A portly young man of twenty-two years, Scott Logan possessed both the sallow complexion and scraggly beard of a perennial shut-in. His was the appearance of a man who had largely given up on life.

Currently, his face lacked the typically haggard or blank expression that he wore when alone. Instead, his eyes were ablaze with wonder and his tone filled with a manic form of whimsy that caused random people to stare at him in open mouthed surprise.

"Hello happy people!" he cried while offering his ridiculously overly the top expression of joy. "Welcome to Archer's."

"Mama, that man is wearing rabbit ears," said a little girl after pulling her thumb from her mouth.

"Yes, he is!" exclaimed the little girl's mother. She made a big fuss over the situation and acted like it was a wonderful thing to see a grown man wearing rabbit ears.

"You must really love your job," said the woman as she pulled her child along. She offered Scott a smile that seemed warm on the surface, but held all of the authenticity of a chocolate coin wrapped in gold colored foil.

"Ma'am, you have no idea how strong my feelings are for this job," said Scott while offering his best and most cheerful smile.

She nodded at him politely and tugged her child along. The moment no one was around Scott's face sagged a little. He glanced at the time on the nearby cash register then grinned. He only needed to put up with the asinine bullshit of his daily grind for five more minutes.

Time flowed quickly from one minute to the next. Scott's anticipation grew, but something horrible became apparent. Sadie, the woman who was scheduled to come in to take over the customer service center had yet to appear.

Three minutes past time for him to clock out, he radioed the store's team leader Ashton. "Hey, boss lady. Any sign of Big—" Scott caught himself mid-speech. He was about to say Bigness, a nickname that he had for one of his coworkers. "...Sadie?"

"Big... Sadie?" she asked with a slight snort. The radio remained silent for a moment, but when she called back it was to give him the worst news imaginable. "No, I haven't seen her. Is she supposed to be here today?"

"Yeah, like four minutes ago. I'm already running past schedule," he answered.

"You are? My little sheet thingy says that you're scheduled till six," said Ashton in a pouty tone of voice.

Scott blinked owlishly, his eyes going wide at the end. Why was she pulling the cute girl routine on him? Did she not realize how few in number were the fucks that he legitimately gave about her plight at the moment? Well, two people could play workplace power games. "So, I'm getting overtime?"

"Wait, what? No. No. No..." she said.

"I'm just saying... You remember, right? I had to do a double shift the other day, and I also stayed over to cover part of a cashier shift. I'm like ten minutes away from forty hours," he told her casually.

"Well. Crap," said Ashton. "You should go clock out, I guess..."

"Who's gonna watch the front-end?" he asked her. Honestly, he did not give even half a damn about that at the moment. It was still proper to ask her, however. Appearances were important, even when one did not care about them.

"It's only two hours. Guess I'll have to do it..." she said in a way that made it sound like she was pouting.

Scott restrained himself from saying the word, "Good." Instead, he radioed back, "Alright, boss lady. I'll head out then."

"Have a good night, Scott." Her voice sounded even poutier than usual.

"Well, since you asked me to I'll do my best," he responded with all of the cheerfulness that he could currently muster. He might as well go out on a high-note, after all.

"Yay. That's the spirit..." she said hollowly.

He did his best not to laugh at her dispirited response. Nothing good could come of it, and he did want to escape his working day nightmare as soon as possible.

No time was wasted in rushing back to the employee area. He waved rapidly at the people working at the pharmacy, and then punched in the code to the backroom. Once inside, he raced to the time-clock and clocked out for the day.

He waved to various people and did his best to seem happy and well-adjusted up until he left the building. The moment he stepped onto the concrete walkway in front of the store his body drooped slightly and he released a tired sigh.

The light died in his eyes even as he acquired a blank expression. The work day was over, he no longer needed to pretend to be someone else.

Head down he walked away from the store front and began the arduous journey home. Along the way he sneezed loudly, twice.

"Damn, it's getting worse," muttered Scott. The last thing he wanted to do was to get sick. The next few days would be blissfully work free since it was Thursday, but he'd already reached the point where they'd have to pay overtime.

Archer's never paid overtime. Those corporate bastards would let half the store stay home rather than risk paying an employee more than minimum wage.

A few minutes later he sneezed for a third time, and felt the onset of a headache. A tired sigh escaped his lips. He noticed where he was then said, "Guess I'll get something after all."

Decision made, Scott crossed the street and headed for the Supra-7. It was a convenience store that he frequented for various reasons, mostly due to the fact that the shelves stayed stocked as full as possible. The owner did not believe in only stocking the bare minimum to cut costs, a fact that caused the store to be quite popular in the local area.

Once inside he saw someone he knew. Scott threw his hand up and did his best to wave in a friendly manner. "Hey, Danny."

"Hey, man," said the guy behind the counter. Danny, last name unknown, was a young man Scott saw frequently as a cashier at the Supra-7. Scott suspected that he was related to the store owner, but he'd never managed to care enough to ask.

Pleasantries spoken, Scott headed to the medicine aisle and snatched up some cold medicine, and then grabbed a cold drink. At the checkout counter he was in for a mildly rude awakening, however. Scott stared at Danny. "You telling me that this cold medicine went up two dollars since yesterday?"

"Yeah, it always goes up in the winter," said Danny. "Though, that's a bit much..."

Scott grunted and paid for his purchases. He was tired of greedy corporations sucking people dry. Humanity became shittier by the day as far as he was concerned.

"Where's the apocalypse when I need it?" asked Scott with a snort. He laughed to himself, a sad little noise that spoke volumes about his exhaustion.

"I hear ya, man," said Danny with a laugh of his own.

Purchases in hand, Scott waved to Danny and left. The better part of half an hour passed on the way home before a strange scent caught his attention. He sniffed the air like a hunting dog for a moment then realized what was going on.

His nose crinkled in disgust. "Damned chicken house..."

He'd left the city proper and entered the rural area near his house. In the distance, down a long dirt road, people were loading chickens onto the back of a truck.

Scott snorted a little then sneezed once for the effort. His eyes watering slightly, he still managed to speak his piece. "Party's over. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

A cacophony of squawking echoed from the chickens as someone obviously did something to piss them off even more than the current situation did. Scott decided that it was their way of responding to him despite the fact that there was no way that they could have heard him.

"Eh? Fuck you, ya squawking bastards. Call me when you're delicious," he said before offering himself a genuinely amused laugh. Not long after, however, a few of the chickens broke free and made a run for it. Despite their best efforts, though, most were rounded up quickly and herded off toward the truck that would take them to meet their ultimate destiny.

He spent a brief moment watching the scene unfold. The moment passed and he looked away. Something about the situation bugged him, but he was not certain exactly what it might be. It was a common sight, really. It happened every year. The chickens lived their lives and laid their eggs, and then at the end of the year they would be herded off to processing.

Eventually he moved on, but the unsettling sensation continued to plague his mind. After he reached his home, but before heading inside, the sound of a helicopter flying overhead caught his attention. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up. "Military, huh? They're popping up a lot this week."

Once he'd managed to make it inside the house, he tossed his stuff on the couch and stripped down to his underwear. He lived alone. There was no one to judge him, and he refused to wear his work clothes for another moment.

The television blazed to life a moment later. "Why's it on a show about plastic surgery?" he asked curiously. He checked the channel then grunted as he recalled the reason. It was one of the life science channels, last night he'd watched something about sharks.

"Skin grafts for burn victims, eh?" asked Scott while the off-screen narrator explained the process of replacing badly burned flesh with fresh new tissue.

He watched for a few minutes then switched over to one of the movie channels. He continued to flip through the channels until he found something that at first glance appeared to be a zombie movie.

"This could be good," he said before grabbing his drink from his bag and opening it up.

Rotting fingers tried to grasp a fleeing victim even as Scott took a large gulp of his drink. Hearing the moans of the infected, and seeing the hunger in their cold dead eyes reminded him of something.

He sat the remote down and headed toward the kitchen. While the woman on screen ran for her fictional life, Scott pulled out a plate of left over barbecued ribs. The movie cut to a commercial while he heated his dinner in the microwave, but as luck would have it the advertisements came to an end just after he sat down to eat.

Hungry zombies tore into the stomach of their prey even as Scott ripped a rib from the meaty mass on his plate. Scott ate impassively while the zombies pulled intestines forth from their still screaming subject in a manner similar to a circus clown pulling scarves from their pocket.

He gnawed the bone while the zombies ripped open the ribcage of their prey. Scott never batted an eyelash. Though barbecue sauce dripped down his face to splatter obscenely onto his plate.

Scott became engrossed in the tale of terror and commercialism based satire for quite some time. Sadly, the movie finished long before his meal did as he chose to take his time and gnaw all the meat from the bone.

"Ah, well. It was a nice apocalypse while it lasted," he said with a laugh.

He turned it back to the plastic surgery show after realizing that there were no more zombie movies on for the moment. "Ah, now they're on fake boobs?" he asked curiously.

"Once you have properly prepared and sanitized the area, you will begin the procedure by making an incision along the—" began the voice over guy as the surgeon on screen began the grisly task of giving a woman fake breasts. However, he was suddenly cut off by a bright flash of light.

Just as sudden as the flash of light came, darkness followed. Scott collapsed sideways on the couch, remote in hand. He was not the only one to fall unconscious, however. On screen the live broadcast showed the surgeon falling down atop his patient, even as the assistants in the room all crumpled to the floor.

All across the world, and all at once, everyone fell unconscious. Regardless of who they were, or what they were doing, humanity fell asleep or remained asleep if they were already sleeping.

Scott awoke to the sight of nothing. Rather, he was in an empty black space. He called out, "The hell? Where am I?"

In response a small table appeared before him inside of a cylinder of light. Inexorably, he found himself drawn to that table. Unable to fight the pull, he was soon seated and faced with a choice.

On the table before him, a single sheet of paper, a pencil, a cup and several dice appeared. A voice spoke in the darkness. "Update in progress. Please redistribute your attributes, and reallocate your skills in preparation for the upcoming world system upgrade."

"Who? What the hell is going on?" asked Scott in agitation. In that empty space, no one answered that question or any other that he asked. For quite some time he shouted, requested, and even begged for an answer. In the end, it proved useless to question the situation. Nothing existed there same for the table, its contents, and the confused young man who bore witness to them.