August 10th. 7:29 AM.
Magnus woke, daylight threatening to sine through his blackout curtains and failing. He checked his phone.
"One minute before my alarm? Typical."
He dismissed the alarm, and the moment he did, he sighed and left the comfort of his bed.
He changed for work, caught the subway, and opened the store for customer entry as he did five days a week.
Magnus's weekend would begin tomorrow.
'I can't wait for this week to end.'
He checked the time throughout the length of his entire shift.
As the first customer entered, he said his usual monotonous greeting.
"Welcome to WcNonald's! Have you ordered already?"
The customer ignored him. They ordered their food from their phone and waited for their number or name to be called. They did so without giving Magnus or any of the staff so much as a glance.
WcNonald's was a fluorescent-lit purgatory as always. Nobody seemed to enjoy being there and looked as if they were trapped until they left, both staff and customer. The fryers hissed and the customers hissed louder with complaints. The series of beeps and boops became the background music.
A man absurdidly yelled about cheese ratios. A woman threw a drink because her vanilla thickshade tasted "too vanillary", whatever that meant. Magnus barely blinked. He handed out passive-aggressive coupons and refunds and told his coworkers to "maybe try giving a crap today."
Newsflash: They didn't.
In a break between complaints about both overcooked and undercooked fries and forgotten items, something broke the monotony.
The door chime jingled again.
It sounded exactly the same as all the others before it, but, unbenownst to everyone, would be one to help shape the future of the world.
A lone girl stepped into WcNonald's. Her footsteps were drowned out by the beeping machines in the back, and the noisy people sitting in the booths and waiting for food.
'She's about my age? Maybe a year or two younger?'
In contrast to his guess, she composed herself like she had lived centuries longer.
'But... She looks so delicate...'
Her long violet hair flowed down to the middle of her back. The beautiful unnatural colour faded into a soft blue at the tips. Her eyes, a blue-violet like her hair, looked as if a mixture of dusk and the depths of space were captured and stored in glass balls.
'Contacts?' He tried to look deeper, but gave up as to not maintain eye contact for an awkward amount of time.
On her dainty ears, the girl wore a pair of silver earrings. One was shaped like a crescent moon and the other like a star.
'Probably one of those girls into horoscopes and zodiac signs.'
Two pendants hung from a delicate chain and rested just below her collarbone. One, an orb of silver and the other, a blue crystal etched with mysterious lettering.
A dark semi-see-through shawl clung loosely to her shoulders. The fabric was embroidered with the faint outlines of roses which were barely visible unless caught in the light.
Beneath the shawl, a black tank top perfectly fitted her petite form.
Around her neck, a choker of dark leather sat snug, accented with a single crimson gem that gleamed like a drop of blood.
Cinced at her waist was a flared wine-red skirt.
She didn't approach the counter so much as drifted toward it like a wraith or spectre.
Magnus peered at the girl from behind the counter. "Hi, welcome to WcNonald's. Is there something I can do for you?"
Instead of looking at the menu above him on the screens, or pulling out her phone for an order number, she stared at Magnus.
Or rather, instead of at him, he felt her stare go through him.
It was as if there was something behind him or even inside him that caught her attention.
The girl at the counter smiled faintly. It was polite, but distant. "Oh, it's still not ready?"
He blinked. "Waiting for your order?"
She tilted her head and looked at him for a moment.
"No. Not food. Something else. Someone else, actually. I'm… waiting for them to be ready."
The way she said it unsettled Magnus. Her words weren't simple small talk, and didn't feel like eccentricity for the sheer sake of it.
She acted as if she knew something that Magnus didn't.
Magnus squinted and tried to get a read on her. He wasn't sure whether she was messing with him or just a little weird.
"My workers and I can't serve anything that isn't ordered. And we don't take orders from people here since taking orders at counters is a little outdated. Everyone has to use our WcNonald's app or one of the kiosks."
"I know that. I'm not here for food."
"Then are you waiting for someone to finish their shift? I can let them know."
"No, it's quite alright."
"Well, I can't help you unless you tell me what you want. You'd have to be a psychic or telepath, otherwise." Magnus laughed to himself.
She looked at him with a discerning expression that eased into a smile.
"Psychic…" the girl paused with a hand on her chin. "Not quite, but you're close."
She turned away from the counter without saying another word, as if her part in this play was over. Then she stopped, glancing over her shoulder.
"You should drink something. It's hot out. Heat like this makes the veil thinner."
"Uh. Right," Magnus muttered, eyes narrowing. "You… sure you don't want anything, though?"
"No. I'm just checking in on the progress."
And with that, she walked out.
Not a single bite of food or anything to drink.
He caught a final glimpse of her through the smeared glass doors. As she stepped into the sun-drenched street she opened a pale purple umbrella to shield herself from the light.
It wasn't the oversized, cute kind either, it looked like part of an antique collection. The contrast against the modern street made her seem… displaced.
Like she was visiting this time, not living in it.
Magnus watched her disappear into the crowd, a single ripple in a static day.
'What a waste of time... But... She was cute, even if a little weird. I didn't even get her name.'
At closing time, he sent the last of his staff home, finished balancing the earnings, and left the store. As always, he walked to the neighbouring business for his usual order.
"One Gym Rat Extreme, please."
"Sure, Magnus!" the girl at the counter replied.
He'd worn his nametag after work enough times for each staff member to know him by name, and they all treated him well.
Magnus paid, and a few moments later, the girl handed him a red cup with a purple smoothie within.
He turned towards the direction of the subway, but a commotion came his way.
The street buzzed with low-level chaos. One person in green and purple skating gear did extreme tricks on a skateboard while streaming. He yelled and laughed louder than the crowd that watched. As skater moved, so did the crowd.
Magnus took a slurp of his smoothie and smiled.
'A nice refreshing drink after a long shift.'
The skater clipped his shoulder, and shouted a lazy "yo, sorry!" before the crowd swallowed them both. Magnus's smoothie fell from his hand and he watched in slow-motion as it hit the ground and was gone forever.
'After the shift I just fucking had?! I can't even enjoy this one thing. The hate I have for this world seems to be mutual...'
He breathed deeply, still able to smell the fruity flavours in the smoothie.
Just as he resigned the smoothie to its fate and turned around to get another, someone bumped him hard from behind and suddenly, he was off the main road.
He paused in the half-lit alley.
On his route to and from home, he never had a need to look down or enter the alleywars connected the main street.
Old and new graffiti lined the walls.
After a couple of steps, on another wall behind a ripped advertisement for SkillSphere Premium, a torn poster peeked through like it watched Magnus.
~~~
Cult Management Simulator
NOW AVAILABLE ON GLEAM, 2015. CONTROL. CONVERT. CONQUER.
"Your followers aren't sheep. They're wolves waiting for a voice."
~~~
He blinked. That game hadn't been mentioned in over ten years. It never made it big. At least not big enough for him to remember it until now. Rumours said it got pulled because the AI started learning from players. Nowadays, it was normal for A.I to learn and grow in video games. To adapt to your strategies. But back then, it scared people.
A world with creepy mythos garbage. And the best part, it looked like it was mostly about resource management.
"A little different and much older than the usual," he said to no one, eyes narrowing. "But maybe it'll give me that boost on SkillSphere I've been looking for."
He took a picture of the QR code half-visible on the bottom corner and let the scan take himto the intended website.
To the Gleam storepage.
Something shifted in the air.
Lazlo, back home on his bed, lifted his head and hissed once, softly, like something in the world had tilted a few degrees off-axis.
Unaware of the implications, Magnus had already paid for and was downloading the game onto his system at home.
'This should be good!'