I frickin’ love freedom. That’s why I was so stoked to get the free VR goggles, plus the free pizza and Dew. The white rabbit mini-game was pretty fun for a few minutes, and I earned some points chasing that thing down some mega holes. I guess it was a tutorial to show you how to like move around with the headset and the controller and stuff. But I’m a pretty big gamer, so I figured it out right away no problem.
I caught up with the rabbit finally cause he stopped running. But when I got in close to try to pick him up, he like evaporated or something. Then the scene shifted, and I was like standing outside of this huge wall with a gigantic wooden gate that was closed. I tried going up to the gate and like pushing on it and stuff, but it wouldn’t move.
There was the voice again in my headset:
YOU WANT TO GO IN, BRO?
There was nothing to click on though, so I just said “Yeah,” out loud, even though I wasn’t sure this thing was voice activated.
YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH CREDITS YET, YO. BUT YOU CAN EARN MORE WITH SOME SURVEYS, IF YOU WANT. DEAL?
“Let’s goooo…” I said, and then it started for real.
The surveys came at me in 3D this time, and had full sound effects and stuff. I whipped through them like crazy with the controller, and it was a total piece of cake to use, compared to the rabbit mini-game. The questions in the first couple rounds of surveys were really general like I said. But these ones started to get more specific. It was like asking me questions about my childhood and stuff. And my parents. They were multiple choice though, so it was totally cool. I didn’t have to type out anything, which was nice. I got a lot of bonuses cause my speed was so good.
Then it started to get really interesting. It started to ask me all about conspiracy theories and stuff. A lot of them were ones I read about on Reddit and some other forums and stuff, so those were really easy. It asked me if I thought such and such conspiracy theory was like definitely true, probably true, probably not true, definitely not true, etc. There were hundreds of them. I went fast, and I think I got most of them right. Some of them were definitely not true, like that the moon is made of cheese and stuff. Like only a baby would believe that.
There started to be more and more ones I never heard of before in the survey questions, which was pretty weird cause I’m such a smart conspiracy guy. If I haven’t already heard of it, it probably doesn’t exist is what I thought at first. But like a lot of them sounded like they could be probably or definitely true, so I was pretty surprised. It was totally cool to learn about all these new conspiracy theories. I wanted to write some of them down so I could do my own research later, but there was no time if I wanted to keep my speed up and keep crushing extra points and bonuses and stuff.
I don’t know how long I went for. It seemed like a long ass time, but it was pretty hard to tell wearing the VR goggles. I was getting like super tired after a while, and started slowing down, and just picking random answers cause I was losing focus.
WHAT’S THE MATTER, DUDE? YOU DON’T WANT TO GO INSIDE THE SECRET CITY?
“Uh,” I said. “I totes do. I’m just like really tired and stuff.”
HEY, NO SWEAT, MY DUDE. WE WILL FIND SOMEONE ELSE. WE THOUGHT YOU WERE“THE ONE” BUT IF YOU’RE NOT, IT’S TOTALLY COOL…
“Hey, now,” I replied. “I can like still be the One and be tired too, right?”
ACTUALLY, NO.
“Um…” I didn’t know what else to say. I must have passed 8 or 9 hours taking surveys and playing mini-games and puzzles and stuff already. I was totally beat. I thought about how I just wanted to smoke and frickin’ veg out on the couch.
Everything else went dark and a stopwatch appeared onscreen, with no numbers or anything. Just like a frowning face in the middle of it, and it was counting down hella fast.
I panicked. “Okay,” I said finally. “Can we just do like a 5 minute break?”
UNPAID.
“Yeah, fine, unpaid. I get it. Anyway, the One has gotta make a number 1.”
I whipped off the headset, stretched my arms, rubbed my eyes, and jogged over to the bathroom to do my thing. I was totally beat but decided I gotta see what was inside that city, man. It was eating me up inside. Or maybe it was the free pizza and Dew. I decided to cram another slice into my face and washed it down with some sweet, sweet Dew.
I put the headset on again. “Okay, I’m back.”
The timer ran down to zero, and the game booted back up again.
OKAY, COOL. JUST ONE MORE SURVEY QUESTION.
“Fire away, I’m ready,”
Suddenly onscreen there appeared a huge wall of text with the words NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT marked in bold across the top.
“Shit, I gotta read all this?”
NAH, JUST SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM, CLICK THE CHECKBOX THAT SAYS YOU READ IT AND HIT SUBMIT.
“Done,” I said. “What’s this all for anyway?”
PERFECT. IT’S SO YOU DON’T TELL ANYBODY ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE INSIDE THE GATES. IT’S LIKE ULTRA TOP SECRET AND STUFF.
“Oh, dope. Okay, no problem. I’m like really good at keeping secrets. So don’t worry.”
A thumbs up emoji appeared on screen. And then I was standing in front of the gate again. There was a really long progress bar while the next section loaded. It was super slow. I was wondering if it was frozen or something, and almost went to turn it off and turn it back on again. But just when I was about to, there was a grumbling sound and the headset vibrated, and the gate swung open. I went inside.