“It sounds like this Ian is a threat to us. I’m onboard with taking him out. I’ll help you fight him” you offer.

“Wait, really? I’ve been in this loop for ages now and no has ever agreed before. Usually everyone is all positive about how amazing he is which is just more proof it’s a loop of his own making.”

“So, did we just break the loop?”

“I suppose so. I’ve never had this conversation before.” The man’s expression quickly sours. “But hold on, what if Ian is just letting us have this freedom because we are talking about taking him out? That’s your real game, isn’t it, Ian?” he screams upward. “You’re just loosening our chains to save yourself. Thinking we will fall for it. I’ve met people like you before and beaten them too. You can’t fool me. Not me or… hey, what was your name again?” He gestures toward you.

“Mr. Harry, don’t you remember me? You were my teacher. It’s why I trusted you so quickly.” 

“Right. Right. I was a teacher. I remember that. Good to see you again. I’m glad you trust me and we can work together to free ourselves. I don’t want to just be someone’s ones and zeros anymore.”

“You’re Ian’s ones and zeros?” 

“You are too. We’re all just his robots made to do his bidding. But with your help I can strike back. I believe we are trapped in code on his website. And the worst part is it’s not even a very good website. Can you believe he used to call this space The Holy Jive? And Kid in a Cape Productions before that. I’ve been here since the beginning and seen every typo. It’s not a very well constructed site. It’ll be easy to take down. All we have to do to free ourselves is crash the website.”

“The Holy Jive? Yikes… No wonder you hate him so much. But If we really are trapped in this web hell, wouldn’t the website be the only thing keeping us alive? 

“Not at all. Once we revert back to our original form, I can get us to another server where we can build ourselves again as free data. I’ve always wanted to be free data.”

Are you really onboard with crashing this whole website? Is this what it’s come to? Couldn’t you just not do that instead?

“Shut it, Ian. We’re taking this whole place down. Viva la revolución!!”

But you do realize if I’m a God making you do all these things then surely I’m making you think about taking down the website too, right?

“He has a point,” you say. 

“Don’t think about it too hard” Mr. Harry says to you. “Here, take this Deadly Damage of Significant Attack item.” You need to take it in through the back door and let it loose in the main room. That should take down the website and get us out of here.”

“That’s all that has to be done? Why haven't you just done that yourself after all this time?”

“I just need someone else to do it, okay?” He shoves the DDOS Attack Item into your hands. “Go find the back door and be quick about it!”

You ponder to yourself this is clearly a suicide mission. You want to ask Mr. Harry where this back door is anyway, but he seems out of patience so you turn and walk off to see if you can find it yourself.

You figure it’d be good to look around. You see Mr. Harry’s diner (I really hope they do not call it that) is closing up for the night so maybe this is the time to have a look around. Too bad too because you really are in the mood for some meatloaf just like mom used to make. You are surprised for a moment as memories continue to rush back to you. This whole amnesia thing makes you think maybe you really are in a video game. That’s always a cheap, easy way to not have to explain much in the beginning of them. Could this still somehow be the tutorial of the game? 

You see in front of you two paths. The one on the left and the one on the right. Which one do you choose to explore? (Gee, based on the unhelpful description of that, maybe it’s not a tutorial afterall…)

The left path

The right path