Aaron, who's already lost and about to get more so

Aaron struggled to keep his eyes open as he rounded another bend on the seemingly endless winding mountain road that he’d been on for the past several hours. He checked his phone again, only for it to remind him again that not only did he still not have service or GPS, but, since he had forgotten his charger at the hotel he’d been staying at the night before, the phone’s battery was now down into the single digits. He cursed himself for his refusal to stop at the small motel he’d passed just before sunset. At this point, he would have been perfectly happy with a rest stop or even a safe place to pull over to the side of the road, but the narrow mountain roads didn’t have a shoulder and were nearly too narrow even for two lanes of traffic. The few times he’d passed cars going in the opposite direction, it had required some careful navigation to avoid hitting them.

He had enjoyed his road trip, but he was looking forward to getting home to his apartment and bed, though he wished he’d left himself an extra day after his scheduled return before he had to go back to work. As it was, even if he managed to make it home tomorrow, he’d still probably get written up for missing a day of work if he didn’t get somewhere he could send an email. Luckily, with his seniority and familiarity with the woman who owned the small game shop he worked at, it wouldn’t be more than a slap on the wrist, even if he was a few days late. Still, he knew that it would hurt the store for him to be absent, and he knew the torment he'd inflict on himself would likely be worse than any chastisement she could subject him to.

He was considering whether there was anyone else he should notify about his late return, but aside from his friend and coworker, Jack, he didn’t think anyone else would care. Once upon a time, he might have messaged his cat-sitter or his parents, but both his cat and his parents had passed on since then, and he didn’t have much of a life outside of work. He tried, for the millionth time on his short trip, to reassure himself that he was okay with his solitude, but he didn’t really believe it. Every day, he went to work and passed crowds of people who came into the shop with their friends to play games or to shop for new ones to play at home. And, every day, he walked right past them to his tiny little office in the back, where he managed the store's website and e-commerce, alone. Aaron knew it was really nobody's fault, though he spent most of his life silently blaming himself. He didn't mesh well with people. Something about his presence made people uncomfortable, and those who could overcome his awkward presence often found the strange focus and intensity of his passions off-putting. After many years of cycles of joining groups of friends, only to be quietly ostracized, he had decided that, except for the few close friends who'd managed to stay close to him, he would try to live his life in relative anonymity and try to avoid anyone's notice.

As he reminded himself of the reasons why it was better to be alone, a train of thought that had worn a deep trench in his mind, there was a sudden flash of light, and the seat where Aaron had sat only moments before was now empty. The car, now driverless, began to drift towards the precarious guardrails, but just as it was about to hit and go flying into the wooded land along the road, there was another flash, and the car disappeared as though it had never existed.

The next thing he knew, he found himself in a dark room. The room was empty and pitch black except for a thin line of dim light strips that ran along the edge of the ceiling, which indicated a room the size of a basketball court, and an illuminated circle around the plain chair he’d found himself in. From what he could see, the room didn’t seem to have any doors or windows and seemed to be completely composed of a black metal that shone like polished glass. He wanted to get up and explore the space, but found himself unable to move anything but his head and eyes, unable to even speak. Instead, he found himself still in the same position he’d been in before the flash, with his hands grasping a steering wheel that was no longer present and resting one of his feet on a pedal that had disappeared.

Suddenly, theme music played, and a new spotlight came on in the room, forcing Aaron to close his eyes from the brightness. Still, he could hear an upbeat, masculine voice echoing through the room.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, welcome to another exciting season of HHI, the multiverse’s favorite show. I’m your host, C2-30FG-Bravo-Helvetica, but you can call me C2. Before anything else, let’s meet this season’s lovely contestants. Our contestants for this season hail from a small planet, called Earth, in the Sol system. The species we picked up refers to themselves as ‘Humans’ and are the sole sentient species on the planet. They are four-limbed, terrestrial bipeds who have so far made it as far as their own moon, though they had to ride an exploding skyscraper to get there. We’ll be starting with our Master and six contestants this season.”

As the voice described humans and the earth, Aaron managed to open his eyes. He was confused by what he saw. There, illuminated by a spotlight that perfectly lit it without revealing anything in the rest of the room, was a basketball-sized metal sphere floating a few feet off the ground, holding a microphone in its hands that gestured and moved despite there being nothing connecting it to the main body. When it turned in his direction, during one of its gesticulations, he saw that, on one side, the sphere had a single giant mechanical eye that seemed to take up most of its body.

"We’ve got a great batch of contestants this season, and some special new rules to add a little variety to the proceedings. But we’ll get to those later. First off, let’s meet the man of the hour, our selected Master and Captain for this season, Aaron Silver. Mr. Silver is a 35-year-old e-commerce worker for an independent restaurant and game shop, currently living just outside of Portland, Oregon. He is single, unmarried, childless, with no living family, and very few friends. As you can see, he is 5'10 with shaggy brown hair, hazel eyes, and an unremarkable build that is neither overweight nor muscular. The combination of glasses, flannel, and stubble may give him the look of a hipster, especially in Oregon, but he is far too far behind the current trends to make a claim to that description. He loves video games, science fiction and fantasy, trivia, puzzles, and anime, and is quite a prolific solo traveler. For the past several years, he has been in a state of self-enforced isolation, shunning nearly all unnecessary contact with others and keeping to himself. According to our predictive modeling, his fate was to live out the rest of his life in a state of solitude and mediocrity until the solitude finally killed him in his late forties. Instead, we’re here to give him the unique chance to change his destiny with a whole new life. But he won’t be entering this new life alone; he’ll have a whole team of companions along for the ride. And just who will those companions be, you ask? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out. Let’s meet our first contestant, and it’s his boss, Delia!”