The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point

by Jaron Lee Knuth

“No, she's right. Look at how much time he has logged on DangerWar 2.”

  “How did he get out?”

  “What's wrong with him?”

  The arguing and shouting of the growing mob is silenced when the sky above me flashes with a pulsating red light. I remain on my knees. None of this matters. I'm not here. I can't be.

  “It's the DgS!”

  DOTgov Security officers teleport into the domain and surround me. Their sleek, silver bodies appear androgynous and they are impossible to tell apart aside from the numbers on their backs. The officers swipe their hands in the air, raising screens full of sensors and readouts. Information scrolls past their vision. A few of them nod in agreement before one of the officers steps closer.

  “User name: Arkade. We have flagged your account and will log you out immediately to be processed IRL.”

  I never thought I'd have to hear that acronym ever again. In Real Life. I can't process the fear that idea causes in me. It's cracking my mind in a thousand places. I'm not ready. I want to cry out, to beg them to stop, to give me one more chance. Please, please, please let me back in. But they don't give me the chance.

  The officer reaches out and touches me with a hand that glows red for a second before the world collapses in on itself, shrinking to a tiny white dot in the center of my vision. The dot fades and I hear the voice that was once so common place, but now is more like a forgotten bit of nostalgia.

  “Wireless connection disengaged from your nanomachines.”

  Tubes retract from my orifices. The long one pulling out from below my waist is uncomfortable enough, but I choke when the feeding tube pulls itself from my throat.

  “Biological connections disengaged.”

  It's cold. No, maybe it's warm. I don't understand what my skin is telling me because I haven't felt a real temperature in years. The sensation is strange and it takes a few seconds for me to adjust.

  My curiosity is begging me to look around, but I keep my eyes shut. I don't want to see. Not really. Not with my actual, biological eyes. I don't want to see the dirt and the grime and the filth of the real world. I think that maybe if I keep them closed I'll fall asleep. At least I can dream. If that's as close as I can get to removing myself from this physical world, I'll take it.

  “Welcome back.”

  I recognize the voice, but after it speaks, my brain can't locate the memory it's searching for. My eyes blink open. The brightness of the E-womb's interior light is blinding, but as my vision adjusts, I'm able to make out a blurry figure. Like the pixels in the game, my vision defines until I can see the details of the face peering through the open hatch. My brain floods with memories as the connection to the voice is made.

  I see the face of my father.

  00111011

  My father thinks he's helping me out of the E-womb because I'm having problems moving my body after being logged-in for so long. The truth is, I don't want to move. I have an apathy for everything that's making my body refuse to cooperate.

  He sets me down on the bed and I'm able to take in my surroundings. I know I'm in my old tower room. Same rust spot on the wall. Same scratches on the floor. But some things have also changed.

  First of all, my E-womb has been upgraded beyond anything I could afford. It's capable of sustaining someone's life while they're logged into NextWorld without them ever leaving for food or digestion. It takes care of everything for you. Only the richest people can afford those. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't impressed by it.

  The rest of the room is bare. The mattress on my bed has no covers. No sheets. No pillow. My body shivers in acknowledgment of the temperature.

  “Sorry,” my father says, waking the mirrored screen above the sink from its sleep-mode. “When you fell into the coma and your brain activity stopped, I had to convince DOTgov to continue the game world. They agreed, but they made me pay for your tower room and your E-Womb connection out of my own pocket. In order to save credits, I haven't been keeping the temperature turned up in here. Not much of a need, considering...”

  He pushes a few onscreen buttons and raises a small red bar. Heat blows up from the metal-grated floor. It makes my skin ache and the smell of it reminds me of when I'd leave an old vitapaste container out too long. I push myself back on the mattress until I'm pressed against the corner of the room. It's as far away from reality as I can get.

  My father sits down on the bed and says, “I knew you'd come back. I knew you'd find a way. I never gave up hope that you'd escape.”

  When I don't respond, he leans in close, studying my eyes as if he's searching for something. His face is flabby with wrinkles, like the flesh of the worm virus. Tough and impenetrable. It reminds me how rough his hands felt as a child, like the outside world had punished him when he was young. He puts his hand on my head and turns me back and forth so he can examine me. I can smell his breath. I squint my eyes and pull away from him.

  He lets out a sigh and runs his tongue along his gums. It's an annoying habit of his. He was born with teeth and he says he never got used to them being gone. My nanomachines prevented the growth of teeth because they deemed them pointless when all I was going to eat was vitapaste. I can't imagine how weird it must have been for people to have bones in their mouths.

  “I'm sure it's going to take you a bit to adjust. You were logged-in for an unhealthy amount of time.”

  He's worried about me being in there? It's this place that's unhealthy.

  “It's funny,” he says as he lets out a small laugh, turning away from me and sitting on the edge of the mattress. “I've thought a lot about what I'd say to you. Every time I tried to connect a text-cast, or an audio-cast, or a video-cast with you... I'd practice in my mind what I was going to say. I felt so prepared, like when I give a speech. Every word is carefully chosen so that no one will misconstrue anything I say. That's my job. I'm good at that. I'm good at speeches.”

  He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He intertwines his fingers and rubs his thumbs against each other, like he's waiting for one of them to win the struggle. When he looks over his shoulder at me, our eyes catch for a split second before I look back at the bare mattress.

  “But it wasn't a speech I was giving, was it? It should have been a conversation. I know that now. I should have been listening. I have all these questions for you, but I'm no good at that. I'm no good at facing the unknown. Without some kind of plan, everything is... it's just too dangerous. There's too many variables that I can't prepare for.”

  He looks away from me, back at his thumbs. There's a long moment of silence. I want it to end, but I don't want the conversation to continue either. I want him to leave. I want to be alone so I can be as sad as I need to be. So I can be as sad as I am.

  “I've been doing my best. Your life, your upbringing, it was completely different from mine. I didn't know how to make it work. All that stuff came so naturally to your mother. I let her handle it. When she... after she was gone, I was at a loss. I tried, but everything was moving so fast, I don't think I ever had a chance to catch up.”

  He reaches over and sets his hand on my ankle. I pull my knees close to my chest, away from him.

  “Maybe now that we have time to talk, I'll be able to explain myself. And if you can't forgive me for the mistakes I've made... maybe someday you'll at least be able to understand where I'm coming from. This is a miracle. Truly. Whatever it was that freed you from that game, it happened for a reason. And I'm not going take it for granted.”

  He shakes his head and lets out a groan.

  “Listen to me. I'm babbling. Like I said, if I don't have a script to read, this is what happens.”

  He stands up from the mattress and claps his hands together. “I should let you rest. Get some actual, honest-to-goodness sleep. We can talk more later.”

  He walks toward the door, still talking.

  “DOTgov will want to expedite your trial, for the media's sake. There's been a lot of attention to your story from parent groups sin
ce you fell into the coma. I'm guessing we'll only have a few days for me to call in some favors, but hopefully I still have some pull around the office.” The door slides open and he steps out, turning to look at me one last time. “Don't worry, son. Now that I have you back, there's no way that I'm going to let you go again.”

  00111100

  With my father gone, I manage to push myself off the mattress and drag my feet across the metal grate of the floor as fast as I can, toward the E-womb. Maybe it's denial, I don't know, but I refuse to believe I'm trapped here. I keep telling myself this is a momentary prison.

  I open the hatch, crawl inside the doorway, and say, “Log-in,” waiting for the lights to turn on. But they don't. The E-Womb coldly replies, “Access denied.”

  “No!” I spit out the word and bang my fist on the interior of the sphere. “You piece of junk! Log-in!”

  “Access denied.”

  I groan and crawl out, banging my head on the top of the doorway as I exit. It stings, adding to my frustration. I tap my finger on the mirrored screen above the sink, hoping to contact Xen and talk to someone who understands, but the screen flashes the word: LOCKED.

  All I can see is my reflection. The bony figure of a young man I don't recognize. It would be easy to blame it on my age. I'm still skinny, but I'm taller. I must have grown four inches in the past three years. I actually need to bend down to see the top of my bald head in the mirror. There are the beginnings of wrinkles around my eyes and near my nose. Those weren't there before. But it isn't the age of my body that looks so unrecognizable. It's the fact that I'm no longer an avatar.

  This body isn't me. I don't look like I'm supposed to look. I don't move like I'm supposed to move. It's more difficult to lift my arm. It's slower. The idea of doing a back flip or rolling across the floor sounds painful.

  How does anyone live like this?

  I return to the mattress and lay down. As I stare at the ceiling, I notice how loud the room is for being so empty. I can hear the hum of the machines that keep the life-support systems running. The temperature controls rattle below the floor. The air filters hiss in the walls. The entire room is vibrating. Even if I turned off the lights, the sound would deny me the escape inward that I crave. It keeps my consciousness right here, trapped in the real world.

  I try to summon my own game world inside my imagination, one where Cyren and I are still together. I can see her, when I try hard enough, but it isn't real. It isn't even virtual. There are no details, nothing tangible. It's a foggy, fading memory, an undefined form that represents her, but can't come close to embodying everything that she was. I remember the coldness of her leather suit, the sharp edges of every buckle. I remember every curve of her lips. I remember how her nose perked up at the tip. I remember the sharpness of her jawline. I remember the innocence behind her eyes resonating with so much emotion that they threatened to burst. But all these memories are a series of fractured pieces that are so much less than Cyren as a whole.

  I miss her so much.

  She'd know what to say right now. She'd know how to calm my mind. She could always take my swirling thoughts and get them to relax long enough for me to sharpen them, focus them on a single target. We were a perfect team.

  I can't accept that Cyren is gone, deleted, dead. I can't accept that the storage space in NextWorld she used to fill is just waiting to be overwritten by some pointless piece of code, some useless data, ones and zeroes that will never add up to anything close to her.

  Sleep does finally come, but I don't dream. I fall into a blackness not unlike the game death that robbed me of so much. When I wake, I have no idea what time of day it is. The mirrored screen offers me no information. I stumble around the room, pacing. I look out the window and watch the trains pass between the towers. I stare at the lights coming from the windows of the neighboring rooms. I let my imagination wander as to who lives behind each glowing square.

  Time passes, and sleep comes again. Days go by.

  My father returns periodically on his days off. He informs me of his constant struggle to negotiate a plea bargain. He thinks that DOTgov is close to accepting a deal that could grant me probationary access to the communal rooms. Whenever I ask about NextWorld, he always changes the subject. I'm starting to think he doesn't want that restriction removed.

  When he turns the conversations to me, he tries to ask me questions about what happened inside the game, but I tell him nothing. It's pointless. There's no way he could understand what I experienced. I doubt he'd believe me. All I'd accomplish is to summon those looks of pity from his eyes. Or maybe it's fear. Or maybe he'd think I'm outright crazy. I mean, I fell in love with an NPC. What father wants to hear that from their son?

  He's staring directly into my eyes when he asks, “Do you know why I always begged you to spend time with me in the real world?”

  I want to mock him. I want to spit out something hurtful that will tell him exactly how little I care about his “real world.” I want to tell him that the virus took away the only thing that matters to me.

  “It's because I can see her in your eyes.”

  I glance at him. Something about the way he says it sounds different from his usual speeches. It sounds... real.

  “The more time passes, the harder it is for me to remember what she looks like. All the digital pictures in the world don't remind me as much as seeing your face.”

  He reaches out to touch me, but I flinch, pulling away. He doesn't look hurt by my reaction. His hand drops, but he smiles.

  “Maybe it was selfish of me,” he says. “It just... it made me feel, even if it was for just a brief moment, like she was here again.”

  When he stands up to leave, I almost say something. I almost tell him I understand. I almost tell him that I'd do anything to see Cyren one last time. I almost tell him that I'm sorry for keeping that from him. But I don't say any of those things. I just watch him leave.

  00111101

  My father's pleas for leniency in my trial fall upon deaf ears.

  The door to my room opens, and he's standing in the doorway next to two DgS officers. Unlike in NextWorld, these officers aren't wearing matching silver suits. Instead, they're clad in navy blue protective armor, wielding batons and wearing helmets with mirrored visors that cover their faces.

  The two officers step around my father and approach me. One of them points his baton at me while the other pulls a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on her belt.

  “It's okay,” my father says as I back away from the two menacing figures. “It's standard procedure. They need to restrain you for transport to the law room.”

  “It's happening? Now?”

  My father nods his head as the DgS officer grabs my wrist and locks the cuff into place. She grabs my shoulder, spins me around, and locks the second cuff on to my other wrist behind my back. With a shove, I stumble out the door. My father catches me.

  My paper thin clothes aren't providing me with anything but a modest covering from the cold air of the hallway. My bare feet feel every notch and bump in the ridged metal floor. Everything is too real, too intense, too wild and chaotic. There's no design here. There's no beauty. It's function over form. The officer gives me another shove to direct me down the hallway.

  “Everything will be okay,” my father says.

  I don't believe him. I don't need his unrealistic words of comfort. I need facts. I need a strategy.

  “What are they accusing me of? Tell me what to do. I've never seen a trial before.”

  My father doesn't make eye contact with me as he speaks. “It doesn't matter what you do. There's nothing we can accomplish at this point. Most likely, they've already made their decision.”

  I slow my gait to a stunned shuffle. The DgS officer shoves me forward. I stumble, but it forces me to catch up to the conversation.

  “What are you talking about? I thought this was my trial.”

  “In name only.”

  “You're telling me I'm not going to have a
chance to plead my case?”

  My father sounds cold and strangely matter-of-fact as he says, “They have to at least pretend to give you the opportunity to represent yourself, but it's for show. They've looked at the data. They already have all the information they need to make their decision. My advice is to say nothing.”

  “You're telling me that my side of the story doesn't matter at all?”

  “Guilty or innocent, the morality of the situation doesn't matter to them. They have a team of experts decide what's best beforehand. They crunch the numbers. They do market research. They decide whether the declaration of your guilt or innocence is best for them. You really play no part in what's about to happen.”

  I raise one brow and look out of the corner of my eyes as I say, “And these are the people you work for?”

  “I got into politics to try to fix these problems.”

  “You aren't doing your job very well.”

  My father frowns disapprovingly.

  It doesn't take long for the super-fast elevator to reach the upper floors of the tower. It still looks drab up here, with the same steel walls as the rest of the tower, but the DOTgov flag hangs on nearly every wall. A red rectangle with a yellow star. Seven smaller stars surround it, each one representing a continent in the global government.

  When I was in the elementary years of DOTedu, they forced us to pledge our allegiance to DOTgov every morning. For me, it was just words. A memorized set of sentences that held no meaning. I wasn't disinterested out of a sense of rebellion. I just didn't care. The flag was a boring set of symbols that had always been there.

  My father can still remember a time when there was more than one flag, when there was more than one government. He remembers patriotism. He remembers war. He remembers men and women fighting for the world we now live in. To him, the flag means peace. It means unification. It means having hope for our future.

  Maybe I take this world for granted. Maybe if I saw how bad it used to be, I'd appreciate what it is now, but it's impossible for me to not see the cracks, the flaws, the things that still need improving.