Level Up

by Craig Anderson

  Cheeky bastard!

  I don’t mean to get angry, but it’s hard not too. I’ve been pushed around all day and now these A.I. goons are getting in on the act. Well they’ve messed with the wrong warlock! I concentrate and my left hand bursts into flame. With a flick of my wrist it arcs through the air and sets one of my attackers alight. He runs around screaming as his friends all take a step back. Who’s soft now!

  A flashing icon catches my attention and I glance at it. It says, “ultra attack is ready.”

  It’s time to get my warlock on. I look at the remaining guys and think how great it would be if my ultra attack was something that would teach them a lesson. That’s when I see the shadow on the ground and hear the almighty screech. We all look up in unison as a two hundred foot dragon bursts through the clouds and rains fire. I hold my hands up to my face as the fire hits, but my health bar doesn’t budge. I guess I am a fireproof warlock. My assailants are not so lucky, they are reduced to smouldering piles of ash.

  Sarah says, “Wow, most people save that for the boss fight, but sure, why not vaporize five square acres of land to kill three level 1 grunts…”

  I guess I got a bit carried away. I’m about to remove the headset when my scalp starts to tingle again. It’s a tickle at first, like a static shock, but it keeps growing in intensity. I grab at the headset as the screen flickers and goes black. I pull upwards but nothing happens. Sarah has strapped me in tight. I say, “Something’s wrong. Can you get me out of this?”

  “Sure, just give me one second, the game has crashed. There’s some kind of CPU spike on the servers. I just need to isolate the issue before it wipes our whole partition. Carlos, can you get him out.”

  I feel another pair of hands fumbling with the headset. “How is this stuck on so tight? I didn’t have a problem getting it off, it must be caught on something.”

  My whole head is aching now and I resort to a very graceful dance that I am sure looks even more ridiculous than it feels. I’ve almost got the helmet off when a surge of power hits and buckles me at the knees. As I fall to the ground I hear screaming and realize that it’s coming out of my mouth. That’s when everything goes dark for real.

  ***

  I open my eyes slowly and am surprised to see Sarah staring down at me, her face a picture of concern. The lights shine behind her, she looks like an angel. The only thing missing is the halo.

  I try sitting up and the whole room spins. I rub my temples, which only marginally helps. “What happened?”

  “You died!”

  “I know that, the screen went black. I mean what happened in the real world?”

  “You died! For real.” Her expression suggests she’s deadly serious.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I look around and see Sarah clutching a small white box that has wires coming out of it. I follow them to my chest and am surprised to see my shirt is undone and someone has shaved patches of my chest hair.

  Carlos runs into the room. “The ambulance is on the way!” He skids to a halt when he sees me. “Holy shit, you’re alive!”

  I feel my pulse race. They aren’t joking. I was dead. Like, dead, dead. There was no heaven, no angels, no pearly gates, not even a hot-tub full of sulphur. There was just nothing. I didn’t even know I was dead, until I wasn’t. What the hell. Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

  Professor Jasper bursts into the room. “Is everyone ok in here? I heard screaming.”

  Sarah starts to cry and tries to explain between sobs. “Marcus was in the game when the CPU utilization went off the charts. There was some kind of power surge down the cables and he got electrocuted.”

  Professor Jasper shakes his head. “Actually my dear he got shocked, the term electrocuted only applies when someone dies from the electricity. It’s a common misunderstanding.”

  She waves the defibrillator at him. “I know what electrocuted means.”

  He stares at me bewildered. “Holy shit!”

  I get to my feet, my knees still wobbling. “Yeah, that’s putting it lightly.” I rub my eyes. My peripherals are still blurry, there are white spots creeping around the edge of my vision and no amount of eye rubbing is making them go away. It’s like there is something there that is trying to come into focus.

  A paramedic comes running into the room. She takes one look at me and says, “Holy shit! Sorry, I mean, please sit back down sir.” She pulls a variety of instruments out of her bag and starts prodding and poking me. When she is satisfied that I am in-fact still alive she ushers in her partner with a stretcher. She shines a light in my eye and says, “There are no signs of permanent damage, but we’ll have to run more tests at the hospital. You’ll need to spend the night so we can keep an eye on you. Is there someone you’d like us to call?”

  Oh god. Mum is going to lose her mind over this. It’s taken me my entire life to get her comfortable with the idea that I can leave the house unaccompanied. What’s she going to be like when she finds out that I died tonight? It’s going to be years before she lets me leave the house again. Carlos already has his phone out to dial her, but I say, “Wait! Don’t call her. She’ll only panic and come running to the hospital. I’ll tell her tomorrow, when I have had a chance to compose myself.”

  Carlos taps away on his phone and nods. “Ok done. I’ve told her you’re drunk and are crashing at my place.”

  “You couldn’t have told her I picked up?”

  Carlos smiles. “I wanted to make it believable.”

  “Sarah, can I borrow that defibrillator for a second…”

  The paramedics share a look and plonk me onto the stretcher. The second I lay down I feel tired. I mutter something about getting some rest, and then the room fades out of view again.

  LEVEL 4: RESPAWN

  The smell is the first thing I notice when I wake up. It smells clean, like a vat of hand sanitizer. There’s also a rhythmic beeping in the background, and the sound of muffled conversations.

  It takes me a moment to remember where I am. I sit up to find Carlos asleep in a chair beside me. His snoring is making my headache worse. I hit him with my pillow until he reluctantly opens his eyes. “Morning. What time is it?”

  I look around until I find a clock. “It’s 8:30am.”

  As I say the time my heart races. I’m late for work! Is dying a valid reason for a day off? I can’t help but feel that Jenkins may not think so.

  I continue looking around the room. Something still isn’t right. My vision is off. There’s all sorts of junk floating around in my eyes. It must be a side effect of the electric shock. I’m about to mention it to Carlos when a doctor walks in. She doesn’t look much older than me. She smiles warmly and picks up the chart at the end of my bed. “Good morning Marcus. How did you sleep?”

  “Well thanks. I feel much better.”

  “The good news is that all your test results came back and there is no sign of any lasting damage. You’re a very lucky young man. Any aches, pains, other noticeable side effects?”

  I blink a few times. “Actually, my eyes still don’t seem quite right.”

  She pulls out a tiny flashlight and ambles up beside me. She holds open my eyes and shines the light in them, making me flinch. After a few seconds she says, “no signs of any burst blood vessels or anything else to worry about. If it doesn’t improve in a couple of days you should book an appointment with an optometrist.”

  “Ok, I will do that. Am I free to go?”

  “You are, but take it easy. You had a major shock last night. It’s not unusual for new side effects to develop as time goes by. If you start feeling dizzy or getting chest pains you need to call 999 or come back here immediately, is that clear?”

  I nod and the cute doctor leaves the room. Carlos says, “You really gave us a fright last night. I’m glad to hear that everything is ok. Sarah was very concerned for your wellbeing.” His eyebrows waggle.

  “She felt responsible. She was probably worried about the PR nightmare. Imagine if on
e of the beta testers was killed while playing the game.”

  Carlos’ eyes light up. “That would be awesome! Imagine how many people would line up to buy it if you had a news segment about how the game is so realistic that someone died while playing it. You’d have a license to print money.”

  “Only you could find a way to turn my tragic death into a marketing opportunity.”

  Carlos pops an imaginary collar. “What can I say, it’s a gift.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

  He laughs. “There’s no-one on my team around at this time in the morning. You think Jenkins is missing you yet?”

  I find my phone on the bedside table and try to turn it on, but it is dead.

  Carlos says, “Yeah I tried to get that working for you, I think the zap killed it, or the battery might just be dead.”

  “I need to go to work.”

  “To work? Are you out of your mind? You died last night. Jenkins will manage without you for one whole day.”

  “I feel fine. There are some things he is expecting me to wrap up today. It’s important.”

  “You know you really should go home first. You don’t exactly look top notch at the moment.”

  “I don’t have time for that, I just have to finish up some slides and then I’ll take the rest of the day off.”

  Carlos shakes his head. “Honestly, I worry about you. Grab your stuff, I will call a taxi.”

  “No! Every time you call we end up with the crazy taxi driver that is always talking about killing his ex wife.”

  Carlos puts his phone down. “Already requested. Taxi is on the way. I’m sure it will be a different guy this time.”

  ***

  “And then I would move the body in the dead of night to this pig farm which is just down the road. Everyone knows you can’t go to jail if they can’t find the body.”

  “Fascinating, you have clearly given this a lot of thought. It’s the next left after the lights.” I give Carlos a look and he just laughs.

  We fight to be the first out of the taxi. Carlos chucks him a tenner and says, “keep the change.”

  As he wheel spins away from the curb I say, “why do you insist on always tipping him?”

  “Is he the kind of guy you want upset at us?”

  “Point taken.”

  We walk into the entrance of Master Systems and I see Cindy walking into the lift clutching two coffees. I chase after her, shouting for her to hold the lift, but she must not hear me as the doors slam shut just as I reach it.

  “I suppose I should go show my face. Let me know how it goes with Jenkins.” With that Carlos wanders off towards the sales department. He looks just as scruffy as I feel, but the difference is, he can pull it off.

  The lift takes forever, but eventually it comes back and I take it up to the twelfth floor. A couple of my fellow passengers give my outfit the once over, which makes me self conscious enough to at least tuck my shirt in. I’m not sure much else can be done to improve matters other than a full body hazmat suit.

  I’m barely out the lift when the applause starts. My colleagues apparently feel it is appropriate to highlight my tardiness, despite the fact that Jim isn’t here yet and won’t be for at least another hour.

  Brad pats me on the back. “That must have been one hell of a party. Sorry to miss it. Jenkins is looking for you and heads up, he’s pissed.”

  Oh great. I rush over to Cindy’s desk. “Please tell me you got those slides finished.”

  “Slides? What slides?” She smiles, but it is not an innocent smile, it is the look of a snake that just injected you with poison and is waiting for it to take effect.

  I refuse to believe what is quite clearly happening. Perhaps it is a simple misunderstanding. “The quarterly review slides for the board meeting. You said yesterday they were almost done.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would I do those slides, Jenkins asked you to do them.” She speaks loud enough for several other people to hear.

  Yep, there it is, the paralysis is kicking in. Time to get out of here before she coils herself around me and squeezes until a promotion pops out.

  Panic sets in. I’m good in a crisis, but this is way beyond that. Jenkins was expecting those slides an hour ago, and I haven’t even started them yet. This is going to require some kind of miracle.

  Jenkins bursts from his office like a whale breaching the surface. He takes one look at me and says, “My office. Now.”

  This is not going to go well. I quietly slink into the room and take a seat while Jenkins slams the door and says, “I am not impressed. I told you how important it was to send me those slides first thing this morning, and an hour later you come strolling in looking like you’re fresh from the nightclub. Cindy informs me you were out drinking last night. Do you consider this acceptable behaviour?”

  I manage to blurt out, “I was in an accident last night, they had to resuscitate me at the scene. I came here from the hospital.”

  I thought that might slow him down, but no such luck. “A likely story. If you died last night, why are you here?”

  I really want to answer that, but honestly I don’t know. Why am I here? Why was my first thought upon waking this morning that I was late for work? You would think dying would give me some life altering perspective, but I’m still the same downtrodden peon I was yesterday.

  Jenkins keeps talking. “I thought so. Consider yourself lucky that I need those slides from you. Send them through to me, then you will go home and get changed. I expect you to make up the hours you have missed this morning over the weekend. Is that clear?”

  “I can’t.” Before I can explain his face flushes and his voice drops. “If those slides aren’t in my inbox in the next 10 minutes I will be sure to tell the board of directors who is responsible. Then I’ll have a chat with my friends in HR. Good luck getting another job when you’re fired with cause.”

  There it is, that familiar fear. That the last 3 years of torture will be for nothing, that I’ll be tossed aside and have to start over. I can’t let that happen. This has to mean something, it has to go somewhere.

  There’s just one small problem. I can’t send him slides I don’t have and I am certainly not ready to go home and face my mother. There is no point in saying anything else, I may as well just sit out the clock and wait for the inevitable. I quietly slink out of Jerkins’ office and plonk myself back at my desk.

  I guess I should start job hunting. Perhaps this is it. Rock bottom. It’s only uphill from here. I nudge my computer awake and a new popup fills the entire screen. It looks almost 3d.

  Choose role

  Oh no, not another systems update. The last time the IT guys rolled out something like this it took my computer down for the better part of a day. I don’t have time for this. I scroll through the list looking for Business Analysis. There are a lot of joke entries, including archer and barbarian. The IT guys don’t get out much. Someone is for sure getting fired for this.

  Eventually I find BA. It tells me my role specializes in pivot tables, pie charts and data analysis. Thanks for pointing out how utterly pointless my job is. I should have picked middle management, then I could have specialized in a constant stream of pointless bullshit and unrealistic deadlines.

  The update completes and I am left staring at the spreadsheet that Jenkins sent me yesterday. It taunts me with its unstructured data, pivot tables inside pivot tables and an SQL query that would put some novels to shame. This is it, the spreadsheet that killed my career.

  I’m about to close the file when a new prompt appears on my screen. It says Use data analysis?

  That’s odd, I have never seen that option before. It must be part of the new update. I click yes out of curiosity. The numbers all rearrange themselves instantly into clearly marked and labelled tables. It even generates appropriate graphs. I now know exactly what I am looking at. I have no idea how it even did that, the data made absolutely no sense, and yet here it is laid out
clear as day. I take back everything I said, I am buying the IT guys a beer next time I see them.

  There is suddenly a lifeline, a chance to save my job. The question is, do I want to? I think I do. I’m not going to let Cindy win and I’m not going to give Jenkins the satisfaction. I’ll leave here when I am good and ready.

  I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. The urge to fight back.

  I copy the graphs over to the slides and in six minutes the quarterly review deck is good to go. I email it to Jenkins, feeling proudly defiant. I get a curt, “I need twelve copies.” As a response. He just can’t let me have my moment.

  The red paper jam light blinks back at me. I don’t know why I was expecting today to be any different. If the printer could smirk, it would. We do our dance, the trays sliding in and out from memory, following a process I have done a thousand times. A single sheet of paper comes out and it jams again. As usual I give it a good slap, only this time the printer slides across the room and crashes into the wall, leaving a sizeable dent. I stare at the damage and immediately leg it before anyone sees me. What the hell was that?

  I send the print job to the sales office, which is the only office in the whole building that seems to own a consistently working printer. Annoyingly I don’t have access to that office, so I have to ping Carlos to bring them up. He appears a few minutes later with a bemused grin on his face.

  I grab the slides from him. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “I feel more like a paperboy. Did Jenkins forgive you for being slightly tardy and your less than stellar appearance?”

  “Actually he’s sending me home to change just as soon as I give him these printouts.”

  Carlos beams. “Excellent! I’ll call a taxi. We can pick my car up on the way.”

  “Wait, don’t you have to work?”

  “What? No, my boss already saw me so he knows I am working today. Job done. Let’s go.”

  “Can you at least call a different taxi company?”

  “Of course. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  I pop the printouts on Jenkins desk. He doesn’t even look up, he just says, “go home and change.”