by Ian Woodhead
That did not belong to Matt.
“No, that can't be right. Necrovoid is a sandbox game. Everybody knows that!” A familiar head peered around the doorframe. “I just can't think of another explanation though. Can you, Jordan?”
“I thought you were dead?”
“Well, ain't that a nice way to treat an old mate,” replied Barry. “Thanks for that, and I love you too. Well, I don't, you're a bit of a spaz, but the slight to my character is still valid.”
Jordan slid off the other side of the bed, hoping that perhaps Matt had dropped the sword in this mess before scampering away. “You can't be here. My dead mum and dad fed on your guts, man! This isn't happening.”
Barry entered the bedroom, kicked away a scattered pile of Jordan's DVD's, books and fantasy figures then sat on the bed. “God, you really are thick.”
“You are dead, man!” he repeated. “I saw you die.”
“Yeah, you've already said that. Yeah, you're right, you did see me die. You complete clown. It's not supposed to happen like that! Christ, what a fucking amateur. Jordan, did it never occur to you that your mum and dad might have been inside the house Come on, wake up and smell the frying bacon. Where else were they going to be?” Barry slapped his forehead. “Have you any idea of the fuck up you created because of your noob move?”
Jordan slowly blinked. “Wait, so this isn't real life, I'm still in the game?”
“Well, durr! Like Mrs Spicer kept her son locking in his bedroom for, like twenty years? To be honest, I'm fucked if I can work out why Necrovoid came up with that implausible scenario. It usually goes for some more realistic figure plucked out of your memory to act as your NPC companion. Than again, thinking about it, what else could it do. You kinda backed the software into a corner. You’re a sad loser noob with only one pal and even I think you’re a cockwomble.”
“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. I want out. This is mental. Seriously mental.” Jordan waded his way back to the other side of the bed. “I mean it, enough with the bullshit. I want to go back to reality.”
Barry scrambled off the bed and ran out of the bedroom.
“Come back here,” screamed Jordan. “I'm seriously going to knock you out.” He jumped onto the bed and off the other side. The map fell out of his back pocket and slipped under the bed. “Bugger off, I'm not getting that.” The clattering coming from the kitchen told him exactly where the pretend Barry had gone to.
Jordan ran through the hallway and over to the top of the stairs. “I mean it, get your arse back up here. I want out of this right now!” He received no reply, not that he expected one. Barry was acting like a twat. Oh, God. This was unreal. Even his NPC behaved like the real Barry! He got to the landing window and just happened to look outside before he ran down the stairs. Seeing a yellow and blue striped deckchair and a space-hopper on Mrs Spicer's shed roof did not shock him in the slightest.
He found Barry sitting on the kitchen counter, opening a tin of hotdogs.
“Okay, less with the stresshead, man. Fine. I get it. You want to go back. If that's what you really want, then no problemo.” He popped a hotdog into his mouth. “Only if you're really sure. You see, if you do go back to reality now, all your game progress will be lost. I'm talking in-game and out here, in the surface game. You might not think it, but you've done pretty well and it would be such a shame to lose all the work you've put in already.”
“Like I give a shit anymore? Whatever. I really don’t care, man. Just do it.”
“Then what, Jordan?” Barry shoved the last three hotdogs in his mouth and dropped the tin on the floor. “I mean, what’s your next move, oh great one?”
Jordan watched the tin roll across the kitchen floor while thinking of how much emotional trauma that this bastard game had put him through already. He so wanted to punch the pretend Barry into the middle of next week. “What the fuck has that to do with you?”
“Hey, cool your jets. I'm only asking, man. See it as me helping to make this product even better than it already is. I mean, if you, the user, thinks that listening to Susan make you feel like an inch high, is better than the delights which Necrovoid promises then I'm obviously doing something wrong. Or let's consider your mum. Don't get me wrong, she's a lovely woman but thanks to your attention-seeking daughter, her constant worry that they'll be thrown out of the house because they can't afford the mortgage payments, and the fact that her boss won't leave her alone at work” He grinned. “You don’t even want to know what body part he took a picture of last week. Yeah, that was one shocked woman when she opened that text on her phone! What else? Oh yeah, she also thinks that her two old friends are about to split up. That poor lady hardly knows you exist. In fact, she secretly prefers how you have turned out, Jordan. It's less stress for her.”
“Shut up. Just fucking shut up. This is all lies!”
“As for your father, you have no idea how much of a disappointment you are to him. He had such high hopes for you, taking you for your first pint, helping you learn to drive, giving him grandkids. It's got to the point where he'll settle for you leaving home so he can turn your bedroom into his own mancave.” Barry jumped off the counter, walked past Jordan and entered the living room. “Right now, your mum and Susan are having a right go at each other. Mum's found out who her daughter's been seeing and she is absolutely steaming.” Barry came back holding a copy of Necrovoid. “I bet you a million pounds that Susan will blame all this on you. Even though you had nothing to do with it.” He placed the box on the kitchen table. “Do you really want to go back to that? Come on, at least give it a couple more hours, you know, until you get to the end?”
Jordan shook his head. “No, I'm sorry. I can't deal with this anymore. It's seriously doing my head in. I don't know what's real and what isn't. I'm so confused.”
Barry opened the box, took out a sensenet and placed it in front of Jordan. “Fair enough. If you insist. You can't say I didn't try.”
Jordan went to grab the sensenet only for the NPC to place his hand over his. “Wait, before you do make what I think will be the biggest mistake of your life,would you mind if I ask you just one more question?”
He shrugged. “I guess, but I'm not going to change my mind.”
“Well, you're not the only one who's confused here. I get that this game has screwed up your head. Believe me, I do get that. It's doing what it's supposed to be doing, at least, that's what it does in the beginning before...” Barry winked. “Before all the fun stuff starts. Wait, I'm going off track here. Look, Jordan. My question is this. When you get back, and after your family makes you all miserable, guilty, worthless, and probably very fucked off, what do you plan to do then? You've played all your other games to death. I guess you could go for a walk, perhaps join your mum and dad at the Horse and Crown for a drink? Maybe even tag along with your sister when she visits her mates? There's always Barry, I suppose. Not that you'll get much out of him. He's deep inside his own Necrovoid game, and believe me, that kid's a natural!”
Barry took his hand away. He walked back over to the kitchen counter, jumped back up and grabbed another tin of hotdogs.
Jordan picked up the sensenet and placed it on his head. “Fun? How the fuck can you call what's happened here, fun?”
Barry put the tin down and held up his left hand. “You're still alive in both scenarios,” he replied, pointing to his left thumb. “You have the girl in the deep game.” Barry pointed to his left forefinger. “You now have the primary weapons and believe me, that's an achievement! Even Barry doesn't have the sword in his game.” The NPC folded three fingers then pointed to his ring finger. “Hell, you even have most of what's happening figured out in the deep game. Okay, so you don't have a fucking clue what's going on in this scenario, but that's not unusual. Nobody who's reached this stage has figured that bit out yet.” He looked at his two remaining fingers for a moment before folding them as well. “The fun? Come on, man, work it out! In the deep game, you're armed with a shotgun, there are
zombies all around you. A beautiful girl is clinging to your arm, and you're racing against time to reach the farmhouse before the last wave of spores erupt and infect everybody else except you two. Well, that depends on if you reach the farmhouse or not. If you don't then, you two are as fucked as everybody else on the planet.” Barry chuckled. “Oh dear, spoilers!”
“There's nothing stopping me from playing again though, is there?”
“Of course not, man.”
“Well, there we go. What's with all the pleading and crying?”
Barry sighed. “Do you really want me to do the finger thing again? If you leave this game, all your progress is lost and the parameters will reset. The deep game scenario will change, meaning that you'll lose Jenny. Not to mention that the amnesiac subroutine will apply to the surface game as well. Believe me, you do NOT want that. You think this is confusing? Man, you ain't seen nothing yet. The difficulty level will go up one notch and the prospect of finding any weapon in both scenarios before the shamblers in the deep game or the runners in this level eat your face will be pretty much nill. Is that what you really want?”
Jordan shook his head.
“Look, man. I'll cut you a deal. Just continue playing for just a couple more hours and if you decide to chuck it in, fine. Go for it. Hell, I'll even forego the amnesiac subroutine application on your next play. How does that sound?”
“Two hours?”
“That's all I ask. Are you in?”
Jordan nodded. “I suppose.”
“Nice one, man. You won’t regret this! Matt 's gone back home, by the way. The sword's with him. Oh, and don't forget your map!”
Barry jumped down, ran past him and out of the kitchen. Jordan kept the sensenet in his hand while listening to the NPC rummaging through the crap under his bed. He fell into the chair next to him. Oh Christ. His family were still alive! Until now, this earth shattering news hadn't sunk in. The sensenet fell through his fingers. He grabbed the edge of the table and focussed on not crying while the shakes slammed through his body. Jordan wanted this to stop!
The pretend Barry brushed past his chair and dropped something on the table. Right at that moment, Jordan didn't care about any map. He just wanted the pain to stop. The NPC sat opposite him, reached out and gripped both his hands.
“You know all those volatile emotions that you're currently experiencing and have turned you into a big bowl of green jelly, with or without ice cream? Well, that's how you would have felt if all this had been real.”
Barry clicked his fingers and the underlying terror, the fear of loss and the overpowering grief suddenly vanished, the shakes had not gone but they had subsided.
“What the fuck did you have to do that for?”
“Would you like me any less if I simply replied with, for fun? No, don't pull that face, Jordan. See, you'll experience something similar as soon as you come out of the game, and given your limited range of emotions, I'm not sure how long it'll take you to snap out of it. Call me selfish, if you like but I'd rather you finish what you started. You get me?”
Barry slapped his palm on the map. “Make sure you put this in your pocket before you go”. He stood up and walked around the table. “You're going to have such a brilliant time. Lots of zombie killing, severed limbs flying in every direction, oh, and don't forget rescuing all those pretty survivors!” Barry leaned closer. “Is there anything else I've missed out? You know, I do believe there is. See, Jenny exists in this game as well. Ain't that a double bonus! If that doesn't get your juices going, I don't know what will! Right. TTFN. I'm out of here. Which is what you should be doing. You had better go find your NPC companion before the dim twat accidentally cuts his head off with your sword or something. Shame you fucked up earlier on. You could have had me instead of the dim bulb. Still. Well, you live and learn.” Barry left the kitchen. “Have fun, dude!”
He gave it a couple of minutes before moving, just in case Mr Barry Freeman, Mr annoying but confidant shithead decided to make a re-appearance. His first action was to pick up the sensenet and place
it on the table. Jordan resisted the urge to stroke the damn thing. To stop it from turning into his little comfort blanket, he shoved the insurance policy into his front pocket and leaned over to grab the map, curious to find out why pretend Barry was so eager for him to have the map.
"Oh right," he muttered, after examining the paper. It showed this scenario and not the in-game town. A red line started from this house and followed the main road, through the middle of town and stopping in front of a large building. Now the software wasn't messing with his head, Jordan knew exactly what it was supposed to be and it certainly wasn't a government building but yet another shopping mall.
Back in-game, this map showed the picture of a red tree in the middle of the shopping mall. A smile face had replaced the tree. "I guess that's where I'm supposed to go? Are you going to spoon-feed me every clue, you spanner-faced tossbag?"
Right before his eyes, the map changed back to how it looked earlier. Jordan resisted the urge to grin. It looked like he touched a nerve. If also reminded him that Big Brother did indeed exist inside this game and obviously had a bit of a complex. It also taught him a lesson about watching his words.
Jordan walked over to the outside door, got to his knees, crawled through the gap and into the garden. He walked down the path, through the gate and leaped into next door's garden. Not once had Jordan kept an ear out for any super-zombies that might be lurking close by. The way he saw it, the game's main antagonist wouldn't be paying him a visit until Jordan had tooled up.
Thanks to Barry's shocking revelation, everything around Jordan had lost its menace. He kinda felt a bit pissed off now. Granted, this was only a surface emotion. A feeling created by the software and after the mental horror that Barry had just subjected him to in his kitchen, he found himself smiling.
Maybe Barry was right about him staying in this game. From what Jordan figured, he'd entered the meat of the game. Wall to wall slice and dice. The zombie equivalent of a shooter bullet hell. This is the reason why he unrolled the damn sensenet over his head the first time! Jordan ought to be grinning from ear to ear.
So why did he still have the urge to sack it all in and go home? Like that even needed answering. Thanks to the pretend Barry laying out the naked truth while acting like a complete cockwomble, Jordan now felt like a cog inside some vast machine. Unimportant and totally replaceable. Oh sure, Barry didn't want him to leave the game but his disappearance wouldn't make that much difference in the long run.
He pushed open the door and walked into Mrs Spicer's dining room. This was affecting more than it should. Hell, everybody and his dog was playing Necrovoid. Jordan knew that even before he bought his own copy.
“You thought this was special, didn't you?” he whispered. Jordan looked up as he passed through the doorway, just to make sure the odd ball hadn't put the sword back. It was true though. He actually believed that the world had come to an an end, that his family was dead. It wasn't that he thought what had happened was special, it made him feel special. “Christ, you really are a fuck up.” So what was this? Some kind of anti-climatic come down?
He'd rather look at how he felt right now as his head trying to wrap itself around the fact that his parents and Susan were not in fact flesh hungry zombies at all. He pulled the sensenet out of his pocket. All Jordan had to do was roll this over his head and the game would end and everything would be back to how it always was.
“I promised him two hours.” Jordan stuffed his insurance policy back in his pocket, checked the living room then made his way up the stairs. How could he have even believed for one minute that this was reality? He forced out a laugh. Like anything so unbelievable could possibly happen to him.
One of the bedroom doors opened. That'd be the Matt NPC making his entrance and getting ready to spew out whatever speech the the game had shoehorned into his subroutine. Jordan bet himself a pork pie and a can of coke that the mental case wou
ld now be insisting that the pair was to leave this place and follow the map.
“Saving game progress. Get ready to play Chapter Two.” He stopped at the top of the steps, refusing point blank to look out of the window. “No way this could be Chapter Two, “ he murmured.
“I said you'd be safe!” said Matt, while stumbling towards him. “Didn't get I say you'd be safe? See, you ought to listen to good old Matt, cos I know things. I know lots of things. Are you hungry? I sure am.”
Chapter Twelve
He sat on the side of his bed with the sensenet resting on his left thigh. The sound of sparrows fighting for food competed with the noise of the Monday morning commuter traffic. He lifted his head, breaking the contact between his eyes and the carpet. A moment ago, he was sure there was a dark patch by the door of his bed, matching the area where the surface-game donner kebab had fallen. There wasn't any stain on the carpet. Of course there wasn't. The empty protein bar wrappers weren't there either.
Dad had gone to work. His sister was at college and the town centre shops had pulled his mum away from the washing up. Normality reigned supreme. Almost. Jordan had one more task to complete and that proved harder than he thought possible. He knew that if he really did want everything to return to how it is, he needed to throw his sensenet in the bin.
The birds outside and the traffic weren't the only noise filtering into his bedroom. From downstairs, he heard the droning voice belonging to a reporter coming from the news programme on TV. His dad hadn’t switched off the set before rushing out. He couldn't hear the individual words but as the clock showed that it had just gone ten, the programme will be repeating today's news headlines.
The Necrovoid game dominated the channel. It was the only news item on today's programme. At least, that's what it felt like at the time.
Ninety minutes earlier, he'd found himself stood in the middle of their living room. Jordan couldn't remember if the disconnect from the sensenet happened here or in his bedroom and just happened to walk down here without realising it. His last vivid memory concerned that idiotic NPC asking him if he could use the sword to slice up some pineapple chunks and a few hot dogs. That had been the last straw. Jordan pulled the sensenet out of his pocket and rolled it over his head, despite Matt begging him to stay.
