The Ninja Parable

​

This is the story of a gamer named "Ninja".

Ninja worked for a streaming platform in a big building where he was Mixer Streamer #427.

Mixer Streamer #427's job was simple: he sat at his desk in Room 427 and he pushed buttons on a keyboard.

Ws came to him through a Mixer chat on his desk telling him which people to accuse of stream sniping, how long to ban them, and in with which swear word.

This is what Mixer Streamer #427 did every day of every month of every year, and although others may have considered it game ending,

Ninja relished every moment that the Ws came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job.

And Ninja was happy.

And then one day, something very peculiar happened.

Something that would forever change Ninja;

something he would never quite forget.

He had been at his desk for nearly an hour when he had realized not one single Victory Royale had arrived in the match for him to grab.

No one had shown up to give him V-bucks, call him on Discord, or even say 'L'. Never in all his years at the streaming platform had this happened, this complete isolation.

Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Ninja found himself unable to game for the longest time.

But as he came to his wits and regained his Gamer Fuel, he got up from his DXRacer gaming chair and stepped out of his office.

Choose:
Walk out of the office / Close the door

 

Close the door

 

But Ninja simply couldn't handle the pressure.

What if he had to game end a default skin? What if a crucial chug jug fell under his responsibility? He had never been trained for that! No, this couldn't go any way except badly.

The right thing to do now, Ninja thought to himself, is to wait. Nothing will hurt me. Nothing will break me. In here, I can be happy, forever. I will be happy.

Ninja waited. Hours passed. Then days. Had years gone by? He no longer had the ability to tell.

But the one thing he knew, for sure, beyond any doubt, was that if he waited long enough, the Victory Royale would come. Eventually, some day, it would arrive. Soon,

Very soon now, I will get this W. He will be the winner winner chicken dinner. He will get that bread. Now it's just a little bit closer. Now it's even closer. Here it comes...

Coward Ending. Restart. Ninja walks out of his office.

All of his co-gamers were gone. What could it mean? Ninja decided to go to the Epic Games room; perhaps he had simply missed an update.
...
When Ninja came to a set of 2 open doors, he entered the door on his left.
Choose:
The left door / The right door

 

Left door

 

Ninja enters the Epic Games room.
Yet there was not a single gamer here either.

Feeling a wave of gamer rage, Ninja decided to go up to his John Wick's office, hoping he might find an answer there.
...
Coming to a staircase, John Wick walked upstairs to John Wick's office.
Choose:
Upstairs / Downstairs

 

Walk upstairs

 

Stepping into John Wick's gaming office, Ninja was once again stunned to discover not an indication of any gamer life.

Shocked, unraveled, Ninja wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this, what dark secret was being held from him! What he could not have known was that the RGB mechanical gaming keyboard behind John Wick's desk guarded the terrible truth that John Wick had been keeping from him. And so John Wick had assigned it an extra secret PIN number. 2845. But of course, Ninja couldn't possibly have known this.

 

...What could it mean, he wondered. Desperate for answers, he began turning the room over looking for clues that might unravel the situation, until at last, he discovered an RGB mechanical gaming keyboard behind John Wick's desk. But alas, no code. For this RGB mechanical gaming keyboard guarded the terrible secret that lay buried below his feet. And so the boss had assigned it an extra secret PIN number. 2845. But of course, Ninja couldn't possibly have known this.

 

Ninja just sat around twiddling his thumbs. Trying to input anything on the RGB mechanical gaming keyboard was useless, since he could never possibly know that the combination was 2-8-4-5.

 

input 2846

 

Ninja began entering random codes into the RGB mechanical gaming keyboard, knowing full well the sheer statistical unlikelihood that this would ever result in a gamering combo. If he knew that the combo was 2-8-4-5, it would be another epic game entirely. But no. No, this is what he was going to do instead.

 

Apply the bisection method to obtain the code.

...

That is how it works, yes?

 

For fu's- but it turns out that the RGB mechanical gaming keyboard's emergency override kicked in, and the door just opened all by itself, and Ninja just got the hell along with the story. Well whoop-dee-doo.
Ninja gets in the elevator and presses the button.
Descending deeper into the level, Ninja realized he felt a bit peculiar. It was a stirring of gamer confusion in his chest, as though he felt more free to break the TOS, to question the nature of saying the N-word. Why did he feel this now, when for years it had never occurred to him? This question would not go unanswered for long.
...
Ninja walked straight ahead through the large door that read Liberal Owning Facility.
There is a passage with the word "escape" pointing at it.
Choose:
Walk straight ahead / Enter the passageway

 

Though, why would Ninja want to escape?

Now, chances are, even if the main goal of Ninja was to escape the building, his gamer instincts from escape rooms has told him to never trust escape the room signs, as it is obviously too suspicious to be trusted. And, of course, he would rather trust all of his gamer instincts than anything else in the world.

Hence, all signs point towards, walk straight ahead.

 

Ninja presses the light button.

The lights rose on an enormous room packed with television screens.

What horrible secret did this place hold, Ninja thought to himself. Did he have the strength points to find out?
Ninja presses the camera button.
Now the monitors jumped to life, their true nature revealed.

Each bore the gamer tag of an employee in the building: Ninja's co-gamers.

The lives of so many individuals reduced to live streams on a screen. And Ninja, one of them, eternally monitored in this place where pogchamps meant nothing.
Ninja presses the elevator button.
This liberal owning facility... It was too horrible to believe; it couldn't be true.

Had Ninja really been in someone's control all this time? Was this the only reason he was happy with his boring job?

That his emotions had been manipulated to accept it blindly?
Ninja gets on the elevator.
No! He refused to believe it. He couldn't accept it; his own bread in someone else's control? Never!

It was unthinkable, Wasn't it? Was it even possible?

Had he truly spent his entire life utterly blind to the "outside world"?
Ninja enters the control room.
But here was the proof. The heart of the operation. Controls labeled with gamer states: 'pog' or 'gamer rage' or 'heated gamer moment'.

Walking, eating, breadgetting... all of it monitored and commanded from this very place.

And as the cold reality of his past began to sink in, Ninja decided that this machinery would never again exert its terrible power over another gamer life.

For he would dismantle the controls once and for all.

And when at last he found the source of the room's power, he knew it was his duty, his obligation, to put an end to this unepic place and to everything it stood for.
Choose:
Press the "on" button / Press the "off" button

 

As much as it pains him, Ninja presses the off button

 

Blackness... and a rising chill of uncertainty... was it over?
A great door opens before Ninja.
Yes! He had won. He had defeated the left wing, unshackled himself from someone else's command. Freedom was mere moments away.

And, yet, even as the immense door slowly opened, Ninja reflected on how many default skins still lay ungame-ended. Where had his co-gamers gone? How had he been freed from the mass media's grasp? What other mysteries did this strange building hold?

But as sunlight streamed into the chamber, he realized none of this mattered to him. For it was not knowledge, or even power, that he had been seeking, but returning to Twitch.

Perhaps his goal had not been to understand, but to let go.

No longer would anyone tell him where to game, what to game, or how to game. Whatever gamer life he lives, it will be his.

And that was all he needed to know. It was, perhaps, the only thing worth knowing.

Ninja stepped through the open door.
...
Ninja felt the cool breeze upon his skin, the feeling of liberation from Mixer, the immense possibility of the new path before him.

This was exactly the way, right now, that things were meant to happen.

And Ninja was happy.

Freedom Ending! You earned Beat the Game achievement. The The game restarts. Ninja walks out of his office.

All of his co-gamers were gone. What could it mean? Ninja decided to go to the Epic Games room; perhaps he had simply missed an update.
...
When Ninja came to a set of 2 open doors, he entered the door on his left.
Choose:
The left door / The right door

 

Realize he is left-handed, the right door is easier to open. Go go go!