He remembered the word from the blue screen. All Chat. Free, available anywhere, usable by anyone.
Out of pure boredom, and because sitting on a log in a jungle with nothing else to do was starting to eat at his nerves, he thought the words.
All Chat.
The blue screen flickered and a new window opened up, text already scrolling before he even got a chance to read the first line.
Player4471: anyone else spawn near water or just me
xX_Reaper_Xx: LMAOOO bro said spawn like this a game
Player4471: IT KINDA IS THO
Hotdog: hotdog
Marisol.99: does anyone know if the healing potions actually work or if that's just a scam from the shop npc
xX_Reaper_Xx: bro its not an npc its literally another player 💀
Marisol.99: oh
Vincent123: How the hell does anyone already have potion?
GhostPepper: selling 3 iron daggers, dm friend chat, no lowballing
Vincent123: What the fuck?! Report for alt account!
Allen stared at the screen like it had personally offended him.
"What in the world," he muttered, "is with their names... Who name themselves hotdog???"
He kept reading anyway, morbidly curious now, the same way he used to watch his grandkids scroll through their phones for hours without understanding a single thing they were laughing at.
Player4471: wait can old people even survive here or is it just built diff for the young ones
xX_Reaper_Xx: bro why would you say that out of nowhere
Player4471: i dont know i just woke up as a teenager and it feels weird typing that out loud
Author: "Your name" does anyone get me?
Allen sat up a little straighter at that.
"Huh," he said out loud. "So it's not just me."
Marisol.99: wait so we all died???
xX_Reaper_Xx: dont say it like that its giving anxiety
Hotdog: hotdog
Allen rubbed his face with one hand. "This Hotdog fella needs help."
He hovered his attention over the chat box, the way the blue screen had shown him earlier, some kind of text field waiting for him to use it if he wanted. His thumb, or whatever passed for a thumb in this ghost interface, hesitated.
He wasn't used to typing to strangers. Back home the most he ever did on a phone was answer a call from his daughter, and even that took him three tries most days.
Nokia.
Finally he typed, slow, one word at a time.
AllenPogi: does anyone know where we are exactly
The replies came almost instantly.
xX_Reaper_Xx: bro really just said "does anyone know" like this a customer service line
Marisol.99: Ashveil, region unknown lol, system doesnt tell you more than that unless you got map privilege
GhostPepper: yeah level 2 privilege gives you a radius map, until then ur just walking blind like the rest of us
Hotdog: ha?
Allen read that twice, slower the second time, letting it sink in.
"Walking blind," he repeated to himself. "Great. Love that for me."
Hotdog: hotdog
"I swear to God," Allen said, shaking his head, "if that's the smartest one in this chat, we are all doomed."
Allen closed out of the chat after another minute of Hotdog saying "hotdog" three more times for no reason anyone could explain. Reading strangers argue about spawn points wasn't going to get him anywhere, and sitting on a log feeling sorry for himself wasn't either.
"Water," he muttered, remembering what Player4471 said. "If people spawned near water, maybe I'm not too far from it either."
He picked a direction, mostly guessing, and started walking again. The jungle didn't get any friendlier the deeper he went, roots grabbing at his bare feet, branches slapping at his arms like the whole place was annoyed he was there.
He kept walking, mumbling to himself just to keep some kind of company in the quiet.
Talking to nobody had been most of his conversations back home anyway.
"Seventy-three years and I never once got lost in a jungle," he said, ducking under a low branch. "Come back as a teenager and boom, first thing I do."
The trees started thinning out little by little, sunlight breaking through in wider patches instead of thin cracks. He picked up his pace, hope doing more work than his legs at that point.
Then he heard it. Water. Not much, just a soft steady sound somewhere ahead, moving over rocks.
"Finally," he breathed, and pushed forward faster than his old mind was used to letting his body move.
The trees opened up into a small clearing with a stream cutting through it, clear water running over smooth stones, wide enough to wash in but not deep enough to worry about drowning in. Allen dropped to his knees at the edge of it without a second thought, cupping his hands and splashing water on his face.
Cold. Real. Grounding in a way nothing else had been since he woke up.
Sighhh...
He sat back on his heels and looked at his own reflection rippling on the surface. Young face staring back at him, dark hair messy from the walk, none of the tired lines he'd carried around for decades.
"Still not used to that," he muttered.
He cupped his hands again and drank this time, then sat there for a moment just listening to the water move. No screens. No system messages. Just the stream and the wind moving through leaves somewhere above him.
It was the first quiet moment since he'd woken up that didn't feel like something bad was about to happen.
He almost laughed. "Guess I should be grateful for this."
He glanced down the length of the stream, following it with his eyes. It curved off to the left and disappeared behind a wall of thicker trees, but something caught his attention further down, a shape that didn't belong in a jungle.
Smoke. Thin and gray, rising up slow above the tree line in the distance.
Allen went still.
"Well," he said quietly, pushing himself back up to his feet, water still dripping off his chin. "Guess I'm not as alone out here as I thought."