1 Restart

I can already feel the headache coming.

My name is Joe Peter's on, I just had my 33rd birthday last week and I have been working here for the last 12 years. I work for a company that produces mainly mobile games, you know the ones, the annoying ones that pop up ads all over the place to get you to pay money to remove them. I specialise in making the idle type of games.

My boss has been on my back ever since my birthday, I have been trying to make the games more fun and interesting, instead of just spitting ads all the time and annoying users. My boss doesn't like that, he thinks I should stop wasting time and just shove more ads in, then get onto another game.

Looking up I can see my boss talking with another employee, but he's glancing over to me every couple of seconds. I know he is going to come over here complain to me again when he is done.

I can already feel the headache coming.

I looked at my watch, it's one of those older style watches that you have to wind up. People always ask me why I even had it, since most people just use their phone, but it was my dads, it helps me remember him and helps keep me sane. It's the little things that can make a difference you know? Looking at the watch I can see it's almost lunchtime.

I glanced up at my boss again and saw he was pretty distracted talking with the employee still. I decided to skeak out to lunch, I figure the worst is he will yell at me for leaving early, but he was going to yell at me anyway so what difference does it make? I keep low and move quickly towards the elevator.

"You're going to be in trouble you know"

I quickly spins toward the person who spoke, it was my co-worker Rachel.

"I know, it doesn't matter anyway, I am always in trouble for something" I waved at her.

She just looked at me as if she had heard that too many times already, "You will be fired one day if you keep this up. "

I shake my head, "Nah, I make him too much money, there is no way he will fire me so long as I keep making games for him."

I wave at Rachel again and then continue to the elevator. I press the button and wait, I glance back to where my boss is and I can see him looking right at me. As he was just standing there I hear the elevator ding so I jump in. As the door closes I can see my boss looking pretty angry at me, oh well, I will deal with that later.

Finally getting outside I take a deep breath, and then immediately regret it. The air here is not great, I grew up in the country, my parents owned a farm but I didn't want to work there. I have always been a gamer, that's why I joined this company, to make games, just the company has been getting worse.

I look at my watch again, I have about an hour and a half before I need to be back. I decided to go down to a new diner that opened up recently, it's about a 20 minute walk from my work but that's fine, it gives me an excuse not to go back quickly.

The walk helps wake me up a bit, it feels good to stretch my legs a bit after sitting down for a couple of hours. Before I knew it I could see the new diner in the distance, a big neon sign saying Betty's Diner. It had been themed as a 50s style diner so it's a bit of an attraction these days.

Looking in the window I can see the place looks pretty busy, but there are a couple of tables free. I go inside and I swear it was almost like I was teleported through time, the theme and music was well picked, I thought it was great. I took a seat over in the corner and very quickly I heard a woman say "Hi hon, welcome to Betty's, you want a coffee or something else to drink?"

As I turned to her I saw a young girl, probably not much older then 18, she had a name tag that said Susan on it and she was handing me a menu. "Sure" I replied, "I will take a coffee, white and two sugars."

She nodded to me and said "Sure thing hon, won't be too long. " and she turned and walked towards the counter. While I was waiting I looked through the menu, there wasn't really much exciting as it was pretty much what you would expect to eat at a diner.

I put the menu down and looked outside, I don't know why I looked, just I felt like I had to. Outside I saw a group of 5 people standing there looking at at the diner. That's not so strange but what was strange is that they were all wearing the same thing, brown robes with deep cowls, so deep you can't see their faces. I thought I was going crazy, because it kind of felt like they were staring at me.

I was starting to feel really uncomfortable and I was thinking about getting the hell out of here, but just as I was about to get up and leave I heard a loud clank noise. I just about jumped out of my skin at that point as I whipped around to see Susan had just put a cup of coffee on the table in front of me.

"Did I scare you hon? Here's your coffee, have you thought about what you wanted to eat?"

I turned back around and looked outside again, the people where gone. I turned back to Susan and said, "Um yeah, sure... I guess I will just have the hamburger, medium rare. Oh and some fries"

Susan wrote down my order then looked at me, "You alright hon? You are as pale as a sheet right now."

I nodded, "Yeah, I'm... fine."

She looked at me as if she didn't believe me, "Well if you say so, I'll just go get your order, won't be too long."

I smiled at her then turn back to look out the window again, I couldn't see any trace of the people.

They had some newspapers on each table here so I decided to read that while waiting for my food. It was a newspaper dated back in 1953, they really went all out for this place.

It took me a while to notice, since I was reading the paper, but the entire diner was dead quiet. Once I did notice the abnormal atmosphere I looked up. Those 5 people were back, there were standing in the diner and looking right at me.

I looked around and there was no one else here, it was like everyone just vanished. I wanted to leave, to get out of there, but they were standing in the way.

"Joe, it is time." I heard a disembodied voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

My heart felt like it was going to rip through my chest it was beating so fast.

"Time for what?" I asked, "who are you?"

"Come Joe, it is time." that same disembodied voice said again.

I stood up, "What are you talking about? I am not going anywhere!"

The person standing in the front lifted his hand, it looked very pale and almost skeletal, almost like skin had been stretched over a skeleton. They pointed at me and I suddenly couldn't move, I even slowly lifted off the ground.

I struggled to get free, but I couldn't really move a muscle. "What did you do to me?" I shouted, "Let me go!" At least I could still talk.

"Come Joe, we have a long journey ahead." I slowly floated over to the person who was pointing at me, I figure it was them that spoke.

I looked at the person and asked, "What do you mean a long journey? Where are you taking me?"

They didn't answer me, no matter what I said they no longer said anything anymore. They all moved toward what can only be described as a portal while I followed behind, floating and immobile.

We were, moving, for lack of a better term, through some kind of space. It was completely black here, not dark, just black, void of any kind of scenery. We didn't stop, we were always moving. For some reason I never got hungry or tired here. I had no idea how long we were travelling for.

Suddenly they stopped, "You have arrived at your destination Joe, we have reset your body age to 15, good luck."

A portal opened up in front of us and I started rapidly floating towards it, then everything went blank.

I slowly opened my eye, the bright light hurt as my eyes adjusted. After a few minutes I was able to see properly, I was in the middle of a forest.

I had no idea where I was, looking around a little I didn't recognise anything. I remembered what the voice said and I looked down, my body seemed younger and more toned, it felt like I was in the best shape of my life.

Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, I whipped around to see a bunny jump out of the bush, only this bunny had spikes coming out of its body in places and it was red, it jumped at me and tried to bite me. I panicked and ran away, I was crashing through the forest making a lot of noise. I didn't see the cliff in front of me until it was too late, I went running straight over the edge.

I don't remember the fall, what I do remember is the pain I felt as I was lying at the base of the cliff. Amazingly I didn't cause major damage to myself, nothing felt broken so all I got out of it was some scrapes and bruises, and a massive headache. I managed to cushion my head on a rock when I fell.

I looked back up the cliff, it was about 30 feet up, I was surprised that I didn't break something in that fall. As I sat down to try to recuperate my thoughts were about that rabbit. What was that thing? My mind immediately went to my favourite book genre, isekai. Did I really just get sent to another world? I mean it has to be right?

I started getting really excited, so much so that I even forgot about the pain and the fact I just ran away from a bunny. In those stories the protagonist usually always got some awesome cheat skill, so maybe I got one too!

I began using the various terms that were used in the stories, like "status," "inventory," and "system," but nothing happened. I spent abiut hour trying anything I could to maybe display some kind of screen, but nothing.

I said to myself, "Maybe I don't have anything like a system, maybe I have super powerful spells or something." then I spent the next hour trying various magic words from books, still nothing.

"Oh well," I said to myself, "At least I get to restart in a new world, maybe my powers will come in later."

And with that I set out to try to find a town or something, I looked down at my watch and noticed that it was damaged, "Damn, must have happened during the fall," I muttered to myself. "well, I hope I can get it fixed somewhere, and I hope I can find a town soon."