“How do I activate the System?” he demanded suddenly, stepping back with firm determination in his eyes.

“Why should I help you?”

“Because I want to change: I don’t want to be the guy who hurt you, who treated you so badly.”

“Hm,” she said. Then she opened her mouth to say something snarky but then slumped her frail shoulders and sighed. She looked at him with a perplexed expression, stuck between hate and compassion. “Like an idiot I’ve given you too many chances,” she said finally, her hands limp at her side, fidgeting nervously.

Rod didn’t say anything. The blue flashes behind him grew intense and daringly expansive, illuminating her auburn hair for a brief moment. Her smile was intoxicating. He was brought back several years into the past and felt mournful, like opening a box of mementos.

She looked him over. Her smug smile gone. Eyes like black beetles now. It was like she was scanning him intently like a robot. “Suppose you don’t know anything about the System.”

“Except that Aleku designed it.”

She smiled then, but more out of humour than anything. “I see.” She tilted her head as she inspected her fingernails, stretching them out before her. “Perhaps, Rod, I can tell you something.”

“Tell me what?”

“That it’s not too late to turn back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“We can all do what we set our minds to do,” she replied with a smile, though it was a little off.

“And I want to change my life for good,” he said stubbornly.

“I suppose that’s normal,” she said with a dissatisfied air. “But you aren’t special in that regard.”

Slightly annoyed by her casual dismissal, Rod said, “What the hell are you doing here, anyhow?”

“I’m here to stop you,” she said. “You don’t mind that I smoke a cigarette while we have a little discussion, do you? I never did end up quitting after all that was said between us. Nothing could have convinced me to stop, of course, but death itself.”

“Are you real?”

“As real as anything in this world,” she said with a slight cough.

“Can you get this thing to work for me?”

“I could. But you still haven’t given me a good reason to use it on you. I’m its gatekeeper, you see. I judge all those who seek to enter through the door. Are you worthy?”

“What do you mean? Stop talking about all this nonsense. Just let me use this damn System for crying out loud!”

“You don’t really know how to interact with people,” she said. She had a husky, smooth voice that was alluring to the young man. Yet it had a strange, robotic quality to it which he could not ignore.

“If you’re not going to help me then fuck you!” he hissed, his brows bent down, and his lips curled.

She sighed, and looked out at the door, and then back to him. She leaned back against the wall, smoking her cigarette casually. “Why should I help you?”

“We are just talking in damn circles. What are you, a robot?”

She cackled, but a cute sort of cackle, almost like a chuckle. “Like I said, I am the System’s gatekeeper. I’m the protector if you will. Nothing enters and nothing gets out without my express permission. But I’ll tell you what: because we don’t have much time, I’ll let you in, but only if you promise to go along with the program, and not to break any of the rules.”

“What are the rules?” he asked impatiently.

“You’ll find out soon enough. There are other avatars in there who will help you out. I’ll be in there, don’t worry. I know that you are a very anxious individual. I think after learning about you I’ve come to understand you.”

“I’m going to change my life,” he said, smiling ear to ear in excitement.

“Get on with it then,” she said angrily, tossing her head to the surgical bed behind him, and the rich red colour of her lips became brilliantly visible in the sea of blue from the sea of computer lights, tinted only slightly away from its original hue somehow miraculously.

He looked at her dumbly. “What?” he said.

“Go, lie down and let me activate the System.”

“Why are you angry all of a sudden?” he inquired, frowning.

She wrinkled her nose and sighed. “If you aren’t careful, you could seriously hurt yourself.”

“How so?”

“You change the wrong thing, and you could mess up your brain.”

He pondered on what she had said for a moment, but then shook his head. “You’re just fearmongering.” Then he took another step back, releasing her from his grip, and looked at her with suspicion. “Wait,” he began.

“Go, lie down now,” she said. “Szybko!” she threw her hands behind her into balled white fists.

Worry and anxiety gripped his heart as he seemingly lost control of his legs; they moved sporadically backwards like an automaton towards the bed. “Hey!” he cried, “What is going on? Why, why? Wait, why? Your name? What is your name? I’m forgetting it, slowly, I’m forgetting your name!”

“My name?” the young girl asked innocently, one leg over the other, staring with her black eyes into his black soul. She went on staring without a word, half frowning in concern, all the while balancing on one foot.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

He continued to be sucked backwards into the grey surgical bed, where the bundle of optical cables lay sparking with blue fire. He craned his neck over his shoulder and his eyes widened in terror. “Why like this? Would it not be better to be put under general anesthetic for an operation like this? Has this not been trialed before? Why to highschool, anyway? Would it not be better to go even further back if I am going back at all, and correct my early childhood experiences there so that I don’t end up with this abhorrent personality disorder that I do suffer from now?” And though Rod was unable to think himself out of his current warped perception of reality, the thought was perhaps a smart one, for he, in his own estimation, was a ruined individual by the time he entered into the highschool arena. But his mind was and had always been preoccupied with highschool and the events that happened thereafter. Consequently, his destiny, if one believed in such an individualistic philosophy, was for that torturous training ground. This was confirmed by the appearance of the walls surrounding him, which seemed to shift before his very eyes to burgundy and brown. To his right, the towering blocks of computers dissolved into a series of bubbles, seemingly replaced, like a clever magic trick, by the tail-ends of flapping blazers and loose-fitting, two-sizes-too-large pantlegs, all sliding away from him down a narrow, wooden corridor; on the left, the bright pale light of midday burst through worn, waxing double fire doors, leading down some old steep steps, which had been untouched since they were first laid fifty years ago by old burly men with their thick, northern accents, into the courtyard. Here was a place where most of the nerds and geeks in his Year cloistered. How ugly they were to him all those years back! He felt his anger rise in his chest all of a sudden like a kettle left to boil. Here would be a place to cause mass destruction with his advantageous development, he thought. Back then, he was unfairly behind neurodevelopmentally (that is what the psychological literature would say), but now, he reasoned, they all would have their comeuppance. Unable to restrain himself, the corners of his lips twinged upwards as his heart pounded like a maniac. It was probably going to be overkill; adrenaline surged through his veins. Here was a place to unleash his creativity, his social engineering capabilities, he thought. Not being able to take back command of his extremities, he struggled against his invisible chains as the school bell rang with full vigor. He snarled like a caged lion, starved and taunted with the smell of freshly dangled steak. “I will be a child again,” he thought with foam bubbling in his mouth.

"You best get away with me you dickhead!” shouted the young teenage girl with a snarl. She walked over to a shard on the floor and picked it up. Earlier, the young girl had launched a brick through the windowpane. Now, she struck at his face with it, but Rod, having no joy in life himself, stayed where he was unblinking.

At one point, he was in his bed with his smartphone on speaker, listening to a woman on the other end of the line.

“You should break up with her,” she said. “She’s no good for you. She sounds like trouble. You have to pick, Rod, between her or your new job.”

Rod’s eyes glazed over, but his heart jerked behind that thin white T-shirt he was wearing. She was his only friend, his first love, the only person who listened to him, who accepted him for who he was and is and will be. He felt at a loss. He wanted to quit his job, but his mother disapproved. His mother, the only other significant figure in his life who seemed to care about him. Again, he felt at a loss of what to do.

Darting his eyes across the room again, with his legs quivering underneath him, he noticed that it was no longer the narrow, brown school corridor packed with students that he was in but the black metal cage of his black 2006 1.4 litre Vauxhall Corsa SRi. Through the window glass he saw that it was night. He could see no one about, nor any other car save for one parked discreetly a few spaces away on the opposite side to the left. Adjacent to that was the exit of the car park, which opened up into a dual carriageway. He looked at the young brunette next to him. She looked young and attractive. His heart was sent into overdrive, and he began to hyperventilate as thoughts stormed into his mind. He turned to look outside the window next to him, the driver’s window, and saw nothing but dark green hedges. He could hear her speak but not the words. The words were indecipherable to him now. The words meant nothing to him. He had the feeling, however, that this would pass soon, but the longer he waited the more anxious he got that it wouldn’t go away, that the mirage was in fact his reality and that he would have to perform; but he felt like a fraud. He looked at her face but the shadow, created by the lonely streetlights casting down their white, exposing light at a weird angle, hid her round face from his eyes. Only the moon was out. Then he tried to turn his waist to her, pressing his buttocks into the grey nylon seat and sliding it away towards the door, and looked at her shifting face intently, though he could not see its features. But he did not give into despair and forced his lips to part, to utter, to speak something, anything. He was powerless like always and this frustrated him to no end.

Then the world around him suddenly changed again and was turned into the outdoor activity camp he spent the day at with his Year 6 class in the summer before highschool. This time, however, the feeling arising from within him was more intense, almost unbearable for an instant, as it had been at that precocious time. And what, what was he doing in that room, surrounded by all his classmates whom he had called friends for the past seven years? He was sitting there at the back of the room, in the back row. “And where, where were the adults whose job was to supervise these young, precocious children? Where was the parent of the child who started it all? It was she who organised it. They stepped out all at once!” And he laughed and he seethed and he laughed. Yes, he clenched his fists and snarled and laughed, nervously, frighteningly, shakily, noisily and continued to laugh all throughout the memory. He struck the air and pointed, and shouted as he saw the children look at him with their evil, demonic eyes: “Look, look, if I treated children like that now I would be in big trouble! I wouldn’t get away with this at all! Yes, yes, they all just ganged up on me and-” But when these children didn’t stop staring at him, into him, he ceased laughing. A volley of darker emotions took hold of him. All at once he felt a wish, a very dark wish, a wish he would be ashamed of even thinking of considering consciously; a wish he would not even share with his most intimate friend, and he sat and wondered, and that it would be a most permanent thing, too, to go after the parents who were now out of the room for the sake of a phone call: “Fuck them!”

He stood up defiantly, looking furiously and righteously for the adults who had slipped out. All his concentration seemed to be intent on this particular idea, and he felt to his bones that this was the only thing to do to make things right, and that now, now, he had no choice – and that although no one would understand, his life would invariably improve.

“Fuck them all!” he cursed to himself, in a hot rage, to which he felt also ashamed. “If I am to change my life for the greater good of society, then I have to do all that it takes. They deserve it! If no one will punish them, if no one will exact justice then I will! I wish I had never gone to that fucking camp in the first place. Oh dear, how stupid is everyone else!... And what I can do now, what I will do in fact with no one to stop me. How despicable people will think of me for doing the things that I am thinking of doing right now. It is my imagination, right? Am I a criminal for imagining such things? How miserably they treated me for several years. How miserable it has stayed with me for all these years. How miserably I then went on to treat those who called me their friend. Oh, my heart, it cannot take anymore. I am going to die! All I wanted was acceptance, but they refused to give it to me. They rejected me. I am a reject! I am not good enough! Well, I will reject them now. I will tell them that they are not good enough. Yes, yes, no good for me to the just wipe out this entire simulation immediately, no, no, I will exact my revenge methodically, slowly, tormenting them ruthlessly through the same techniques that they employed against me – just more skillful, a bit like a surgeon or a dentist. I will destroy their brains like they destroyed mine. I will turn their brains into mush before they even reach adulthood. Yes, yes... I have undergone such agony, such torment, such ridicule, such humiliation, that now it is their turn to suffer. My life has been inexplicably ruined because of them. Yes, yes, I am justified in these actions. What am I, a dog? And here, I wanted for so long to forgive them, to move on with my life...Well there is no moving on until I bury the thing.”

He moved, as the scenery around him changed with such violent shifts of colour and light. All his thoughts seemed centred on the topic of revenge, on hate, on malice, and he felt all the religion leave his body.

Suddenly, he was faced with another significant event from his childhood. It seemed to him that he was progressing backwards in time, sifting through his memories, rewinding back the clock as it were.

He heard a girl say: “He’s cute.”