John payne was just a 26 yr old normal guy, living a normal life in a normal apartment. He was the kind of guy to work as an administrative assistant in a car parts company and lived an uneventful life.
His life would have been monotonous if not for a sudden virus outbreak happening worldwide forcing him to work from home. The first month was pretty ok for him as it felt convenient and freeing, but as time went on he started to mundane things in his life, the sound of machinery, cars revving, the dog three buildings away, his co-worker's pimple, and other stuff.
Opening a popular video app on his phone where people post content, John scrolls through multiple content creators like, Dewdewdie, drycritikal, SWD (Stupidity Weakness Deceit) and many others not finding one interesting enough. Before John closes the app out of boredom he goes for one last swipe of his thumb and sees a tutorial video of a game he used to play years ago
"How to kill the wither with villagers(op strat"
Ignoring the obviously clickbait title, he reminisces the days he played these games. He remembers being attacked in the night by a zombie and digging a hole to sleep in. He recalls the time he practiced his water bucket skills and trading sticks for precious gems in villages. Remembering his pet wolf inside the game made him sad, he went on a lot of adventures with it and it hurt him a lot when he had to stop playing.
All his memories of playing the game were coming back to him like a wave and with it emotions of happiness and melancholy. He was raised as an only child with his mother dying due to complications of his birth, growing up in a rather cold environment he turned to games as an escape from his life. His father was a good parent but bad at expressing his emotions, a trait John inherited, both lived in harmony in their house as John's father bought games as a form of affection for his son. John's father died when he turned 22 and it was around this time that John stopped playing video games.
How he missed those days of innocence, maybe, just maybe
"...I could play again..."
Ding!
Rousing him from his thoughts, he checks the notification from his phone and sees an email from his workplace. Sitting up straight he walks towards his computer and turns it on. The email was from a co-worker asking him to check if he received the letter from a different branch on the company account.
Minutes later the letter was found but it was sent to one of his accounts and not the company's. Blunders like these were nothing uncommon but he still had to check if it was the correct letter.
John double clicked on the file and opened it, to his surprise it wasn't what he thought it was.
'To open this file you must go to our terms and conditions... clicking on the box means that you accept our terms and conditions. [terms and conditions]'
John was confused, this was a letter from a branch company why would they make it cumbersome for others from the same company to access it? Since he already knew the terms and conditions of the company he clicked on the box to accept the terms and conditions.
This time John was shocked to find out that the sender of the file from 'Veslpro Autoparts' to 'All-Cube industries'.
"Did I just get hacked?" He thought, as he scrambled to fix this situation. Accepting terms and conditions from unknown sources was dangerous as they could and can get away with taking your money and information. While Trying to think of a solution to this a pop-up appeared on his screen that read:
" You have accepted our terms and conditions including Section 5, Clause 3; transfer to a fitting alternate world required to raise inheritor. Voluntary world transfer will now commence... "
"Huh? this has to be a prank right? alternate world? this has to be dave's prank, ever since he learned how to code he's been trying to hack into peoples devices for fun" John was trying to make sense of the situation and even felt relieved that he knew the culprit behind this event.
" Your body cannot survive dimensional travel, acceptance of Section 7, Clause 2; insufficient body capabilities will be discarded and transfered to prepared inheritor's body during dimensional travel "
'eh?' was the only thought John had before he lost consciousness.
[POV all-cube]
It was a good decade for the all cube, the game created by the human it influenced was rapidly gaining popularity. Even though that game was just an expression of the guidline made by it, it was enough to look for candidates.
The cube was at a dillemma, there many potential candidates worthy of the inheritance which made it hesitant in its decisions. It could only choose one, and it had to choose it from thousands, it could only bounce in frustration. Its code clearly said "to those deemed worthy" well it would be okay if there was an abundance of inheritance, but there was only one!
Trying to find a way to circumvent this requirement the all-cube felt a presence behind it, directing its senses it "sees" a beautiful fat wolf. The cube used the space inside it to store consciousness from pets in the game as it could not bear to see them dissapear like its makers did.
The space inside the all-cube housed multiple pets that were well cared and loved by their owners, pets that had absorbed these emotions and developed sentience. The confused all-cube looked at the fat- no- morbidly obese wolf standing on its stump for legs looking at it woth dark sparkly eyes.
When a world gets deleted by a player, anything in it dissapears, Any pets that get transfered would feel sad or dissapointed that their owner would leave and forget them. The main reason why the all-cube was confused was the emotion held in this fat wolf's eyes, 'hope', it suspected, also why is it so fat? The all-cube checked the dogs memories and saw the player who cared for it [slim3yspy77] who took the wolf in all of their adventures regardless of the danger. Together man and dog traveled the lands, with the man dying multiple times to keep the dog alive and losing af the items they worked hard for, and yet the man never got angry once, even relieved that he managed to keep the dog alive. There was an occasion of the dog getting hurt by blocking an arrow from a skeleton archer, which prompted the man to hunt every skeleton he saw and feeding the dog half a stack of meat every day.
The all-cube finally discovered how the wolf became obese, all that was left was to find out why the wolf still had hope in its eyes. Skimming through the wolf's memories it arrived in a small wooden shack and saw the wolf sitting down and a the owner beside it. The all-cube felt something similar on the player, with the intent to investigate it bypassed the game and travelled through the game avatar towards reality. There it saw a man pursing his lips trying not to make a sound while tears flow out of his eyes and snot out his nose.
"...thank you.." the man was saying repeatedly while sniffling.
it was then that the all-cube remembered a scene, before it traveled through the void it saw countless beings hugging their loved ones crying and those without doing the same.
Amongst the cries it heard "do not cry for it has ended, cry because it happened".
It was the same for this man, he was not sorry for for letting go, he was happy for everything that they experienced and guilty for not being able to do more. Pulling itself out of the obese wolf's memories, the all-cube looks at the creature infront of it.
In the wolf's eyes lay hope, in its thoughts are the expectations of a new adventure with it's owner. It did not think it was abandoned or forgotten, the love it felt from its owner did not allow these thoughts. It will wait until its owner calls for it.
the all-cube could sense the thoughts of the wolf and for a while it did not move, perhaps pondering.... until
An explosion of radiance shone upon the dark space, for a moment the all-cube pulsated in its former glory a reminder that it is an object created by gods, a house of power and creation.
Facing the fat creature the all-cube, for the first time since its creation, spoke in a robotic voice.
"Mission part 3/5 has commenced"