2020-04-20 05:16
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description
<p>Today, a visitor claiming to not be a deliveryman, delivers an unexpected gift to Omar. The gift is a metal card, with an impossible design on its surface, that also comes with an offer. It's an unbelievable offer in the sense that Omar finds it literally hard to believe. This is, however, partly because of the fantastic claims, and partly because he has the attention span of a wet brick.</p> <p>Omar is also sort of odd. That is, he's both strange and has a mild form of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. His defining characteristics are that he is lazy, apathetic, deceptively unremarkable, and is occasionally an asshole. He is an aggravating man-child that manages to, at least, be a minimally functioning human being. His minimally functional status is all thanks to his hyperactive subconscious mind, and a system of inane and asinine rules that are oddly effective.</p> <p>You might be thinking, "why the hell would I read about a protagonist like that?" which is admittedly, a perfectly valid question. The simple answer is that Omar has the allure of a train wreck wherein all passengers survive, unharmed. That's not to say he is immune to the consequences of his actions, but neither is he burdened with an excessive amount of bad luck, or good luck, for that matter. Nonetheless, the events that occur around him are usually the most probable, because after all, that is part of the two-dimensional nature of time.</p> <p>This brings us back to that offer, which is actually a rather amazing offer. If he accepts, Omar will become a player in the game Reality Break, where he will be given a cybernetic interface that will add game elements to his life. Like all players, Omar will also become permanently chronoactive, thus granting him certain abilities, while also exposing him to the long-term risks of acquiring a chronoactivity-induced mental illness.</p> <p>If that happens to him, it's quite possible that most people will be unable to spot the difference, or more likely, would even bother to do so.</p> <p>As a chronoactive person, he will be able to perceive the two-dimensional nature of time, which will allow him to retain his memories of prior timelines, whenever the timeline changes. Those changes can range from the trivial to the significant, but altogether, such changes occur several times a day.</p> <p>He will also gain the ability to enter the chronopause, which is both a place in and of itself, and the boundary between non-sequential points in the timeline. This will make him a chrononaut; an actual time-traveler capable of visiting the past and the future in our normal world, in addition to granting him access to the strange civilizations that exist within the chronopause. As a time-traveler, he will be free to change the course of events as he wishes, assuming he knows how to get to those points in space and time, and has the resources to make those changes, and none of the other players and non-player chrononauts disagree with those changes (particularly those more powerful than him).</p> <p>All in all, despite these downsides, it really is a great offer, and something that Omar absolutely doesn't deserve. That is, if he can pay attention long enough to even accept the offer.</p> <p>Note: The narrative style is that of a reliable narrator with a "3rd-person sarcastic" POV.</p> <p>This story takes place in the Reality Breakers/Chronopause universe.</p>
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