This choice: "Check it out! *send a pic*" • Go Back... You're in the middle of a sim session with your friend, a thing the two of you do a lot. This isn't just playing with one family mind you; entire cities are involved! Being the Marketing majors the two of you are, it's not necessarily the architecture that tickles you: it's that data. That sweet, sweet data. If you could, you'd have your entire home made of charts and graphics, and likewise themed stuff.
Just as you were going to look over those sewage flow graphs an umpteenth time, a special someone sends you a message. "One sec," you tell your friend and go aside. Knowing him, ever the delightful airhead he was, there could be absolutely anything in that attachment. You brace yourself for a headache.
"Check it out!" He sent a pic of... a pencil?
"middle of a game rn," you tell him.
"No, you don't understand! It can draw and erase ANYTHING!"
"Magic pencil you say? Do you have any-"
Just before finish that thought he sends another pic. And another. Then three in rapid succession. All of them involve him seductively posing with his newly disembodied head. Somewhere in your loins you're impressed, and somewhere in your head you can't believe what a giant risk he was taking. He's probably done stupider things, you chuckle to yourself.
"omg"
"pretty neat right ;)?"
"fucking. rad B) let's meet early?" You pause for a moment. He always put permission before absolutely anything, even that one time when you nearly choked to death on a churro. But with a super pencil like that in his hands, he may as well be God. Plus you think it's pretty effing weird to want to erase any part of your body, even for fun. But then again, it is his body. You have to ask him, "no weird tricks on me, alright?"
"deal ;)"
"cheeky", you send, ironically smirking to yourself. He's totally gonna pull something now, but he'll never use that pencil on you. You thank Captain Underpants for his lessons on reverse psychology.
"Ruth?"
"Yeah?"
"Check out what James just sent me."
Ruth can hardly believe her eyes as you scroll down. She puts a hand on her mouth, agape. "Has he shown you any drawings yet?"
"Actually... no he hasn't."
"Could be mad risky, girl."
"Which is why I want you to come with."
Ruth is flattered. "...Does this mean I get to punch him?"
"You weren't going to?"
------------
Mrs. Kang, ever the nice lady she is, only gave you and Ruth mildly suspicious glances as she welcomed you into her home. "It's not what you think," Ruth mused as she passed by. Heading to James' room, the two of you notice immediately how quiet everything is, save for the classically ominous notes of a theremin. The two of you share a moment of mutual unease. You open the door, creaking ever so dramatically, and call out, "James?"
Ruth spots something in the corner immediately and does a double take holding a scream. Ahead there's a giant spider perched over the corner, holding what looks like James inside it's jaw. Then with a wet crunch the body jerks, clawing at life before flopping limply on the floor. The spider perks up, legs tapping on the plaster walls and a fuzzy black mass turns toward you two... And then it leaps!
"Surprise!" Ruth knocks him in the jaw with her heel, to a sickening squelching noise. James, now truly plastered on the floor, moans as he rubs his lower jaw, mouth full of blood. "...Surprise?"
"What was that!?" Mrs. Kang does not sound happy.
"Sorry, Mrs. Kang!" You hope to God she doesn't storm up there. Trepidly, you look over the staircase.
"...Keep that in your house!" Inside, you sigh in relief. She can smell secrecy.
You turn back to the situation, dumbfounded, both by James' serious injury and Ruth's tremendous instinct. You kneel down and reach for a maxi pad, wiping up his blood. "Good one, James."
"Hehe... awesome." He roots around his mouth with a spider-leg, pulling it out and spitting after catching some fur in his mouth. "Uh, Sandy, do I still have teeth?"
He opens his mouth for you, and in response you clear as much of the blood as you can. "It's, uh, it's not good."
James turns crestfallen. You turn to Ruth. The girl, hand on her hip, can only bite her lip and shrug. You nod, acknowledging her guilt. "Thanks, Ruth. Ahah, looks like you deserved that black belt after all." Ruth breathes out and smiles, thanking you for forgiving her.
Ruth shuffles her feet, looking around the room for answers. Sure enough, she spots the pencil itself. That's when it hits her: "I can fix this. James, can I use your pencil?" The man-spider nods his head. Ruth steps over, grabs, and sets herself at the desk. Sure enough--voila! A spray bottle with the red cross logo on the side. Then with the sound of crackling, hissing, and crumpling the doodle inflates from it's paper medium into the third dimension, complete with magic health stuff! "Even cooler than I thought it'd be," she remarks. Quickly she steps over to James, who on seeing the bottle opens up his mouth. And just as intended, though with a twinge of pain, James jaw re-aligns, his teeth reassemble, the cuts and bruises seal, and all the blood evaporates into nothingness.
"Holy shit, Ruth," you remark. "Good thinking."
"You can thank pokemon for that."
You help James back up, still a little creeped out at this. You look over the potion spray, then his spider body, and wonder, "How did you do it?".
"Just scribbled on the wall, actually. Gave the spider body special clamps so it could accept me." He shows a dog collar like device around his "spider-neck". "Hehe, I think ahead." Like that he pops the clamps off and cranks his head, creating that juicy crunching sound from before. He lifts himself into your hands, then directs a limb to a button set inside his neck-slot. Like that, the body poofs to smoke. "Far ahead," he smirks. His human body jerks back to life and walks over, prompting you to return the thing, which you do.
There's a small moment of silence now, as you three stand around with all this information in your hands. "There's a lot we can do with this. Oh my god, there is so much we could do. Ruth, we could build a city for real!"
"Holy junk, that's right! We could draw anything we want in it! Oh my god, we could write our own game, or live in a penthouse, sic a monster or something. But... then again we'd be building it all ourselves. And I'm not that great an artist."
James agrees. "Yeah, that sounds like a lot of... busy work. There's a lot we could do in here, you know. If you're into it, that is." He turns red at this. Ruth raises eyebrows at you, to which you give a coded shrug.
"Well... you do have ownership." You turn to Ruth. "And the whole universe sounds pretty sweet. But...," you look over at the comic books he's collected under his bed. It reminds you of the material you read, about high concept stuff just like this. "We have to be responsible about this. We could ruin someone's life, or walk into an Eldritch trap! Or there could be a government investigation, or worse somebody from the mob." Your two friends nod. "Maybe we should..." The inner child in you fights against your words. "It's best that we make sure nobody--including us--ever gets ahold of this... thing. It'd be right to return it at least."
James seems to want to protest, but he knows your logic is sound. You can't lie to a little excitement, but Ruth is in the room. Your best friend is being stoic, but emotive: she'll respect your opinion, but her inner opportunist won't live this down for a while. You make the call.
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