Wolfenstein Alternate Reality Game: Redux

## Disclaimer

This is a spinoff story to the Wolfenstein Alternate Reality Game. All rights reserved. Do not modify, delete, distribute or otherwise touch the contents of this page or you gonna have lawyers all over your ass.

## The story

The cold wind was piercing, penetrating. Darkened clouds were gathering at the horizon and slowly consuming the sky, forecasting a cleansing thunderstorm. The rain was already seeping from above; the strong scent of petrichor hit Dave's nostrils with relentless force. He shuddered, yet kept on walking. There was nothing to do but walk. The people of the city swarmed and mingled all around him, oblivious to the dark threat unfolding beyond the frail veil of their reality. Dave knew, yet he kept on walking. There was nothing to do but walk, a final act of bravery, pressing on towards the inevitable, ditching all refuge as futile. IT was everywhere around, within the foreboding sky, the crushing clouds, whistling wind, cracked sidewalk, featureless building, his own soaked hair. Escape was never an option.

Dave looked on.

His panicked thoughts raced back in time, incapable of handling the stress of what was to come. He was back in the illusory safety of his own room, sitting at the computer. Life was hard, but there was a game capable of rescuing him away from the dangers of life and onto the colorful, flowery fields of nostalgia. It was called Wolf. Wolfenstein 3D was something else, slaughtering German national socialists by the thousand was a way of life rather than a mere game. Right now he was looking for mods and information. He stumbled upon a wiki he'd never seen before, a new one apparently, and clicked around on the most popular pages. Joshua, the name said, but there was something wrong about the contents. Filled with absurd statements mixed with uncanny warnings, he was sure it's just someone's idea of a joke, and yet the powerful portents and omens therein played an alarming note in his thoughts. Never mind. Serpent on the Mount, said another name, and as he was about to click, a tender whisper fell on his ears. "No", said everything, a limp gasp of the material plane itself struggling for life. He stopped for a brief moment, bewildered, and moved the mouse. Wolfenstein Alternate Reality Game. "No". Where did the voice come from? Never mind. He clicked.

He clicked, and in that click lay the horrid, terrified wail of a trillion universes suddenly comprehending their new foul fate.

Dave looked down.

It was over, he knew, but there was still safety within the hardness of the ground, its dull gray face, the cracked, worn concrete, patches of grass sprinkled with fresh rain, broken glass and ruined paper, the pattern and imperfection of the pavement. No more. Dave witnessed its gradual dissolution. Everything around him was going out, the final fading moan of a reality slashed in twain. Images of things dithered, shuddered and fizzled away. A last thunderclap, the roaring scream of universal doom and annihilation, filled the air, then the air was gone too. Floating freely in the void, Dave looked on. Amidst the vast nothingness a spark flashed and Dave immediately recognized IT. He closed his eyes, but IT remained. As the last second of time was about to run out, IT gleefully held it still and filled the remnant of Dave's shattered mind with the serpentine, sordid thoughts of all things never meant to be.