The hospital discharged me with the efficiency of a system flushing a bug. A nurse handed me a bag of generic painkillers—the kind that treat the symptom but not the cause of being alive.
"Take two after meals, Mr. Holt." She said.
Her professional smile was a perfect, sterile mask. But the voice that slithered into the base of my skull was colder, truer:
{He looks worse than the tile he hit}.
My first lesson: Humanity comes with a director's commentary track. And the critics are brutal.
I manufactured a thin,meaningless smile. "Thanks."
As she turned, her final thought trailed after me like psychic exhaust fumes: {Hope he doesn't sue.}
Sue.
The word was almost funny. I couldn't afford to sue a vending machine for stealing my last dollar. My life wasn't a tragedy; it was a budgetary shortfall.
---
The bus ride home was my first live-fire exercise in hell.
I found a seat, my head throbbing in time with the diesel engine. I wasn't trying to listen. DES didn't require intent. It simply... opened a channel.
A man built like a stacked refrigerator was wedged by the window. I must have glanced his way a second too long. His head turned. His eyes locked onto mine: {What's this runt's problem?}
The thought vibrated in my skull, coarse and grainy like his voice would be. My mouth moved on autopilot. "S-sorry."
He looked away, but the mental channel stayed open, leaking his contempt: {Freak}.
It wasn't an insult spoken to my face, it was worse. It was the pure, unfiltered truth of his assessment, and I was forced to swallow it. My knuckles whitened on the seatback. This wasn't hearing thoughts. It was being force-fed the raw material of my own social exile.
I fixed my gaze on the floor, trying to shut it out. It was like trying to ignore a spotlight on a dark stage.
Wait.
I forced myself to look up, to scan. To... test it.
An old woman clutching her purse, staring out the window. Silence.
A teenager lost in his game, thumbs flying. Nothing.
A man in a suit frowning at a spreadsheet. Not a whisper.
Then, from my left. A new frequency tuned in. A girl in headphones was scrolling her phone, her body angled away from me. Her face was a mask of bland commuter emptiness. But her mind provided the subtitles: {...why is he breathing so loud? Ugh, men are so gross. Just taking up space.}
Her lips never twitched. She gave no sign. The cruelty was sterile, efficient, and entirely secret. It was the kind of thought she'd never say aloud, the kind that vanishes without a trace. Except now, I was the trace.
A cold understanding crystallized.
DES wasn't broadcasting everyone's mind. It was a targeted sonar. It pinged only the thoughts that were, in some way, laser-guided toward me. The silent judgments, the instant rejections, the visceral recoil I'd always felt but could never prove.
The system wasn't giving me the world's secrets. It was mapping the exact shape of the hole I occupied in it.
That hollow map led me home.
My apartment welcomed me back with the warmth of a tomb. "Cozy," the listing had said. It was the kind of space that made you understand why people become serial killers—just for a change of scenery.
I closed the door. The silence was supposed to be a relief. Instead, the HUD in my vision pulsed, a gold filament burning in the dim air. Words assembled themselves with surgical precision.
[DES – Full Integration Achieved]
User Status: Operational.
Core Metrics: Displaying Baseline.
A childish part of me still hoped for a mistake. A cosmic apology.
The universe does not apologize.
[Core Desirability Score: 0.5 / 100]
Analysis: Social & Physical Presence registers below statistical noise. Effectively invisible.
I didn't choke. I went cold. They'd quantified my nothingness and given it a decimal point.
The scroll continued, a clinical autopsy of Terrence Holt.
> Physique: Below Average. (Strength: 2/10, Agility: 3/10)
Presence: Deficient. (Posture: 4/10, Vocal Tonality: 2/10)
Social Metrics: Critically Low. (Charm: 3/100, Confidence: 0/100)
Sexual Appeal: Negligible. (Score: 0.5/100)
Genital Size: 3 inches. (Note: Morphological adjustment possible via system quests.)
There it was. Not just an assessment. A blueprint for inadequacy. It had measured my dick and filed a report. Humor was impossible. This wasn't embarrassment; it was deconstruction. They had taken the last private, unmeasured part of a man and given it a fucking rating.
The HUD, indifferent to my silent crisis, moved on.
> Potential Growth Available: 100%.
Primary Deficiency Clusters: Charisma, Influence, Financial Acumen, Physiological Optimization.
Initial Mission Chain: Loading…
Objective 1: Survive a direct social challenge.
Objective 2: Obtain your first System Certificate.
Reward: Unlock Daily Income Protocol.
My eyes locked onto the last two words.
Daily Income.
The cold shock of the stats evaporated, burned away by a sharper, more primal heat. Money.
They weren't just offering me charisma or confidence.They were offering liquidity. The power to stop choosing between food and bus fare. The power to not be poor.
In that moment, the other objectives—social challenges, certificates, "desirability"—felt abstract, like training modules.
But the money…the money was real. It was the lever that could move the world, and DES had just handed it to me.
A slow, unfamiliar sensation uncoiled in my chest. It wasn't hope. It was hunger.
My life hadn't just changed.
The game had just been explained to me.
And I finally wanted to play.
---
To be continued...