It is January 2020. What a beautiful year, you think. A year in which nothing could possibly ever go wrong. Your faithful wife, who is entering her second trimester, is expecting your second child. The child—who you obviously want to be a boy, as you are a normal heterosexual man—should be born in late June, meaning the child will be a Gemini or Cancer. Not that you believe in anything as silly and godless as astrology! Now, gender, there is something that is real, permanent, and completely immutable.
Gender! To announce such a thing to the world is a must! You have spent the last three months doing your duty to tell everyone in your life, "We're pregnant!" Now, you must raise the stakes. You and your wife have agreed that planning a gender reveal party is essential (as essential as gender itself). Especially since your 10-year-old son did not receive a proper gender reveal, as they were not really "a thing" back in 2010. The poor soul. It might explain why he's a bit light in the loafers.
Now, is the time to right the wrongs of the past. Your new, better child will be assigned pink or blue while he or she is in the womb. He or she will come out knowing the way! The world is 50% boys and 50% girls, and [[you must do your job to honor the ritual of keeping the two genders in perfect harmony->YGRPDTWII]]!You double click on the Internet Explorer icon seventeen times. Eventually, a few windows pop up on your desktop screen. On your Yahoo.com homepage, you type in "google," which takes you to Google.com. You type in "google" in the Google.com search bar one more time for good measure. On the next page, you type in "firts gendre reveel partyy" at the top bar, and goddamn, although you've made that poor robot do a lot of work, it somehow knows what you meant and brings you to a list of relevant news articles. You click one.
Apparently a woman named Jenna Karvunidis is credited with "inventing" the gender reveal party phenomenon in 2008. She cut a cake to reveal blue (for boys) or pink (for girls). Hers was pink (girl). Well, those are the two colors for the two genders, you nod. A cake seems easy enough, although baking is by no means a man's job. Still, you scribble it on your notepad.
As you keep reading, you learn that although Jenna is credited with popularizing the gender reveal, she's come to think of the entire concept as a nightmare. You frown, not quite understanding. You keep reading. It says she wants people to stop having gender reveal parties. Is this a copyright issue, you wonder? Does she want people to pay her licensing fees? You could appreciate some healthy capitalism, although it does seem a //little// stingy to ask to pony up some cash just to announce the presence or absence of a penis or vagina. [[You keep reading]].You wake up in your Moon Capsule, lying on your Moon Bed. You feel dizzy. Your spouse is off to the side, brandishing a gun-like object at a table.
"It sounds like you were having a nightmare," they say.
Out your Moon Window, you can see the planet Earth hovering below.
"Wait. Gender is a social construct?" you ask.
Your spouse points the gun at you. "Always has been," they reply.
You flinch, before you leave the remainder of your drunken sleep daze, and remember the machine in your partner's hand is a temperature gun. It beeps in front of your forehead.
"Your temperature is normal. I was worried you had a fever," they say. "But maybe it was all just a bad dream."
You ramble for a few minutes. You say you dreamed you lived on Earth instead of the Moon. You talked about being a strange thing called a man. You talk about pink and blue, about boys and girls, about sex being the same thing as gender. You talked about gender reveal parties. But the more you talk, the more the uncanny dream leaves you. It is slipping away. You are leaving the nightmare behind.
"That would be super bizarre," your Moon Spouse says. "Like if we had a patriarchal notion of sex based on human anatomy and external genitals. And somehow these variable were used to argue universal innate features from everything to biology, to psychology, to personality."
"Yeah," you laugh uncomfortably, "That would be weird."
**TRUE END**A Pinterest page comes up and you look over your shoulder to make sure none of the men in the office can see you using such a dainty website. The coast is clear. You scroll, looking for anything that might be appealing.
Dear Lord, why are there so many cupcakes?!
Ooh, is that a gender reveal flare gun? You scribble down "Flare gun/fireworks???" on your notepad. What could be more American than the invention of fireworks?
Gender reveal basketball. Acceptable athletic gesture. You notate.
Gender reveal piñata! Heck yes! You imagine yourself as All-American sports idol, Lou Gehrig. With the perfect stance, you swing the wooden bat, blue pieces of candy and confetti exploding everywhere. But wait. This could also be a good chance for your son, Brynndynn, to get it on the action. He's a little squirrelly, but you could see him getting excited over beating up a colorful piñata to get candy inside. As long as you can keep his two chicken legs on the ground. [[You write down "gender penyata."->Further Adventures in Gender Reveal Party Ideas]](if: $cakeEnd and $birdEnd is true)[[From a distance, you hear a familiar voice calling your name.->It Was All Just a Bad Dream]]Today is the day! Although it's February, you're fortunate that climate change and your general geographical location has lead to the day being uncomfortably warm. For the gender reveal party, your wife filled a giant black balloon with pink confetti (for a girl) or blue confetti (for a boy).
You were able to buy a small machete from one of those flea markets that caters to poor people for the occassion. On one hand, you're pretty psyched about introducing your son to weaponry. On the other hand, Brynndynn is a little bit flouncy and is liable to cut his own foot off if he swings with too much pizzazz. You've done your best to coach him over the past few weeks, just like you've done your best to coach him the past decade. All those afternoons throwing baseballs watching as he turned and let them hit him in the back. All those evenings missing catching football, crying and asking if he could go inside yet.
Brynnynn, by no means, is athletic. You attribute this to his mother dressing him in purple as an infant (alongside the lack of a proper gender reveal). But after your training, you feel confident that he's got this in the bag. The day is perfect. Your normal friends and relatives are here, and in an hour or so, you'll find out the gender of your baby.
The men (all wearing blue shirts) stand by the grill, grilling manly meats, and the women (all wearing pink) sit around with their emotions, gossiping and such. The day is as perfect as the year 2020. [[Nothing could possibly go wrong->Balloon Launch]].You are a Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawk. You are a male, although you are completely unaware of sex or gender as a concept. Because you are a bird. You are mostly interested in eating mice, rabbits, and chihuahuas. You are sometimes interested on your biological urge to mate, but you are a very gay bird, and most of your time was spent seducing other boy birds with your handsome Cobaltuginous feathers. Ah, such was the life, having same-sex bird relations and traveling around the world with the blue-breasted hawks you fancied. Unfortunately for you—you are now the last of the Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawks—a fact you are completely unaware of. As you are a bird.
It is Coldtime, so you have traveled some place warm. It was not too hard to find, as the environmental damage that humans wrecked on the environment made this easily possible. You did at one time possess a biological instinct to find others like you and spend your days with them, but that seems so long ago now, and mostly you just soar through the blue skies, as if stuck inside a strange dream—OH FUCK!
Usually, with your literal hawkeye vision, you are very good at spotting things. That is how you saw the nice plump Affenpinscher you had as an amuse-bouche earlier in the day. But somehow, in your bird-brained reveries, you missed the giant orb of ebon death floating beneath you and being carried by the wind straight toward you. You only have a nanosecond to react.
[[Dodge it->Dodge]].
[[Smack into it->Smack]].Your perfect bird of prey instincts lead you to swooping down at the last moment. //Whew/, that was close. You wonder what that horrible blob is and it if could have swallowed you whole—or worse—through an increasingly unlikely chain of events lead to a global apocalypse. Your heartbeat beats less and less fast as [[the strange dark hovering beast moves higher into the sky->You Are a Balloon]], and you go look for someone's pet Maltese to snack on.Although you are a predator and a hunter, the sound of the giant balloon popping is too much for your little bird heart. Your heart goes into overdrive and your body goes into shock as the rubber explodes around you, causing strange small things to fly out if it and be carried away with the wind.
You fall and fall and fall through the heavens, descending through the clouds, ultimately handing on an unnecessarily large outdoor grill that just finished its job. Your body hits the cooking grate so hard that it knocks it off to the side, your unconscious body rolling onto a bed of hot coals, where it won't be found for another hour.
Your life has come to an end. That should be the end of the tale, right? It's not like there's some weird ornithologist who is completely obsessed with you being the last Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawk in existance, right? [[Right?->You Are a Scientist]]Your son Brynnynn is off to the side leaning on the smoke cannon while singing "Little Girls" from the movie musical production Annie, a film you have not forgiven your wife for letting him watch.
"Brynnynn," you say. "It's time."
He gives you a manly nod before twirling the cannon tube like a baton.
"Some day I'll land in the nut house with all the nuts and the squirrels," he sings as he prances past you.
At the table, you wait patiently as your wife finishes washing all the dishes. You have your notepad placed in front of you, and you are deep in thought. You wonder what the ole ball-n-chain has in mind. Hopefully none of those lacy cupcakes. You need to go bigger, louder, more American. You're thinking along the lines of a barbecue—some explosions. Lord, if you could just squeeze one more Fourth of July in this year, wouldn't that be grand? Your internal narration is momentarily distracted by the sight of your 10-year-old son gallivanting with a Swiffer across the living room.
"Brynndynn, please act like a gentleman. Gentlemen do not two-step without a lady partner," you say. Brynndynn sadly puts the cleaning product down.
"Now be a good boy and take out the trash. Then you can watch some Last Man Standing while your mother and I discuss important adult matters."
"Yay!" Brynndynn squeals. "I hope zaddy JTT makes a cameo again." You have no idea what he's talking about, as this Gen Z talk confuses you, but you're pleased when he quickly takes the trash out and returns inside. Less pleased when he runs up the stairs on all fours like some strange dog-horse hybrid.
[[The time draws near.]]February 1st, 2020. Today is the day. You have woken up at dawn, just in time for your wife to make you a hearty meal of bacon, eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and pancakes. In a few hours, she will set up the decorations, and soon after that, your guests will arrive.
As your wife refills your cup of coffee, she says curiously, "So I noticed there weren't any boxes in the fridge. When were you planning on going to the bakery?"
You wonder is this is some elaborate womanly trap. It might just be best not to acknowledge her. Yet. This could be as serious as you suspect it is. You have no choice but to engage.
"The what?"
Her eyes flash, if only for a moment, with the heat of one thousand suns.
"For the Gender Reveal Party. The Gender Reveal Party we are having later today. I gave you instructions. You were supposed to buy two cakes from the bakery, both with white icing. One was supposed to have blue velvet cake on the inside. The other was supposed to have pink velvet."
The memory of this entire conversation is foggy. You certainly did not order a cake. You just expected your wife to make one. There was some serious miscommunication.
You go to speak, but you meet your wife's one, crazed twitching eye, and your life flashes before your eyes. You wipe your mouth with a napkin and excuse yourself from the table.
"[[I will be picking up the cake—cakes—now->Cake Hunt]]," you say. You force your posture upright and your body into a calmness as you make your way for your car keys.Your wife turns her voice into a low growl with almost a demonic quality and says, "Choose wisely." She pushes the shortlist in front of you.
She then smiles and says, "Hehe, I'm just joshing with you. So which plan do you want to go with?"
[[Gender Reveal Cake]]
[[Gender Reveal Baby's Black Balloon->Gender Balloon Bash]]
[[Gender Reveal Fireworks]]Both you and you wife draw sweat upon your brows as you spend the evening talking, discussing, debating, and going over the logistics of which weird relatives you do not want to invite. Every path has a consequence, a variable. No two gender reveal parties are the same, which is why you find yourselves lost in the minutiae. The only time your hyper-focus is broken is when Brynndynn crawls down the stairs to shout, "WILL YOU TWO STOP FIGHTING?!" to which you both shout back, "We are not fighting!" in unison.
The time has come. You feel as powerful as the MPAA, designating a film an 'R' rating because a woman character experiences happiness and pleasure. Your blood (but not tears) have gone into this process, and you are finally left with a short list of options. Balls of scrunched up paper litter the table you sit at with your wife. Before you, rests the holy list that will determine everything. It is time to assert your husbandly ways. It is time for your battle cry.
Before you can speak, your wife places her two principled and noble hands upon your own.
"Listen," she says. "I'm proud of you for all the hard work you've done. I know this must be hard for you—to not know the irrevocable gender of our child for a few more weeks. But... I want this to be equal, in the same way that the world being made up of 50% boys and 50% girls is equal. And since //I// get to know the gender's baby first and keep it a secret, [[I am allowing you to choose how we will reveal the baby's gender.->Gender Reveal Options]]"Your wife, who is a stay-at-home-mom (as Christ intended), is currenty going alone to the baby clinic today to get an update on her wombly duties. You have been told that she will learn the baby's permanent gender at this appointment. You are trying to not think about it too much or get too emotionally invested, as everyone knows emotional investment is for the womaned kind.
In some regard, it is a big day. Almost like a pregame of the big gender reveal that is to come. Before your rest your weary head on the pillow tonight, you will know your new child's genitilia. But there is still work to be done, boot-straps to be pulled up. This evening, your wife will want to speak to you about the logistics of the party after she cooks you dinner and does all the clean-up herself. She'll want to compare notes about how you two imagine the gender reveal to go. Your silly, beautiful, feminine wife. Always overcomplicating things. There's two colors, and you show one of them to your friends and family. That is it, right? That's the gender reveal?
Although, what if there is more? You would not want to look foolish in front of your pure, virtuous wife. It would be best to use some of your time at your all-American white-collar job this afternoon to [[research gender reveal parties]].Karvunidis said that "...assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of [a child's] potential and talents that have nothing to do with what's between their legs." At this you scrunch your brows, completely focused. But gender has EVERYTHING to do with what's between a person's legs! Except for Barbie's boyfriend, Ken. He was always somewhat mysterious to you.
Scrolling a little more, you see a photo of Karvundis's daughter wearing a suit (which is meant for boys). //Hmm, that's no good//, you think. You feel mildly upset by the sight of a girl-child not wearing a dress. It seems like the creator of this party has lost her way. Probably tainted by those dastardly liberals. Best to erase this all from your mind as soon as possible. You drag all the Internet Explorer windows until they're partially off your screen, revealing your desktop.
//Ahh//, there, it's gone.
You return to your Dell's desktop, double-clicking the Internet Explorer icon twelve times, and eventually wind up [[searching for "gander revael parry idaes"->Gender Reveal Party Ideas]].//Whew//, all this research is making you tired. You hope your wife is roasting a chicken tonight alongside some unseasoned mac-and-cheese. That would be swell.
Returning to the world wide web, you continue scrolling. There has to be one more. Something pure and true to the spirit of the gender reveal. Something catches your eye and you put the brakes on the mouse. Was that... a gun? The Pinterest provides you with a weblink to The YouTube, and before your eyes you watch a manly patriot fire a gun off into a box of tannerite and colored chalk, leading to an explosion of blue smoke. If it was within your gender, you might even shed a tear at such a beautiful sight. But as you are a man, you just curl your lips inward and nod a manly nod at your CRT monitor. You simply write down "gender guns" on your notepad, underlining it and circling it three times.
Time to slide down the ole dinosaur tail and call it a day. [[There is much to discuss with your loving, devoted wife this PM.->Wife Discussion]]"I'm ready," your wife says playfully, drying her hands with paper towel.
"So?" you say.
"So," she says, pulling up a chair to sit down next to you.
"Honey? Baby?"
"Yes, my darling?"
"The gender," you say. "What did your vaginacologist say?"
Your wife leans over, kissing you on the forehead.
"Oh my silly hubby," she says. "I thought you understood. This is all part of the gender reveal. //I'm// the only one who knows. The gender is revealed to //you// and //everyone else in the world// on the day of the party."
This revelation absolutely floors you, but if it was written in the Gender Constitution, it must be so. And part of being a godly man is exhibiting virtues like patience. You nod dutifully, knowing you can withstand anything for the gender reveal to come.
"It's not that long a wait. We can plan it for February 1st. You'll just have to wait a few weeks."
"Weeks!" you laugh. "I can wait months if I need to."
Your wife laughs back. "That is true. We could have a gender reveal party at any point this spring, as 2020 is going to be a perfect year where nothing could possibly work to sabotage our plans."
That is absolutely right, you nod along.
"So," you say, tapping your notepad. "I have a few ideas."
"I do too," she smiles. [["Let's compare notes and come up with our short list of ideas."->A Short List of Ideas]]$cakeEndYou turn the key of your car and sit in your driveway staring at the dashboard while trying to think this through. What are you options? You could go to a bakery and buy another cake. You wonder if buying a cake could take time to make. You don't have much time. Perhaps if you scream at the workers until you get your way? That's your usual go-to. It might just be easier to bribe them to buy someone else's gender reveal cakes.
Or, just go to the grocery and get some cake box mixes. Those only take like 10 minutes when your wife makes them, right? Christ on a cracker, you cannot ask that of her though. You will have to suck it up and sneakily make one while she's outside setting up decorations. If you're stealthy enough, you could succeed. Yes, it is beneath your gender to bake, but you have no other options. You will have to act femmely for the sake of your unborn child. His or her gender being revealed to the universe comes before all else. Not to mention: even you have the foresight to understand your wife's fury if you brought home a box of Funfetti and expected her to bake it hours before the party.
Your eyes drift over to the golden, glowing symbol of the gas cannister and the blinking "E" beside it. You sigh. **Could this day get possibly any worse?** you think, not realizing the metanarrative telegraphing that such a sentence could imply. [[You drive to the nearest gas station->Gas Station]].//Your Gender Reveal Party Destroys the World// is in beta, and hopefully I'll have some more time soon to write a few extra endings, including a TRUE END (!!!)
If you'd like to suggest a specific gender reveal party idea (or ways the world might end), leave a comment.
Thank you for playing. -JD
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**ENDINGS**
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(if: $cakeEnd is 1)[ENDING 1: **ZOMBIE ENDING**](if: $cakeEnd is 0)[ENDING 1: LOCKED]
(if: $birdEnd is 1)[ENDING 2: **BIRD FLU ENDING**](if: $birdEnd is 0)[ENDING 2: LOCKED]
(if: $balloonEnd is 1)[ENDING 3: **GRAY GOO ENDING**](if: $balloonEnd is 0)[ENDING 3: LOCKED]
(if: $fireEnd is 1)[ENDING 4: **WILDFIRE ENDING**](if: $fireEnd is 0)[ENDING 4: LOCKED]
(if: $cakeEnd and $birdEnd and $balloonEnd and $fireEnd is 1)[It looks like you've unlocked very ending available at the moment. If you'd like, you can [[erase your game and start over->Erase Game]].]
[[Play again and try to destroy the world in another way?->Your Gender Reveal Party Destroys the World]]As you fill up your tank, your eyes wander around the parking lot, watching the various strangers go about their day. You are slightly panicked and not sure what your next destination will be. Wherever it is, there better be gender reveal cakes there. In the corner of the parking lot, beside the convenience store, you spot a Caucausian-American man with locks doing some sort of trade with a woman. She hands him cash, and she hands her a cardboard box; the exchange ends and she walks away. As he's counting his cash, he looks up, locking eyes with you. Your turn away, focusing on escalating numbers of the gas pump.
You think you're safe before a voice calls behind you, "Hey, man! You in the market for anything?"
"I am not interested in procuring any reefer or patchouli essential oils," you say.
"Man," he says, "I've got other stuff."
"You would not have what I need."
"Oh, yeah, man? Well, like, you don't know that."
"Listen, Drug Rug," you begin. "I'm a little bit stressed because I need to get a Gender Reveal Cake. So unless you have a Gender Reveal C--"
"Oh yeah," he says, scratching his head. "I think I have one of those. At least like a cake mix? Come on by after you're done juicing up, Boss."
What. What did he mean he thinks he has one of //those//?
As you reach the perfect double zeroes on the dollar sign amount for your gas, you shake the handle, getting every last drop out. Looking over your shoulder, you see Granola Gary climbing in the back of his station wagging, throwing things around.
As you close your tank, you sigh. You've never felt more humiliated as [[you walk over to his motor vehicle->Hippie Wares]].As you approach the car, you hear him literally shout "Eureka!" and climb out backwards from the episode of //Hoarders// that lives within his vehicle.
He hands you a plain white box. It has no fancy graphic design. No pictures at all. Just plain black text that says: GENDER REVEAL PARTY CAKE BOX MIX PROTOTYPE.
Underneath it there is a subtitle that says: DOES NOT CONTAIN EGGS, VEGETABLE OIL, OR WATER.
No water in the box? You scoff. Still. God in heaven must be looking down on you because He wants your Gender Reveal Party to go off without any problems.
"Where in the world did you get this?" you ask.
"There's this food laboratory outside of Huntsville where they invent new types of—"
//Mhmph, Huntsville,// you groan inside. That's a city full of liberals. Educated rocket scientists thinking they're better than the rest of us.
"—this place shut down because of some pathogenic fungi or something—"
You tune home out as you take out your wallet.
"—so anyway be careful with—"
"How much do you want for it?"
The draft-dodger taps his long, dirty fingernails on his own chin beside saying, "$20."
//That's outrageous!// you think. A cake box mix must caught, what, 25 cents at most? You feel blood rushing to your face, but you know this might be your ownly chance, so you have to swallow your pride in front of this Scooby Doo pothead. Your hand shakes as you hand Andrew Jackson over.
"Thanks, dude," he says, before wandering off to hassle some other gentleman gassing up his automobile.
[[It is time->Let's Bake a Cake]].When you get home, you notice a couple of cars parked in the driveway, meaning some guests have arrived early. One belongs to your good bug, O.H. (Other Husband). You sneak in through the front door as quietly as possible. Off in the distance, through the patio's glass doors, you see your wife standing on an unstable-looking chair putting up some streamers alone. //Phew.//
You spot O.H. sitting on your couch nursing a beer. He goes to give you a big greeting, but you put your finger up in front of your lips, shushing hi and ushering him over to you. You tell him //everything//. As part of pact you share by gender, O.H. agrees to do everything in his power to keep your wife out in the backyard while you commandeer the kitchen and make some cakes.
You open the contents of the box across the counter. There is a satchel shaped like a pointed arrow, which you are pretty sure represents men, and a satchel pointed like a cross, which is for the ladies. Feeling as you don't have much time, you decide just to make one cake with a blue side and a pink side.
You are so focused, that nothing could break your stride. Not even Brynnynn cutting through the kitchen on roller skates singing, "In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee...."
The box itself doesn't contain any instructions. That's probably what the word "prototype" on the cover was referring to. You have to admit, you feel a little special eating something that isn't even on the market yet. Although you have no clue what you are doing, you find a mixing bowl and round pan from your wife in her kitchenly storage spaces. How many eggs could a thing need? Six? Seven? You decide eight will do, cracking them into the bowl, running some water beneath the faucet over the concocton, and topping it off with a splash of olive oil.
At a certain point, you have a blueish glob and a pinkish glob, and you pour them at the same time so they take up half the round pan. You turn the oven on to 400 degrees and pull up a chair. You will watch it until it looks like cake.
Time is meaningless. You watch, and you watch, and slowly and surely it rises and becomes a cake-thing. Easy-peasy you think. All that's left to do is take it out and smear some of that white frosting looking stuff from the final satchet all over. You take it out of the oven, pull up a butter knife, [[and go to work->Kitchen]].The cake looks.... suprisingly normal. Albeit not as tall as the cakes you've seen your wife make, it has a decent round shape. You remember what side is the boy side and what side, although you have to admit the colors might have blended together a little bit. One side is more blueish-purple and the other side is more pinkish-purple, but you're certain you can still tell the difference. You quickly cover the thing up with globes of frosting.
You dig through the fridge, finding some blueberries and a jar of beets. You edge a "G" into one side with the beet juice and create a "B" on the other side with blueberries. For the first time in your life, you feel slightly proud of your own creativity. It felt so strange and instinctful, so outside of the manly logic you have relied on in the past. You feel like you are almost about to experience an epiphany when you see O.H. trying to non-chalantly block your wife's path as he makes small talk.
"OK, OK," she says, before freezing. "Wait? Why does it smell like someone's been baking?"
Your wife pushes past O.H., spotting you.
"Oh, hey. I, uh, used the oven to reheat the cake."
"Reheat the cake?" Her eyes know everything. Her feminine eyelashes bat in disbelief.
"I'm going to bring the cake to the backyard now," you say, as you clandestinely lift up the curiousity and run past your wife. You can feel her staring at the back of your head.
You hear her say, "Just one cake? Not two?" but you know your life is on the line, so the only thing you can do is [[run towards the back patio->Cake Party]].You have set up a small poker table with a table cloth over it, with the cake at the center. You have spent the past five minutes whisper-arguing with your wife as Brynndynn entertains your in-laws with Fortnite dances and lyrics from //West Side Story//.
Your wife is both very mad at you, but very impressed (yet slightly disgusted) that you went through the trouble of baking a cake. As long as this goes over without a hitch, you will be safe from //the dog house//, a term you are familiar with in your healthy, heteronormative marriage.
You explain the logistics of which side to cut from. The time has arrived. You and the other guests sit down on folding chairs, and your wife turns her back to the crowd, secretively slicing a piece of cake off. You can see her body grow stiff and pause. Once again her arm moves, to cut another slice. She does this a couple of more times before spinning around slowly with a slide on a paper plate. As she turns around, everyone says in unison, "IT'S! A!..."
"Booooil," your sister-in-law says.
"Goooy???" O.H.'s wife announce with an increasingly alarmed face.
The slice of cake is unmistakably purple. So purple that is appears to be glowing. Between trying to bake two different dye mixtures in the same cake, and the beet and berry juice that dripped and mixed with the frosting, the entire thing is a disgusting, radioactive mess.
Your wife locks eyes with you. You crawl over to her side, as the guests stare at you.
"So howabout those Cowboys," O.H. exclaims loudly, and gives the group a cue to talk amongst themselves.
"What. The. Hell."
"Don't worry," you say.
"Our child's gender reveal is the most important moment in their entire lives, and you're telling me not to worry? I am leaving. You entertain the guests while I get another cake."
"No," you say, holding out your palm, your car keys already in them. "A person of your gender shouldn't drive. I will fix this."
Before your wife can say another word, you have already hopped over the fence of the backyard, run around to the driveway, and [[headed off in your motor vehicle again->Zombie Party]].It took shouting, pleading, begging, and spending $500 that would have better gone into your child's college education fund, but you have two perfect round white cakes, one with a blue "B" and one with a pink "G" on top. For once, everything in the universe is balanced and perfect. In a few minutes, you will arrive home, and will know your baby's gender once and for all.
As you pull up in the driveway, you see an ambulance parked in front of your house. You also see the unusual sight of Brynndynn on rollerskates, clutching the shotgun you keep above the fireplace. You wonder, for a moment, if all the relentless bullying he's complained about receiving at school due to not fitting in with prescriptive gender codes has caused him to go coconuts. Surely ignoring his pre-pubescent agony and reinforcing these strict fixated concepts of gender at a home only helped?
"Father," he says, "The dead have returned to life and are walking the earth with an unquenchable hunger."
You exhale a deep sigh, grateful that your son hasn't pulled a Columbine. That would have surely put a damper on your baby's gender reveal party.
"There is not enough time to explain. Your bosom buddy O.H. partook in some of that putrid-looking purple cake, which caused him to asphixiate. We called 911, but he was dead by the time they arrived. And yet—as one was trying to revive him—he launched up and bit the EMT man in the neck. I ran to grab the artillery as you always directed me to."
You are so proud you could cry (if crying existed for your gendered kind). Your girly boy saved the day. //Hmmm//, but the cake you made also killed a man. //Hmmm//, sounds like some of your friends and relatives also may have died, but you'll have to put aside those feelings and never, ever address them or admit accountability for your actions.
[["Wait, you say, what about your mom?!"->About Your Mother]]"You have to let me finish," Brynndynn says. "I was able to blast O.H. through his torso, knocking him through the fence into the neighbor's backyard, but when I looked around the corner, he was gone."
"And your mother?"
"Unfortunately, the EMT had converted into the walking dead almost immediately, and was already chewing off Aunt Suzie's face." You never really liked Aunt Suzie, so you twirl your hand to encourage Brynndynn to get on with it. Boy, does this child love theatrics.
"I tried to contain the outbreak. The EMT and Aunt Suzie have been put to rest, but I was not able to locate O.H.. I suspect he may have infected others by now."
"And your mother?"
"Oh, mom's sitting in her SUV—across the street—like literally right behind you. She's perfectly fine." You turn around and your wife waves to you.
"Brynndynn, you are a man now, which is all I have ever asked you to be and prayed about literally every single night for the past decade." You hug your son—but not in a gay way or anything—more of one of those one-arm pat things—and take the shotgun to him. "It is time you take the keys from your mother and drive, so the two of you can escape this hell on earth."
Brynndynn hugs you back, and quotes some song from Into the Woods that you do not recognize. You shed a single tear as you watch him rollerskate backwards to the car, [[shimmying as he waves goodbye to you->Cake End]].You follow the path of wreckage, corpses, disembodied limbs, and bloodshed, until you find O.H. a few blocks away. At last, you find him thrashing around the bedroom, chewing on the skull of some poor ole spinster. His skin is fluorescent purple. His eyes are bulging. His lips are wide and covered in blood. He looks a little like Grimace from McDonald's, when the light hits him just right.
You want to tell him to remember the football games, to remember the strippers, to remember that one time you jerked each other off in college but pretended you both were too drunk to remember it and never talked about it ever again, to remember the fishing trip, to remember mowing the law and the beer bong and going to the gun range.
Unfortunately, for O.H., there is no coming back. You say something heroic out loud, and lift up the shotgun, pointing it directly at his skull. Unfortunately for you, he's one of those 'fast zombies' that some nerd has probably designated an entire Wikipedia entry to. He bites you at a very unlikely angle and tears into your left eyeball. It's, like, really, really gross. And bloody. Really bloody. Anyway, boy howdy, do you not survive that attack. You become a member of the walking dead too, but, being as you no longer are a creature of agency, you remember none of us. None of anything. No son, no wife, no gender reveal, no cake. Only a husk with a constant hunger.
Which means, you have no knowledge at all that you've kicked off the beginning to the end of the world. It's slow at first, but it turns out that Americans are just really terrible at preventing and/or containing a global pandemic, and sooner or later there are purple-skinned people eaters all across the globe.
While a few doomsday preppers hide in their hidey holes, and a select members of the ultra-wealthy find aways to evade the walking dead, they cannot hold out for long. Finally, the world achieves a true equity on a global scale, where all humans on the planet earth share the identity status of being marked by the hand of death.
**ZOMBIE END** (set: $cakeEnd to 1)
[[Let's see which endings you've unlocked!->Endings]]At this point, everyone has been significantly fed with American beef and pork, significiantly quenched with high-quality American beer (for the men) or diet lemonade (for the ladies). You eat a couple of hot dogs, while making sure to eat them the way men should eat hot dogs: by tearing off chunks and placing them into your mouth, as to not bring a phallic object to your lips.
Your wife had been busy earlier in the day filling a thick black balloon with either blue or pink confetti. You've tried not to think about it, although you admit you stared at it once or twice while flipping burger parties. The makers (most likely American) did a damned good job with it, because you couldn't see anything at all past the dark rubber. The balloon keeps its secrets well as it hovers ominously in the middle of the backyard.
Your friend, O.H. (Other Husband), who had too many Bud Lights, makes an unintelligible toast that warms your heart. A few other people say nice things about your unborn child based on prescriptive notions of gender. When the time has come, your wife ushers Brynndynn out with the blade, giving you a worried look. Your son turns on some bluetooth speakers and begins to play 2 UNLIMITED's "Get Ready For This" on his phone.
You are mortified as he leaps around with the machete, but everyone at the party is clapping slightly off-sync with the song and apparently enjoys his performance. You watch Brynndynn twirl his arm back, just like you've instructed him, and [[swing at the balloon]].And...he misses.
Brynndynn severs the cord which anchors the too-big black balloon to the earth. The wind starts to lift it just as you realize what is happening. As if in slow motion, you can hear your voice going, "NOOO!" in a deep register. You run, as if moving through a world of thick honey, leaping off your perfectly mowed grass to grab the bottom of the balloon.
But you are one inch and one second too short. You grab at empty air, and the mysterious balloon floats up into the sky, as the crowd of friends and family [[watch it get smaller and smaller->You Are A Bird]].You are a weird ornithologist who is completely obsessed with birds, your favorite being the Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawk. You have spent like, a really, //really// long time focused on birds. Your undergraduate degree in biology. Your masters degree in zoology and animal wildlife. Your PhD focusing on the bird conservation...
And now, as a post-doc, you are employed at one of the most prestigious universities that houses one of the most comprehensive and diverse aviaries in the entire world. Your entire education and life's work have cumulated into studying the Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawk.
Despite tenured Baby Boomers professors refusing to retire and universities refusing to open new tenure lines when they actually do—instead relying on the unethical practice of paying adjunct instructors unliveable wages—you have a healthy attitude toward the future.
Nothing can go wrong as long as the healthy, relatively young Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawk (who you've nicknamed Rock Hudson) continues to live. You have a reason to believe Rock Hudson may be the last of his kind, which excites you as much as it frightens you. There is so much resting on this one bird's fate.
At one point, Rock Hudson had been captured and chipped and let go again. The idea is that hopefully he will find a female to mate with. You are the one who has access to his chip, which includes geolocation among many other necessesary and very interesting bird details.
You're enjoying your afternoon coffee with suddenly [[a terrible alarm starts buzzing from your computer screen->A Terrible Alarm]].You frantically roll your office chair, gluing your eyes to the screen. //This doesn't make sense//, you think. The chip—which monitors the hawk's vitals, has sky-rocketed. You've never seen a panic like this captured in a bird of this species. And not just that, the signal has dropped to a zero. The bird's movements have dropped to a zero.
You stare at the screen, head throbbing, coming terms with the idea that the last Broad-Winged North-American Cobaltuginous Blue-Breasted Hawk in existence might be... dead.
Your eyes glaze over, and you sigh. You can feel your entire budding academic career coming to an end. A combination of not enough sleep, too much caffeine, and a complete lack of healthcare options—including access to mental healthcare—makes you feel like you're about to have an uncontrollable breakdown.
[[You hope you don't do anything drastic->Something Drastic]].You try to remain calm as you look over Rock Hudson's geographic regions, and spot that he's been moving through some rural areas in a warmer climate. You create a narrative in your head where a hunter shot him out of the sky. That is the only plausible explanation. Having no affordable access to mental healthcare and no properly outlet for the devastation Rock Hudson's death has caused you, your thoughts go to some pretty dark places.
You wait all day, and when lock-out times comes for the university biology lab, you hide under the desk, rereading plot points from Margaret Atwood's //Oryx and Crake// that you intend to plagiarize.
Sneaking deeper into the biology labs, where one of your peers has been doing studies on highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), you spend hours taking the petri dishes from their homes. Avian flu, swine flu, dog flu, horse, flu, human flu—even one belonging to bats—you line up all the diseases. Breaking out the ole punch bowl, you mix every virus you can find together, not even bothering to wear a hazmat suit, because why bother?
You expect some sort of alarm to be tripped—some sort of night-shift security guard to come around—but because of reduced university funding, no one even seems to know you are there. You bring your new concoction over to the aviary portion, injecting and infecting hundreds of birds of hundreds of different varieties with your super-flu.
And then, one by one, you release the back into the wild. It is dawn by now. [[You are very tired->Bird Flu Ending]].As you return to your desk, putting your head on your keyboard and slipping into a well-deserved sleep, the bird fly to impossible distances.
Some of the birds die almost immediately. Some live. Some infect humans. Although the infection does not spread among humans—at least not like you intended.
However, the strain of bird flu you invent is so potent that within a few years you decimate every species of bird on the planet. There is no antidote, no recovery.
A different kind of plague moves after the birds are gone. Since every insectivorious species is now extinct, locusts and disease-carrying mosquitos overrun everything. The mice and rats that birds of prey snacked on spread their own type of novel virus, creating a sequel to the bubonic plague that wrecked havoc on the world in the mid-13000s.
The extinction of all birds creates a devitation in normal global pollination, affecting fruit production. It's gradual at first. An ecosystem here. Another creature going extinct there. The balance of the world has been throw irreparibly off: global food shortages, new diseases that pop up quicker than they can be cured.
Ultimately, it is a pandemic—alongside starvation—that does humans in. Not that you, the mad scientist, survive that long. The exposure in the laboratory did you in.
As you die, you learn that you not only get to see your own life flash before your eyes, but the life of your greatest love. In your final moments, you see the balloon popping in front of Rock Hudson's face. You think "Wait, what the fuck, is that some type of gender reveal balloon?" momentarily considering how a gender reveal party triggered the apocalypse—before the lights turn out forever.
**BIRD FLU END** (set: $birdEnd to 1)
[[Let's see which endings you've unlocked!->Endings]]You are a balloon. You do not think. You do not feel. You are built exceptually sturdy rubber (not made in the USA) filled with colored confetti (also not made in the USA) and helium. The wind is carrying you higher and higher, until you ascend toward a passenger airplane.
Although airplanes are built sturdily for bird-strike events in the air, and although they are also made to glide to safety in the event that one or more engines fail, you are a one-in-a-trillion balloon.
The way you get sucked into one engine isn't that remarkable. What //is// remarkable is just how inconveivably flammable the confetti inside you is. It doesn't take long for one engine to catch fire, and then the other one, and then entire plane engulfs by fire, smoke, and [[human panic->You Are a Pilot]].You are a pilot, and you are kinda fucking panicking. Despite all your training, this situation is really, //really// bad. Did you hit an entire flock of geese after they'd drank a gallon of nitroglycerine each or something? Why is the plane doing thissss?
There are passengers you can hear screaming and banging at the locked door behind you. //This is it//, you think. You pull out your phone, texting your husband that you love him.
What? No. The pilot is not gay. Why did you expect the pilot to be a man? The pilot is a heterosexual woman. Well, I mean, she would be open to exploring her sexuality more, but 2019 was a rough year, and she has a lot going on at the moment. Like some Twine game player making sexist assumptions about her gender. Oh! Right! Also, a plane she's piloting is currently on fire. Anyway...
Although you have years of experience beneath your belt, you know this is it. All you can possibly do as the plane makes a downward nose dive is try to guide it into a clearing that appears to be uninhabited by humans.
As you get closer and closer to the earth, you spot such a space. There is an immaculate green field of grass in a perfect square shape in the middle of the forest which grows immediately below you!
(if: visits is 1)[You look to your co-pilot, who quietly whispers, "[[Where are we going?]]"]
[[Anyway, you crash into the earth and everyone on the plane dies->Nano Ending]].You turn to your co-pilot and say, "We're going to a party! It's a gender reveal party, it's your gender reveal party! Happy gender reveal, darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much!"
And then, umm, you start humming this little tune, and, and uh, it kind of goes like this: it's kinda "[[One, two, one, two, three, four!->You Are a Pilot]]"Although the pilot had used her best training and wisdom, the one thing she could not have predicted is that the field of green grass was a shallow cover for an underground bunker. //Ohh, yes.//
An underground bunker that housed a top-secret governmental laboratory experimenting with nano-technology. These nanobots purpose involved being created to assist in surgical procedures. Unfortunately, the tests were still in beta, because the in-production nanobots had this bug where they would self-replicate endlessly. Luckily, as this was an extremely controlled environment, this wasn't an issue.
OH WAIT. A PLANE JUST CRASHED INTO THE BUNKER AND EXPLODED.
Which resulted in these self-replicating machines escaping and producing copies of themselves forever. On top of performing their programmed surgical tasks on humans who did not consent to and do not require surgery (although many of them do because they have no health insurance to access surgery otherwise), the nanobots also take on devouring entire ecosystems across the planet.
Eventually, the nano-bots lead to a complete ecological collapse and consume every single biomass on Earth. The entire planet is reduced to a lifeless mass overrun with genderless nanomachines.
**GRAY GOO END** (set: $balloonEnd to 1)
[[Let's see which endings you've unlocked!->Endings]]Game successfully erased! If you'd like, [[you can destroy the world all over again->Your Gender Reveal Party Destroys the World]].
(set: $birdEnd to 0)
(set: $cakeEnd to 0)
(set: $fireEnd to 0)
(set: $balloonEnd to 0)Although perhaps most humans—even those with the smallest modicum of self-awareness—would have seen where this going. Unfortunately for you, you're blown back by the raging inferno that roars toward you. The explosion is so catastrophic and shocking that any part of you that is waiting to perceive the gender is lost. There is no gender revealed in the fire: only misery.
You at least have that nice period of your body going into complete shock to hide the unfathomable pain of having your clothes and skin melted off by third-degree burns. If only you had a fourth-degree burn. At least then it would be so severe all your nerve endings would have been destroyed.
You don't die, at least not immediately. As you collapse on the ground, you at least get to see the fireworks exploding in the night sky, the sound of America booming overhead. You shed a single tear, knowing your child will enter a glorious world. There are people screaming your name, people running around, but mostly your ears are ringing and your hearing seems gone. You can see fire raining on the tops of trees, various parts of the grass around you on aflame.
Although you do not survive to witness it, the low rainfall and dry underbrush makes it easy for the fire to spread. Soon, it reaches all 50 states.
//ALL 50 states? EVEN Hawaii?// That would be a reasonable question, if someone reasonable was alive to ask it. Unfortunately, this fire is like... really, really fucked up and hot. Even the Pacific Ocean cannot stop it. It burns up a town, then a county, then a state, then a country. Soon, the Gender Reveal Fire of 2020 has engulfed the whole world.
Even after every living creature has been charred to a crisp, the fire continues to rage on. If anyone was alive to see it, they would note that it had become the loveliest shade of orange. Which gender is orange, you might ask? Well, that, my friends, is the gender of the apocalypse.
**WILD FIRE END** (set: $fireEnd to 1)
[[Let's see which endings you've unlocked!->Endings]]There are few things you like more than making random things explode in patriotic glory. Which is why you made sure to replenish your stock of illegal fireworks around the new year. Perhaps it was, in fact, The Lord sending you a prophecy. He knew what you would need to bless your child's gender reveal.
Technically //all// fireworks are illegal in your county, due to the unseasonably dry climate. Which you, of course, do not attribute to climate change, as climate change is not real. That didn't stop you and your best bud O.H. (Other Husband) from going buck-wild on January 1st though. Either way, you're friends with all the cops in the area, and they have better things to do with their time, like arresting people for possessing miniscule amounts of marijuana or arresting Black people for walking down the street minding their own business.
Although you couldn't be more enthusiastic about this specific gender reveal party concept, your wife only seems moderately on-board. O.H. was the one who cleverly suggested that you combine //fireworks// with //fire// at the same event, since they're practically the same thing. Once your wife got the romantic idea of a bonfire in her head, she's been busy ever since planning s'mores and songs to sing around the campfire.
This has given you and O.H. [[the subterfuge you need to get a little bit crazy->Subterfuge]].Sitting in the backyard with O.H. nursing some Natural Ices, you create a crude drawing with your friend about how everything will go down.
One: you have secured some empty property at the edge of a friend's farm to have the gender reveal party at.
Two: you will build a giant bonfire.
Three: you will place a number of sky rockets, firecrackers, bottle rockets, M-80s—and the baddest boy of the mall—the M-100—around the circumfrance of the bonfire.
Four: you will create two satchels. One filled with copper chloride (which creates a blue flame, which represents boys, because boys are associated with blue) and the other filled with lithium chloride (which creates a pink flame, which represents girls, because girls are associated with pink).
Five: each sachel will also be filled with things like Ziploc bags full of gasoline and lighter fluid. This will help the fire catch. When the fire catches, the gender will be revealed. When the fire catches, it will also grow and set off all the fireworks.
Six: after the fireworks have finished and the fire has settled, your normal friends and family will enjoy s'mores, beer, patriotism, and the new gender of your baby, which is carved into stone forevermore.
You clank your Natty Ice can against O.H.'s. The plan is perfect. [[No part of it could go wrong->Fire Day]].Today is the big day! February 1st, 2020. You woke at dawn, more excited than a child at Christmas, arising to celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus. Even before your wife gets up to make you breakfast, you make your way to the farm to begin set-up. Everything is perfect, and you're home by 9am.
You think it might be nice to include Brynndynn in the action. He seems to love anything with flashiness, and what is more flashy than fireworks? He's ten now. It is about time to start burning the world down like a man. Although you sit him down and have a man-to-man talk, he shakes his head.
"Why?" you ask. "Why, my son?"
"I'm scared, Dad."
You shake your head, hiding your disappointment. It will have to be you. You will have to be the one to usher in a new generation of the two genders to the world.
You go to the kitchen table, finding the immaculately packaged snacks, decorations, drinks, and grab bags that your wife entirely purchased and wrapped up herself. You offer to carry them to the car for her: [[it's the least you can do->Bonfire, Baby]].Your friends and family have gathered around. Although you encouraged them to wear the color matching the gender they believe the baby is, you're not very surprised when the men come wearing blue and the women come wearing pink. It makes sense, to abide by your sacrosanct gender like this.
Everyone is having a good time, standing around, drinking, talking about how the baby's gender will holistically create his or her entire path in life—normal adult conversational topics. Someone is blasting Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" from the back of their pick-up truck with the windows rolled down as Brynndynn performs uncomfortably high leg-kicks to the beat.
As the sun sets, you know your time approaches. The bonfire has been lit, and it highlights the crowd as the sky becomes darker and darker. Earlier this afternoon, you gave your wife the two satchels, each with a sticker at the bottom, marking the gender. As you approach her, she gives you a worried peck on the lips. You can see her facial features in the fire light. "Be careful," she says. Be careful? What could she mean? Could her womanly emotional sixth sense have somehow detected something that your impeccable cool, collected manly logic missed? You watch as your cowardly son creeps to hide behind his mother's beach chair.
You take the satchel in the hand and march toward the small bonfire you've created. This is the time. You can imagine the perfection that will follow. You get closer, swinging your arm, and [[toss the bag into the blaze->Wildfire Ending]].