I should be in bed. In my cozy, warm, soft bed. Instead, I’m running for my life, in the woods, from monsters. My pursuers were 3 of the most ugly chickens I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve seen too many chickens in my life, but I’m pretty sure they don’t normally have scales, yellow pulsating eyes, and frothing mouths. I tripped on a particularly gnarled root that would have sent me careening into the forest floor if it weren’t for me plunging my handy spear into the ground to keep me upright. I say spear, but it looked more like a walking stick you see at gift shops with one pointed end. I got back to running as I thought back to how this all started…

I sat up groggily as I read the text hovering in front of me. It seemed to move with my head as I stood up, looking around to find myself in a forest full of strange white trees with black leaves.

“Ok Seth, this is clearly a dream, or a nightmare, or...something. This, this can’t be real.” I was struggling to convince myself as the blue screen faded away and another took its place.

The first four statements seemed like some kind of computer, and this was backed up by a mechanical voice reading the same lines from what seemed like everywhere. The latter part was much more human, with even the voice changing from a robot to the voice of a young woman.

“...What?” was all I could say. Teresa? Overmind? What was going on? Was this some kind of secret government experiment? It was bad enough that this “Overmind” knew my last name. Seriously, what kind of last name is Umbra?

Looking around was hard with the text taking up half my eyeballs. With my peripheral vision however, I could clearly see that I was alone. So who was talking? Were there speakers built into the ground? Suddenly, while I was trying to peek behind it, the blue screen shrank and moved to the top right of my view. That was...odd. But useful! Now I could properly see that absolutely nobody was nearby, and also be properly freaked out.

Just as I was getting ready to slam my head into the ground to try to wake up, I could feel a warm, gentle sensation flowing through my head. I immediately calmed down and began to think properly. This clearly wasn’t a dream, and I sure wasn’t going to give myself brain damage to try to prove otherwise. Instead I recalled what that screen had said before.

“Status?”

I stared in shock at the outpouring of text in front of me, then screamed as my clothing started to disappear.

“No! That’s my favorite pair of socks! Wait, more importantly, stop stripping me! This isn’t right! This is against my rights as a human! Stop!”

Despite my protests I was now shivering nude, the forest being colder than I had expected. As I looked around wildly like a startled animal, I suddenly noticed a pair of trousers on the ground that hadn’t been there before. I was too embarrassed to care and quickly put them on, only to yell again when the pants started crawling UP my body! It wasn’t unpleasant, but still creepy. My thrashing didn’t stop the pants from enveloping my body and...turning into a shirt? A whole outfit in fact. Ok, that was weird, and also impossible.

“What is going on! Who are you! What do you want!” My screams were only met with another blue box.

For some reason I felt like the box was winking at me.

This time the box felt almost sad. Especially that last part. Almost like Teresa was lamenting for the loss of someone. But what do you mean don’t die?!

I found myself gripping a comfortable, if rather flimsy spear. Taking a deep breath, I resolved to figure out what was going on and to get out of this forest. I took a single step forward and felt something change in me, a knowledge that this was real and that the consequences of failure were death.

That’s when the giant chickens burst out of a nearby bush and I peed my pants.

“MOMMMMYYYYYYYYYY!!!”