The game did not load a battlefield. It loaded a cramped, dark apartment. The camera was strictly first-person. Viktor looked down and saw his own avatar's hands. They were covered in oversized, cartoonish white gloves. In his right hand, he held a standard-issue military knife. In his left, a squeaking rubber chicken.
Suddenly, the door to the apartment burst open. Three AI-controlled soldiers rushed in, guns raised. But they weren't shooting. They were screaming in terror.
A mission objective popped up on the top left of the screen in a bubbly, comic-sans font: OBJECTIVE: MAKE THEM LAUGH. NO SURVIVORS. SГєbor: Clown.Of.Duty.zip ...
The screen didn't flicker. It didn't glitch. Instead, a Title Screen appeared in blinding, high-definition color.
Viktor stared at the screen. The clown soldier on the monitor had stopped moving. It had turned its head to look directly at the camera—directly at Viktor. The painted smile on the screen seemed to stretch wider, splitting the pixels. The game did not load a battlefield
+100 PTS! SLAPSTICK KILL! popped up on the screen, accompanied by the sound of a canned studio laugh track.
There was no music. Only the sound of heavy, rubbery footsteps echoing in an empty room. Viktor looked down and saw his own avatar's hands
Viktor tried to pause the game. He hit the Escape key. Nothing happened. He tried to Alt+F4. The screen stayed locked on the nightmare. He reached down to pull the plug on his PC tower, but his hand froze when he heard a noise. It wasn't coming from his computer speakers. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.