Chapter 272 - Game with no Difficulty (1/2)

“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 he had been made exactly for this job.

“And Stanley was happy.

“The camera panned away before fading black, and this time the title of the game appeared on the screen.

“And then one day, something very peculiar happened.”

Something that would forever change Stanley; something he would never quite forget.

The game faded back in, showing Stanley who was still in front of the computer, but this time he wasn’t moving.

“He had been at his desk for nearly an hour when he had realized not one single order had arrived on the monitor for him to follow.

“No one had shown up to give him instructions, call a meeting, or even say ‘hi’. Never in all his years at the company had this happened, this complete isolation.

The camera showed the other seats in the office which all happened to be empty.

Something was very clearly wrong.

Shocked, frozen solid, Stanley found himself unable to move for the longest time.

But as he came to his wits and regained his senses, he got up from his desk and stepped out of his office.”

As the narration finished, the camera panned away from the screen. Zhao Lei then realised he could control Stanley and start the game.

“What a weird start to the game.”

Zhao Lei was really confused, but he understood why Chen Mo said the game suited him. He was just like Stanley, someone who couldn’t escape work. On the surface he was incredibly happy and satisfied, but underneath that was someone incredibly sad and depressed.

Stanley’s job of pressing buttons on the keyboards following the instructions of the monitor, there was virtually no difference compared to a machine. But Zhao Lei couldn’t help but associate that with his job. Sure it was more complicated, but was he that much different from Stanley pressing on the keyboard?

Zhao Lei shook his head to usher away the weird thoughts in his mind, and looked around the room using his mouse.

The office was incredibly empty and quite small. He couldn’t interact with the computer, the filing cabinet, or the documents on the table. Zhao Lei left the office after triple checking he couldn’t do anything.

The rooms labeled 428 and 429 couldn’t be opened either.

The narration continued.

All of his coworkers were gone. What could it mean?

Stanley decided to go to the meeting room; perhaps he had simply missed a memo.

There was a soft yet mysterious track in the background, and a weird narration to go with it. But the two combined fitted the game so well that Zhao Lei didn’t feel like anything was out of place, and even forgot that most games didn’t have weird narrations like these.

When Stanley came to a set of 2 open doors, he entered the door on his left.

The tone of the narrator was an incredibly natural one, as if it was something that was certain to happen. Zhao Lei didn’t put too much thought into it and walked through the door on the left.

The narrator would guide Zhao Lei through the next little bit of the game.

The meeting room was also completely empty, and so was the boss’s office.

Although there were a few forks in the road, Zhao Lei suppressed his curiosity and followed the instructions given by the narrator.

“Shocked, unraveled, Stanley wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this, what dark secret was being held from him!

“What he could not have known was that the keypad behind the boss’s desk guarded the terrible truth that his boss had been keeping from him.