. He didn’t care if some other streamer was able to do double the level of dungeon that he could. Games were about fun and flooding the entire screen with frogs was fun. Annoying when he felt he was just one properly rolled piece of equipment away from making it work, but still fun.

  As John reached the diner, he saw the news van setting up and assumed the reporter was inside. And she was. She was also exactly what John expected. Young, beautiful, overconfident, and completely untrained in field craft. Sitting deep in the booth so there was no quick way to stand and escape. She also had her back to the door in a booth that could be approached from three directions. No reflective surfaces to watch her six and probably no idea at least two people were recording or taking pictures of her as she sat there. Continuing his quick scan, John laughed and added, “probably doesn’t even realize that she might not want to get any food unless she gets a different waitress.” Wonder if there is a story there. Rude customer or something to do with a guy. Taking a second glance at the waitress, probably nothing to do with a guy.

  John sat down with his phone underneath the table feeding live to his glasses so he didn’t freak out sitting there with his back exposed. The reporter looked up, “It really is you. Or..I guess I mean, you are really REAL. I had heard from locals you were real, but it seems like most of the country believes it was Justin.”

  “Greatest trick the devil ever pulled and all that.” John said. “So are we shooting in here?”

  “No. We got a permit for shooting in the park, so they're cordoning off an area around a bench right now. I just wanted to go over the details once to make sure I’m not making some stupid mistake or missing something important and to give you an idea of what I’ll be asking once we’re streaming.”

  “Great. Ready when you are.”

  “Okay, uphill in the snow both ways, get off my lawn? How did that happen?”

  “I used to stream after work and troll the kids who would come in and start telling me I was playing the game wrong or telling me how much better their toons were. One day, a kid in there kept telling me I needed some more crit damage or crit chance and I was playing a stupid build like I’m some noob and just would not stop. So I put on my imaginary cowboy hat, spit some imaginary tobacco on the floor and gave my I’m here for fun not to min/max or optimize efficiency speech with a John Wayne accent. Kid just kept going while I was being a goof, so I added on the end, ‘your parents probably weren’t even born yet when Diablo 1 came out. We didn’t have youtube guides. We tried things out and had fun. Uphill in the snow. Both ways. Get off my lawn.’ Next thing you know, I get a call from my sister’s and they had dressed one of their friends as a psychiatrist and were calling to see if i was having mental issues.”

  “That’s how you found out you had went viral. That’s hilarious. Now how did, ‘Let the froggies hit the floor’ happen?”

  "After I went a little viral, people checked out my VOD’s and started clipping all the stupid stuff i had done over the years. That was followed by the ‘strangest thing John said to me’ lists, most of those were just Theo Von quotes I’d throw out. Nobody watches the classics anymore. Twitch created their Grandpa Style category and finally we got the Brokehip Mountain South Park episode and The Tonight Show.”

  “And the tonight show, tell me what happened there.”

  “Well, I got lots of requests for shows and podcasts, but i turned them down knowing I’m best in small doses. But the tonight show? I’m not going to turn down a chance to talk to Scarlet Johansen for 7 mins. Hell yeah. I was all in for that.”

  “So I get there and we do a little back and forth about why I’m the way I am and my live life like I have no one to embarrass and no one whose opinion I cared about attitude and I had an idea. I went off on the tangent about being isekai’d from an almost identical world into this one. About the time I started talking about how inconvenient it was not to have suction cups anymore, I felt Scarlet and the audience weren’t feeling it anymore so I reeled it back in and ended the tale.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “You’ve probably seen the behind the scenes, but as soon as we went to commercial, I apologized to Scarlet for taking the bit too far and she did the, ‘that was a bit, my god. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for you having dementia or for you having been stolen from another planet.’ and that kid from the men in black remakes came out asking if I would stay out there so he could chase me off the stage and do the eye thing with the crowd. And as they say, the rest is history…at least until we convinced them it wasn’t.”

  “Justin?” the reporter asked.

  “Yeah. After the tonight show, people started saying I was just an industry plant and everything was scripted. That’s when Justin had the idea. It sounded like fun. I only spent a couple days on set playing games and going crazy doing everything I could think of. They had all my old clips. Justin did the getting into make up stuff and the behind the scenes shots of him where he was doing some of my bits. They even got Scarlet to do the interview where she admitted she could tell it was Justin and they had to do all the shots from the side because some of his prosthetic had come loose. Didn’t really appreciate her describing my look as a disgusting costume by the way. Justin debuted it on April 1st and for some stupid reason, people believed it.”

  “What did you do after the documentary was released?”

  “Retired because Justin gave me a sweet deal and quickly realized just how boring retirement was.”

  “Okay. They’re ready for us. Any questions?”

  “Nope. Lead the way. I’ve got a lot of being bored to get done.” John stood and bowed to the reporter with his arm extended towards the door. Following her to the bench John struggled to not start singing Sir Mix a Lot’s lyrics. She looked back over her shoulder and gave John the, I know you’re looking at my butt smile, so John gave her his best, I’m a dirty old man and don’t care that you know, eyebrow wiggle. Once there, she was guided to her position facing the street. John was placed with his back to the street, but that was fine. He still had his phone in his hand.

  “Many locals swear he’s real, but most of the country believes he’s not. I’m here today to set the record straight…” The reporter started, but John was distracted by the truck coming way too fast and headed straight for them. He tried diving out of the way, but the reporter had also seen the truck and John was tripped up and he ended up face planting on the front bumper of the out of control truck.

  “I hope that looked like I was trying to push her out of the way.” John thought just before the lights went out.

  When John woke up, he noticed the icon flashing. When he concentrated on it, a screen popped up.

  Welcome to the System

  Your planet has just finished its integration.

  The time freeze will end in 3…2….1.

  And John tried to open his eyes, but he realized he had no eyes. He could just see everything around him. However, nothing looked quite right. Everything was made up of strange glowing bits. I’m made up of strange glowing bits. Why do I look like a puddle? Where is my body? How do I move.

  After realizing no one was there to answer his questions, John started looking more closely at the glowing bits. He realized the glowing bits in the air were just randomly floating, but the glowing bits in the wall and floor had structure. They were organized.

  Essence Sight has reached Level 2.

  Hey, my glowing bits are organized too. They are constantly flowing from that glob in the center out to the rest of my …ummm…puddle. I wonder if I can move them faster. After a few seconds of staring intently at his glowing bits, John accidentally moved a large chunk of them to the side. His puddle flipped over.

  Essence Manipulation has reached level 2.

  Cool. But not what I was trying to do. John then spent the next several minutes plucking at his glowing bits and finally succeeded in stretching a line of them out to the side. When he reached the edge of his puddle, he was able to stretch his puddle out in the direction he was moving his line of glowing bits.

  Tentacles level 1 has been learned.

  Woo hoo. Glowing bits and tentacles. Let’s see what else I can do. John tried to condense the distance between each of the glowing bits he had in a line, but they slipped and moved back into his main body. After some fiddling around and a few more levels in sight, manipulation, and tentacles, John was able to extend a quadruple line of tentacles out a little bit farther than the length of his puddle, attach it to the floor, and quickly pull his puddle over.

  Kinetic Tentacle Operation level 1 has been learned.

  After spending an extended time in high density essence you have reached Level 2.

  Hell yeah. Leaderboard here I come. As John continued practicing moving with his tentacle and pancake flip technique, his sight extended to where he could see a door. Sensing some yummy glowing bits heading towards the doorway, John decided he was hungry. Why am I assuming glowing bits would taste yummy? They might taste horrible. But then again, they might taste yummy. Only one way to find out.

  When John reached the door, he moved out into the hall on his mission to determine the yumminess of glowing bits, John received a surprise. That looks like a human. It is a human. I wonder if human glowing bits taste yummy. Wait. He might be cool. Let’s just say, “Hi.” We can always eat him later if he isn’t cool.

  John extended a tentacle and waved. The human must have seen him because he took a quick step back then smiled and pointed. John kept waving. Yes, human. I am friendly. I won’t eat your glowing bits… if you’re cool. Are you …Oh shit!!! John saw glowing bits moving out of the center of the human and down his arm towards his finger. His instincts told him this was not a good thing, so he tried to pull himself back into the room.

  He was too slow. The man’s glowing bits rapidly shot out of his finger and hit John. Some of John’s glowing bits disappeared. Prick. Don’t kill my glowing bits. I’m going to eat…no…I need to hide. How do I hide. Maybe if I make my glowing bits look like the wall and floor.

  Camouflage level 1 has been learned.

  The human stepped into the room and looked around then quickly stepped back and looked up. After looking around again for a few seconds with a finger loaded, the human walked away. Stupid human. You will rue the day you killed my glowing bits.