Wendy Peppernickel, an Asexual Conspiracy Theorist

Wendy Peppernickel was meant to be born Walton Alexander Peppernickel the IV after her parents received a very drunk doctor’s evaluation that the baby-to-be would be a boy. The baby’s room was plastered in sky blue, rocket ships dangled over the red crib, and the crib sheets depicted the Martian Manhunter--chosen on the mistaken belief that he looked less violent than that evil-looking "Batman" they always heard about--on their every surface.

Tucked below spinning space vessels, wrapped in martians, and confused for a baby boy, none of these things necessarily explain how Wendy Peppernickel came to be the way she was, but her parents think it did and insist, among other embarrassingly ignorant things, that the Captain Marvel blankets they passed up would have avoided the whole “aliens” thing. We can’t even begin to ask them to understand that their daughter isn’t a picky lesbian, but is instead just not interested in romantic or sexual interactions with anyone... not even the woman she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with where Ms. Peppernickel was right now: lying in her bed, the ruined, upper-left quarter of her face hidden beneath bandages, her flat chest half-revealed in a dress shirt, and wrinkled granny panties clinging to her waist. She passed out half-undressed from school, her mind and body exhausted after her last day in a Chess Club competition as a minor. Her face was small with a slightly up-turned nose, and she hides almost half of it behind thick, black-rimmed glasses when she’s not in bed. Her small mouth and petite features combined with that to give one the impression of a most-learned mouse, and the rest of her body didn't distract: she barely rose to five feet in height, she was a B-cup only thanks to how narrow her torso was, and she had nary an ass to comment upon. Spindly legs and arms completed a fairly unattractive frame surely not constructed for sex or its consequences, which suited Wendy just fine but worsened her quasi-anemic stamina. The only large thing about her was her hair: huge, curly locks of black hair that never truly obeyed their master, even when she deigned to order them into sane styles. It is this tiny, hot mess that slumbered through the moment she transitioned from minor to major in the eyes of state laws.

The time was 12:33AM in Eastern Standard Time, which was precisely the moment she was born just eighteen years ago. Her phone, drained of battery and forgotten on her floor, suddenly surged back to life as the empty battery indicator filled back to green. A small update wheel appears, and so the quiet forces of destiny did their work.

It takes all of nineteen seconds of downloading to change the direction of Wendy's life forever.

The phone (previously on vibrate) began its screeching alert. Wendy shot up from the bed, her cheek covered in drool. “Buh-huwat?!” Wendy half-fell, half-jumped from the edge of her bed towards the sound, her hands groping blindly for her phone and not pausing to reflect and instead fetch her glasses from her bathroom. With narrowly squinted eyes she eventually finds the sole source of light and noise in her mess of a room: her phone and an notification she can't quite read. It wasn't the proximity alarm--that was a quiet alert--nor was it a signal received from her homemade satellite hidden in the backyard tree. Instead it was some gaudy icon and text she couldn't quite make out beyond it ending with an exclamation point:

Gem Ladies has been updated! Unlock your phone to play now!

“Gem.... been... phone... what...?” Muscle memory is the only reason this half-conscious adult manages to swipe her phone open with the six-maneuver glyph it takes to do so. She continues to squint at the display, unsure of what's even going on: she sees brightly-colored blocks in a simple pattern, along with another line of colored blocks lowering towards the rest. “Game...? Ugh...” Another pop-up to confound her, one she is sure is asking her to rate the game on the app store:

Do you want to earn some bonus time?

She tapped the "NO" with dreamy frustration. Wendy had spent her emergency reserves just to pick up the damn thing, and suddenly she was playing a game she didn't even recognize. Groaning she rolled over, ignoring the phone as the blocks landed in the incorrect configuration: green-to-purple, purple-to-orange, and orange-to-green. It was time for her to swap the blocks around and match the colors on this relatively simple first level... only instead she shifted about, phone still in hand, as she tried to get comfortable on a convenient patch of dirty laundry beneath her. She had to make the trip back to the bed, but it was so far away... and up there... and she was so sleepy...

Uh-oh! Time's up, let's see how you did:
0 out of 3 matches made
0 out of 60 bonus seconds earned
You failed! Punishment grade increased by 0.4.

Achievement unlocked: Welcome to Gem Ladies (played the game for the first time)! You may remove one punishment for free.
Achievement unlocked: Apathetic Player (ignored the game completely after starting a round)! Punishment grade increased by 0.2.

Choose your punishment within 30 seconds (or all three will apply!):
[Smooth and Shorn]
[A Button for Punishment]
[Sweats Under Scrutiny]

Half a minute later, another infuriating tone stirred the young Peppernickel from what was very nearly her the rest of her night sleeping on the floor. Groaning, she put the phone to her face again and saw an unknown interface. "PG 0.6" was a shining new sigil in the upper-right corner, though Wendy had no hope of reading it without glasses. The screen was otherwise dominated with two giant buttons: PLAY and MANAGE PUNISHMENTS. A generous timer of six hours blinked over the PLAY button, though this interface too was miniscule enough to escape notice. “They... is this the knock-off chess app I...” Grumbling about a half-remembered download, she hit the top button again, thinking perhaps it was a colorful chess board she had seen earlier. Instead, that damn review pop-up came up again. She dismissed it with a curt tap of "No" and proceeded to lose a game as she groped around with what turned out to be some kind of two-stage Bejeweled game, now noticeably more complex than that first tutorial round. She gave it some half-blind swipes before feeling stupid for even indulging it. “Nuh-uh... bed...” Groaning, she finally rose and deposited her blinking phone on the nightstand as she ignores its lasted string of messages. In her near-sleepwalking, she didn't even notice the changes that took place... nor did she wake right away to find the next ones.

Uh-oh! Time's up, let's see how you did:
4 out of 12 matches made
0 out of 60 bonus seconds earned
You failed! Punishment grade increased by 0.3.

Achievement unlocked: Eager Player (play another round with more than an hour left until it's mandatory)! Earn one more positive achievement to win a free punishment removal!
Achievement unlocked: Very Eager Player (play another round with more than three hours left until it's mandatory)! You may remove a punishment for free.
Achievement unlocked: Excited Player (play another round less than ten minutes before the last one)! Earn two more positive achievements to win a free punishment removal!

Choose your punishment within 30 seconds (or all three will apply!):
[Underwhere]
[Her Period Peace]
[An Immodest Proposal]

Quietly she slept as most of the six hours between games passed without incident...