"HELLO," chimed an enthusiastic and loud female voice. It sounded like an odd mix between a computer speak and a high pitched anime girl.

He looked up from his phone, frowning, but didn't see the source of the voice; for that matter, everyone else inside the coffee shop was looking around confused as well. Even the cute coffee shop girl behind the counter was looking around with an odd expression.

"Did you just...?" came a quiet voice next to him. Looking over noticed the gaze of the wierd girl that had sat down next to him at the coffee shop, blue hair, heavyset, and a stud pierced in her noise,

He quickly shrugged his shoulders quickly, "nope," and looked back at his phone, doing his best to avoid any contact with the girl next to him. She smelled really bad.

As soon as he did however, the loud voice chimed again, "Congratulations!", with trumpets blaring in the background, "We are proud to announce that you are the third world to be selected for assimilation into our program and you were randomly selected for a free character upgrade courtesy of Deimos company!"

"What?" He uttered and again looked up. Everyone had stopped what they were doing in the coffe shop and were uttering similar things.

The voice picked up again "Don't worry if you are confused. We at Deimos have created a very customizable system for all users. In case you haven't registered yet, please do so now!"

"What the fuck?" blue hair girl muttered next to him.

He didn't notice her, however, as in front of him was a floating screen with a floating keyboard below it. Hesitantly he reached up and fingered the buttons in front of him, each making a pleasant tapping sound. A growing excitement spread in his gut as he inputted the name he always had in games.

"Thank you for your selection Gans! Processing now!"

In the blink of an eye, the coffee shop was gone and he felt him self floating in a pure white void, some part of him felt extremely uncomfortable, as all sense of distance and sound had disappeared Thankfully, the smell from blue hair girl was gone, but the irritating female voice had returned with mock sympathy.

"Unfortunately, we at Deimos understand that you and most of our other participants may not be intelligent enough to understand the customization process so we have taken the liberty to lock most of your features and pick your class for you. Please push the big button!"

With that confetti came out of no where and a big red button appeared in front of him with the words "PUSH ME!!!" and a big flashing smiley face in front of him.

He frowned., "Hey you know I'm not an idiot I can do this mys....."

The button enlarged itself and came closer to his face, with the flashing smiley face staring at him point blank. "PUSH THE BUTTON! PUSH THE BUTTON! PUSH THE BUTTON!" The voice began screaming in his ear

"OK JESUS OK!"

Reaching out quickly his punched the smiley in the face. It may have been his imagination but he thought it turned into an angry face before disappearing.

"Thank you for your participation in the character customization process. My name is EVA. Please wait here while we process your results!"

In front of him a blue window popped up

Deimos Character Customization complete!

Initial Class selected [Summoner]

Initial gear:

Book "Sam's simple guide to summoning and surviving" available at current residence

Accept?

Yes/no

The no portion was greyed out.

"What the hell is this?" He shouted into the white void.

...

...

...

"Hello, Gans, this is Eva again, I would really appreciate it if you would fill out a brief survey after your Character Customization process."

...

...

"No! Whats going on! I'm not stupid you know. I can pick my own character. And what the hell is even going on?" he shouted again, beginning to feel stupid as he shouted into white void.

"Are you sure? There is a chance that after the survey you will be selected for entry into our prize raffle! One out of every thousand participants will be eligible to win"

"NO! I just want to kn"

"Rude!" She paused for a moment, "I completely understand your confusion Gans, many of the other humans selected for the Character Customization process didn't seem to get past this point as well"

"What? I thought this would be easier like I see my avatar and am given a list of choices and races and"

An audible sigh was heard from Eva, interrupting him.

Class Summoner selected! Thank you for completing the Character Customization process! Deimos wishes you have a pleasant day!

"Hey what the hell?" he shouted

"Thank you for completing the survey for me as well!" Eva chimed in.

Deimos satisfaction rating selected, 100%! Unfortunately you did not win the prize. Have a nice day!

*SNAP

Blinking quickly Alex found himself back at the coffee shop face first into his food.

"Sir..."

He felt a hand on his shoulder shaking him

"Sir"

"AAArrrgh!" Alex shot up quickly wide eyed.

"Are you ok?" The coffee shop girl looked at him.

"What!?" his eyes hadn't totally focused and he continued to look around. Half the people in the shop were either waking up up with confused expressions and the other half were shaking them awake or staring at them in confusion.

"I said are you ok?"

He up at the coffee shop girl, his eyes stopping briefly at her sweater chest before looking at her concerned face.

"Uhn yes... Yes I'm fine" he said while dumbly looking at her eyes. He felt a small bit of egg falling from his chin.

"Good...."She paused, looking at him in concern. "I'm going to wake her up now"

"Yes..." he said dumbly as the coffee shop girl tried to shake the fat blue haired girl awake. He became conscious of her smell again, rotten.

Sitting there he thought numbly to himself, blinking a few times and opening and closing his mouth like he fish he watched the others in the store come to their senses as well. Then, coming to a sudden conclusion, quickly blinked stood from his seat and slowly walked out of the store.

"Um... excuse me!"

He looked back at and noticed coffee shop girl looking at him with one hand on the still sleeping big blue haired girl.

"Are you Ok? I know I've asked but something bad's happened" she said, glancing outside. "Maybe you should wait here...." She looked down at the floor quickly "I've already called 911 but their line is busy"

"I.... think I'm fine. I think I should just.." he felt his heart pounding a bit more and a ball of energy was building in his stomach "go home."

Coffee shop girl just looked at him with a slight frown on her face, unsure what to say.

"Ok"

Alex opened the door and walked outside, and realized what the coffee shop girl had been looking at.

It was a sort of weird calm after chaos outside. Wrecked and damaged cars were stopped all along the street, one in particular had slammed into a light pole and cut off part of the street. He could smell burning smoke and copper in the air and watched as several people were pulling people out of their cars.

Unsure what to do he walked around the cars, he lived only a block away. On the way to his place there were people sitting on the ground bleeding or looking around in a confused daze, a few halfheartedly called out to him but he avoided them.

The sun blazed over head and he started to sweat, a constant feeling of unease working itself into him. The previous excitement and confusion wearing away into a grim feeling. Something was wrong.

Buzzing himself into the front entrance way to his apartment building he heard crying. One of the people on his floor had collapsed on the marble tiled stairwell. Blood was coming out of a large cut on his face and his partner was holding his head in his lap looking panic. Their large mixed dog was standing over the two of them barking. Alex didn't know either of their names but always said hello them whenever he ran into them and he like petting the dog.

Instead of stopping he walked past them grimacing and hit the elevator bell. The man stared at him.

"I... don't know what to do." he spoke softly, catching the man's eyes and then looking down.

The man looked at Alex, but didn't say anything, then ignored him and returned to cradling his partners head.

Alex quickly got into the elevator and closed the door. His heart beat was deep and pulsing now, And he found himself shaking as he made his way back into his apartment.

Walking into his apartment he took a breath, revealed he hadn't seen anyone else at his apartment complex. Almost robotically he walked to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Downing it quickly he looked down and almost choked at the book sitting next to his sink.

In gold lettering there sat a small blue book, "Sam's simple guide to Summoning and Surviving"

Reaching out slowly the touched the cover of the book, feeling the old style leather cover and groves where the gold embroidered title lay

Book Bound to user Gans

He paused to look at the prompt window floating in the air. Staring at it a few moments before hesitantly reaching out and tapping it. Immediately it vanished, and Alex looked around his apartment room, not sure what to expect.

Sighing he flipped open the leather book.

Hello there. I'm Sam the Summoner. I used to live on planet one and I have to tell you that whoever you are, you are one unlucky son of a bitch. Thankfully, Gans, you've got my help, and kid I gotta say that you are really going to need it.

The most important thing for you to realize that whatever has happened so far is only going to get worse and the old world is going to disappear. I'm assuming you are on day one when you read this. I'm not going to lie, the next couple of days are going to be getting worse and worse. Tomorrow you are no longer going to be safe. Get that in your head?

Lets start with survival basics

First thing you are going to need is clean water...

The book was weird, if he tried to skip pages he would be presented with a blank pages. It also only covered survival tips and he spent the night following most of them.

He filled up the sink and bathtubs with water and threw sheets over the windows. Luckily he lived in a nice condo complete with heavy security doors and he lived just outside of downtown with a lot of empty space around him.

He noticed his phone had rung a few times. Calls from his mother, he briefly looked at the phone each time but reconsidered, he had to focus on getting things together and knew she would want to come home. That wouldn't be possible with the roads. A slight twinge of guilt rode over him each time he noticed a family member call.

He also opened up his gun safe, keying in the factory setting code he had first gotten for it, 123456. Slowly he took each gun out, examining them and placing them on his coffee table. He had a 9mm Beretta pistol, a AR-15 rifle, and another AR type sniper gun that shot .308 rounds. He grimaced slightly as he looked at each, then grimaced even more when he realized he had a small box of ammo for each and nothing else

"I wish I spent time more time with these" he spoke out loud for the first time in awhile. Staring at the door, he realized he hadn't spoken since he was downstairs with the gay couple from his floor.

"Its not like I could do anything for them..."

He fell asleep watching you tube videos for the basics for AR rifles and pistols.

He woke up to gunfire outside.