While waiting for the bathroom, Jon wondered exactly what had happened. Was he just seeing numbers and levels and nothing else? That seemed unlikely. He wondered if there were other things gamelike going on than just the hit points.
Jon thought to some of the sillier things he had seen in RPGs and decided to try his inventory. He went into his room and picked up a couple of schoolbooks. With the schoolbooks in hand he tried to pick up a game guide, then a sci-fi book, then an encyclopedia volume. Jon quickly found himself unable to carry more books; Jon concluded that he didn't have a video game inventory where carrying 99 of the same item is no problem.
But there had to be something. Could he cast spells? At the thought, he saw some text overlaid on the wall. He turned his head and the text moved with it. It seemed to be a menu. Jon thought about picking "Skill" and it did indeed change into a list of what looked like spells. The first one read "Fire" with explanatory text. Jon picked it and found himself holding out his hand, when a half foot wide ball of fire streaked out and hit the wall. It didn't seem to leave a mark, but Jon wasn't going to try it dozens of times to see if the effect accumulated.
Jon next picked "Equip". It showed him as having a shirt in his armor slot, pants in the legs slot, and sneakers in the shoes slot--just what he would expect. Some RPGs used armor types such as breastplate or leather mail. But some used strange things for armor that wouldn't be expected to provide much protection in the real world. A character could have 5 different levels of shirt, some of which cost 100 times the price of other ones and protect better than a full suit of plate mail.
"Use Item" brought up a list of things he was actually carrying: Phone, Wallet, Coins, plus all the "armor". He tried to use the wallet.
Upon picking the option, Jon found himself forced to pull the wallet from his pocket, hold it out, and say "I can't use that here". Then he involuntarily put it away.
As soon as this was over he tried taking it out and looking at it normally, which didn't cause him any difficulty. But did that mean that any "magic" items would have to be used that way as well? There wasn't really any such thing as...
Of course there was. He picked up the stone.
"I wish my shirt is green."
And his shirt turned green. So the menu didn't limit the stone. But did it mean there were special magic items around that needed the menu? If the world had turned into a RPG, there had to be special magic items, if only potions. Then Jon saw something on his desk that certainly hadn't been there before, and definitely wasn't a potion. It was....
