Joe Mackerson (Single Man)

Name's Joe Mackerson and I have an arcade machine with a tanning bed attached to it in my house basement.

So, to take a few steps back from here to before - that is, a few hours ago - I spent the day doing the usual home maintenance stuff. Being out in the rural side of America means that although you can get plenty of space to yourself, that same space gotta be tided up so things don't go bump in the night. Removal of undesirable plants like poison ivy, checks for pests and critters, and the typical look around of the house for anything off; stuff like that. Had to drive out to a neighbor about a mile away to get some tools I didn't have, cause I sure as hell wasn't going to try and cut thick rotten tree branches without proper shears. So once that was dealt with, I had to then drive back to the neighbor again to return the tools.

Basically, it was busy few hours outside the house. So when I got back inside to wash up and relax, I was greeted with my dog and cat - Macy and Meyer respectively - at the door to the basement, both in agitated states. Thought that maybe some little critter slipped inside the house while I wasn't looking, so I got some gloves and bucket big enough to catch a squirrel and went down the stairs. Which leads us to where I am now, before some weird combination of an arcade machine and tanning bed that appeared in my basement.

While it looked out of place with all the utilities, pipes, and wires it looked remarkably seamless in its installation, as if it was built with the house from the get go. Thing is, though, it sure as hell wasn't there before and I didn't see or hear anyone (or anything) bring something like this inside the home, ever.

Anyway, normally people would be, understandably, freaked out if not confused as hell. My parents didn't raise no coward though and I just walked up to the machine, though with healthy amounts of caution; wasn't about ready to get grappled by something hidden in that tanning bed thing. Thankfully, that didn't happen and after I set the bucket down, I check out the arcade machine part of the weird assembly.

Didn't look like much though now that I have a closer look, its less of an arcade machine and more of big computer in the style of its grandfathers - bulky and heavy, with a monitor that might've as well been lifted from an arcade cabinet. Still, it had a modern keyboard and mouse set up laid out on a tray before the monitor, and I could spot some doodads like USB ports and the likes across the machine's case. On to the monitor's screen, all it had was an empty text bar in the middle with the prompt, "Enter your name."

So, I go, "what the hell," and type in my name. When I entered my name, I was greeted with this text.

[Name Recognized, Joe Mackerson is now the Owner]

Turns out this whole thing operates on the rules of "finder's keepers" - not how I would've done it, but its not like I could directly talk to the manufacturer. The text didn't stay long before the screen switched to something of a browser, like Chrome or good 'ole Explorer. Except the browser's contents looks like some bizarre catalog for... yeah, give me a moment.

Okay, yeah, so this machine? From what I could tell from this convenient PDF manual that I found after some snooping, this whole thing is able to create replicas of fictional characters of any kind. Somehow. I had my doubts, like some really heavy ones, but then I remembered that this thing just... showed up in my basement, hooked up and ready to go. So I looked around the whole browser thing to see what's up. To no one's surprise, the catalog defaults to the section on female characters, though there's tabs for male characters alongside non-human characters, so at least its not entirely biased for guys.

Would look into those sections later, though, as my curiosity got me interested on some stuff about this machine - though I was split between using one of these preset characters or continuing looking through the PDF manual.