The Magic Returns

[NB: The initial branch of this story is the Christopher Ash character. It will not work correctly unless you turn on the game mode; there are a significant number of both hidden and displayed variables. Also, there are a lot of loops in the game. What this means is that there is potentially a great deal more in a single playthrough than the latest-numbered chapter would indicate.

I have never attempted anything like this before. Please post about any bugs you encounter, I'm sure there will be more than a couple.

8/25/2020 Status: The "Work" gameplay loop should be fully playable, and there are sex scenes with Lisa. I was going to get more done before I tried to publish, but I decided it was more valuable to start getting feedback from anyone generous enough to provide it before I attempted to write the rest of them.]

It's autumn in the year 20XX. You are a normal individual just trying to make your way in a coastal, urban, capitalist hellscape. Not much has gone your way, and you don't know what direction your life is going to take.

After another cheap dinner with your similarly dispirited friends, you find yourself laying in your bed. You lay in the dark, staring at your phone, and hitting the refresh button on the same few social media sites, over and over, hoping for that little rush of endorphins that comes when someone likes one of your memes. You wish that something cool would happen. That you could be as cool as you believe you could be, if only you had a little boost of cool to get you started.

And that's when it happens. You get a call. You don't have a choice as to whether to answer. Where the icon to decline the call would be, there's just another green "answer" icon. Like if Chuck Norris was calling you. Surely no one else would be so rude as to call without texting first.