Wherein we all die, every week


I'm not feeling our last Choose Your Own Adventure outing, I don't know why. Maybe after the glory of a stuffed bunny zombie apocalypse and a cool super-hero outing, I just need a break. So that's what we're going to do!

I've long wanted to do something writing-related here, and now we will. I'll write up the start of an adventure. You write what happens next. I'll pick the one I like best, and next week we'll repeat -- I'll post my beginning, the next installment, and we'll go again.

We've done something sort of similar before, but it petered out. My theory is that it was partly because of a voting component, so now I'm going all Kim Jong-il and just running the show. Ha!

So here goes (taken from College Humor, but we'll end up in a place totally different, I'm sure):

It’s another boring day at your stupid office. You spent most of the morning catching up on all the Internet you missed while sleeping and now you’re behind. Your stomach is growling because the banana you bought had a weird brown lump on it. You know you should get back to work, but you also know that you’re hungry and don’t care about your job at all.
What do you do?

  • SEARCH FOR FOOD in the drawer that you haven’t used since you started here 2 years ago.
  • CHECK EMAIL to see if your boss sent any super-long emails you can read to pass the time.

Your job now is to write up the results of both of those actions in the comments below, one of which results in our death and the other which continues the adventure and presents us with two choices for going on. For instance, the College Humor folks have this as the result of "Search for food", which would be the "continue" installment:

You open the mysterious drawer and are greeted with a cornucopia of disappointment!
What do you eat?

  • A BUNCH OF THUMBTACKS that definitely aren’t food and shouldn’t be treated as such.
  • ADDERALL PILLS that you bought off a high school kid who said his name was “Wolfgod.”

And this might be the deadly result of the other choice:

You pop open Outlook and sure enough, Dear Leader has sent out a company-wide message. "FORWARD THIS OR RISK DEATH!" it's headlined, and recounts a storied history of people who sent it along to their friends and families to find prosperity, and those who didn't who are now dead. Hogwash! Wasting time is great, but chain letters are a tool of Satan. You sneeringly hit "Delete", upon which a short circuit in the keyboard fries your white-collared head to a cinder. Your office adventure is over."

Next week I'll go through all the comments and pick two -- one I like best that continues the adventure and one that results in our untimely death. You can go for humorous, serious, or nonsensical. You can introduce vampires or super heroes or aliens or your mom. Knock yourself out, but keep them clean (PG-13 at most).

To recap, your job now is to write up the results of both choices in the opening paragraph above, one of which ends in death and the other of which continues the adventure by offering up two more choices.

Have fun!