text: [Themes: modern, humor]
  
  That's the spirit! I knew you had it in you!
  
  Okay so you're feeling uncharacteristically motivated today, that's a start, but where exactly you're going to begin is another question.
  
  Getting a job might be the way to go, but you have no idea what you might be qualified for. You could go to a family member for help or your old friend the internet as usual.
  
  > ask your older brother Ben
  You're not really sure of how much help you're going to get from Ben given that he's probably just as reclusive as you, probably more so.
  
  You head to the backyard to look for him, but he's nowhere to be found. You do see his girlfriend Moon Shadow meditating in the garden though. For being a filthy hippy she's very pretty. In some ways you can see why Ben gave up his potentially lucrative job in the government for her. Though you don't think Moon Shadow had it in mind that he'd become a paranoid survivalist nut that indulged in every conspiracy theory known under the sun.
  
  You ask her where he is.
  
  "Hey Moon Shadow, sorry to bother you, but do you know where Ben is?"
  
  Moon Shadow stops her meditation to address you.
  
  "No worries Suzy. I am just happy to see you! You spend far too much time inside that dark basement hiding out from the world much like Ben does in his bunker. The both of you should embrace all the beauty it has to offer!"
  "Uh, sure. So do you know where Ben is?"
  "Sadly no. I haven't seen him for a couple days, but I'm sure he'll return to me soon. He always has!"
  "A couple days? Where did he go?"
  "Oh he's working on his underground bunker as always. He really gets caught up in it; though I try to tell him that it's completely unnecessary, but I understand his intentions to protect all of us are good. It is my hope that he will someday come to his senses and we will leave this place. The aura and karma here are...well very fucked up."
  
  Never having been in Ben's bunker you ask where it is.
  
  "Dunno, he hides it really well and keeps switching the entrance. In fact I haven't ever been inside it; I've always slept up here beneath the majestic stars."
  "Hmm, I think I've seen you and Tommy on the couch in the living room a few times."
  "Well Tommy gets cold sometimes and he wants his mommy with him, would you have me deny that right?"
  "I suppose not. So where's Tommy then?"
  "He's been spending time with his father, so he's also down in the bunker. It's good for them to bond and it allows me to get back in touch with the cosmos."
  
  At this point you're getting exasperated.
  
  "How the hell can Ben move the damn entrance around and hide it so well in just this backyard?" you ask.
  "I'm afraid I do not know the answer to your questions. You will have to ask him yourself. All I can tell you that if you truly wish to find him, you will do so, but I am wondering if you should not stay here and meditate with me so that you may calm yourself and perhaps find another path."
  
  > Go find Ben
  You don't have time for Moon Shadow's hippy shit, you're here to find Ben.
  
  "No, I'm pretty sure the only path I wanted to follow today was to find Ben."
  "Very well, but as I said before I have no idea where he's hidden the entrance this time. You'll just have to find it yourself." Moon Shadow tells you and then goes back to her meditation.
  
  You begin wandering the backyard, looking at the ground in the hopes of finding something out of place, but you're not having too much luck.
  
  "How the hell...gah, tis is pointless...huh?"
  "Aunt Suzy pretty!" you hear a familiar voice say.
  
  You turn around and see Tommy!
  
  "Tommy! I thought you were with your dad. Your mom's over there."
  "Mommy sleeping."
  "No she isn't she's med..." you look again over in Moon Shadow's direction and she's no longer meditating she's on the grass sprawled out fast asleep.
  
  "Oh well, I guess she is asleep. So Tommy, as I said before I thought you were helping your dad."
  "Busy. No want my help anymore." Tommy says while looking down at the ground. At first you think he's sad, but actually he's just become fascinated with a bug on the ground.
  "Tommy where's the entrance to the bunker?"
  "Dunno."
  "You don't know? How can you not know? You came up from the bunker!"
  "Oh yeah...me don't know. Keeps changing location. You want to play?"
  
  This little trip to find Ben has just gotten weirder by the minute. You're really starting to wonder what the hell is going on. Though part of you just wants to give up and not bother with this nonsense.
  
  > keep looking for Ben
  "Tommy, think carefully. WHERE is the entrance to the bunker?" you order which seems to make Tommy upset. He collapses on the ground and begins to cry.
  
  "WAHHHHHHH! I don't like this game! No blue anymore! No more bad place!"
  "What the hell?"
  "Dig too deep! Too deep! Two trees! Scary things! (Sob)"
  
  It's a bit incoherent gibberish, but you begin to wonder if Tommy hasn't given you the clue of where to find the shelter entrance. You look around and notice the blue colored flowers near the medium sized trees in your backyard and you start to wonder.
  
  You leave Tommy to his retard seizure and head over to one of the trees and knock on it. Sounds solid, you knock on the other one and it makes a completely different sound.
  
  "Hah! Hollow!" you say and feel around for a door of some sort, eventually you find one and when you open it up a long ladder leading down is revealed. At the bottom you can see a faint bit of light and hear the hum of a generator.
  
  While you're glad you found the entrance, you still don't know how the hell he's been supposedly changing the entrance. It really doesn't seem possible, unless Moon Shadow and Tommy were initially lying to you.
  
  You descend down the ladder. It takes awhile, but when you get to the bottom you find yourself in a fairly spartan room with a few dim lights and a generator. There's only one corridor leading from the room so you follow it.
  
  "Ben? Are you down here? Don't shoot if you are, it's me Suzy!" you call out, walking down the corridor.
  
  You pass many smaller room, most are empty. Some have things like canned food in them. You marvel at the fact that Ben was able to build something like this within a relatively short period of time. Amazing still that nobody really paid much attention to what he was doing or how he even got the materials down here.
  
  Eventually you come to a spot where the bunker doesn't have the wall siding and just dirt with wooden support beams are being used. You're guessing that Ben's only just started digging here. You also notice that the newly dug pathway is sloping downward and there isn't any lighting in that direction. This was creepy before, but now it's starting to approach the scary realm. You decide you don't really want to go any further.
  
  "BEN?! Are you down there?"
  
  Your call is followed by silence for a moment, then you hear some shuffling, then heavy breathing. Whatever it is that's approaching, it doesn't sound like Ben and when a disgusting figure dripping with ichor steps into the dim light, you know damn well it isn't Ben!
  
  Panic and fear overwhelm you, and you run screaming back to the ladder. The inhuman noises are only getting louder though. You completely freak out when you run into a figure that steps out from one of the side rooms. You're temporarily blinded by the powerful light shining from where the figure's head would be. The figure turns down the light and you can see that it's Ben wearing light mounted helmet.
  
  "Suzy, what the fuck are you doing down here? Get out of the way!" Ben shouts and strides past you with a shotgun when he hears the noises behind you.
  
  You crawl into the room he just came out of and hear him shout "DIE FUCKING MUTANT BASTARD!", followed by a couple of gunshots a hideous cry and a loud thump.
  
  Ben then returns to find you.
  
  "Suzy, you're still here? You've should've kept running, it's not safe down here." Ben asks helping you up.
  "W...what's going on down here?"
  "Oh nothing much except trying to clean out some sort of race of creatures. I dunno what the hell they are, but I call 'em Chulocks. Y'know like a combination of a Morlock and a Chud heh heh."
  
  You have so many questions that you don't know where to begin. Ben touches some sort of panel on the wall with his shotgun and a secret door slides open and motions you inside a nicely furnished room with a large arsenal, computer, books, bed and some food.
  
  "Don't worry about the Chulocks, we're safe in here, though I really need to install a security camera system down here. Just haven't had time. I Look Suzy, I'm sure have a shitload of questions, and I'll try to answer some of them, but you'll have to leave soon. I have to start working on changing the layout of this place again, obviously it isn't hidden enough if you found it. What were doing do here anyway?"
  "I...I was going to ask you for job advice."
  "Job?" Ben starts to laugh. "I don't think I'd have any good advice since I gave up that life long ago. You still living in the basement?"
  "Yeah."
  "Hmm, you might want to think about moving or at least sleeping with a weapon."
  "Why?"
  "Well as you can see living underground around here isn't exactly the safest thing. Now I doubt if these things will be crawling into the basement anytime soon, but still it's something to think about. Ironic that I built this place to be safe and it turns out to be almost as dangerous."
  "Almost? Why the hell are you still living down here?"
  "You might as why as why am I still living in America. Because it's my home and I'm not going to be run off by some underground mutants or ancient race, or whatever the hell those things are. Besides I got a theory they're government made anyway. Probably some sort of experiment that went wrong, or maybe even unleashed on me purposely. It wouldn't surprise me."
  
  You're not sure if that is the case, but given that you saw one of these things, Ben's conspiracy theories might not all be crazy.
  
  "How long have you been fighting these things?"
  "Quite awhile. I first ran into them about a year after I started digging this thing. Little did I know something else was digging UP. There were shitloads of them in the past. Nowadays not so much. I dunno if it's because I'm killing them all off or they're finally getting the idea of not to come around here. For awhile I thought I'd killed them all, and I even had Tommy come down here to help me sometimes, but as it turned out they weren't all gone and I sent Tommy back up. He's seen them, and is scared of them, but I know his attention span isn't the greatest."
  "So, wait does Moon Shadow know about this? Does anyone else?"
  "Moon Shadow, well if you've spoken with her, she'd probably try to make friends with the damn things. So no she doesn't know. Everyone else in the family doesn't know either. They're all too wrapped up in their own dramas and wouldn't believe me if I told them. Well Uncle Ed might, but he's up to his own suspicious dealings and quite frankly I think a Chulock eating him wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. He's just plain creepy."
  
  This all seems very surreal to you. All you did was want a little job advice to do something with your life and you got wrapped up in something much more.
  
  Question is now, are you going to actively do anything about what you learned?
  
  > No
  This definitely isn't for you. You want to be out of here as quickly as possible. Ben certainly understands.
  
  "Can't say I blame you, but like I said before you really should think about changing locations of where you sleep or move out entirely. This place was never the healthiest of environments...eh, I'm not going to tell you what you should do with your life, but take this pistol at least. Hell, given our family's dysfunction you should have one anyway. Take care okay?"
  
  You take the gun and make your way back up the ladder and out the bunker. Moon Shadow and Tommy are now both sleeping near the garden. You pass them and head back to the basement half expecting to be attacked, but of course that doesn't happen.
  
  You don't sleep much for the next few days and when you do its on the living room sofa, which means you have to endure Kelly's insults, but nothing worse than that. (She does notice that you carry a pistol around now though) Out of curiosity you go back to the tree with the secret entrance only to find it doesn't exist anymore.
  
  Time passes and Ben comes up to the surface every once in awhile as usual, and you talk more in depth about things. Namely the "underworld". He's convinced more than ever that the government has something to do with them.
  
  Eventually he says he has everything he needs down there now, and doesn't expect to come to the surface again. He tells Moon Shadow to take Tommy away and go some place else for he cannot be the soul mate or father that is needed. He also tells you again that you should leave with them and hands you a bunch of money. He says it's the last of his life savings from his "old life".
  
  You can't see any reason to really stay. You've been on edge ever since you found out about the Chulocks, and you were looking for something to do with your life.
  
  Saying goodbye to Ben one last time, you, Moon Shadow, and Tommy move on to parts unknown where an unknown future awaits. But hopefully it won't involve Chulocks.