by John L. Monk
Sometimes in the evening I’d pretend to work on research I no longer had interest in. She, in turn, would play video games with her niece, who lived in another state. And because she was effectively blind while lensing, this relieved her from the burden of my weirdo staring.
Melody had gotten me to play with her in the past, but I’d never given more than a halfhearted effort. To my shame, I’d always been somewhat snobby about gaming. And though I’d never let on, her pastime had been a mild stressor in our early marriage.
Now, for the first time ever, I wanted to retry gaming. She’d been taken from me once already—possibly—and I’d be damned if I lost any more time with her.
“Melody?” I said cautiously.
When she didn’t reply, I raised my voice. “Mel?”
“Huh?” she said. I started to talk and she added, “No, not you—one second, guys.” She blinked a quick sequence and poked something behind her left ear before turning to me. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering if I could play too,” I said lamely, feeling like a little kid.
Melody’s lips widened in a warm smile. “Yeah, since when?”
“Since now,” I said. “Can you sign me up or whatever you do?”
“You’re already signed up. You’ve had an account for years. You just never used it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, okay then. Do I need a tooth implant?”
“Nope. Ruth? Ethan’s gonna play. Enable his audio for Gamma Realm 5.”
“Keying audio for Gamma Realm 5,” Ruth said.
“Okay, mysterious husband,” Melody said. “Lie back, close your eyes, and I’ll give you a big surprise.”
For the next several hours, Melody guided me through a 20th century depiction of a nuke-blasted wasteland. There were lasers, mutants, and bands of refugees living in scattered communities. There were technological treasures to be unearthed from government research facilities, eternally guarded by relentless killer robots. There were stats, levels, mutant powers, and skills to unlock.
The more we played, the more it became clear I’d dreamed the whole Mythian thing. Melody hadn’t died. She was right here! Laughing beside me while I murdered a bunch of sucker-people with a rocket-propelled grenade.
“Good job, Ethgar,” she said, laughing and game-kissing me—an act I’d thought strange the first few times, but now looked forward to. “Almost too good. If I were a suspicious gal, I’d think you were playing games on the side.”
I smiled at her use of my game name, which she’d given to me.
Melody said, “I play with my guild on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you’re serious, they can do without me a few weeks while we level you up.”
“I’d love that.”
And I meant it. This was a side of Melody I knew little about, and I cursed myself for a snobby fool.
Months passed. Our lives turned into something like an extended vacation—or even a second honeymoon. Melody never got back to her guild. Rather, we became a guild of two, and together we sliced, pummeled, bashed, stabbed, and blasted our way through Gamma Realm 5 and a bunch of other games—daily, from dawn till dusk, with little breaks for naps and food in-between. At night we’d go out to eat, and yes, drink, though not to excess. When we got home, we’d make love—an increasingly rare event in the past several years, but I was on a mission to change that.
One day, after an intense evening fighting monsters in an undersea government laboratory, I said the unthinkable: “Wouldn’t it be great to retire this way? Go to one of those Everlife worlds?”
I’d tossed it out lightheartedly.
Melody’s smile faded. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What if I’m not?”
“Well, are you? Are you serious?”
I nodded. “Sure. I like this. Gaming. We’d be good together. We are good together. And, uh … like they say: we’d live forever.”
“No, Ethan, we wouldn’t,” Melody said sadly. “We’d die. Our bodies would die and take our real personalities with it. We talked about this. You said it was a government lie to get rid of old people. We watched all those videos, read the books, went to the marches.”
“But what if it’s real?”
Melody shook her head and smiled in a way that said she wasn’t buying it. Then her eyes glazed over as she engaged her smart lenses.
“Come on, Ethgar,” she said in her tough-girl gaming voice. “These mutants ain’t gonna kill themselves.”
Two days later, Melody said she had to visit her sister. I’d never liked her sister, so I stayed home to work on my crafting skills. My character was in that sweet spot between skill advancement and profitability. Thermite bombs were very profitable if you cornered the market. Which I had.
Later that night, richer than my character’s wildest dreams, there was a knock on the door of our apartment. It was the police. They were here about Melody. Her flitter had malfunctioned, crashing her into a building and killing her instantly.
Again.
Chapter Nineteen
The police asked where I was during the accident, the last time I’d seen my wife, and whether or not we’d been fighting. I answered numbly, but accurately.
Something in my manner must have rang false because they disabled Ruth’s privacy protocol and asked her if I was lying. Ruth’s story backed up mine, and they relaxed after that.
Now they asked how I was doing, were there friends or family they could contact for me, and did I need a grief counselor?
No, I told them. None of that. I even remembered to thank them, which they seemed to appreciate. Then, after about an hour—enough time to ensure I didn’t jump out a window—the police expressed further condolences, said goodbye, and left.
I shut the door, turned around—possibly to look for a window—and found a wall of fog in the middle of my living room.
As if a switch had been flipped, memories of Mythian came flooding back. I’d been in a cavern beneath a swamp. There had been a blue torch. To escape it—to finish the Trial of Pain—I’d jumped through a wall of fog just like this one.
“Leave me alone!” I shouted.
I yanked open the door to leave but found the way blocked by more fog. Fog ahead of me, fog behind me, and two walls on either side.
“Oh, god,” I said.
The cruelty of this so-called game was unbelievable. Somehow, it had tricked me into thinking this was all real. That I’d only dreamed she’d died. Then it had taken her away again.
She’s still there. Alive in Ward 2. Cipher said so.
To get there, I had to finish the Trial, which I assumed ended just beyond the fog.
What if it’s something worse?
Hard to imagine anything worse than losing Melody twice in one life. Three times, considering the marriage I’d squandered beside her but not with her. She’d lived an exciting life full of adventure, and I’d missed my chance to share in it.
No more.
Resolved to finish what I’d started and to fix my mistake, I wiped my tears, adjusted my shirt for some reason, and stepped through the fog.
Wearing only sandals and a noob tunic, my bottomless bag tucked inside it, I fell through a mist-shrouded tube with no ceiling or floor. The mist gathered thickest about twenty feet to either side, creating a barrier I couldn’t see through. My character sheet was back, and my stats were where they were supposed to be. Once again, I was a level 37 sorcerer.
Before Mythian—back when everything was still normal—I’d purchased several ground cars from the 20th century. No, not the really expensive kind, like Ferraris and Lamborghinis. I’d gone for the more affordable models: a Toyota Corolla, a Chevy truck, and a red Ford Escort.
My fastest speed in a car had been around seventy miles an hour. The wind coming through the window that day paled in comparison to the gale roaring past now.
Falling.
Falling.
In the real world, I couldn’t have fallen this long without slamming into t
he ground. My death should have been a long-ago certainty. But the Everlife designers were sadistic, and they loved reminding me of that fact.
Falling.
Falling.
That charade they’d pulled with my old life, using it against me … The pain I’d felt when Melody said no, she didn’t want to retire to a game world had been just about unbearable. The game wanted me to think she was rejecting me. The question was: why? Who would do that?
Trial of Pain, indeed. It was all bullshit.
Pay attention.
I paid attention.
I tried using my hands and feet to hover close to one of the foggy walls. It worked a little. Then the tube readjusted, placing me back in the middle. A helluva trap. Nothing could kill me, and I couldn’t leave. Not without shooting myself with a spell and dying. All that’d do was take me back to the shore and that awful blue flame. Then a replay of my last days with Melody, and in the end I’d be right back here.
Jaddow…
That bastard hadn’t told me about any of this. It felt like a betrayal. He’d wanted me to come here because he once had. Presumably. Or maybe this was an elaborate way of getting me out of his hair.
I summoned an apple and lost it immediately. I summoned another and chucked it at the foggy tube wall. The apple didn’t go an inch before shooting quickly above me.
The science was clear: apples weren’t nearly as dense as Ethans.
That other group, those adventurers … If they’d been here, seven strong, they could make a chain and spread out, like skydivers. The tube had shown no indication that it expanded or contracted. It moved when I moved, stranding me in the middle.
And just like that, I had an idea.
Rolling onto my back, I let the wind balance me out until I was sort of floating, like an otter. I opened my bag and reached in, looking for the telekinesis ring. Hard work slipping it on one-handed, but I managed. Next, I fished out my staff, then struggled as the wind tried snatching it away.
When I was ready, I let the staff go, grabbed it using my telekinesis ring, and began moving it to the fog wall. Holding it cross to the wind was difficult because the force kept trying to flip me over. Now the staff was above me, trailing like a streamer. Surprisingly, this worked in my favor.
Still concentrating, I willed the staff that way, leaving it vertical to reduce its profile, and the staff sailed easily over to the wall.
Careful now…
Another pulse of will and the staff entered the foggy wall. All resistance stopped. I angled it flat and knocked into something solid and unmoving. Tapping some more, it became clear I wasn’t falling at all. My body was suspended in a wind tunnel.
In a flash of inspiration, I pushed against the solidness and started moving sideways. I kept pushing, and pretty soon I passed through the fog onto a ledge of stone circling the tunnel. It also had a low ceiling. On hands and knees, I crawled its circumference twice feeling for exits or hidden levers, but found nothing.
Trapped again.
Or was I?
If this really was a wind tunnel, then I’d been floating, not falling. With more drag, I might have floated up. With less, I’d drop like a stone.
Still smarting from those monkeys stealing my clothes, I stripped off my noob tunic and packed it and the staff into the bottomless bag. Then, clutching the bag close to my body, I rolled off the ledge back into the wind tunnel.
The wind caught me, as expected. But when I pulled in my arms and crossed my ankles, the wind didn’t pick up. A good sign, in that the trap wasn’t compensating to keep me in the middle.
A few seconds later, my feet touched the unyielding ground and the wind quickly died. The foggy walls evaporated and a rock-hewn tunnel materialized in front of me, leading into darkness.
I didn’t follow it. I sat on the ground, dropped my head in my hands, and wept.
Chapter Twenty
Beyond the wind tunnel, there were other obstacles to overcome, some more challenging than others:
A hall of mirrors with easy-to-kill doppelgangers of me that leaped out randomly with long, wicked knives.
A chasm with floating platforms I had to hop across.
A forest of mushrooms that sprayed a digestive poison when disturbed.
A long corridor with burning liquid dripping from the ceiling.
A room of swinging blades I had to weave through.
Another room had numerous hidden tripwires that triggered crossbow bolts from holes in the wall.
I was able to survive each obstacle by going as slowly as possible and not panicking. By the end, my skin was a blackened, perforated, bloody mess. I ached everywhere, and all I wanted was a shower. If I gave up, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this, and Melody would go on sleeping forever. But then I would have failed as a husband and as a human being.
Instead of that, I healed up, ate enough apples to stay alive, and got some sleep.
Real darkness this time. No magic runes or glowing moss. Which is why, with plenty of points to spare, I applied one to Light Rune and cast it onto my staff. Guided by its faint twinkling, I continued down the latest corridor through the sadistic underworld. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I sensed the Trial was coming to an end.
Hours later, when no new tortures emerged, I wondered if I’d been fooled. Maybe the passage was looping back on itself endlessly in another maddening trap.
No sooner had the thought occurred to me when the ground began to slope. The air changed from cool and fresh to moist, faintly reminiscent of morning breath. The walls looked different, too. When I held my staff close, they glistened with dampness, and the color had gone from grayish black to light brown. It didn’t feel like stone, either. More like leather.
“Yuck,” I whispered, wiping my finger dry.
The floor was made of the same material, and slippery in my noob sandals.
A damp gust of air blew against me. A few seconds later, it blew back, like a bellows. In and out.
“Now what?” I said quietly.
From far down the corridor, a man’s voice called out, “Come a little further, Ethan Crane, and I will tell you.”
With a gasp, I said, “Who’s there?”
Whoever it was didn’t reply.
A hundred feet more and the tunnel opened to a room lit by an unholy red light. The breathy smell was now that of a charnel house, and the floor was a mess of what looked like blood and other bodily fluids. Adding to the gruesome scene were the walls and ceiling, stitched together from tormented human faces. Living faces. They writhed and moaned in horror as blood seeped from staring, lunatic eyes. Their gazes followed me as I cautiously approached a throne in the middle of the room. Sitting on it was a skinless corpse whose lipless face seemed to grin at my discomfort. It looked like those pictures you sometimes saw in doctors’ offices with the muscles, ligaments, and veins exposed. The only thing keeping its organs from spilling out was a smooth layer of translucent fascia.
The throne was constructed of enormous swollen gums and blackened teeth, like an exposed mouth with the rest of the skull cut away. Continuing the theme, a long tongue had been rolled down and across the floor like a red carpet. When I realized I was standing on it, I leaped aside and nearly slipped.
“Watch yourself,” the dead thing said in an amused tone. “Fall here and the stain of this place will follow you for all your days.”
“What the hell are you?” I said, a twitch away from blasting him.
“I am called Bite,” he said. “And you are Ethan. And you have very nearly completed the Trial of Pain. Are you excited? Do you quiver in anticipation of your prizes?”
“How do you know my name?” I said.
“Part of my charm.” He pointed a glistening finger at the ceiling. “I heard you scratching around up there. I know you are friends with Jaddow. He is your mentor. I know you have business with a man named Cipher. His relationship to you is … murkier.”
Bite was a lucid, like the bartender at The Sl
aughtered Noob. Bernard knew the name of every person in the game. But even he hadn’t heard of Cipher. And he couldn’t talk about Jaddow for more than a few seconds without losing his train of thought.
“You know about Cipher?” I said. “How?”
Bite’s chuckle was wet and phlegmy, and I wanted to clear my throat in sympathy.
“I am a fiend,” he said, “and a greater fiend, at that. Fiends and divinities are intimately aware of everything in the world—every rock, tree, and blade of grass. Each player. Every creature. We also know our fellow fiends and divinities … or so I’d once thought. I’d been completely unaware of this one until just the other day when in he waltzes, unannounced, to stand in the very spot you now occupy. Cipher, he says. Pleased to meet you.” He laughed again. “I was designed to be creepy, but that one…” Bite shook his head slowly back and forth, a study in puzzlement. “He told me I would remember him for as long as he felt necessary. From me to you, I believe he has that power. Other than his name, he exists as an empty spot in Mythian’s blemish-free tapestry. Your wife does, too. Melody?”
Mouth open in shock, I stepped forward to demand how he knew about my wife—and Bite jumped the twenty feet between us to stand quivering in front of me.
Startled out of my wits, I launched a hasty attack:
“S-shadow Beam!”
The room darkened briefly, but the beam didn’t cast. Bite seemed unfazed, more amused than anything.
“Careful, now,” he said. “It’s a long walk back. And there’s the matter of your Hard Mode option—the one that makes you relive your most painful pre-game experiences. Normal Mode players have only to deal with physical pain. The creators of this world added an extra layer of hell for the more ambitious types.”
“How do you know about my wife?” I said, holding my ground. Something told me if I retreated, Bite would be on me like a wolf after a wounded deer.
He leaned in close, an inch from my face, and I nearly gagged at the stench of meat, blood, and bile coming off him. Then he pulled back.
