The reason my hand was shaking was because I’d had too many beers the night before. Still, she had a point. I was lying.
“Very well, author,” she invested all her sarcasm into the word, “I must be off now.”
The heavy trail of her perfume hit me, arousing and sickly sweet. She gave me a peck on the lips and walked out.
The front door slammed.
I stared at the sandwich in my hand. I wasn’t hungry at all. I was sleepy.
I laid my head on my arms and studied the meager expanse of our kitchenette. The place reeked of frugal misery. The tiles above the sink were crumbling. The monotonous sound of the dripping tap was killing me. The broken oven door didn’t close anymore. The stove top was caked brown. The low ceiling, rusty gray from all the tobacco smoke, hung gloomily overhead.
The sight made me want to walk out onto the crumpled balcony of our one-bedroom apartment, climb its flaking wooden railings and just sit there dangling my feet in the air. Then just push myself off and jump down.
I got up, leaving the dirty plates on the kitchen table, and walked out onto the balcony.
The bright sunlight hurt my eyes. I squinted and stretched my stiff body, then reached into my pocket for some cigarettes.
The pack was empty. I swore and heaved a sigh. I was past caring. Must have been the nicotine withdrawal that did it to me.
I leant over the railing and stared at the eight-story drop. A deep puddle of rainwater glistened below, its steely surface reflecting a hasty procession of white fluffy clouds above.
The clouds parted momentarily, releasing a bright beam of sunshine.
It blinded me. I felt almost electrocuted.
The view swam before my eyes. My vision failed, then came back — sort of. It was now crowded with lots of little floating specks that looked suspiciously like some kinds of symbols and numbers.
I slumped onto a shaky old stool and wiped my eyes, trying to blink the illusion out of them.
Enough. Time to go and get some cigarettes. And coffee. And once I was back, I really needed to sit down and finish that wretched book.
I kept getting this nagging feeling that once that was out of the way, my problems would be over.
All I needed to do was finish the damn book.
Chapter Two. WTF?
“We can’t stop here, this is bat country!”
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I WALKED GINGERLY, leaping over the rainwater puddles that lay in my way. My left sneaker was falling apart but I didn’t feel like fixing it. I couldn’t afford to have it fixed, either. A new pair would have to wait. We had too many bills to pay. The rent, the utilities, the Internet. We had groceries to buy. Me, I’d have bought new sneakers first — but luckily, Yanna had her hands firmly on our purse strings.
Our backyard didn’t differ much from the others in our district. A classic Russian disaster of dirt, mud and chipped curbs; a paraphernalia of mismatched windows and glazed flaky balconies; discarded plastic bags caught on tree branches and washing lines; garbage spilling out of industrial-size bins. A couple of winters ago, the council had had to do some emergency repairs on the burst waterworks (another Russian classic) so they’d bored through the frozen tarmac, fixed the leak, then covered everything with a layer of earth which now turned into a swamp every time it rained. Nothing to rest one’s eye on, really; the first dainty green of the budding trees was the area’s only redeeming feature, holding the long-forgotten schooltime promise of approaching summer vacations.
The dilapidated playground at the center had long become a meeting place for the local drunks. Some of them were my age, their development apparently arrested while still teenagers. Others were youngsters running their errands. They were presided over by Yagoza, a sinewy man of indeterminate age, his skin blue with prison tattoos, wearing shapeless track bottoms and a green Che Gevara T-shirt the size of a tent. He was some sort of a criminal authority around here.
Yagoza was smoking a cigarette and sipping beer from a can.
They looked bored and down on their luck. Even from where I stood, I could see they were desperate for something stronger than beer. Beer was like water to them.
One of them was hanging on the kids’ monkey bars, apparently imagining himself a gymnast. Seeing me, he jumped down and rubbed his hands together. “Phil? Hi, man.”
The others looked up at me, then returned to their beers, disinterested.
Not good. I’d had problems with the guy before. Known under the moniker of Alik, he’d once followed me on my way back from the corner shop. At the time, I’d been in a good mood. I’d just received a nice check from a client so I’d done some grocery shopping to celebrate. Alik and I got talking. I gave him a beer. Once I got home, I promptly forgot everything about our encounter.
He hadn’t. From then on, every time he saw me he tried to give me a bear hug and cadge a smoke or a beer.
“Hi, man,” I replied unenthusiastically.
He walked over to me and shook my hand while lacing his other arm around my shoulders and slapping my back. His hand brushed my jeans’ back pockets as if searching me.
My vision blurred again. I peered at his face but it appeared sort of out of focus.
“Jesus. You alright?” he asked matter-of-factly without a trace of compassion.
“Not really. Wait a sec,” I eased him away and rubbed my eyes, peering hard at him.
His face came back into focus. His eyes were framed with the thickest, longest eyelashes I’d ever seen. I’d never noticed them before. He must have been a very pretty child before life had had its way with him.
A pockmarked face with oily skin. A broken lopsided nose. Nicotine-yellow teeth. Greasy hair...
And what the hell was that?
I peered at him harder, rubbed my eyes and peered some more.
Alik startled and looked around him. “Wassup, man? You alright? Tell me! What the f-”
“No, wait,” I raised my hand and ran it above his head.
I couldn’t feel anything. Still, I could see it!
My breath seized. I couldn’t take my eyes off a big inscription in clear green letters hovering over his head.
Romuald “Alik” Zhukov
Age: 28
Romuald? His parents had some sick sense of humor. Had my name been Romuald, I’d have probably turned to the bottle too.
“Is your name Romuald?” I asked.
He startled again. “’xcuse me?”
“Your real name, it’s Romuald, right?”
“Well... Yeah but... wait. How do you know?”
I didn’t reply. My thoughts were racing like a herd of wild horses, trampling everything in sight.
This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. A hungover hallucination, maybe. Drinking too much. Playing too much, sleeping too little.
I focused on the inscription which obligingly unraveled like a parchment scroll.
Romuald “Alik” Zhukov
Age: 28
Current status: Unemployed
Social status level: 4
Unclassified
Unmarried
Criminal record: yes
The last line flashed red. I focused on it, hoping to unravel it as well. Didn’t work.
“Phil! Wake up, man! Hello!”
The message folded back in, its lone top line still glowing in the air.
“Sorry,” I said. “Surprised me, that’s all. Romuald is a real rare name, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Dad’s idea. His grandfather was apparently Romuald. Why?”
“Just wondered. Never heard anything like it before.”
“I don’t think you have,” he agreed with a suspicious ease. “Listen... I’ve got things to do. I’ll see you around.”
“Sure.”
“Spare a smoke?”
“I’ve run out, man.”
He heaved a sigh, then swung round and began to walk back.
“Alik, wait!”
&nb
sp; He turned and stuck out a quizzical chin, “What now?”
“How old are you, twenty-eight?”
He nodded and walked off. The inscription continued to hover over his head, growing smaller in size as he moved away until it disappeared completely.
I didn’t risk following him even though I was dying to find out whether it might work with the others too. I could kill for a smoke. I crossed the backyard and walked out onto the street.
As I headed for the shop, I kept peering at everything in my way: shop windows, traffic signs, cars and occasional passersby. Nothing happened.
I’d been working too hard lately, that’s all.
But what about his name? I couldn’t possibly have known that! Nor his age! I didn’t even know the guy!
Still deep in thought, I entered the shop, walked over to the cash register and offered a handful of loose change to the woman, “A packet of Marlboros.”
The middle-aged saleswoman — a mutton dressed as lamb — was busy talking on her phone, cradling it between her ear and her shoulder. Without interrupting her conversation, she took my money, counted it, fished for some change and laid it next to the pack on the counter, momentarily locking her gaze with mine.
Holy mama mia! Yes!
With a shaking hand I scooped up the change and the smokes, shoved them in my pocket and barged out.
The moment she’d looked me in the eye, a system message had appeared over her head,
Valentina “Valya” Gashkina
Age: 38
Back in the street, I cussed. That had been really stupid of me. I walked back in and offered her some more money,
“Sorry, Valentina. I forgot to buy a lighter.”
“I’ll call you back,” the woman said into her phone. She peered at me, uncomprehending.
Then she visibly relaxed and reached for a lighter off the shelf. She probably decided that I was one of the local drunks who was on first-name terms with all the liquor vendors.
As she turned her back to me, I scrolled down the message,
Valentina “Valya” Gashkina
Age: 38
Current status: Salesperson
Social status level: 9
Class: Vendor. Level: 3
Widow
Children: Igor, son
Age: 18
Ivan, son
Age: 11
Criminal record: yes
Let’s try it again, then. “How are things, Valya? How’s Igor and little Ivan?”
At this point it must have dawned on her. She stared at me, lighter still in hand, apparently trying to remember where she might have met me. Unwilling to admit she couldn’t remember someone who seemed to know her, she finally replied,
“Igor’s fine, thanks. He’s finishing his second year at uni. Ivan is nothing like him. He doesn’t want to study at all. Igor does his best to knock some sense into him but Ivan just won’t listen. He’s not been the same since his father died...”
She fell silent, apparently surprised at her own indiscretion. Heaving a sigh, she handed me the lighter. “If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know me?”
“We met at some friends once,” I mumbled, accepting the lighter, then walked out.
I headed for a small boulevard, unwrapping the cigarettes as I walked. I lobbed the crumpled plastic wrapper into a bin and lit up, drawing in a lungful of smoke.
What kind of criminal record might she have? Dipping into the till, maybe?
I finally reached the first bench and slumped down on it, sprawling my aching legs. I could sense the nicotine course my arteries, reaching my brain.
Something flickered in the corner of my eye. As I squinted at it, a message appeared, growing in size. This time it was about me.
Warning! You’ve received a minor dose of toxins!
Your Vitality has dropped 0,00018%.
Current Vitality: 69,31882%.
What did they mean, vitality? Was it supposed to be the same as hp?
I finished my cigarette, all the while imagining myself losing 0,00003% vitality with every draw. I didn’t enjoy it at all. My ingrained gaming habit had warned me against any behavior that could be classified as DOT or a debuff. I kept smoking purely out of principle.
Wait a sec. How much life did I actually have?
A red bar appeared in the lower left corner of my field of vision. It was 69% full.
Excuse me? Where were my remaining 30-plus percent vitality?
Had I just lost 30% health just by smoking a cigarette? Or was this supposed to be some kind of cumulative effect? What could I have possibly done to-
I knew very well what I’d done. That was all those sleepless nights, junk food, drinking, smoking, not to mention all the environmental problems. A no-brainer, really.
This I could understand.
What I couldn’t understand was, WTF was going on?!
Chapter Three. The First Quest
“Who are you and why should I care?”
Futurama
CAREFUL AS I’d been, I must have got a few sneakerfuls of rainwater as I’d walked. No system messages this time: apparently, I risked no hypothermia-related debuffs no matter how wet and miserable I felt.
My head swam with thoughts. Was I going mad? Could this be a brain tumor? Or some personality disorder? Should I see a doctor?
Sucking on my third cigarette, I tried to think of an appropriate clinic. Finally I gave up, Googled a list of local practitioners and made an appointment.
That felt a bit better. Having said that... how sure was I that the world around me was real? Crazy, I know. But what if there was nothing wrong with me? Could it be reality itself that was glitching?
The cigarette smoke, the group of drunks hanging around the kids’ playground, my own wet feet and a tiny ant crawling up my arm — everything around me was screaming its absolute authenticity.
But how about Amra and Mahan? Those were two of my favorite LitRPG heroes. Didn’t they feel the same when they’d found themselves transported — one to the Boundless Realm, the other to Barliona? At first, neither of them had even realized they were in VR, so real was everything around them. So my idea made sense, really.
I could in fact have been abducted by aliens — or some mysterious powerful corporation as the case might be — who must have placed my waning body into a VR capsule and sent me here. Why? No idea. I’d never considered myself special, even when I’d been elected class monitor back in grade school.
Still, I could try and test it, couldn’t I? I’d played enough games in my lifetime to be able to tell fact from fiction.
With my right hand, I reached into my pocket for the lighter while holding my left hand in front of me. I placed the lighter under my hand and clicked it a couple of times, casting Fire.
I lasted only a few seconds. I'd never been one of those masochistic types capable of self-mortification.
Ouch, that hurt!
A system message appeared out of nowhere, then faded just like some 3D movie picture,
Damage taken: 1 (Fire)
I blew on my scorched hand. Pain was a perfect proof of this world’s reality. So was my burned skin. But the system message... it glaringly contradicted both.
Also, what was it supposed to mean? Damage taken, 1 — one of what? How much hp did I have? Where could I see my stats? What skills did I have? What was my social status? Was it the same as a player’s level? And how was I supposed to earn XP here?
I rolled my eyes this way and that, searching for an interface but found none. I couldn’t see any icons, buttons or status bars. The health bar was the only thing still hovering in view.
I blinked. The health bar slid up and disappeared.
Wait a sec. I blinked again. Immediately the bar was back, as large as life and twice as ugly, sporting the number 69,31792%. Aha.
I focused on the number. Nothing happened.
I blinked again. Same result.
The number annoyed me. If only I could see the act
ual amount of my vitality points!
The figure promptly disappeared, replaced by a new stat:
6,238/9,000
What, just like that? All I had to do was think about it?
Never mind. I really needed to look into all of this. Skills, stats, that sort of thing. But first I needed to work out all those nasty debuffs I apparently had. How was I supposed to bring my life back to the required 9,000?
Then again, that too could wait. Life, XP, all that sort of stuff. First I needed to determine whether this was real life or not.
The moment I thought this, a shadow lay on the tarmac by my feet.
“Excuse me?”
I looked up. An old man in funny-looking clothes and a fedora hat stood before me, staring down at the ground.
My good manners got the better of me. I jumped to my feet. “How can I help you? Would you like to sit down?”
As I spoke I looked over the boulevard. There were plenty of empty benches around as most people were still at work.
“Thank you,” the old man uttered in a weak, lispy voice. “That’s very kind of you. The reason I would like to speak to you is this. I have trouble walking. Still, I’m supposed to do some walking every day. So I come to this boulevard and I keep trotting up and down the lanes, up and down. Then I’m forced to sit down and read a paper. Because reading fresh newspapers is very benefici-”
He had a very funny, stilted way of speaking. Almost like a book character. I kept nodding my understanding, all the while trying to meet his gaze but he kept averting it, staring at the ground at my feet.
He was wearing light summer loafers, a shabby business jacket patched at the elbows and an enormous pair of baggy jeans reaching to his armpits and secured by a belt with a shiny steel buckle saying Jamiroquai, of all things. Which looked suspiciously like an Easter egg courtesy of the mysterious designers of this snazzy NPC character.
I suppressed a giggle. The old gentleman stopped and looked me right in the eye in surprise.
Restart_LitRPG Series Page 2
