Reality Transit: Saved by a Subway Surfer

Title: Reality Transit: Saved by a Subway Surfer

The silence and sereneness of the sapphire-twilight night was suddenly pierced. It was the melodious and rhythmic tapping of fingertips on a keyboard, resonating through the room of David Kreisel - second year Physics major at Havard University. His brow furrowed in deep concentration, David was meticulously solving the torque equations for his research paper.
Ever since he'd been a boy, he had always been mature for his age. Always at the top of his class, never involved in tomfoolery or infantile pranks. An ideal student, some would say. His studies were paramount, and his orderly world was scrutinized by an unyielding routine, well, until it was interrupted by an occurrence so paranormal that it would shake David’s rock-solid world to its foundation.

In the quadrangle of his university, a vibrant graffiti suddenly sprang to life on the far wall of the main building - a large, audacious figure on a surfboard with the name 'Jake' enscribed by its side. The graffiti stood out mainly because, Harvard was not a place where you would find wall art. Next, even more strangely, the painted figure leaned out, winked at David and then hopped out of the wall. David watched the ghostly figure in awe and disbelief as it solidified into living, breathing Jake from Subway Surfer - the leading character of the once-renowned mobile video game.

To say that David was flabbergasted enough to forego all the equations whirling in his brain would be an understatement. He stared at Jake, the mischievous, daring surfer with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a broad grin. This must be stress-induced hallucination, David thought.

But Jake was real. He did what Jake did best. He brought the fun, the disorder, the mischief, and the jolly-good childhood frolic that David had missed out willingly in his march to academia. Jake introduced him to a magical "Subway board" which whisked them off through time, turning everyone they interacted with into caricatures from the game. The campus became a subway, and the once-quiet Harvard, a surfer's playground.

The ride altered David, not just emotionally but physically too. Every time David hopped onto the board—trying unsuccessfully to elude dashing trains and pursuing policemen, David was transforming. His mature, professor-like air was receding and, in its place, appeared a brash, vulgar thirteen-year-old version of himself.

David, now a misbehaving, rebellious tween, was wreaking havoc in the hallways of the prestigious institution, provoking the dignified professors, and rattling the structures of the long-lasting traditions. The exemplar student was now rebellious, unsettling, and outlandishly audacious, a terror on his magical subway surfboard. Despite the chaos, something was changing in David. A laughter, a lisp of liberation, the thrill of mischief crept into his soul, breaking the decades-old shields of seriousness.

As the days passed, David found himself sliding between being a prestige-obsessed scholar and a carefree teenager. It was liberating and terrifying at the same time, but David had to decide before the line separating the two worlds blurred irrevocably.

Caught between the turbulence of his double life, David finally confronted Jake, pleading with him to end this playful chaos.

Jake smirked, "I'm just a reflection, David. A missing part of you that you locked away under the pressure of being perfect."

"We are all a little mischievous, David," Jake continued, "We are all a little perfect. We are all a little flawed. That's what makes us human."

David understood then. This was not about becoming someone else but accepting himself wholly, with his perfections and his flaws. He thanked Jake who promised to tone down the troublemaking but not before one last rebellious ride down Harvard Yard which echoed with their shared, triumphant laughter.

This story was generated by user bomb with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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