by Charles Dean
“Well, there are other options. We could arrange for you to kill livestock. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and a few butchered chickens will stop you from murdering everyone in the building or escaping to hunt down human victims until your appetite is sated. We won’t be able to constantly monitor your vitals or accurately track your hunger-related brain patterns until we can come to a far more complete understanding of your condition, but it’s up to you. I just want you to be informed before you make a choice.” Charles laid out the options clinically, his voice devoid of any form of emotion.
“DarBear . . .” Stephanie reached out and touched him. The familiar feeling was a little comforting, but also slightly unsettling. There was so much that he didn’t know about her, yet she had still put forth a great deal of effort for his sake. “You can’t tell me that the idea of playing video games to manage a condition is really a bad one. I thought the solution was cool. Can you imagine how few people would have cavities now if brushing their teeth were as exciting as a 2D platforming console game was when we were kids? If exercise were half as fun as most MMOs, Americans wouldn’t be struggling with a constant influx of diabetes like it was popcorn kernels on the floor of a movie theater.”
Truth. Who actually likes to do cardio? he thought, agreeing with her. “So I have to go into the game every day, kill stuff and hope that I don’t die in the game?”
“Well, actually, should you die in the game, you will appear at the portal. It’s your bindstone. If you had died at any time before this conversation, you would have discovered that fact on your own. I don’t know how or when you came under the impression that dying in the game meant dying in real life, but it wouldn’t be much in terms of a treatment if it had such a high chance of getting you truly killed.” Charles smiled wryly. “More details Steph forgot to share, I take it?”
“Yes, something like that.” Darwin mentally kicked himself several times. He had gone through jaw-dropping trials, emotional drama and what felt like very real agony trying not to die in a video game that apparently had no penalty for death. It was like showing up to school thinking there was a horrible test waiting for you only to find out that it was a Saturday, and you didn’t even have to be there. He stared down Stephanie, finding his annoyance redirected. “Someone apparently forgot to tell me a lot.”
“Well, would you have done anything differently?” Stephanie returned his gaze. “I mean, would you have gone down the exact same ‘save the world and rescue the innocent humans’ route if you had? I thought that not telling you was putting you in the right frame of mind to do what was necessary.”
Darwin couldn’t argue with her logic. “Yes. I probably would have, but I would have been much less stressed along the way.”
“Psh. You’re a gamer. You have to play on hardcore mode, or it isn’t fun.” She just laughed, dismissing all of his near-death experiences as nothing more than a simple set of challenges in a game, and her response somewhat bothered him. Nevertheless, the weight of the conversation bore down on Darwin and left him with too much to think about to be mad.
“So I have to go back in there.” Darwin sighed, coming to the realization that the other choice he had been presented with really wasn’t an option. He had felt Hunger’s pull, and although he had only been experiencing its sudden cravings for a week, they were already frighteningly powerful.
“Yeah, but this time we’ll be prepared to start monitoring your brain activity to see if there is a cure. The entire program just went operational last week. Theoretically, the only way you should have been forced into Tiqpa is if your condition had started to trigger in real life because you had killed someone--a situation we didn’t expect to happen so soon. Now that we can chat and prepare you for what's to come, I don’t think there should be any problems. That said, it is still your choice as to whether or not you want to go back into the game. No-one will force you.”
“Sure, no-one will force you. Who could? But I imagine that your guild would be pretty bummed out if you just quit on them.” Stephanie shrugged. She had gone from playing with candy to fiddling with wrappers, twisting them around and making some sort of candy wrapper origami. “I mean, that weird redneck samurai, the anime kid on a sugar rush and your three unfried chicken wings might all take offense to you just randomly quitting.”
“Yes, and you must still consider your quest. Do you want to give up on the hopeful multitudes you have just brought together under the banner of freedom?” Charles asked, sipping his soda again in the same genteel way he had before.
Stephanie is right, but as for Charles . . . Is he being sarcastic? Darwin couldn’t help but question the man’s intentions as he studied him. Darwin felt like the NPCs were real, but did Charles share the sentiment? There was no way to be sure whether or not the man across the table from him simply viewed Darwin’s growing faction as the product of a crazy man tilting at windmills or as a worthwhile endeavor. Trying to figure it out was like trying to tell whether or not a deadpan comic was actually telling a joke or if he was simply stating a fact without realizing it was funny.
Are they even real . . .? He found himself suddenly torn on the topic. They were all programmed by other people or created by the AI, so to even think of them as real was like considering the images on your television as real. After interacting with them for even a short period of time, however, it was hard not to. Sitting at the table, outside Tiqpa, it was easy to dismiss the hundreds of game characters he had helped. They were NPCs; this was real life. But just a few minutes ago, coming off that battlefield, mourning the dead with his fellow faction mates, it was real. They were as real as any person he had ever met, and their grief wasn’t something to be discounted in the least.
“You know, it’s kind of funny,” Stephanie interrupted his troubled cogitations, drawing the attention of both gentlemen.
“Huh?”
“Well, your name is Charles, and his name is Darwin.” Stephanie cracked a big smile. “If it wasn’t unintentional, it wouldn’t be as amusing.”
Even Charles hinted at a smile for a moment before straightening out his face again. “Yes, it is amusing. Especially given the way he’s evolving right before our very eyes.”
“Evolving? I don’t know. The only change I can see is that he has gotten really horny lately.” Stephanie laughed as she reached out a hand and flicked one of Darwin’s horns. “Though I’m not sure they help with the reproductive success of our species.”
Darwin flinched as the vibration traveled through his head. “Wait . . . They’re still here in the real world?” He asked more for an explanation of why, rather than an actual confirmation of what was plainly obvious.
“Why wouldn’t they be? Your original body was the one that gained them--not a game avatar.” Stephanie giggled as if this were some common sense piece of information that even a two-year-old would know. “You actually, physically, went in and out of Tiqpa. Most, if not all, of the changes that took place there are going to carry over into the real world.”
“Even the--” Darwin was about to ask more about the portal situation, when a question sprang back into his head--one he hadn’t been able to shake off. “You knew I was going to go insane for a long time. How?”
Stephanie’s tone, despite all her usual amusement and pep, flattened out like that of a boring professor at the end of a lecture. “Because all demon men do. A few of us women too, but every man does for sure. It’s inevitable.”
“Huh?” Darwin needed more of an explanation than that. It was like she was explaining that the sky was blue because everyone saw it as blue. It didn’t tell him anything.
“Darwin, do you know why we’re called demons?” Stephanie probed, obviously knowing that he didn’t.
“Because we have red eyes and horns?” He poked the bones protruding from his head. “Kind of seems like an appropriate term, actually. The only thing that could make us more demonic would be is if we were given accountant visors,” he said, trying to make light of the situati
on as the tense atmosphere started to feel like it was closing in around him.
It worked. Stephanie smiled, but then she went further. “Hmm. That is one way to look at it, but you’re one of the first to have horns in centuries--and the truth is a little more gruesome. You see, our father, or rather our creator, was once hailed and praised as if he were a god in our world--a world that already had religions almost identical to the ones this one does. We even had similar concepts of good and evil supernatural beings, which is how the naming ended up being so convenient. But, as those religions faded, he ended up being a god to the people there in his own right. After all, thousands of years before you were born, he had already achieved something incredible. He created the perfect human: a being who didn’t age, get sick, grow fat or suffer from any health problems. It didn’t matter what this new man ate or what he did or didn’t do. He would always have the perfect body, sculpted like a Greek deity. Our father’s creations, modeled and perfected from the DNA of normal humans, were also almost infinitely kind and patient with humanity. It caused people to jokingly call them ‘angels’ as they stood above man in every way. Of course, there was still a hitch. You have watched B-movies from the science fiction genre, right?”
“Yes . . .” Darwin already knew exactly where this was going. It wasn’t hard at all to guess what would happen next, but he still needed to hear the details. “But go on. Please do explain how this leads to me going insane.”
“Sure, sure,” she said, taking a deep breath.
Both he and Charles were listening intently to the story she was telling. He had a feeling from the way Charles didn’t react at all that this wasn’t the first time he had heard the story, but the man’s eyes still gleamed with curiosity. It was as if he were searching out the wording for any new pieces of information that he didn’t pick up on during the last however many telling’s.
“You see,” she continued, “the first two or three hundred years, these kind, immortal beings raised families, built homes and integrated themselves slowly into every community. They did everything they could to make the world better. But as time passed, one by one, they eventually returned to the country of their creator. Years passed, and the population of the country naturally shifted until it was comprised almost entirely of angels. Procedures were even done to gradually convert the children of normal human citizens of the country into angels.
“Then, after centuries passed, the people of other countries started to covet the angels’ wealth, prosperity, and immortality. Cursing them, people began to say that the angels’ charity was nothing more than misguided pity, and that, if they really wanted to make a difference, they should share everything. People said that if the creator could make himself and his children immortal, he should do the same for them too.
“When it finally reached the point of war, it was disastrous for the angels. They weren’t the type to commit violence at all. In fact, the idea of ending a human life was so offensive to them that the first angel to kill someone in combat ended up shooting himself later out of guilt. That’s when the creator used something in his technology to tweak the angels. He made them into killers. After the adjustments, every angel over thirty years old, which was an incredible number of them, became faster, stronger and better at warfare than any of the best-trained military personnel from the opposing countries. At first, these modifications resulted in the angels slaughtering their enemies . . . but then the war took a dark turn.
“What started out as small tweaks became big changes, and the men who had gone to battle, who had tasted blood for the first time . . . they became cursed. They started to kill each other after the battlefield was cleared of enemies, and what began as a one-sided slaughter of humans, slowly turned into crazed angels murdering anything and everything in sight. When a group of young male angels who hadn’t gone insane yet saw what was happening, they went to the creator to seek guidance and help. Unfortunately, he was already affected by the curse and ended up killing several of his own children before dying in a brutal fight himself. That’s when our title of angels was stripped. We had fallen from our heaven, cursed by humanity to suffer the carnage of war. Our people had gone from being peaceful, perfect beings to demons, and our god was damned as a devil by his own kind.”
“So . . .” Darwin began adding up pieces of the information. “We came from a different world?”
“It’s the easiest way to explain it, but yes. It became a world where we demons were almost non-existent. We did our best to hold on, but a lot of things were hard. The humans hunted us, year after year, wearing away at our dwindling numbers. Then, as if it wasn’t hard enough to keep our numbers up already, reproduction also became very hard. When our men hit thirty, the hunger would take over, and they would kill indiscriminately. They had to be exiled so that they wouldn’t butcher everyone in the tribe-like groups we were living in. It was like an unspoken race to have males father as many children as possible before that happened.
Sometimes, out of every few thousand men that were kicked out, one would turn into a special kind of crazy: He’d grow horns, his skin would strengthen over time to the point that bullet wounds would only slow him down, and he’d hunt us down like an animal hunts prey. He wouldn’t go after humans at all: he’d only come for us. Your father, Darwin . . . he almost killed half the neighboring tribe . . . or so we heard.”
“I’m a genetically-altered immortal that was modified to transform into a bloodthirsty murderer sometime after I turned thirty years old just so that I can take part in a war that my ancestors apparently lost horribly?” Darwin suddenly wished that his soda was actually something stronger--like a scotch and cola. On second thought, however, he decided he didn’t need the cola. He had never seriously drunk alcohol before, yet this somehow felt like the perfect time to try it out.
“That’s about the sum of it.” Stephanie nodded her agreement.
“But if the genetics were changed to make me into a killer, couldn’t they also be undone? Couldn’t the change be reverted?”
“Well . . . theoretically? Absolutely. The problem is that the one who first initiated the change is dead, and no one else knows how he did it. That’s exactly why I’ve been working with Charles for the past few decades: to develop a way to study your brain, figure out exactly what was changed and how we can save you.”
“Can one of these guys bring me a handle of bourbon?” Darwin asked, finally giving into the sudden allure of liquor.
“Won’t do you any good. We don’t get drunk. It’s kind of a health problem, and we don’t suffer from those, remember?” Stephanie laughed as Darwin’s face fell. Immortality without the ability to enjoy alcohol. Despite never having thought booze was necessary before, he somehow felt like this was a huge downside to the entire being immortal thing.
“So going back to one of the earlier topics of the conversation . . .” Darwin dragged out his pause. The mood had been a little too heavy for him to lift, so he felt the need to make a joking attempt at lightening it. “Stephanie, since you’re so old, do I have to call you grandmother?”
“Hey! You better not! You’re the old man, remember? Ignore the age. I’m a woman. It doesn’t count,” Stephanie immediately protested Darwin’s line of inquiry. “Darwin, I’ve been around longer than most people will ever live, and I’ve never met a nice demon guy . . . Well, not until now, anyway.” Stephanie took a moment to coquettishly wink at Darwin before continuing. “So while Charles and I can’t force you back into Tiqpa, I’d really like you to give it a try,” Stephanie pleaded, stretching out the word ‘really’ a few more counts than necessary. “After all, when you go insane up here, and we have to kill you, the death will be for real.”
“And if I lose it in the game, what’s to stop me from staying in that state? Would walking back through the portal help?” Darwin remembered the feeling of wanting to kill very clearly. It was like being forced to eat nothing but stale, leafy food for a year and then coming face-to-face with a juicy ha
mburger--except a hundred times stronger.
Charles smiled reassuringly. “Well, that’s also one of the beauties of the game. If you die while going berserk in the game, it won’t let you fully revive until the condition passes. Hopefully, even if you stay in Tiqpa permanently, that will just mean that we have more time to research and more data to draw from. During your first forty levels, we were able to isolate the condition and label it as ‘Hunger,’ a name of my choosing.” Charles was still in the middle of his explanation when Stephanie shot her hand up as if she were the brainy kid in class who couldn’t help but show off.
“Actually, I named the other skills! Every time we started to identify conditions related to our race and its natural development in the game, or came up with skills for your class, I got to name them! The boss was only insistent about Hunger since he said the name I picked was too vulgar,” she excitedly interrupted him.
“Yes, and it was,” Charles continued. “Anyway, we have isolated key parts of the neurological pattern, chemicals your brain seems to release when it goes into a rage, and we marked them so that the system we use to control Tiqpa will hold you until it fades. Regardless, you may still want to avoid being around non-respawnable NPCs or anyone you invited into your faction that isn’t a player. While the players will respawn without any problem, the NPCs won’t. Given your predilection towards saving them, I am recommending that you stick to player-only groups during battles and let the NPCs in your faction live out peaceful lives.” Charles looked over at one of the staff before finishing. “I am also highly recommending you keep this between us.”
“Is there any reason we can’t tell Kass and the others? Would it jeopardize something?” Darwin had to ask. The whole ‘let’s keep huge, important pieces of information a secret until a huge misunderstanding results in something awful’ trope was so aggravating to watch on television that he didn’t have much of a desire to live it out.
