“Pick up for Ray Delano.”

Ray looked up. He walked over to the counter.

“Romectal, eh? I’ll walk this over to the pharmacist, she’ll talk it over with you,” the lady at the counter told him.

Ray gave a short thank you and walked over to the side, where there was another long line of people. They were stacked to the door, a line of people looking at their phones.

Twenty more minutes of waiting ensued. Then, it was his turn.

“I just want to make sure with you, take once per day at night,” the pharmacist lady read off the label. “Have you taken this medication before? What do you use it for?”

Ray opened his mouth.

“I mean, there are multiple uses, don’t get me wrong. Sleep aid, depression, anxiety, just to get started. “Are you familiar with the side effects yet? Did your psychiatrist mention any particular ones you might be susceptible--?”

“Yeah. I hear voices.” Ray interrupted with a straight face. He stared down the lady at the counter, searching for any possible hints of recognition.

Change...soon.

She stopped, eyebrows raised and mouth ajar. “Well...”

Ray cracked a smile. “No, I just use it for sleep. I’ve taken it before, it’s no problem.”

The pharmacist lady laughed lightly and handed over the bag. “Have a good day.”

“You too,” Ray said while turning.

[ur the walking scum of the earth absolute dogshit trashcan]

Ray’s fingers flew across the keyboard in a practiced manner. His team just threw the game.

Again.

He had told them so many times to back off but they just wouldn’t do it. Ray wished he could control their characters for them.

[Do everyone a favor and kys]

The defeat screen came up. Ray clicked once to continue to the next. A line of text he’d seen only a few times before came up afterward.

“Dear player, you have been reported to be unsportsmanlike on multiple occasions. Your account has been suspended for two weeks.” Ray read off the screen. “Here is evidence for your suspension.”

A long list of text from his recent games was displayed. Ray smashed his desk, rattling his setup.

‘This piece of shit game.’ Ray thought angrily. He was fuming.

Ray took a deep breath. He exhaled a big sigh. Then, he clicked on his computer a few more times to get on Reddit.

It was evident to Ray that he'd been wronged. He’d gotten unlucky team after team. Anyone would snap at this point. The matchmaking system was at fault here. He titled his post TERRIBLE GAME QUITTING. Ray proceeded to spend the next thirty minutes ranting his frustration at the game.

He clicked again to submit the post.

Time... is up.

Ray froze. What did it say?

That was new. He looked around to see if anything had happened. His clothes on top of the dresser, the closet slightly ajar, his bed, and a TV on the floor. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.

Then he flushed.

He felt embarrassed for thinking that something would happen. Nothing would happen in his room, right?

Just to be sure, he checked online for any news of anything happening worldwide. Ray found nothing. There wasn’t any news about any change.

I might just be going crazy, Ray thought to himself as he started up another game. He adjusted his headset, took a gulp of water and continued his usual late-night escapades. Ray found himself loading up a new game he just bought on a sale.

An hour passed in an instant.

“Ay,” a loud voice erupted from his headset, startling Ray. He quickly adjusted the volume settings. He had forgotten he was in Discord. “How's it going, dude. Want to duo?”

“Hey Arnold, sorry can’t tonight. Got banned,” Ray replied casually.

“Awh man, again?” Arnold joked. “This is like, what, your fourth time or something?”

“Feels bad man, shit teams are shit,” Ray shrugged. “Come play this with me.”

“I’ll pass. Gotta look up those new structures and shit online y’ know.” Arnold said, after a second. “Have you seen?”

“Wait, what?” Ray stopped what he was doing immediately. He got chills across his body. It couldn’t be, right? “What structures?”

“Yeah dude, it’s like a massive prank or something. Huge structures hovering above the big cities, San Francisco, Seattle, D.C, New York. I don’t know, could be photoshopped or like holograms or some shit. Been reading about them, just sighted.” Arnold continued. “ Could be aliens or somethin’, y’ know. That’d be cool.”

Ray frantically looked online. It was blowing up all over the internet. Massive grey buildings were appearing over every major city in the world. He quickly checked to see the pictures in San Francisco. It was the closest city to him, after all.

Ray started to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He refreshed the page.

“Ray? You there, dude?” Arnold asked repeatedly. “Hello, team? Is team there?”

“Yeah, uhh.” Ray scanned the various pages. He quickly made screenshots of the structures in the cities close to him. “Um. Dude, refresh the page.”

“Why?” Arnold asked again. “Somethin’ happening?”

Ray saved them onto his laptop’s desktop for easy access. His heart started pumping harder and his blood pressure rose. The constant ringing from his phone didn’t help.

Maybe it was all connected.

“Just do it, you’ll see,” Ray replied quickly. There wasn’t much time. He needed to save as much information as possible.

“Oh my god,” Arnold gasped. “It’s real. Aliens are fucking invading us!”

Ray grabbed the remote from his bed and turned on the tiny TV in his room.

“Broadcast from the government. We are currently taking steps to ensure the safety of all citizens. Please do not panic. Stay indoors for safety. We interrupt this program for an emergency broadcast from the government. We are currently taking steps to ensure--”

There was a knock at his door. Ray moved to open it by reflex, then stopped. What if...?

“Ray? Did you see the thing on TV?” His mom asked, diffusing the tension.

“Ray? Do you know what’s going on?” Arnold said on discord at the same time.

“Yeah, I don’t know anything about that,” Ray called out, replying to both at the same time. He calmed himself down with a few deep breaths. “Going to search online for more info.”

He heard his mom’s footsteps leave, probably to go call her friends.

Ray browsed through the front page of the forums once more.

What the... Ray thought. He had heard sirens through his headphones. Was something happening near Arnold's place?

A beep showed that someone disconnected. Ray immediately tabbed into the chat room to type to his friend. [Team? Arnold u ok?]

Seeing no reply, Ray assumed he’d just left to talk to his folks. Nothing bad was going to happen, right? He turned his attention back to the forums. “Just leveled up...IRL,” Ray read. He was on a subforum of a popular MMORPG he played.

“Walking down the street; I wasn’t watching where I was going. Tripped and stepped on a puddle of goo accidentally and a screen popped up saying I leveled? This some kind of joke?” He continued reading the post. “It wanted me to input level up points into STR, AGI, INT.”

Ray scanned downwards towards the comments section instead of reading the rest of the post.

[Happened to me too lol]

[^ this now im lvl 2]

[ye dude im like lvl6969 now hehexd]

Surprisingly, there were massive upvotes on those comments.

Fucking trolls, Ray thought. He kept scrolling down until he found an interesting comment by xdarklord69x. There is no way this is happening.

[We may be now in a game-like system. TIL leveling up is actually real. Just achieved level 3 earlier by killing green blobs (it rained last night and they were everywhere).]

For some reason, Ray felt that this guy wasn’t trolling. So he kept on reading. Interestingly, the comment was downvoted to -10.

[What I know for a fact:

Monsters are real and they spawn in differing locations. Levels are real and they power you up IRL. To test that, I put everything into AGI. Think I’m faster now? Skills are real. Trust me.

Good luck everyone, going to farm exp now]

Ray felt goosebumps. This was shocking. The voices in his head were real. This meant that he wasn’t going crazy. Right? But, if he wasn’t going crazy, that meant that the aliens were contacting him.

There were just too many possibilities. Ray immediately distracted himself from the train of thought by putting his eyes focused back to the screen.

His eyes scanned the replies to the downvoted comment.

[Autism at its finest, gentlemen.]

[Fake news, boys. Move on.]

Nothing interesting was being said. Then, he heard it once again. It was like a conversation was being played in his head without his approval.

Alright, let's see what we have here. Level 3 planet, easy difficulty. Hmmm, let's increase difficulty in a day cycle. Automated guns, eh? Let’s check spawns. Slime, goblin, wolves. Ah, too easy.

The voices were back.

“Hello?” Ray said out loud to the darkness of his bedroom. “Anyone there?”

No reply. It was exactly like eavesdropping on a monologue. Though, the voice did sound a little different this time. It was more gravely, deeper than the last. A little muffled as well.

A knocking sound came from his door, startling Ray out of his thoughts. “Ray? Have you checked up on Mrs. Lufrin? She might need help.” His mom knocked again. For once, she didn't sound worried.

“Yeah, I’m going,” Ray said. He quickly put on his jacket, springing out of his chair in one motion. He opened the door. “Mom, did you see the news?”

“Yes, but it’s in the city. We’re far from the spot,” his mom explained, easing his mind. “Just be careful out there. Drive safe.”

“Yeah, mom. I will,” Ray replied. He checked his phone, then shrugged. He'd gotten a text but he couldn't be bothered to respond.

Ray bounded down the stairs and opened the garage door. Looking around, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Ray kept his eyes peeled, scanning around meticulously as he opened his car door.

Everything seemed normal as he shifted gears and drove off.