The day of the abduction started normally.

  Jon woke, rising well before dawn. His morning routine, his day, and even his life were a well-oiled machine. He had honed them to pass as quickly and painlessly as possible. He set out his clothes the night before, placed the coffee maker on its timer, had breakfast and lunch ready in the fridge, and parked the car outside to avoid opening the garage. Everything was in its place, each task completed in its appointed time. When he left for work, Tess and the kids were still asleep.

  Work was fine. Jon was pleasantly, blessedly bored for much of the day. A welcome difference since his career change. He finished out his day, then left to get the kids from daycare.

  As Jon saw them, color returned to his day, washing away the gray of the work hours. The evening proceeded as usual: play with the kids, make dinner, let out the dogs, eat dinner, bathe the kids, then finish the bed-time routine.

  After they were tucked in, Jon grabbed his running clothes and made his way downstairs. Tess had finished washing dishes and was getting ready to start her shows while folding laundry in the living room. A high-pitched voice rang out from the baby monitor at Tess’s side: "I POOPED. I POO-OO-OO-PED."

  Jon sighed. Tommy was halfway to four. He was potty trained, but still in a diaper at night. Tess had already started to get up from the couch, but Jon waved her off with a smile.

  “I got it,” he said.

  Tess gave him a grateful look and began her show. Jon went back upstairs, moving carefully to avoid waking Hally, their daughter. That would risk a chain reaction. It was like the dogs, if one child woke the other the whole family would be up all night.

  Jon tossed the soiled pull-up and returned to soothe his son back to sleep. They sang some nursery rhymes, then Tommy requested a monster check. Jon looked under the bed and in the closet, ensuring there were no spiders or other monsters. He sat for a few minutes stroking his son’s hair while he fell back asleep. Tommy had his mother’s blonde hair and complexion, which had been a surprise for Jon when he was born. Jon had assumed he would have black hair. Tommy had Jon’s eyes though, as well as his stubborn streak. It made each day a battle, but Jon wouldn’t have traded away a single one.

  Finally departing for his run, Jon took in the late-spring air. It was pleasantly warm, the road escorted on either side by old-growth trees, and the smell of barbecue and fresh-cut grass hitting him with each step. He would run to the gym and get in a quick lift, then run home and still have time for a shower and a show or two with his wife before bed.

  Jon was content. He had healthy kids, a happy wife, a good marriage, and a good job. Life was good.

  Which made what was to come so much worse.

  As Jon began to close in on the gym, his vision cut like someone had flipped a switch. Before his foot could finish his next step, he felt a stuttering sensation. Everything went black, followed by a flickering light, and then innumerable pop-up ads crowded into his vision.

  The pop-ups looked like system-administrative windows from the 1990s. A dozen of them flicked through his mind in seconds. They were all in different languages, none of which he recognized. After a few moments, one in Spanish appeared stating:

  “?Hola! ?Quiere mas informacion? ?Haga clic o diga sí para obtener más información!”

  Jon knew some broken Spanish from high-school, and it was almost like the pop-ups recognized his comprehension. The messages transitioned to Spanish. When he failed to respond, they began rotating swiftly through other romance languages. Then one popped up in what he thought was German, and finally English.

  “Hello! Would you like to know more? Click or say YES to find out more!”

  “Hello! Would you like to know more? Click or say YES to find out more!”

  “Hello! Would you like to know more? Click or say YES to find out more!”

  Each message brought a vertiginous sensation with it, and the pace remained rapid, with many crowding into his vision each second. All of the messages stated the same thing. Jon felt nauseous and faint, as though he had been standing for a week with his knees locked. A new popup with blaring red letters came next:

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “WARNING! FAILURE TO REQUEST MORE INFORMATION AT THIS TIME MAY RESULT IN PERMANENT LOSS OF THIS OPPORTUNITY! YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RETURN TO YOUR FORMER LIFE WITHOUT THIS CRITICAL INFORMATION!”

  With this message came a searing headache. Jon blurted out,

  “Yes, I would like to know more!”

  All the messages ceased, and for a few minutes Jon remained in the dark. It was as though he was in a sensory deprivation tank. Then with a horn blaring and a sparkling confetti effect, a blue message with white font floated into his vision.

  “Congratulations, you have been selected for a unique opportunity! Gain knowledge, strength, and power beyond anything you ever dreamed! Immortality can be yours! Select here or state your intent to progress to be brought to the class selection suite!”

  After a few seconds he felt the headache returning. He saw another warning alert begin to flicker and form before coalescing into a longer message:

  “WARNING! FAILURE TO PROGRESS AT THIS TIME WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT LOSS OF THIS OPPORTUNITY! YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RETURN TO YOUR FORMER LIFE WITHOUT PROGRESSING!”

  “OK! I would like to progress!” Jon called out.

  The room appeared. There was no transition, no fading sense of his prior reality. One moment he was in the void, and the next moment it was as though Jon had been sitting in this room for hours. If it weren’t for his thumping heart and the cold sweat drying on his arms and forehead, he might not have believed he had been running seconds before.

  Jon was sitting at a plain wooden desk in a black office chair. There was neutral lighting with an indeterminate source. There were no obvious fixtures or lights in the room, the light was just there.

  A metal door in the corner was marked in bright red letters:

  “Employees Only”

  There was no other visible entrance or exit to the room. The walls were tan, though it was difficult to tell. They were absolutely covered in posters. The smell in the room was a mix of plastic from the posters, chemical coatings and musty old paper. It reminded Jon of the scholastic book fairs of his childhood, typically hosted in the school library.

  After a few moments taking in his surroundings, Jon took a breath and gathered his courage:

  “Hello?” he called out.

  There was no answer.

  Jon got up from his seat and took the few steps required to try the door. His hands were trembling as he reached out tentatively to the handle. As he made contact, he felt a painful jolt run up his arm, locking the muscles in place. His arm fell limply at his side a moment later as a two-tone beep rang out. The beep was followed by a feminine customer-service voice announcing:

  “Authorized personnel only. You are not authorized. Please wait, a member of our team will be with you shortly. Your comfort is very important to us; please feel free to use the catalog while you wait for your assigned representative.”

  As the voice finished its brief message, hold music began playing. It sounded vaguely tropical, the music you would expect to hear in a beachfront store or a resort lobby. Jon’s arm began functioning again after a few seconds. He called out a few more times, but there was no answer.

  It felt like he was losing his mind. Jon couldn’t wrap his head around how he had gotten here, or where ‘here’ even was. He wondered if he was hallucinating, or if he had suffered some sort of psychotic break, but it seemed unlikely: his thoughts were linear and organized as ever, the pain from touching the doorway had felt very real, and the environment had visual, auditory and tactile components to it. If it was a hallucination, it didn’t seem consistent with anything he had encountered in years of medical practice, though admittedly psychiatry was not his field.

  Jon grabbed the chair, carrying it over to see if he could open the door without touching the handle again. As the chair hit the handle, the painful jolt came again. This time it seemed to hit everything from the neck down, and Jon dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  He couldn’t tell if the music had stopped, or his hearing had cut out, but it was completely silent. Jon lay on the ground, twitching and trying to breath, but he couldn’t control his diaphragm. The metallic taste of blood came from a spot where he had bit his right cheek, and his right arm throbbed from where his head had struck it as he fell. Even his eyes remained locked in place. As the burning need for air grew ever stronger he wondered if the dust bunny in front of him would be the last sight he ever saw. The voice came again:

  “Authorized personnel only. You are not authorized. Please wait, a member of our team will be with you shortly. Further attempts to access unauthorized areas will result in punitive action. Your comfort is very important to us; please feel free to use the catalog while you wait for your assigned representative.”

  After a few more seconds of terror, Jon was able to pull in a ragged breath, only to cough out a mouthful of blood. A minute later, he made his way back to his feet, shaking slightly. The bleeding in his mouth had already slowed, though his cheek was sore. He realized he had been lucky to escape any significant injury from the unguarded fall. The hold music had started up again sometime while he was recovering on the floor. He stood there a while, just staring at the door numbly.

  The door was locked. He was clearly being monitored. The whole situation was batshit crazy, but he had to assume what he felt and saw was real, with real consequences. Jon didn’t know where he was, but one thing was absolutely clear.

  Wherever this was, Jon was a prisoner.