"Hey, Mommy, are you done now?" Katie turned around in surprise to look at a young girl, 8 years old. She looked a lot like Katie did not so long ago. Of course, there were some key differences. For one thing, she was wearing a light blue tank top and white shorts. She also had darker skin and hair than Katie, but she had the same eyes. Katie soon remembered that this is her daughter, Lisa. Her darker skin and hair were what she inherited from her father.
"Yes, I think I'm done now," said Katie.
"Why were you on a treadmill? You've got one back home," said Lisa.
"Oh, I was taking a brief stroll down Memory Lane," said Katie. 'Or up it in this case,' she thought.
Lisa just tilted her head in confusion and said, "So can we go now?"
"Of course we can," said Katie, "I just need to use the bathroom first." She needed to let her thoughts settle, her new memories still needed to kick in. Also, she wanted to take a better look at her new self. "Just wait here and I'll be right back." With that, Katie headed to the bathroom, not considering it might be a bad idea to leave Lisa alone near the Walk in Life machine.
Lisa admired her mother, thinking she was the best mom ever. She had looked at several of her mom's old photos of her in her prime, back when she was a bodybuilding goddess. Lisa wanted to be just as big and beautiful as her when she grew up. She had been lifting weights back home, so she was much fitter than the usual 8-year old. But she wished she was big enough to get on the big exercise machines like her parents, but they told her she was too small for them.
But the treadmill didn't seem too big for Lisa. It looked to be about the best size for everyone. Well, Lisa's mom was on the treadmill for a little bit, so Lisa thought it was alright for her. She wouldn't be going too fast or too long. And she had just enough spare change to pay for a turn.
With that, she started to insert all her quarters into the hopper and hit the start button on the keyboard attached to the treadmill. Suddenly, a message appeared on the screen and it says...
'Welcome to your walk through life. Please enter your name.'
An empty text box started to appear to enter her name. Lida looked on and wondered why she needed to enter her name. But she brushed it off and hit her name on each key to enter her full name. When she hit enter, her full name began to appear above the screen. Once she did that, another message appeared and it said to her...
'Please enter your age.'
Another text box appeared and want her to enter her age. Curious, she type the number eight and hit enter. Looking up to her name, she could see it calculating her actual age. That's when she saw that her full age on display with the eight on the left and the seconds ticking up on the right.
Seeing that, she was amazed and said, "Wow! My age looks accurate! Even the seconds look like it's ticking on real time. Never thought my game to pinpoint my proper age."
As she was looking at it, another message appeared as this one is the strangest. It reads...
'Select the direction you wish to go.'
Below it is two choices with arrows. The up arrow with the word, 'forward' and the down arrow with the word, 'backwards'. Lisa looked to it and finds it all completely strange. Why would there be arrows keys with two separate directions? Does it mean walking forwards or walking backwards? There are a lot of questions that is going through her head. But she made it this far and she wants to know how this arcade game works. So looking to the keypad, she wondered which directions she wishes to go.