1

“HEY, WHAT’S UP Y’ALL, IT’S G AND H COMING AT YOU LIVE FROM TIMES SQUARE. Haha not really. It’s just our bedroom.”

“Yeah, just our bedroom.”

“But we’re totally gonna go to Times Square super soon!”

“And we’ll stream the whole thing.”

“Heck yeah! Don’t forget to smash that MF like button, am I right????”

The young freckle-faced girl giggled as she performed for the camera. Tens and tens of subscribers would be watching this video in due time, and Gretel’s incredible cuteness was the biggest factor in all of that. And Hansel’s, too, of course.

“So, like,” Gretel said, “we really can’t wait to explore the Big Apple. It’s gonna be hella rad.”

“Hella,” Hansel added.

“It’s all thanks to the G&H Squad that we’re so hashtag winning.That GoFundMe was so rad! Almost a whole hundred bucks in just one month! We’re gonna go to New York, try out at a talent agency, and totally make it big, and you’ll get all that money back and more when we totally--” Gretel pointed at Hansel, who began to make a wagging gesture with his fingers-- “Make it rain.”

Gretel did a spin and then when she faced the camera again, added, “See you soon, Successville. We’ll be waiting.”

She clicked a button on her webcam and stopped recording. Another Youtube video down for the count.

The two young twins looked at each other and nodded heartily. This was going to be the best trip they ever took.

Neither of them had ever been to New York before, though it would have been surprising if only one of them had been, since they had only been apart for six of their nine thousand four hundred and twelve days of life. This would be a brand-new adventure that they were sure would land them in a whole new stage of life.

Gretel was obsessed with being an idol. She stanned so many awesome pop stars and insta models and her dream was to be just like them. She’d even sent a half-dozen emails to Express VPN trying to get them to sponsor one of her videos, but they all got lost in the spam filter or something because they never responded. One day she would get so many sponsored posts... So, so many.

It had been her dream ever since she was a young child to become an internet celebrity. Ever since the days of William Sledd, Boxxy, Tay Zonday, and even the famous Mark Fischbach himself, Gretel had been obsessed with the idea that, one day, she could be the kind of person that made viral videos and did all sorts of crazy stunts for a few years and then coasted off that success for the rest of her life. As long as she could make one huge hit video, like Annoying Orange or something cool like that, she’d make enough money to travel the world, get a wife, raise some kids in a decent house out in Long Island, and retire at age 40 after making the anniversary video to that viral hit. She’d planned all this out for a really long time. All she needed was one big break; it was God’s mission for her to become successful!

Hansel was mostly along for the ride. He thought it might be fun.

So with their channel’s two thousand four hundred and thirteenth video uploaded, the twins high-fived and started packing for their trip to the far-off land of New York City. It would be scary, but it would also be amazing. G and H were going to be famous.

2

“Are we really sure about this?” Richard asked his extremely nude girlfriend who sat up on the bed reading a bad LitRPG on her Kindle. He was at the foot of the bed, pacing around with a particularly powerful fretting to it. Anyone watching this scene would feel instant anxiety.

“We are absolutely, completely certain,” she said. She did not lift her head or make any kind of eye contact with Richard. “We’ve talked about this for a very long time. It’s final.”

“But they’re my kids... Anna, they’re my kids. What will they do without me?”

Once again, she did not look up. “They’re a nuisance. And they can survive without you.”

“But they’re only twenty-six!” Richard exclaimed. “They hardly know how to cook macaroni on their own!”

And that was the comment that made Anna finally meet his eyes. “I’m twenty-six too,” she said sharply. “And yet I own my own software company and I’m not some stoned out of my mind slacker sitting in her room all day watching My Little Pony AMVs.”

“Gretel tries her hardest,” he whined.

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Well... She thinks she tries her hardest...”

“All I had to do was send a $200 check to her GoFundMe campaign and now she suddenly thinks she’s going to be a model or something, despite spending every waking sober moment of her life streaming Stardew Valley or whatever. It’s the most ridiculously easy plot I’ve ever devised.”

“You’re being mean.”

“And you’re not being mean enough.” She averted her eyes away and placed their gaze back on the Kindle where they would continue to pour over a really contrived isekai fantasy novel. “I’m not being a very good sugar honey, am I? I’ve let us get too mixed up.”

Richard sat down on the bed next to Anna and stroked her back. “No, of course not,” he said. “You’ve paid me a whole lot of money to spend time with you, but I genuinely really like you. You’re a sweet woman.”

“No, I’m not. I’m using you because I’m into older guys and I’m too busy with work to actually date anyone the normal way. Then I let you move in and... It’s all too weird, isn’t it?”

“Why don’t we get married?” he suggested. “Then it won’t be a sugar honey situation anymore. Just a husband and wife and two grown adult children.”

“Nope, not doing it with Gretel and Hansel around. We have to kick them out, and that’s that. I might be rich but I’m not supporting these useless pieces of not-providing-productivity-to-our-capitalist-society junk.” She beckoned him closer and he laid back on the bed to cuddle with her. “I’m going to take a shower in a second, and when I get out you’d better be on your way across the Hudson River with your kids. You’re going to abandon them in Manhattan and come back here safe and sound all by yourself. You hear me?”

“Yeah, I got it...”

“And then we can finally do some fun stuff around here without getting woken up at three in the morning because Gretel is cheering on a speedrunner streaming from Japan.”

“Fun stuff...”

“Like wild sex parties,” said Anna.

“I understand.”

“Now come here and give your honey some sugar,” she said. He obliged, but he felt intensely guilty about all of it.

His poor children...

3

They were in a tunnel. A tunnel underneath the Hudson River!

For all her life, Gretel had never left her faraway homeland of Paterson, New Jersey. But today, she and Hansel would be taking their first steps into a larger world... They’d be going to New York City, the capital of the United States of America!

Hansel was busy playing his Gameboy Advance (the game was Metroid Fusion), but Gretel always got too carsick to play games or use her phone, so she looked at the cool tunnel with all the cars. Just to think... if this tunnel ruptured, everyone in all these cars would probably immediately die from all the water rushing in.  It was really scary but also really cool.

In just a few hours, Gretel and Hansel would finally begin their ultimate journey into Successville and they would make the coolest and best Youtube videos ever. She could just see the headlines: “We Tried Pizza For the First Time,” or “Guess What Happens When You Drop a Quarter Off the Ferris Wheel in the Toys R Us Store?” (Gretel was unaware that the Toys R Us store had closed several years prior.)

“Dad, thanks so much for taking us on this awesome trip!” Gretel exclaimed.

“Yeah, thank you,” Hansel added.

“Uhh... Okay,” mumbled their father Richard. He buried his face in the wheel of his car for a moment before regaining some composure.

“You know what would be cool?” Gretel asked. “If we used Pokemon Go to mark our whole trip. We’d trigger all the stops and gyms as we pass them and then we’d know exactly where we went during the whole day. Hansel, can you do that?”

“Already on it.” Hansel set down his Gameboy Advance and took out his Samsung Note 7+, tapping away at the screen with his little stylus. “Two stops already.”

“There’s Pokemon Go stops in the tunnel?”

“There’s stops everywhere.”

Soon, they reached the center of New York--Manhattan Island. The buildings were massive, towering behemoths that were nothing like their provincial rural town of Paterson. This... this was a magical land. Both twins doubted that even a place like Disney Land could hold up to such a sight.

Their car was also stuck in massive traffic, which meant Gretel could no longer get that carsick. She took out her phone and began livestreaming immediately, taking a video of the sights and sounds out the window (which she forgot to roll down, but oh well).

“Here we are in the Big Apple, everyone.” There were no active watchers, but she knew that a lot of people would watch the full video after it was uploaded, so that was okay. “What should we do next? I don’t know! But we’re going to explore this city like crazy.” She adjusted her beanie and then switched the camera to selfie mode. A couple cute winks to get those fangirls of hers in a tizzy. “Just wanted to make sure the G&H Squad got a good look at their head honcho. Also, say hi, Hansel.”

“Hi.” He waved a little.

“Dad, do you want to be in the vid?”

“Uh, no thanks, that’s okay...”

“Alright, fam-a-lams, I’ll see you in the next video. Signing off. Stay cute.”

What a great video.

4

“I wonder where Dad went?” Gretel asked. She and Hansel sat at the outdoor table to a pizza parlor (the pizza parlor was closed, but they brought their 7-11 food here to sit and eat), and their father was weirdly nowhere to be found.

“He said he had to go to the bathroom,” Hansel said informatively as he continued to get those Pokemon stops on his phone.

“Oh yeah! I forgot about that. I’m sure he’ll be back in a second.”

They waited.

They continued to wait.

Then as the sun started to set, the pizza parlor opened and the owners kicked them out (they didn’t have enough money to buy a whole pizza, sadly, since Dad made them pay for gas). They had nowhere to go, and it was getting dark.

“I hope Dad’s doing well. He better have brought that Pepto Bismol with him,” Gretel said. “You know how he gets.”

“Yeah, I do.”

They continued to wait, standing at a random street corner.

5

“Okay, so we need to find our way back to Paterson,” said Gretel.

“Should we use the trains?” suggested Hansel.

“No, that sounds complicated. I think we should just walk. Then we can livestream it more. Plus, we have a map home!”

“We do?”

“Yeah, the Pokemon Go stops. We can just go back through them in reverse and we’ll be home in a jiffy.”

“My phone died four hours ago.”

“Oh.”

Gretel and Hansel then began to wander around the giant urban jungle known as New York City for an extremely long time. So long that the night came and then the people on the streets vanished. The lights went dark, other than the street lamps that kept their glances shiny and their hopes up.

But they never did find their way. Instead, they wandered deeper and deeper into the city until they were completely, hopelessly lost. Gretel’s phone died, too, so they didn’t even have a way to contact their father (because what kind of kid learns their parents’ phone numbers in this current year? You really can’t blame them) or even a way to livestream to the G&H Squad. It was a mortifying experience to fully lack the ability to send messages to their most loyal, crowdfund-donating audience.

They roamed and rambled until the sun was almost up and the first peeks of light rose in the sky.

And that’s when they saw it: a peculiar one-story house right smack-dab in the middle of all these skyscrapers and high-rise condos. It was so plain and ordinary that it stood out considerably. And unlike most of the other buildings in the whole city... bright light still shone brightly from one of its windows. Importantly, to Gretel, this was BLUE light.

That meant only one thing: the person or people in that house were her kin. Late night gamers.

“We must go in that house,” Gretel said. “God will not forsake us. He will land us in the biggest success ever.”

“Okay, let’s go,” said Hansel.

They entered.

And inside were dozens of full garbage bags containing neglected recyclable plastics and cans and paper piled so high that several stacks reached the ceiling. Strange machines and blinking computer lights lined nearly every wall, except for the one that hung a detailed portrait painting of a busty anime character. They paced further through this blue-lit house. Their stomachs rumbled loudly, so they went over to the kitchen to raid the refrigerator.

Inside the fridge was... Yes... Yes! It was leftover pizza, exactly the kind of food that Gretel and Hansel had been waiting to try for all this time.

They heated it up in the microwave and, guess what? It was delicious in exactly the way that one would expect. Pizza was everything the movies made it out to be, even if it took such a long trek to reach.

Then, suddenly, a high-pitched feminine voice called out:

“Who goes there?!”

“Ah, crap,” Gretel muttered.

“Yeah, crap, that’s not good,” Hansel added, helpfully.

“I smell pizza!” the voice shouted. “I may not be able to see you, but I know you’re raiding my fridge. You better come in here right now!”

“Come in here?” Gretel asked. “Where are you?”

“In my bedroom.”

“Okay, we’ll come right over.” Gretel and Hansel were nothing if not obedient.

They entered the bedroom and found a horrifying sight--a really messy room where clothes laid on the floor and empty beer cans were stacked up on a haphazardly-placed coffee table! Gretel could hardly stand to look at it all, though Hansel mostly took it in stride.

In front of a quad-monitor setup (one monitor on Discord (light theme), two monitors showing two different Hearthstone streams, and one monitor on Notepad++), there sat the owner of this mysterious house which Gretel and Hansel had broken into: a young woman, sitting half-naked on an uncomfortable office chair as she stared blankly ahead. Her hair was a bright frizzy ginger and the rims of her glasses were ridiculously thick.

This woman was... really, really hot, Gretel immediately realized. Perhaps the sexiest woman she had ever laid eyes on (though the women of the provincial village of Paterson were not among the most beautiful lot, so the comparison was not quite fair).

“Who are you?” the hot woman asked.

“Oh, us? We’re Gretel and Hansel, part of the G and H Youtube channel. I bet you’ve heard of us. We stream daily.”

“Huh.” The woman typed at lightning speed into a web browser on one of her monitors and brought up their Youtube channel. She closed it about five seconds later. “Never heard of you. But I guess you’ll do.”

“What do you mean?” Gretel asked.

“Yeah, what do you mean?”

The woman rotated around her office chair and faced the two directly (holy crap her boobs were kinda... like... completely showing to the entire world here). “You’ve broken into my house, which according to New York State Law gives me full legal right to deal with you with whatever means necessary. I’ve planned this for a long time, and now it’s finally here.”

“Huh?” Gretel asked, more distracted by the boobs than actually responding.

“You see, my name is ‘The Witch,’” explained the Witch. “I’m one of the top sixty computer hackers in New York City, and I intend to take over the entire world someday.”

“Awesome!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty awesome.”

“But I am also a NEET and a Hikikomori. I haven’t left my house in over three years because I’m always working on new projects. But now that you’re here...”

“Us?”

“Yes, you, Gretel,” the Witch said. “You. I’ve needed a girlfriend for so many years, especially one who can go pick up groceries for me, and now you’re finally right here.”

“Oh, dude, I’ve been looking for a girlfriend for ages! Gee, this is the best. Can we go on dates and stuff?”

“If the dates are solely within the confines of my house, then yes.”

“That’s... less exciting, but maybe it’ll be fun...”

“But Hansel, too, is a very interesting proposition,” she said. “I’ve also needed a subject for my experiments for a very long time.”

“A subject?” Gretel asked.

“We’re going to ‘fatten him up,’ as they say in the transhumanist community,” said the Witch. Her glasses flashed bright white from the glare of the computer monitors behind her.

Hansel gulped, but Gretel was still mostly focused on how attractive the Witch was.

6

Yeah, this was pretty fun...

Gretel and the Witch made out on the (messy, unmade) bed. They were using tongue and everything and most outside viewers would have considered this pretty arousing had there been any outside viewers. The two women were about to start doing the hanky panky when suddenly the Witch broke it off.

“I’ve got it!” she shouted. She hopped up from the bed and raced to her monitor, where she began typing away at her Notepad++ file.

“You’ve got what?” Gretel asked whiningly. This was the fifth time this week that the Witch suddenly stopped mid-makeout. Gretel had only been keeping track because she was really bored about not doing much of anything else.

“I know how to design the memory cores on the rocket boots,” the Witch said. “It’s all so simple...”

Gretel sighed. “You know, Witch, maybe one day we could go to the movies or something? I hear that new Dune movie is really cool, and also Zendaya is pretty hot, you know?”

But she was ignored, because the Witch hopped up from her office chair and ran into the workshop on the other side of the house. Bored, Gretel followed.

They entered the workshop and looked at Hansel, the young man suspended up on countless wires and cables, whose body was about twenty-five percent machine by now. Over these past few months he’d been “fattened up,” as the tech community calls it when someone’s body is replaced piecemeal with robot parts until they are more machine than man.

The Witch’s main plot all along had been to build the perfect cyborg-slash-killing-machine that could be mass produced to create a transhuman army under her permanent control. Hansel was pretty fine with going along with it, but it was all so top-secret that Gretel couldn’t stream ANY of it. Her channel was going to waste, especially since Hansel was in no condition to shoot and videos with her. If he left permanently, she’d have to call the channel “The G Channel” which was just painfully generic. “G Squad?” Really? Ugh.

“How are you doing, Hansel?” she asked as the Witch replaced his feet with new rocket shoes.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve been playing more Pokemon Go, in my brain. It’s not that fun when you can’t walk around, but I’m using VPNs.”

“That sounds cool.”

The Witch finished replacing the feet and pumped her fist. “I’m so awesome!”

“Yeah you are,” Gretel said. She went up to her girlfriend and kissed her on the cheek. “Now can we go back to making out, with the implicit promise of hanky-panky as long as we both consent to it?”

“Of course. What kind of gal do you think I am? NOT gay and in love with this super hot woman in front of me?”

“Awwwwww.” Gretel blushed and then scooped up the Witch. She took her in her arms and carried her all the way back to the bedroom.

(Their making out would again be interrupted by a Zoom call between all the members of the Transhumanist Community Forum.)

 

7

“I’m so bored,” Gretel whined, laying her head face down on the dining room table. “This house is so small and I just want to climb a mountain or something. My channel views are so bad right now.”

“You just said three completely unrelated sentences in a row,” the Witch said. “So which is it?”

“I don’t know... I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You’re the one who agreed to date a NEET. Are you done with me already?”

“I don’t know. It’s just... I feel like we never do anything anymore,” Gretel said. “We make out, I play Monster Hunter while you tinker on my brother, I go to Best Buy and pick up spare parts... And it’s been the same thing for a whole year already. I can’t even charge my phone after all this time because of your moratorium on Apple devices. Frowny face emoji...” She lifted her head and frowned deeply at the Witch.

And the Witch merely sighed. “I’m doing my best to conquer the world for you, Gretel. I thought you wanted more from me than just my breasts and my personality. If you want to leave, then you’re free to go. I won’t stop you.”

“...Really?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. You’re my girlfriend, not my slave. Do what you want.”

“You’re just... letting me go?”

“I’ll feel really burned if you do, but I won’t stop you, Gretel. I love you too much to stop you from your dreams. Successville and all that.”

Gretel hesitated. She wondered for a moment if she was making the right decision.

But then she remembered that this was not her home. It wasn’t Hansel’s, either. He hadn’t been fully “fattened up” yet, but he was soon to reach full mechanization at this rate. If they were to truly reach Successville and get their channel subscribers up, they couldn’t do it while the Witch was impeding them.

As sad as it was, Gretel left the house and took Hansel with her.

“I love you,” she whispered under her breath before she closed the door.

8

Gretel rode on Hansel’s back as he rocketed through the sky in a superhero pose. They made the long journey out of New York City and to that distant farmland known as Paterson, New Jersey.

Finally, they had come back home, and it only took the Witch’s ingenious transhumanist technology to accomplish it. They could finally resume their path to Successville now that they were back in a comfortable, safe environment.

And there right at the front door to the house, as if waiting for them with baited breath, was their father. They began to run, rushed inside, and threw their arms around the father's neck.

“My twins!” he shouted. “You’re home!”

The man had not had even one happy hour since he had left the children in the woods known as New York City. However, the woman had died.

“You’re alive...” he sobbed. “If you’re alive that means you finally got real jobs and learned to provide for yourselves... I’m so proud of you. You’ve finally become real adults.”

Gretel stopped and pushed her father away. “Wait, what?”

“Where do you work? Is it retail? Can you give me a discount?” He chuckled. “Oh, just kidding. I’m just so glad you’re safe and not doing that silly Youtube stuff anymore.”

It all finally clicked for Gretel at that moment.

They hadn’t simply gotten lost in New York. They had been abandoned in New York. Abandoned by a man who no longer believed in the dreams of his children.

World domination, in retrospect, was a much better prospect than a pathetic old man who would forsake his own children and stop them from living in his house the rest of their adult lives.

“My channel has gained fifty subscribers since the last time we spoke,” Gretel said. “And I’ll have fifty more for every day I don’t have to speak to you again.”

She stormed off, and Hansel followed willfully. Their father was confused, both about Gretel’s words and about Hansel’s mechanical body, but they didn’t give him time to say anything in response.

That was the last time they ever saw him.

9

“I’m so sorry!!!” Gretel shouted. “I was wrong about everything!!! Lesbianism really is more important than fame and subscribers!!!”

The Witch took her in her arms and hugged her tightly. “Are you ready to conquer the world, my love?”

“Ready as hell. But let’s make out first.”

And make out they sure did.

10

Gretel and the Witch sat side-by-side at their thrones in the Royal Palace. After the Trump Tower was demolished in the aftermath of the Great Cyborg Revolution, Queen Witch decided to build her new home right on top of its remains. It felt symbolic and it felt great. Even though they had conquered the entire world with their half-mechanical army, they both felt like New York was their best home (also the Witch expanded her Hikikomori vow to encompass all of New York, so that she could at least leave the Royal Palace every now and then).

“I always said that God would not forsake us,” Gretel said. “And it turns out I was completely right all along.”

“Yep. We’re the best,” the Witch said.

“I’m finally successful, just like I always wanted.”

“And I finally rule the entire planet.”

They leaned close to each other and made out again.

From the open window at the front of the palace came Hansel, zooming in with his jetpack and rocket feet. His face was mostly mechanical now, but it was still pleasant to look at.

Hansel smiled (sort of), then he saluted. “The resistance in Alberta has been quelled,” he said through his vocal synthesizers.

“Awesome,” the Witch said.

And so it would be for the rest of their days that Gretel and the Witch would live in peace and harmony as the rulers of the planet. And Hansel was there too.