He remembers his package

He then remembered the package in his bag. He clung to the desperate thought that somehow his glasses from Japan would help his eyesight just enough to get this task done. He knew this wasn’t how glasses worked just as he knew that he would inevitably get written up for daring to injure himself at work but he blearily clung to this solution.

Wordlessly, he stumbled to the break room and opened his backpack. He shifted the oversized cardboard box out of the bag and began to wrestle with the layers of tape that mummified the package. Each inch he could peel was a small victory. With fervor born from exhausted hopelessness he peeled the clinging plastic until finally he grabbed the cardboard flaps and lifted. Inside, buried in green packing peanuts and nestled in a small clear sandwich bag, was his prize.

In no time at all Jimmy was holding the glasses in the palm of his hand, examining them as if they were a magical relic of some kind. As the initial wonderment subsided though he slowly approached the all too familiar realm of disappointment. The frames were made of cheap, tacky, red plastic with faint black kanji characters scrawled onto each side. The lenses were already slightly scratched from having been damaged in transit. The only other item of note was a thinly folded instruction manual written entirely in Japanese which was all but useless to the average gaijin buyer.

Jimmy stared at the peeling break room wall, twirling the glasses in his right hand idly. He knew that he was living on borrowed time and that soon Maggie’s shrill voice would command him to re-enter the font of the Shoppe and get back to work. I don’t deserve this, he mused to himself. Fuck this job.

Lost in thought, Jimmy raised the glasses to his face. His eyes felt naked without frames covering them so wearing his new purchase, scratched lenses and all, felt strangely automatic. All at once Jimmy felt like he should be wearing them; it was the right thing to do. Bringing the frames to his face was comfortable and correct and made the day just slightly more tolerable. With his new glasses perched on the bridge of his nose Jimmy felt a little less hopeless without questioning why.

The sense of familiar warmth faded however once the glasses were in place. Without warning a faint green HUD appeared in Jimmy’s line of vision. It didn’t obscure his sight but the words and numbers were still distracting as they appeared all at once. At the top of his right lens was what looked like a gauge set to 0%. Under the gauge there were many rows, each of which read “?????”.

Jimmy happily saw an English word at the top of his left lens. In simple text, he made out the word “Profile”. The word was followed by a blank space with a blinking box, waiting for text to be entered. Under this line was a crude shape that Jimmy recognized as the symbol from a women’s restroom sign, a triangle crowned by a circle more or less, followed by the number 0. It was all Jimmy could do to stare, mouth gaping, at what had appeared.

Without warning, the text began to shift. The profile line was beginning to fill itself in! Soon, instead of a blank line with an expectant flashing box, the line read “Jimmy Phlox”.

Jimmy had never done drugs in his life. He’d always been a relatively down to earth person who naturally separated dreams from reality. He’d never experienced a lucid dream or anything that even remotely came close to a supernatural occurrence. He’d never placed much faith in the mental state of anyone who had. The only thing Jimmy’s rational mind could think of then, as he saw his name automatically populate in the HUD of his new glasses, was that his work had caught up to him and that he was hallucinating.

His stupor was broken by Maggie’s inevitable wailing.

“Any time now,” she screeched.

Jimmy found his feet as more words appeared under his name. Words like “Height” and “Weight” followed by disturbingly accurate numerical values appeared and disappeared. Even he didn’t know his own blood type until a flash of green text proclaimed that he was AB+. All of this ceased however when he came face to face with Maggie.

Under the bar labeled 0% on the right side of his field of vision a list began to populate. Each item took up a single line and appeared one after another. They read.

Shoes

Socks

Shirt (Outer)

Shirt (Under)

Pants

Panties

The percentile bar was now labeled too. Jimmy let out an audible gasp as he read the name of the woman standing before him: Maggie McMuffin. She bared her teeth in a half smile / half glower expression.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Maggie was very obviously extending a single digit from the middle of her tiny hand.

“Let’s get back to work,” Jimmy breathed, not knowing what to make of his erie eyewear.

Maggie wiped the counters while Jimmy counted the bills in the register. The lenses of his new glasses were surprisingly clear, as if they had been tailored for his needs specifically. The bills and coins felt hyper real in his hands with colors that almost seemed to literally leap off their forms. He was done in no time. He looked over to see Maggie leaning against an empty counter typing away on her phone.

She looked up. “Now we get to see if you know basic math.”