As you wake from a long and dreamless slumber, you sit up from the bed, holding your aching head in your hands. You look around to get your bearings. Whatever room you've been dumped into is small, and designed to appear even smaller upon first inspection. Gleaming white walls almost touch you on all sides, boxing you in. You look down to the floor, and the only things breaking the blinding glimmer of the spotless white marble are a dull, compact chair a small black desk, immediately in front of you. Perched on top of the desk is an old-looking CRT monitor and a stained off-white keyboard. You look around the desk for a computer tower, or any wires leading to or from the keyboard and monitor, but they stand on their own. Puzzled and exasperated, you sit down on the stiff wooden chair and look at the screen. Before you have a chance to reach forward to switch it on, it flashes to life with the familiar *clunk* of the vacuum tube within its body. Three words blink on the screen in black, set against a stark white background;
PRESS ANY KEY
[[Press a key on the old keyboard]]
[[Lie back onto the bed]]
You choose the big, clunky spacebar. As you press down on it, the old *clack* sound brings back memories of old LAN parties, of your friends- will you ever see them again? You try not to think about it. The text disappears from the screen, replaced by a spinning *loading* icon, one that seems to last forever.
Finally, with a mechanical *clunk*, the old vacuum tube shuts off once again and the monitor blinks into darkness. Was that it?
The chair slides backwards, as if on a rail, and before you get a chance to look down to see what's happening, the floor beneath you opens up, and you feel the chair tilting slowly forwards. You grab onto the flimsy wooden seat, with no other hand or foot-holds in sight, but your grip soon gives way beneath your own weight. You fall, arms flailing and eyes wide in terror, before landing below with a soft *thump*, on what could only have been a floor of matresses or marshmallows judging by how soft it was. Yet, when you look down, the same hard marble as above greets you. You look up to see where you fell from, only to see even more white glistening stone, easily half a mile above. In fact, that white gleam is all that greets you from all sides, but instead of the intense and smothering captivity of the room above, you see a room easily the size of five football fields. As you squint in the distance, you see some interruptions in the white brilliance- large arches cut into the marble with what looked like labels above them, and above a central arch, a giant sign that flashes with stupendous scale, one that proclaims proudly for all the world to hear, 'Reddit'.
What the hell is a reddit?
You go closer, and see below the sign is a crossroads of sorts, a choice between three different archways, stretching as far as you could see. To the left appears to be a fairly nondescript archway, sparsely decorated and somewhat tastefully arranged. To the right, a continuum of horrors greets you, and you take in everything from photos of Shrek in the distance to random Manning faces at regular intervals. After an exhausting walk, you stop before the biggest, central arch, directly below the sign, one that reads in simple lettering above it, *multireddit: Gaming*. All varieties of people weird and wonderful stride beneath the arch, running back and forth between small doorways on either side of the walls tunnelling beyond the archway. You see pitchforks, flaming torches and long lists in their hands, and every emotion from anger to amusement on their varied faces. Without knowing what the hell any of this means, you stand there, bewildered and indecisive.
To your great relief, a figure emerges from the archway, seeing your confusion and desparation. He appears... Blurry, somehow, the edges of his skin jagged and almost pixellated. He's bald, wearing only a loincloth, and bears the appearance of what you'd expect some sort of *peasant* to look like.
As he approaches, you corner him, and you decide exactly what your priority is, and that other questions can wait.
[[Demand to know how to get out of this damn place]]
You stand up from the chair, frustrated and helpless. You may not be able to do anything else, but you certainly won't play whatever sick game this is. You flop back down onto the white metal cot, and it creaks beneath your weight. *'Is this really it?'* you think, staring at the polished ceiling.
What will you do next?
[[Fall asleep, and hope this was all a dream]]
Get off your ass and play the damn game, fool. [[Press a key on the old keyboard]]
He laughs, his minimal facial features shifting slightly, in a voice that somehow sounds low quality, as if it's muffled by a paper bag or something.
"There's no escaping Reddit, you can only find a place where you belong!"
You aren't gonna get much help from him about getting out of whatever this place is, so you change the subject.
[[Ask him what's straight ahead of you]]
He looks back at you with what looks like genuine fear when you ask. He shudders for a minute, and then whispers,
"What's down there is not for sane minds. Fire and brimstone await you, pain and ignorance too. What you're looking at is where people around here try to have serious discussions, and well... It consumes them. They can't accept other opinions, and eventually end up at each other's throats. And at the end of it all?" He gulps. "Politics".
You see the genuine concern on his face and your eyebrows furrow with indecision.
[[Venture down the left path]]
Or instead,
[[Ask him what's down the right path]]
[[Ask him what's straight ahead of you]]
[[Ask him where you are]]
[[Ask him who he is]]
The pixel-like eyes and mouth on his pale face seem to jump up a notch in happiness, as he gesticulates towards the path with his wirey, jagged arms.
"Why, wonders and glory await you there, for that's the land of shitposting! If you listen hard enough, you can even hear the adventure from here! For endless times of fun and celebration, spend the rest of your days in low-effort content and easy karma."
Without knowing the meaning of most of what he just said, you make your next decision.
[[Take the right path, to find out what "shitposting" means]]
Or instead,
[[Ask him what's down the left path]]
[[Ask him what's straight ahead of you]]
[[Ask him where you are]]
[[Ask him who he is]]
He turns around with excitement and vigour, opening his arms before him as if he were a Roman emperor surveying his kindom.
"This.... Is gaming".
You've heard enough. You step past him and take in the rows of doors on either side of you, different designs and shapes on each one. "Those doors are subreddits, each one leading to an active community of gamers" he says, before walking towards a small, pixelated door with the same vague blur that plagued his body.
"And this... The magnum opus of Reddit, its crown jewels so to speak", he proclaims proudly. You look at the door.
*/r/consolemasterrace*.
You recoil in horror. Console gamers, thinking they're superior? You feel ill. Hardly the crown jewels of this whole operation if it's a shitty little door stuffed in the corner. Your eyes wander to a huge golden set of double doors at the end of the hallway. He follows your gaze and shudders.
"That's... A place of heathens. I would advise you stay away from them and adhere to the true gospel, friend".
You can't decide if you should advance, or consider your other options.
[[Move foward toward the golden double doors at the end of the hallway]]
[[Enter the jagged, pixellated door of the console dwellers]]
Or,
[[Ask him what's down the left path]]
[[Ask him what's down the right path]]
[[Ask him where you are]]
[[Ask him who he is]]
He looks at you with what you could almost make out to be jealousy for seeing this place for the first time with his beady black eyes.
"This is Reddit, friend, a place where time never ends! You can shitpost, argue and troll to your heart's content! Time here moves quickly; what seems like an hour can turn into a year, and really how could you want any more than what we have here? Our memes are dank and our jerks are circle!"
You shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. He seems to be talking in riddles. You should probably ask him something more straightforward.
[[Demand to know how to get out of this damn place]]
[[Ask him what's down the left path]]
[[Ask him what's down the right path]]
[[Ask him what's straight ahead of you]]
[[Ask him who he is]]
His face seems to light up in joy at the prospect of talking about himself.
"Why I'm a vanguard of the cleanest, most pure race of all, can't you tell? I thought the cinematic way of movement and gloriously optimized textures would have tipped you off! These other folks probably make your eyes hurt with their high resolutions and framerates, if you come back to our sub, you too can ascend to greatness! The console master race will never die!"
You take a step back, uncomfortable. He's one of... *them*. You'd read about them before, but you weren't sure they were real- he was a.... peasant.
You decide you want to get what you need from him as soon as possible and end this conversation. You move onto your next question.
[[Demand to know how to get out of this damn place]]
[[Ask him what's down the left path]]
[[Ask him what's down the right path]]
[[Ask him what's straight ahead of you]]
[[Ask him where you are]]
As you embark down the long trail to the distant archway, you feel a growing sense of dread. Obviously the strange man was crazy, but as you walked away the look he gave you was almost one of pity, or mourning. You shake the thoughts from your head and push forwards. The arch grows ever-closer in your vision, and you feel a rising flush of heat the nearer you get. You can see the walls in front of you blur with what must be heat distorting the air, and you can smell burning. You turn the corner curious, but stop when you see the spectacle before you.
The tunnel looks similar enough to the gaming one back in the center, with rows of doors lined up along the walls, and another large double door at the end. Your gaze is drawn to a door to the far right, near the end of the corridor, one with flames and pitchforks pouring out of it like nothing you'd seen before. The fire licks at the walls surrounding the door, and a torrent of men with what looked to be cartoon frog faces push at each other to get out, hurling insults at anyone fool enough to come close. You can hear their cries from the other side of the corridor.
*CUCK! CUCK! CUCK!*
You take a step forward out of curiosity, but soon you stop in hesitation. The horde of frog-people had been trying to push past a row of armored men in black riot gear, with *Admin* emblazoned on their backs, and now they had broken the lines. You hear the admins scream "they're leaking!", desparately trying to stop the horde, but as they rush toward you, hurling insults and obscenities at every step, you stand still, paralysed with fear, and unsure what to do next.
[[Turn tail and run, back to gaming and back to safety]]
[[RUN, DAMMIT!]]
You move as fast as your legs can carry you, feeling the stampede of footsteps behind you all the way. These people... If they were people... They couldn't be reasoned with. You start to realize that this 'Reddit' is far from a safe space, it's filled with hate and anger, and you run back to what you think might be relative sanity. Evidently, these users, these 'Redditors', could never reach a conclusion on anything, and their attempts to do so would just end in pain for all involved. You decide your luck there had run out, and not to try your hand in "discussion" again.
When you finally reach the central arch again, your pixellated guide seems to have vanished. You look around you, checking if you're safe. It was a long run from the far corner of the room, but it seems that your pursuers didn't have the same stamina you have... It seems Reddit does that to people.
You catch your breath and steel yourself, ready for more surprises, and make your decision.
[[Take the right path, to find out what "shitposting" means]]
[[Move foward toward the golden double doors at the end of the hallway]]
You move as fast as your legs can carry you, feeling the stampede of footsteps behind you all the way. These people... If they were people... They couldn't be reasoned with. You start to realize that this 'Reddit' is far from a safe space, it's filled with hate and anger, and you run back to what you think might be relative sanity.
When you finally reach the central arch again, your pixellated guide seems to have vanished. You look around you, checking if you're safe. It was a long run from the far corner of the room, but it seems that your pursuers didn't have the same stamina you have... It seems Reddit does that to people.
You catch your breath and steel yourself, ready for more surprises, and make your decision.
[[Take the right path, to find out what "shitposting" means]]
[[Move foward toward the golden double doors at the end of the hallway]]
The path to the archway in the far right corner seems a lot more entertaining than the rest of the giant room you'd seen so far. You'd initially thought the whole thing was blank and boring, but this pathway proves you otherwise. What you can only assume are 'memes' pave the ground and the walls, with everything from Shrek/Smash Mouth to Bee Movie providing your soundtrack through small screens in the floor tiles. As you grow closer, the memes seem to grow... danker, somehow, with your mild nose exhalations growing into genuine chuckles. You smile, and when you finally reach the archway, one covered in rage comics, you stop to take in your surroundings.
Ahead is the same layout as the previous hallway- rows of doors on either side, big double doors at the end. You can make out men in suits rushing in and out of the double doors and into the various other doors, like any ordinary businessman would.
As you advance down the tunnel, you notice a theme. The left doors seem to be more catered towards novelty subreddits of sorts, while the right are just plain old memes. Where do you head first?
[[Advance to the end of the tunnel, and see what the focal point is]]
[[Investigate the weirder communities you catch glimpses of through the doors]]
[[Browse the dankest of the memes]]
The hallway to the golden doors seems like a mixture of what you'd seen so far. There was rage and anger coming from some communities, you hear chants crying out *Fuck Konami* from a nearby door, but also happiness and memes, which you saw in a sub filled with footballs and cars, with legions of people shouting "nice shot" and "savage". These communities were somehow less alien to you than what you'd seen prior were. You push on, past the maniacal laughter from a circle of people who seemed to be jerking off onto a copy of the Witcher 3, and finally you reach the towering, shimmering golden doors. As you ascend the steep marble steps, you imagine what the ascension to the pearly gates would feel like, and decide that it wouldn't be too far off this.
You touch one of the doors as you reach it, the solid gold surface feeling warm and inviting to your skin. You push it forward to find a row of people, men with golden skin and flowing white hair, who seem to be welcoming you.
"Welcome, brother. We see that you were lost, but now we can assure you that you're found. You have ascended".
You walk towards them. Under ordinary circumstances, this would probably have been slightly creepy, but here, it feels... Different. You know you don't belong back with the fire and brimstone of arguments, or with the bustle of the shitposting market, but here, you feel at home.
The men welcome you with literal open arms, their long flowing white robes bustling behind them. Rows of clouds form beneath you, and you lie back on them, welcoming the slumber.
When you open your eyes again, the clouds and other men are gone. You're back in a room, the same tiny white room you'd waken up in what seemed like so long ago. At first, alarm hits you, but then peace. Your eyes settle on the desk in the corner of the room, expecting to see the same old CRT monitor, but instead, you see a huge array of massive LCD displays. You rush over to the desk. Beneath it sat a colossal PC tower, filled with huge cards with *Titan X* inscribed on their sides. Resting in front of the monitor array is a keyboard and mouse, this time with shiny rainbow arrays lighting up the reflective walls. Was this... RGB heaven? No, you decide, and click onto the main monitor, determined to get to the bottom of this.
On the screen sat an application you'd never seen before. *Steam* it read on the taskbar, with an icon that was alien to you. You scroll through it, desparate for answers, but your frantically pumping heart comes to a stop. The screen is filled with an incredible array of games, all for you. You see *The Witcher 3*, *Fallout 4*, *Dark Souls III*, *I am Setsuna* and *Fallout New Vegas*, among dozens of others.
You take a deep breath, crack your knuckles, and start gaming. Your worries about seeing your family, friends or anyone else were long gone. You remained in the tiny room with no discernable exit, but your mind was at ease. You cared not about anyone or anything else, because finally... You were home.
[[Finish]]
As you approach the bustling set of marble steps leading up to the huge double doors, you can see the businessmen more clearly. They hurry around with briefcases, memes falling out of them at every step. You push open one of the heavy wooden doors, and peer inside. Thousands of these businessmen bustle around inside a grand hall within, the sights and sounds attacking you relentlessly. You see one of them push a huge button in the center of the room, and the hall erupts in chaos. Red lights flash across the hall, and a loudspeaker crackles to life;
"Biden memes are going stale! Sell! Sell! Sell!"
The businessmen run back and forth, bundling up piles of memes and burning them in front of you. You realize that these men made their living off memes... Like some kind of... meme economy
You don't want to disrupt their obviously valuable business time, and you've had enough of memes for a while, so you venture back to the central arch. As you walk, you realize that memes really are the bedrock of Reddit, the glue that holds it together- those businessmen trading in memes are the ones that keep the traffic and revenue coming, and you didn't want to get in their way.
You arrive back at the central arch, the gaming tunnel seeming somewhat barren compared to the bustling marketplace you just left.
[[Move foward toward the golden double doors at the end of the hallway]]
[[Venture down the left path]]
These doors were strange, and the people even stranger. A community labeled */r/marijuanaenthusiasts* seems to be a room full of trees and men admiring them, nothing else, with not a hint of any drug in sight. You catch a glimpse of what you have to turn away from, a room full of cars and what must have been dragons... making love, followed by another, and another with just cars doing it. */r/dragonsfuckingcars*? Well that was... Something. You stop at one of the last doors, firmly closed, one which none of the men in suits seemed to want anything to do with. You grasp the cold door handle and yank it open, only to be bombarded by a barrage of flashing lights and shouts. You slam it shut again, your head still rolling, and look at the door label. */r/ooer*? That's one way to describe it.
Dizzy and disoriented, you look towards your next destination.
[[Advance to the end of the tunnel, and see what the focal point is]]
[[Browse the dankest of the memes]]
The smell of the memes invades your nostrils. The odour, between the newly planted Biden memes and the stale and decaying advice animals, is undeniably dank. Rows and rows of doors stretch out ahead of you, some of them newly built and some of them falling apart. You can see small rodent-like creatures scurrying out of a few of the doors with memes in their little claws, *9Gag* painted on their backs. With each door you pass, you hear cries of *repost! repost!* echoing through the rooms at regular intervals. You see a sub devoted entirely to memes abouta dead gorilla. This is a weird place.
You move forwards, seeing enough of these 'memes'.
[[Advance to the end of the tunnel, and see what the focal point is]]
[[Investigate the weirder communities you catch glimpses of through the doors]]
G A M E O V E R
Whoever clicks into this, thanks for playing my shitty little text adventure, and credit to /u/3dJoel for inspiring me to make it, and for having a really creative giveaway idea. Have a great day!
Your eyes begin to ache even as you catch a glimpse of their domain through the barely open door. Everything there is real, and tangible, but just seems blurrier. People move at a pace that seems slow and disorienting, and they pop in and out of view depending on their distance from you. The whole room seems like it has a haze over it, your vision completely stained by its presence. You make your decision.
[[Stay in the land of the peasants and accept their miserable way of life]]
[[Turn back, back to the light]]
G A M E O V E R
How could you? Do you not realize what sub you're on? You should be ashamed of yourself.
[[Turn back, back to the light]]
You stumble out of the room, your eyes searing with pain and your head spinning from what you'd just tried to take in. You were back in the long hallway of gaming, and you look back at your pixellated friend, who still stands by the archway, before you make your next decision.
[[Move foward toward the golden double doors at the end of the hallway]]
Or,
[[Ask him what's down the left path]]
[[Ask him what's down the right path]]
[[Ask him where you are]]
[[Ask him who he is]]