Christopher Day woke up, and a blissful, groggy moment, the world was normal. The sun was filtering through his blackout curtains, and his biggest problem was the vague, nagging feeling that he should probably do some laundry.
Then, he opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw, glowing with an ominous light in the top corner of his vision, was the quest.
[Quest: Campaign Trail]
[Objective: A political persona has been generated for and officially linked to the User. The User is now an active candidate in a civic election. Maintain a minimum of 10% [Voter Approval] until Election Day.]
[Reward: --]
[Failure Penalty: Massive loss of [Community Standing].]
It wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare. A real, verifiable, and apparently mandatory nightmare.
He groaned and rolled over, pulling his pillow over his head as if he could somehow hide from the universe's most aggressive pop-up ad. The quest text, of course, remained, perfectly legible even through the pillow.
He gave up on the idea of sleep and reached for his phone, a masochistic, compulsive need to survey the full extent of the disaster driving his actions. He opened the Upshur County Community Forum. He was greeted by a new, fan-made banner at the top of the page. It was a poorly photoshopped image of the blurry deer picture from his old Bucky Watcher profile, now set against a backdrop of a waving American flag. Below it, in a bold, slightly menacing font, was the slogan that had been born in the fires of the comment section.
"Bucky Watcher: He's Watching."
Chris recoiled, the phone slipping from his grasp and smacking him squarely in the face. "Ow," he muttered, the sharp pain a physical punctuation mark on his morning. The reality of his situation was inescapable. He was a meme. He was a slogan. He was an involuntary candidate.
As he was attempting to rub the sleep from his eyes, a series of news alerts began to pop up on his phone. The other candidates, the real ones, were officially entering the race.
The first was a link to the Buckhannon Record Delta's website. The headline read: "Hardwick Enters Mayoral Race, Promises 'A Return to Stability.'" The article included a photo of City Councilman Ralph Hardwick, a stuffy-looking man in his late fifties with a neatly trimmed mustache and the bland, forgettable face of a career bureaucrat. His platform, the article explained, was one of "stable, experienced leadership."
Chris used [INSPECT] on the photo.
[Name: Ralph Hardwick]
[Class: Bureaucrat (LVL 25)]
[Status: Cautious, Opportunistic]
Great, Chris thought. The establishment candidate. The boss of boring.
The next alert was a link to a slickly produced video that had just been posted on the community forum. It was from Milla Slater, a wealthy local business owner who owned a chain of successful car dealerships. The video showed her standing in front of one of her dealerships, a gleaming row of pickup trucks behind her, her expression a perfect blend of maternal warmth and corporate ruthlessness. She promised to run the town with "fiscal responsibility" and to "finally bring some business sense to City Hall."
[Name: Milla Slater]
[Class: Capitalist (LVL 38)]
[Status: Ambitious, Predatory]
Okay, the corporate candidate, Chris thought, a new wave of anxiety washing over him. She's probably got a huge war chest and a high-level marketing team.
The final alert was a shaky, low-resolution selfie video posted directly to the forum. It was from Skip Jenkins, a popular farmer and, more importantly, the legendary former quarterback of the Buckhannon-Upshur High School Buccaneers football team, the one who had led them to the state championship in '95. The video showed him sitting in the cab of a massive tractor, a worn, leather football resting on the dashboard next to him.
"Folks," he said, his voice a friendly, down-to-earth drawl, "I'm not a politician. I'm a farmer. I'm a football coach. But I'm sick and tired of watching the so-called leaders of this town run it into the ground. It's time we brought some common sense back to City Hall."
[Name: Skip Jenkins]
[Class: Football Player (LVL 5) / Farmer (LVL 22)]
[Trait: [Local Football Legend] (+15 Charisma with residents over 40)]
Chris stared at the screen. A bureaucrat, a capitalist, and a football legend. And him. A reclusive, unemployed thirty-year-old whose primary political platform was, apparently, a blurry picture of a deer. Seeing the real, actual candidates made his own unwilling candidacy feel terrifyingly concrete.
The political reality of the situation was too much. The anxiety debuff from his new, unwanted public persona was a constant feeling under his skin. He needed a distraction. He made a conscious, strategic decision: he would actively, and with great prejudice, ignore the election.
He opened his quest log, his eyes scrolling past the glowing text of the [Campaign Trail] quest. He was looking for the smallest, most apolitical, most mundane quest the System could offer him. He needed a win. A small, simple, and completely meaningless win.
As if on cue, a new quest appeared, triggered by a series of loud, angry stomping sounds from down the hall, a percussive rhythm of paternal frustration.
The house was filled tense shouting. Pete was in a full-blown, category-five rage. He was stomping through the living room, pulling cushions off chairs, throwing magazines off the coffee table, and yelling at Misty, who was trying, and failing, to calm him down.
"I don't know where they are, Pete!" Misty's voice was a thin, strained wire. "Where did you have them last?"
"If I knew where I had them last, I wouldn't be looking for them, would I?" Pete roared, his voice echoing through the house.
He was fifteen minutes late for a fishing trip with his friends, a semi-annual ritual of male bonding and quiet contemplation. And the source of his fury, that was currently holding his entire weekend hostage, was his missing truck keys.
The System, in its infinite and deeply unhelpful wisdom, formalized the domestic crisis for Chris.
[Quest: Assist a Family Member!]
[Objective: Locate Pete Woody's missing truck keys.]
[Reward: 15 XP]
[+2 Family Standing]
That would work. It was a low-level fetch-quest, the kind of mission he could complete without leaving the house. It was the perfect distraction.
He got out of bed and leaned casually in the living room doorway, a calm, disinterested observer in a storm of domestic chaos. Pete was now on his hands and knees, peering under the sofa, muttering a string of creative and colorful curses.
Chris focused his mind, not on the keys themselves, but on the abstract concept of Pete finding the keys. He was a support class after all. He activated his [Minor Probability Manipulation] skill.
A faint blue shimmer, visible only to him, washed over Pete's angry, flustered form for a split second. The HUD showed the small, but not insignificant, cost.
[EP: 8.75/9.00]
Pete, in an exasperated huff, gave up on his search under the sofa and stood up. He slapped his hands against his own pockets in a gesture of defeated frustration. His expression shifted. The rage drained away, replaced by a look of baffled confusion.
He reached into the back pocket of the jeans he was currently wearing. And he pulled out the missing keys.
He stared at the keys, a small, jangling cluster of metal and plastic, as if they were an alien artifact that had just materialized in his hand. He looked around the messy, disheveled living room, his brain struggling, and failing, to compute how he could have possibly missed them. He didn't apologize. He didn't acknowledge his own spectacular, room-destroying failure. He just grunted, a sound of masculine denial.
"Well... must have just put them there," he mumbled, before storming out the front door to his truck.
The moment the door slammed shut, a satisfying ding sounded in Chris's mind.
[Quest Completed! 15 XP Awarded!]
[+2 Family Standing]
He watched his experience bar nudge forward, a small, but gratifying measure of progress. Smug satisfaction washed over him. He had successfully, and with minimal effort, used a reality-altering power to avoid a lecture from his step-dad. In the grand, cosmic scheme of his life, this felt like a monumental victory.