It was the last day of ordinary life for Theodore Cross. It went as the last five years of his life had gone; he woke, drank coffee, dressed in a suit and tie, and went to work. Work was a private school only two miles from his house, so he huffed and puffed on his bicycle in the summer heat. By the time he got to his classroom, he was soaked with sweat and ready for another cup of coffee.

The teacher’s lounge at Thane Academy was a small, dreary room with two moth-eaten couches and a folding table with a coffee machine. Huddled around it, like soldiers bracing themselves before the storm of battle, were his colleagues. He quickly veered to the corner of the room, where Jessica sat reading the news on her phone. Jessica, whose curling black hair sat in a perfect bun on her head. Jessica, whose brow furrowed ever so slightly as she concentrated. Jessica, who taught history with such grace and poise that it made Theodore weak in the knees.

“Morning,” he said, as he grabbed his cup of coffee: two creams, no sugar.

“Morning,” she replied, “you see this business with the wildfires? They’re saying it’s climate change. Apparently they’re evacuating Denver.”

“I don’t want to know,” he said. Thoughts of environmental catastrophe made him depressed. Powerless.

“You can’t live with your head in the sand forever, Theo. Sooner or later you’ll have to face the world,” she said, “come on, you’re a Science teacher — you could be doing something about this! Volunteering or research or something.” Then she frowned, itching at her hand.

Theo’s eyes narrowed. He could see the red welt there, on her perfect brown skin.

“What’s that?” He asked.

She looked surprised for a moment, then embarrassed that he’d seen her scratching. “Oh, nothing. Just this welt I can’t seem to stop scratching. Bug bite, I think.”

He sat, then lifted his hand to hers. “May I?” he said.

She looked at him curiously, then produced her hand. He took it, and for a moment, the heat of her skin made him shiver. He examined the red welt, the irregular edges, the beginning of a scab leaking puss…

“Have you been hiking recently? Or gardening?”

“I harvested some tomatoes yesterday. How’d you know?” She asked.

“You’re going to want to be more careful in your garden. You’ve got poison ivy,” he said, frowning.

“Wait, what? Really?” Jessica asked, taking back her hand to examine it.

“Yeah. You can tell by the color. I hate to say it, but you’ll probably find a few more welts in the coming days. They take a while to show up. You’ll need calamine lotion to soak up the oil and some hydrocortisone to help the itch.”

She smiled. “Classic Biology teacher,” she said, “how do you know all this stuff?”

He looked to the side, not wanting to meet her eyes. In truth, he’d been pre-med in college, and had always wanted to be a doctor. But his ADHD had made that hard without meds, and he didn’t wind up having the grades to go to med school. So instead, he taught Biology. But he didn’t want to tell her that. Instead, he came up with something else.

“I used to do a lot of backpacking. Like, survival stuff. Before I became a Biology teacher,” he said. Again, he didn’t meet her eyes. It wasn’t a lie — he did love survival training, prepping, all that stuff — but he left out the part about failing to get into med school. A lot of people would think that part of his life — camping and backpacking — was boring. Or at worst, strange and even dangerous. Like he was running around the woods naked hunting squirrels with sharpened sticks. But it had always been more about the isolation, about getting closer to nature.

But Jessica surprised him. “Cool,” she said, “you’ll have to teach me sometime. I’ve never even been camping.”

He perked up. He couldn’t tell if she was being genuine or not; sometimes people said they wanted to camp, but the way Theo did it was too much for them. But her eyes were bright and kind, as if she were genuinely interested in hanging out with him. They never actually hung out outside of work, as much as he would have liked to. They were work friends, if he could really call her that, but that was it.

“Yeah, uh, um, maybe we could—“

“Hey gang,” came a voice from above them. They both looked to see a handsome, freckled face looking down at them.

Blake Hansen clapped Theo on the back. They’d been best friends since middle school, but Theo never really got used to how good-looking Blake was: strong jaw, tall, athletic, red-blonde hair and freckles. It was like having an underwear model for a best friend, and the background insecurity was constant. “Watcha talking about?” he asked.

“Doctor Cross was just diagnosing me,” Jessica said. She showed him the welt on her hand.

“Yikes. Well what are you all planning after work? Are we on for trivia at the Stool?” He asked. He was referring to the Broken Stool, a bar in the village beneath the school where teachers went to blow off steam. It was the day of midterm exams, and so teachers would likely need a release after work. Really, all Theo wanted to do was go home and maybe read a book or play some video games. He had a camping trip planned for the weekend that he needed to pack for, and he was planning on going on a run with his dog, Tiberius.

“Yeah, I’m in,” Jessica said, “I’ll need it after this European History midterm. My kids are so fucked.” She rolled her eyes, and Blake grinned. Jessica grinned back.

“What about you, Theo?” He asked. Blake taught math at Thane Academy, and all his students loved him for being smart but not condescending. Deep down, it always irked Theo that in addition to being cool and popular, Blake was also a genius at anything quantitative. But the two of them had always clicked; they had differing opinions on a lot of things, but Theo loved their long, philosophical discussions. Blake tended to be a little more cutthroat than Theo, and Theo tended to be a little more empathetic than Blake, but the tension only made their friendship more interesting. They’d gone through high school and then college together, and now they taught at the same private school. Still, Theo never loved feeling like second fiddle to Blake. Especially not with the way Jessica looked at him.

Theo hadn’t told Blake that he thought he was crushing on Jessica, but he thought Blake could probably tell. Not that it really mattered; Blake had had every girl hanging off of him since high school. He was smart, athletic, and attractive. Even Theo’s high school girlfriend, Sarah, had secretly liked Blake. She’d come on to him drunk at a party once, right before senior year. Blake had turned her down and gone to tell Theo right away, and Theo had dumped her that night. But even though it hadn’t been his fault, Theo had never really forgiven Blake for what happened. Part of him — an ugly, possessive part of him — was still mad that Blake got everything Theo had ever wanted. He shook the thought away. Blake was his best friend. A little jealousy and competition was natural, but he wouldn’t harbor any grudges. At the end of the day, Blake’s friendship meant more than any woman.

“Yeah, I can go,” Theo said, but inside he mourned his alone time being lost. He knew his brain was wired to be a hardcore introvert, but he still felt guilty refusing an invitation. Besides, it would be good to have some social time before he went backpacking alone.

“Cool. First round is on me,” Blake said, grinning.

Theo grinned back. It was hard not to reciprocate Blake’s enthusiasm. He loved Blake, even while being jealous of him, and that was hard to come to terms with. It would have been simpler if it was just one way or another. If Theo hated Blake, then he would just hate him. If he was Theo’s best friend, then he would just be Theo’s best friend. But instead, both feelings existed alongside one another. It was confusing and distressing, and Theo craved simplicity: friend or enemy.

With two more friends confirmed for the bar, Blake began to move around the room, inviting more and more teachers. That had always been his skill: he brought people together.

Jessica threw back the rest of her coffee and stood. “Well, I should probably get to class. I’m sure there will be lots of last minute questions,” she said, “I’ll see you tonight, Theo.” She smiled.

Theo swallowed. “See you tonight, Jessica.”

She smiled, and tucking her papers to her chest, began to walk out of the room. Theo tried not to watch her body move in her plaid skirt, or the way her white blouse clung to her waist, or how her black curls bobbed over her shoulders. But he was watching, and that’s why he saw her vanish.

Vanish completely, into thin air. One minute, she was walking towards the door. The next, there was a flash of blue light, like a lense flare, and she was gone.

Gone.

Theo blinked. He rubbed my eyes, then stood, moving towards the door. But she wasn’t in the hall either.

He turned around, expecting to see equally shocked looks on my coworker’s faces, but they just continued chatting and laughing over their coffee.

“Did… did you all see that?” Theo asked, in a shaky voice.

The gym teacher, Dan Gutter, laughed and looked around the room. “See what, kid?”

“Jessica. She… she just vanished,” Theo said. An uneasy laugh went around the room.

“Great, now he’s seeing things—“ Mr. Gutter began to say, but he was cut off.

Cut off my a flash of blue light.

One minute, he was standing there, holding his cup of coffee. The next, the coffee cup was falling, shattering on the floor, spraying hot brown liquid across the carpet. And the place where Mr. Gutter had been was empty.

It was silent for a moment. Then, next to the place where Mr. Gutter had been, the elderly art teacher began to scream. “What! What is happening!”

Theo ignored her, even as she babbled and shrieked, begging for answers. In the hallways, more flashes of blue light echoed through the door. Each one was accompanied by the sound of surging electricity and the distinct smell of ozone.

Blake stepped forward, confident as ever. “Everyone relax, clearly there’s some kind of issue, but if we all stay calm—“

Zap.

A flash of blue light, and Blake was gone.

The art teacher, Mrs. Morrison, screamed even louder. She began to pull at her hair, shrieking.

Blake, gone.

Jessica, gone.

What was going on?

Then suddenly, the room seemed to slow down. The air took on a faint blue tone, and sounds became muffled. Theo looked around, and it was like everyone in the room was frozen in time, or moving very slowly. He could see Mrs. Morrison’s blue tinged face, still frozen in a scream.

Then, in front of him, bright blue lines formed, like those of a neon sign. They twisted and bent into unfamiliar shapes, and then into letters that he could recognize. The message moved around in a circle before him, flowing and changing, but displaying a clear message.

Congratulations! Your world is being assimilated into the Great Game. You have been identified as a high potential sentient being, capable of accumulating vast universal power. The Game Maker personally invites you, Theodore Cross, to participate in the Arena.

“What?” he said aloud. “What is going on?”

The lines in front of him shifted and changed again, retaining their circular pattern. It looked almost like… sigils, runes from a video game. A magic circle.

Your world has been assimilated into the Great Game. High potential players will be recruited into the Arena, while the rest of your reality will be harvested for scrap. You have been invited to participate in the Arena. Will you participate?

Yes/No

The two options floated before him as circles in themselves. If he squinted, he could see that what he was looking at wasn’t really English. It was runes that he couldn’t recognize. There was one symbol for Yes and one for No, but when he looked at them, he just… understood what they said. He couldn’t explain it.

He looked around the room, at Mrs. Morrison frozen in time, at the door that would lead into the hallway, into the dredges of everyday life.

Or, he could enter the Arena, and leave it all behind.

He thought for a moment, pondering the two options before him.

The prompts he was given were strangely video-game like. The way of speaking… it reminded him of classic RPGs or basic video games. Even the fact that was called an Arena. And what the prompt said? That the world was being assimilated into some kind of Great Game?

He had always been good at video games. And it sure sounded better than being harvested for scrap, whatever that meant when it came to a whole reality.

With a shaking hand, he reached forward and placed his whole palm against the rune that meant “yes.”

Energy surged through his body, like lightning, and the smell of ozone became overpowering. He watched as the power from the panel in front of him ripped through his arm, shattering it into motes of glowing blue dust. The power surged through him, tearing him apart at the atomic level, and then the world vanished in a flash of magic.