Allen Iverson was seventy-three years old(73 years old).
Seventy-three years of waking up alone in a house too big and too quiet for one person. His wife had passed years ago.
His kids had their own lives now, their own kids, their own problems, and somewhere along the way visiting Papa(Father) Allen became something they meant to do instead of something they actually did.
A call on his birthday. A text on holidays. That was about it these days.
He was used to it. Or he told himself he should.
That night he'd fallen asleep on the floor of his living room, too tired to make it to the bedroom, the TV still playing something he wasn't even watching.
And then he fell asleep.
Then his eyes opened.
He didn't move right away. He just stared up, and the first thing that hit him wasn't panic, it was confusion. His body felt wrong. Lighter.
He wasn't sure exactly how old he was in this body, but he knew one thing for certain, he was young. Younger than he had any right to be after seventy-three years of living.
No more crackers from his back.
He closed his eyes.
Maybe he was seeing things wrong. Maybe his old eyes were finally giving out on him for real this time.
He blinked.
He opened them again.
Nothing changed.
Still full of fresh feeling.
He was lying on the floor, no couch under him, just hard ground, surrounded by grass.
He pressed his palm flat against it, felt the grit of dirt under his fingers, felt how real and cold it was.
"Not a dream," he said quietly.
He pushed himself up, slow at first out of old habit, bracing for pain that never came.
When he was on his feet he brushed the dirt off his palms, rubbing them together, and with every second that passed he became more sure of it. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't his mind playing tricks or 'cuz or drug.
That was when the light showed up.
A box, bright and glowing, hanging in the air in front of him like a screen. About the size of a full sheet of paper, maybe a little wider. It hadn't been there a second ago. No sound, no warning, it was just suddenly there, floating.
Allen froze.
He raised his hand slowly and waved it around the edges of the box, above it, below it, checking if it was hanging from something, a wire, a string, anything.
There was nothing.
He already knew there wouldn't be. The thing hadn't lowered down from the ceiling or risen up from the floor. It just appeared, all at once, like it had been teleported straight into the space in front of him.
And he was right. It was floating there on its own, no support, no source for the light coming off it that he could find.
"What in the hell is this," he muttered, squinting at it like that would make it make more sense.
He had no idea what he was looking at.
Author: My cousin's grandfather is like him. He isn't aware of Gen Z things.
Some kind of gadget maybe. A hologram, like in those kingkoy(anime) his grandkids used to watch before they stopped visiting. He didn't know the word for it, didn't know it was called anything at all.
He just knew one thing.
Old men shouldn't be seeing things like this.
"I shouldn't tell them about this...", he said. "Yea, they might send me to mental."
He kept staring at the glowing box, and just as he was about to reach out and touch it, words started forming on the screen, clean white letters against the light.
[Generous Guide System has been activated.]
[Host: Allen Iverson]
[Hello, Host. You may call me GGS.]
Allen took a step back.
"It talks," he said out loud, to no one, because there was no one else in the room. "The damn screen talks."
[I do not talk, Host. I display text. You are reading, not hearing.]
"Same difference," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "So what are you exactly? Some kind of, I don't know, gadget? Ghost? Am I dead?"
[You are not dead. I am a system.]
That word again. System. He'd heard his grandson say it once, years ago, something about a game he was playing, and Allen had nodded along without understanding a single bit of it.
Now here he was, an old man standing in a young body, being told by a floating piece of light that he had one of his own.
"Alright," he said slowly, "and what's a system supposed to do for me?"
[Every week, Host will receive an infinite supply of one item.]
[This week's item: Spaghetti Pack (Infinite)]
He blinked at that. "Spaghetti."
[Hint: similar to instant noodles. Boil, drain water, mix in sauce packet.]
"I know what spaghetti pack is," he snapped, though honestly he wasn't sure if he did or didn't a second ago.
It sounded like the cheap noodle packs his grandkids used to eat when they were younger, the kind you just boiled real quick and dumped the flavor packet into.
'AHHHHHHH spaghetti! I just remember it now...'
"Where is it," he asked, looking around the empty room. "Where's this spaghetti supposed to be?"
[Think the word "Inventory," Host.]
He felt stupid doing it, but he thought the word anyway.
Inventory.
The screen changed. A new layout appeared, boxes lined up in neat rows, most of them empty and gray, except for one glowing box with a little picture of a spaghetti pack on it. Above the rows there was a small icon shaped like a magnifying glass.
"What's that for," he asked, pointing at it even though he knew the thing probably couldn't see him point.
[Search function. Type an item's name to locate it. Once an item has been discovered, Host may simply select its name or image directly without searching.]
He reached out and, out of pure curiosity, tapped the glowing spaghetti pack box.
A single pack appeared in his hand, dry, sealed, ordinary looking, like something off a grocery store shelf.
"Huh," he said, turning it over in his hand.
[Tapping produces a small amount. Holding down produces a continuous amount.]
He tested it, pressed his finger against the box and held it there. Pack after pack started falling out of thin air right in front of him, hitting the floor one after another until he yanked his hand back in a panic.
"Okay, okay, stop, stop," he said, staring at the small pile now scattered across the ground. "Jesus Christ."
[One more function, Host.]
[When an item is given that seem or represents the generosity, Host will randomly receive something in return. ]
Allen looked down at the pile of noodle packs, then back at the screen, then at his own young hands again.
"Alright," he said, mostly to himself. "So let me get this straight. I'm dead, or not dead, I'm a damn teenager again apparently, and some floating light box wants to give me an endless supply of instant noodles a week."
[Correct, Host.]
He sat back down on the floor, right next to his little pile of spaghetti packs, and let out a long, tired breath, the kind only a man who had lived seventy-three years.
"This is either the best thing that's ever happened to me," he said, "or I finally lost my damn mind."