Borislav couldn't believe he would be living there for god knows how long, this apartment was the worse thing that could have happened to him. He was entirely out of *any* comfort zone, left all alone, like a rolling stone falling towards an unknown ditch. He somewhat envied the rocks on his balcony; at least they knew where they were gonna fall when they did. He didn't.
On the upside of things, the apartment was already furnished. He had every piece of furniture needed to survive, and it seemed that Fabius had already bought groceries for him, all laying somewhere in the fridge. As for the absence of running water, it was beginning to take its toll on Borislav. Having to deal with the mess left by Blobby, he had to make a crucial choice between using the water bottles in the fridge to put them in a cleaning bucket, or quenching his thirst with them first. He barely had enough water to use for cleaning, to begin with, and the smell was quite off-putting. Thus he chose the former. Grabbing a mop by the kitchen counter, he got to work and a few minutes later, it was all gone.
Having spoiled all of his drinking water for this task, he went back towards the door and unzipped his bag, exploring its insides with his hand trying to find any bottle he might have fetched during the trip to Janisbure. He felt up a plastic bottle, but pulling it out found out that only a few drops of Koku Kolu remained at the bottom of it. Still, he drank it up, it was better than nothing. Afterwards, he started making himself at home; unpacking his bags, throwing his clothes nonchalantly on his bed, dropping his toothbrush on the nightstand. Then he took one of the tables to put it in the kitchen, leaving the other in his bedroom. Having reorganized his new home at a basic level, he removed his aging laptop from his bag and put it on the bedroom table. He then contemplated what to do next; should he go find a store as to not die from dehydration? Or should he focus on filling up this housing form, whose deadline was tomorrow? Maybe it'd be better to get some sleep first to not fall unconscious in the middle of the streets?
He then remembered the first order from a book he had read a week ago, conveniently titled "10 Rules For Life: How To Stop Being A Loser". The crucial advice, the first rule given, was to "Make a schedule! Make to-do lists!", the author then went on rambling about the daily routine of ancient philosophers, life juice retention, and the destruction of civilization by left-wing radicals. It was quite confusing, but the main advice was clear enough. As he wanted to stop being a loser, Borislav obliged and opened his text editor. Titling the document; "TASKS TO DO", not aware of the tautology, our protagonist intended on turning his life around by writing everything he needed to do. He typed the list as follows:
"1. FILL HOUSING FORM (find out my race)
2. GET WATER
3. GET MORE FOOD
4. SLEEP
5. FIND A JOB"
Of course, the list would be extended in due time, but those were his primary objectives for now.
To cross out the first point, he did as he had always done for everything else he ever needed help with in his life, he sought it by searching it on the internet. This time he typed "How to find out your race" on his search engine. He came to notice that the page in front of him only showed a big pixel velociraptor, with the message "No intranet connection". He felt stupid, but clicking on the network icon from his taskbar, found an extremely good internet router named "Blobbys_Wifi_666". It was completely open; no password, no whitelist system, nothing. He didn't think much about the morality of it, and decided that it was only fair to take advantage of the network in the mean time... B-Man stole his salami after all.
As the page reloaded, images of all sorts of people then popped up and numerous websites appeared. Clicking on one link, he fell upon a DNA testing service. He was originally interested until he found out the astronomical price of the kit, which also would take about a week too late to arrive...Thus he wandered off to other websites, stumbling at one point on "Realzscience.ws".
The website was a niche library "made to propagate true science", or so it claimed. Borislav scrolled to the "Index" section and learned about the concept of phenotypes. Each page dedicated to one phenotype was set this way; the name of the phenotype such as "Bulbazid" in big bold font, followed by a description of the ethnicity's history on the left and two pictures of non-existent people supposed to represent the phenotype's average look on the right, one male, one female, with "Realzscience.ws" slapped upon them as a sort of watermark. This science was apparently so exact it had to prevent people from stealing the website's content.
Having been a superhero, Borislav had come to receive extensive knowledge on the living world; fighting evil robots, anthropomorphic trees and all sorts of zombies. Yet none of these supernatural occurrences came close to the phenotype folklore that was unravelling in front of his skeptic eyes in terms of fascinatativeness. He wondered where the people on this site got such knowledge, was it what they learned at university? He had never before heard that Bulbazians descended from Giants that used mountains as dining tables, or that the pyramids of Karfo had in fact been built by extra-terrestrial beings. In any case, he didn't completely lose himself in this totally legit encyclopedia, he actively put his brain to work to find out what his phenotype was. He was still as undecided as he was before siting in the train, despite having absorbed so much new knowledge. From his face, he could have been anything from Bulbazid-Kanakid, to Bulbazid-Astrakid or even Bulbazid-Sorkid. It was a complete mess, and at times like this he wished he had something left of his father, a picture or just a name at least...
Borislav began to realize that perhaps he didn't absorb enough knowledge yet to deduce his phenotype, after all who could in only 20 minutes? He figured out he'd ask the opinion of experts in the field, those who frequented the Realzscience.ws forum. The threads were organized in several categories, with one of them being "Guess The Phenotype". It was exactly what Borislav was looking for...now he only had to find a picture of himself. Apart from his passport's tiny portrait, he had none. Well, none where he wasn't dressed up in a tight costume holding a box of cereals or with other superheroes and fans. Truth be told, he hated the camera, but like with everything else his mask made him forget that, it wasn't him that was being pictured; it was Mandragon.
Borislav thus opened the "Camera" application on his computer, displaying a low-resolution stream of himself on the screen. He tried a bunch of different poses, all looking equally stupid before settling for a formal pose, also known as "AI pose". He looked straight into the camera with his piercing eyes, standing perfectly in the middle of the picture with the most static face imaginable. Then he put his hand on the touchpad and clicked. He now had one picture of himself on the screen, that he spent staring at for way too long. He found the picture atrocious, he couldn't tell why, he just did. He tried taking others, same pose, same face. In the end he saw them all as worse than the other, and didn't want to send it anywhere but in the recycle bin. However, he glanced at the form laying on his desk, and it reminded him that it was never a question of choice but of need. He *needed* to send this picture on this expert forum, he had no other options. Who knows what would happen if he unintentionally falsified a government document by putting the wrong race? Unlike his name, HeroKorp hadn't changed his face. He'd get sent to Janisburian jail for sure, which could be better than the torture cell he was stuck in, but it could also be worse, hence he didn't want to try his luck.
As he went back on the thread tab and typed up; "Can you guess this guy's phenotype?" as title, his heart started pounding. In addition to being thirsty as a cactus, he was emotionally uneasy. He had to close his eyes, when pressing the "send" box after adding his picture to the post, opening them only after it was already done. Without looking at the thread he simply closed the browser. Nobody was gonna answer right away, Borislav figured.
He paused for a few seconds and admired the absurdity of the situation. He wondered if, other people, normal people, had to ask themselves such questions? Everyone grew in some form of community and identified with at least something, but he lived so isolated from the world that he never had a clue about the most elementary things in society. He never rode a bike, he had not learned how to tie up his shoelaces until he was 14, never cooked on his own, had little education. He wasn't...right. He knew that, that's why he posted he said "this guy" instead of "my". If he asked anyone what his own ethnicity was he'd get at best Fabius' reaction; laughter, and at worse, be called an idiot using myriads of possible synonyms. These thoughts were haunting and demotivating, he tried to wave them away by resolving his most immediate needs; by going to the store to complete point 2 & 3 of his to-do list.
He checked that his wallet was in his blue pants' pockets, and softly pulling aside his grey sweatshirt's sleeve's end, he checked the time on his cheap plastic watch. It was already 2 in the afternoon. Borislav was to distract himself something from he hated, that is living with having shown himself to strangers on the internet, by going out and showing himself to strangers in real life. It was just a walk to the store anyways though, there's no way it could possibly go bad, right?
He was about to find out as he grabbed the set of keys Fabius left on the kitchen counter, and headed out into the doorway. He closed the door once his shoes landed on the red carpet, and just as he locked it, a strange sound travelled to his ears. That of a crying beast. It wasn't just any beast either, it was the worst beast imaginable; a dog. Borislav located the sound as emanating from the middle door, that which led to the bathroom...