AR Short Stories

Chapter 18
Stubborn Gamer

Chapter Description: A game addicted man learns his lesson.

Gray was a fervorous gamer. He streamed on his Twitch and YouTube channels 4 to 7 times a week. But after years of playing games since his childhood, he had a very bad case of ligament strain and his doctor said that he may never be able to play games again. His world was in shambles after hearing that. Playing was his job, he couldn’t just stop! “Calm down son, we just need you to use that brace for two months, but I recommend you to play few to no games at all during this time.” To Gray, these months would be torturous, so his sister, Lillian, would be looking after him so he would not play anything.

Two weeks had passed and Gray was taking a break from his streams and started to get some new hobbies, but played some games here and there for short periods of time. But all that changed when Lillian came to him during a Wednesday morning. “Hey bro, I need to help my friend with her moving. I’ll be out the whole day. Do you think you can stay a full day alone?” “Of course, sis. Chill out, I’m not a kid anymore. I think I can be all alone.” She just looked and had to agree, he was her big brother after all. “Okay, I’m going. There’s some leftovers from yesterday from the fridge. So take care, and I’ll check if you made any progress in any game when I’m back, okay?”

She left and after the man had his lunch, he looked at the controller on the coffee table and something caught his attention, it was like the controller was calling him to play. He tried to resist, but eventually gave up. Maybe an hour or two of Mario Kart online wouldn’t hurt. He thought. But he felt he lost track of time, and he eventually got bored of the game and changed to his old PlayStation 3 to test his new blue controller he bought and a weird game he had never heard of. There was no information about it in any site or game magazine, so he imagined it was a canceled beta and he could be the first person to document the game.

After he put the CD in, the title screen appeared and the title of the game was there, The Watch Tower. He imagined the game would be too buggy or glitchy, but it was indeed very polished and was just pondering why in the world a game would be canceled after what looked like it was in such a development stage. He was having a lot of fun, but something felt off. He was playing for most of the afternoon and didn’t leave the couch, he was thinking of how weird he didn’t have to go to the bathroom in anypoint, but he also had to pull the control’s wire, since the TV looked that far away. And everything came to a reason when a game had a black screen and showed him his reflection, that was now a blonde toddler, maybe around 3 years old and just wearing a shirt and a diaper, who seemed full. This made sense to him of everything, but the game was back and he was near the apparent last boss, a scientist who wanted to make time distortions to save her deceased husband.

He was playing furiously, until he launched the last blow and the controller unplugged from the console, but he saw the last cutscene, where the villain was just a diapered baby like him. But that made him tired, so he laid down to take a nap and, instinctively, pulled the controller’s wire as a blanket. He woke up thirty minutes later, with Lillian over him like an eagle. “Looks like your wrist is better now, huh, baby brother?” He froze. “I knew you would play, but now, before I punish you, I need to change you.” She picked him up and plugged the controller and left the game without thinking twice. Gray realized he hadn't saved the whole game. “Noooo!” “I think that was a good first punishment to you.” She showed him a malicious smile and his diaper got a bit warmer.