"GAME TYPE: SIMULATION. PLEASE CHOOSE SUBTYPE:
“Simulation?” Peter wondered aloud. “Is this, like, Madden or something?”
“No, it’s, uh…. different,” murmured Eugene, who was more interested in the options than conversation.
“Vivid description, Geno,” laughed Judy. “Hey, Lindz, could you wrangle some info outta him?”
Lindsey snapped into a smart salute and lurched up from her beanbag and minced over to the nerd, leaning over to get a better look at the screen.
“Oh! It’s, like, real-life stuff! Like Life!” chirped the rainbow-haired nerdette. “Uh, the board game.”
“So we can pretend to live life while we’re stuck at school. Neat.”
Judy gave her boyfriend’s pec a long-nailed flick. “Don’t be a dick, Petey.” She turned to Eugene with a big smile. “I’ve been playing a ton of Sims lately. Even made some based off of you guys.” She wiped a mock tear from her mascaraed eye. “It’s a shame that Peter the First drowned.”
“Hey, I saw you delete the pool ladder.” whined Peter, poking his girlfriend’s side with a thick finger. “I call foul play.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
Eugene and Lindsey watched the couple mock-fight with smiles, shaky and merry respectively. The slightly-paunched nerd gave a quick cough to draw everyone’s focus back to the entertainment thing-a-majig, “Funnily enough, there is an Education category. And Career. And Strategy.”
“One of these things is totally not like the other.”
Eugene scratched the back of his head with a grin. “Yeah. This ‘U’ person was just probably trying to fill options. Still, I think they’re neat.” He waved at the gently whirring box. “Any preferences?”
Peter’s bulky arm shot up first. “Strategy. I don’t wanna think about school while we’re at it, and thinking about job-stuff makes me all twitchy.”
“Poor widdle nervous top-seed athlete,” cooed Judy, lightly kissing her boyfriend’s cheek. “I kinda wanna see what Education is. Either it’s gonna be some schlocky edutainment stuff or it’ll be so realistic that we can pretend that the pandemic never happened.”
“That’s like, the falsest dichotomy I’ve ever heard,” giggled Lindsey. “Career sounds so totally neat-o! I can give you all, like, a sneak-preview of the millions I’m gonna make.”
The room turned to Eugene, who was expecting to be an instrument of democracy rather than the chooser himself.
“A-alright, I think we should try the…”