Description
This is the story of a person named Stanley. Stanley worked for a company in a big building where they were Employee #427. Employee #427's job was simple: they sat at their desk in Room 427 and they pushed buttons on a keyboard. Orders came to them through a monitor on their desk telling them what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order. This is what Employee #427 did every day of every month of every year, and although others may have considered it soul rending, Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though they had been made exactly for this job. And Stanley was happy. And then one day, something very peculiar happened. Something that would forever change Stanley; Something they would never quite forget. They had been at their desk for nearly an hour when they had realized not one single order had arrived on the monitor for them to follow. No one had shown up to give them instructions, call a meeting, or even say 'hi'. Never in all their years at the company had this happened, this complete isolation. Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Stanley found themself unable to move for the longest time. But as they came to their wits and regained their senses, they got up from their desk and stepped out of their office.
Chapter 1. My monitor isn't working.
