Work Text:
Should he show up for work tomorrow?
Kim Soleum sat on his couch, slowly passing his newest merch reward back and forth between his hands as he co side red this question. The golden liquid looked richer under his apartment lights than the predawn glow, and the reflection off the glass threw small rainbow flashes around the room. This vial was his ticket home.
When he had first received it his flurry of panic had landed that human experimentation won’t of the outcome, but what would actually happen?
Questions, he figured, many, many questions. Where did you get this? What Darkness were you trapped in? How were you dragged in? How did you escape? This is a prototype model? How did you get this? What happened to your own collection tube? Whose serial number is this? You were missing for a month, how are you still sane?
He was sure that if he spent the rest of the day writing answers to every question, he could think to anticipate he might be able to convince the company that what he was holding was genuine and to start the process of filling it, but once he was past the first hurdle what would be the long term?
Weeks worth of interviews, trying to turn everything that happened, thought that wouldn’t get very far; the process to enter and exit couldn’t be repeated, and was something Soleum wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up. Counselling and contamination tests to see why he was unaffected by almost a month straight of living in a Darkness, and if he could work in any capacity. The entire time anything he had said, lie and omissions that he would have today to plan, would be under intense scrutiny. Early interviews would be analysed and looked at from dozens of angles. The terror of being found out as both a coward and a liar would change from underlying to constant in his everyday life.
But at the end of it, if he was convincing enough, he would get his point. S grades were subject to a case-by-case review, and the wiki had some mentions of the reward he should expect. Soleum had read a few stories where it was mentioned that characters had received a payout of 250 000 or 500 000 points. The highest he remembered an employee getting was 875 000 once they had handed in the vials. Even if his reward was the lowest values, he could still purchase his wish ticket.
So why did he hesitate? Why didn’t he just to go home?
He set the collector back into the pocket dimension. If anything were to happen to it there would be no point in this dilemma, one he shouldn’t be having in the first place. All of the worries associated with the S-grade liquid shouldn’t matter because it was a ticket home, so why was he hesitating?
Ever since he had entered this world he had always been in danger. Being found out as a coward was liable to shunt him to the lowest rung of the ladder. Dealing with a roommate who would slaughter him if the slightest hint of his true personality was revealed. Working with sociopathic researchers and inscrutable higher ups. All of this was without mentioning his actual work. There was no reason not to leave.
But what Braun said to convince him to accept kept tugging at the back of his mind.
You don’t miss home, and you don’t think that being home is good. You’re just scared and miserable with what you’re doing right now.
Is the home you wish to return to truly safe?
War, poverty, climate change, terrorism, plagues… and all of the other small, horrific tragedies. Hell can visit anyone, and you are no exception. Does it matter whether the monsters from stories come to life or whether real monsters roam the street?
He wasn’t wrong, but it was easy to rationalize away. No matter what, there would always be a level of danger. Injury or sickness, heartbreak or hostility; there was always a way to be hurt. In this world and the next, that wouldn’t stop. But the level of danger, that’s what was important.
If he were to disappear, give up on going home, he would be all the safer for it. Let Daydream Inc. think that Tamra had finished off the star rookie and move into a civilian life, the chance that he’d run into a Darkness would drop drastically, to almost zero.
Almost zero.
The wiki was unclear on the odds- rather focusing on established characters and new stories- but civilians were always mentioned. A poor soul who hadn’t handled an artifact correctly, a grieving relative who gave an interview recounting another’s final days, or the uncounted masses in the background of a massacre. It was very rare to have a story that didn’t have one civilian end up dead; the writers needed states, and the readers wanted drama.
If Soleum were to go over every entry and slowly tally up every single mention of when someone died, take that number and divide it by the total population he’d get the chance of encountering a Darkness. It could be 1%, or 0.01%, or even 0.0000001%, but it wouldn’t matter. Because it would never be zero.
Once he went back to the company, earned his 500 000 points and received his wish ticket, that unknown chance would drop to zero.
Almost zero.
That was not a pleasant thought. He got up from the couch and started pacing around his apartment, being careful to not alert his neighbours with the noise, even thought they should have been at work. For a moment he wanted Braun there, to have someone to think things over with and to ask questions about Darknesses manifested. He brushed a thumb over his storage tattoo where the coin was stored.
The odds were zero. All the things he’d experienced in the past six months were works of fiction back home, and yet here he was. Being in the world, meeting the characters, going through the entries. The life he had been living was undeniably real.
And he was here because of something that happened from his home. He could imagine the wiki page, as if it were its own entry:
===
[Pop-up Spin of Fate]
: A ghost story featured in <Dark Exploration Records>
: Daydream Inc. Identification code – N/A
: Assumed S-Class Darkness
A prize wheel featured in a temporary merchandise store for a fictional horror universe. Landing on the first-place prize will transport the winner to the universe of the fictional story.
There is no record of anyone escaping. For more details of its existence see, Document #895-42069 (Civilian Interview Record).
===
Was this world actually a Darkness? One that takes the form of a popular horror franchise and forces participants to partake in its own story. If that was the case what would that mean for him? If all the life he had been living since he’d arrived had been within a giant ghost story, was that even possible?
Other Darknesses, ones from the wiki, would they also be part of the current Darkness… No. Traveling between them was possible, calling a taxi to escape from Death Ally left no return to the normal world in-between. Each Darkness could be an individual area, bleeding into the main more he could be living in.
If it was a Darkness, wouldn’t he be corrupted? He had spent only a month within Braun’s talk show studios, but he was sure the effects were obvious. He had had the schoolteachers’ manual for even less time and the outward effects were massive. Living in one for six months, using items associated with its stories, and interacting with its participants would have clear signs.
He stopped pacing and sat back down on the couch. As he rubbed the silver ring he took a deep breath, trying to stop the rising panic. This was why he hated cosmic horror, no answers or narrative, they were all just unknowable, unexplainable, and unsatisfying.
If this world was a Darkness or not, it didn’t matter. If home could have Darknesses, it didn't matter. This world wasn’t real, and there were people waiting for him back home- his friends and family.
As he wracked his brain for a single example, the dread grew. What were their names? What did they look like? Where did he go to university? Where did he grow up? He searched his brain for any scrap of what his life was like before all this.
Nothing.
Soleum know absolutely nothing.
Maybe this was the sign he was looking for, corruption equivalent to an entire world. A ring protecting against it wouldn’t matter if it was part of the Darkness.
He had started off so certain that he’d show up to work tomorrow and continue towards a wish ticket, and now he doubted if the world exists and if his family and friends were real. He hated cosmic horror.
He was back where he started, trying to decide if he should go to work tomorrow.