Intent: The Truth

"What the hell?!" Ella exclaims as we walk toward the mysterious object in the forest.

"You can say that again," I respond, completely baffled.

We have no idea what it is but for some reason, we can't stop walking. 

Let's pause for a minute as I am getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

My name is Mark Thompson and I am an average twenty-five-year-old. I work as a creative director for an ad firm who is trying desperately to get into the gaming business. I hope to someday write the greatest game ever. My girlfriend Ella Williams is an actress/model who has done a handful of ads with my firm.

Anyhow, we both love adventuring and our vacations usually involve mountain climbing, bungee jumping, and other thrill-seeking activities.

Well, now that you know who we are, let's get to the meat of the story.

It was a normal Friday night when Ella started going crazy about an app that she had read about and wanted to try. 

"It's called Randonautica," she said, "It takes you to a place when you think of anything in your mind which is somehow related to what you were thinking about."

"What? Sounds like a bunch of bull," I replied, not paying attention to what she was going on and on about.

"Let's try it, babe?" she started tugging on my arm trying to get me to pause the game I had been playing for almost an hour now.

After a few minutes of her trying to pry my eyes away from my monitor screen, I finally gave up.

"Fine!" I told her, "Just once, and if it's rubbish, you'll never bring it up again."

She smiled at me and gently kissed my cheek, "Deal!"

I turned off my computer and joined Ella on our couch. She spent the next few minutes downloading and setting up the fairly straightforward app.

As soon as we were almost ready to start, we got a splash screen with a few 'Pro Tips'. It all seemed like basic stuff -- respect other people's privacy, don't go into dangerous areas etc. But for some reason, two of the pointers stuck with me:

- Randonaut with a positive mindset!

- Randonauting is best done as a daytime activity.

I mean sure, it's just the developer's way of being cheeky and trying to keep people away from danger. But for some reason, I felt like we were using an Ouija board. You know, how there are rules that shouldn't be broken unless you want to let loose a spirit or a demon or something.

Nevertheless, I ignored the feeling I was getting and allowed Ella to set everything up.

"Ready, Mr Thompson?" my girlfriend asked me.

"I guess," I told her and she tapped on the red 'RANDONAUT' button at the bottom of her screen.

There was a popup on her screen asking her to choose a quantum point type. She selected 'ANOMALY' and set our radius to 5000 metres. After clicking 'NEXT', we were prompted to select an RNG, we selected 'ANU' and then the app gave us one final popup informing us to have a clear intent in our minds with two red buttons, 'CANCEL' and 'START'.

"What should we think of?" Ella asked me.

"No clue," I told her, "How about shit?"

"Not funny, Mark," she replied, punching my arm lightly, "Let's think of kittens!"

"As you say, mistress," I replied unenthusiastically.

She waited for a second to see if I had followed her orders and after giving me a death glare and clicked on the 'START' button.