Why Do I Own Millions Of Souls? (I)

It was supposed to be a light-hearted joke. A gig, a small thing that would make me chuckle every time I remembered it. By all means, it should not have been something that would make me flinch at the memory.

Ah, but it wouldn't do for me not to at least give some context, right?

Very well, then. Oh, and you might wanna listen closely you shmucks. As this is the story for how I, a normal middle-aged guy who worked as the social media handler for a game developing company, became the quite literal owner of a million human souls!

[x]

You see, I'm that person in a company who manages the social accounts, the person who posts images, videos and the likes on social media.

Often enough, when it gets boring, I like to do something vaguely funny. Sometimes, its including a joke here and there in one of the posts, sometimes its leaking information about our developing program to someone else — heck, my boss even encouraged me the first time when he found out — something about keeping the client interested in our product or some shit. Eh, I honestly couldn't remember.

Point is, whenever it got too boring, I liked to do one of these funny gigs — and guess what? I was tasked with writing the whole motherfucking Terms and Conditions of our new program that was scheduled to be released into the public!

It was boring as hell, to say the least.

Now, this task would normally be given to someone more experienced in doing this, someone who's actually paid to write this other than poor me.

But for some god-forsaken reason, the head of the marketing department decided that I would be to do it, since the person who was supposed to do his part is apparently in hospital for "private reasons that we cannot disclose".

So, here I am; a thirty three year old guy working overtime for something that he will probably not get paid for, 2 hours overtime when he should have already finished work.

So, yes, It's boring and I'm exhausted and I want to lie down and sleep for all of eternity and forget that humanity all existed in the first place.

But, I couldn't do that. Not yet, at least. Sleep was calling for me like a long lost lover, and I desperately wanted to fall in its loving embrace, but not yet.

There were but a few lines to be written down, and I could finally then drop dead (read: asleep).

But even then, I knew in my heart that I didn't want this battle between the Google document and my sleep schedule to end peacefully.

The war has ended, and my poor body ached with deep-rooted exhaustion that settled somewhere in my ribcage, but my heart screamed for revenge and salvation.

And so as I was quickly finishing the Terms & Conditions consent form, I flexed my fingers in seriousness and began writing a few extra lines.

It was technically illegal, I thought while writing, and I could probably get sued for violating some poor shmuck's human rights out there, but who the fuck really cared? I know I didn't, that's for sure.

And as my fingers pressed on the letter keys, the computer received input and words started appearing on the screen.

[As per the legal Terms & Conditions presented to you in this agreement—]

My hands seemingly danced on the keyboard, deleting and rewriting a few typos here and there.

[—I now legally own your soul, provided that you legally consent by checking the box below and clicking, 'I agree to the Terms and Conditions as listed above.']

...

..

...

I stared at the screen for some time, giggling like a little girl, then I started chuckling and soon, it bloomed into full blown maniacal laughter.

Someone was bound to notice my little note at the end of the three page consent form, but for some reason, at the time, I didn't really care.

At the time, I spread my hands far and wide, and laughed freely and maniacally. Even when I arrived at my small apartment, slipped into my Power Rangers pajamas, I was still snickering quietly whenever I remembered what I wrote there.

My final thoughts as I drifted into sleep were somewhat sluggish, but still coherent.

'Man, the chaos when someone finds out is going to be fucking awesome. I'm kind of excited.'