So overcome with feeling, he sank further into her chest out of delirium, and cried loudly, spluttering with groans and tears. He could not listen to anything; he had been carried away by his imagination, his hope, his love. And then, as though he had just remembered that he possessed a pair of functional legs, he sprang up and dashed like a little kid towards the woman in mist. He reached the boundary to where the mist began, and looked about him with scattering eyes, but still could not find her.
“Where are you?” he asked in a panic, and then in tears. He ran back to the first woman and wept out of fear. “You told me that she was here! Where is she?”
But while he was sobbing at her breast, wiggling about, still rather anxious and needy, and confused as to why the computer program had chosen his first girlfriend to be the administrative program rather than the woman in question, he suddenly heard the wheezing, hacking laughter of his only friend. He looked up. She was gone, leaving only grey whisps of smoke and his arms coldly empty. The sound of a slow clap emerged from behind the mist – a truly bizarre scene to behold.
The heavy breathing, and the relentless coughing, and the frightening wheezing only became louder as a man exited the fog and revealed himself to the boy. He was a big-headed boy with a toothy, eager smile and a slightly tanned complexion to fool those into thinking he was a blue-collar worker, but in reality he often spent his summers in his parents’ villa in northern Spain. His eyes were soft and round, and one would never have known the seriousness of his ambition, or the evil that awaited the world, in them. He had a full head of dark brown hair that reached down to his shoulders like a lion’s mane, of which he seemed proud. His head was obnoxiously square and blocky, much like his stocky body, a great contrast to the femininity of his hair; if one were to look at him from behind, they might mistake him for an attractive woman. It was obvious to Rod as to the reason why the Pole had grown up with such a comparative ego, and why Jam could discuss with him at length his own base desires so freely.
Because of Rod’s young eyes, his vision was much clearer and more laser-sharp than normal, and thus he could perceive and scrutinise his friend’s face in all its higher definition clarity; his cheeks were fluffy and made one want to pinch them and tear off a piece. This made Rod remember how Aleku was in the early days of highschool. They weren’t friends right away, but he remembered that he was always surrounded by girls, even chased by them at one point. On the other hand, Rod had felt a slight aversion to the young Pole initially, for a reason he could not exactly remember, but now had an inkling that it was some sort of sixth sense for the evil that lay dormant in his heart, waiting for it to develop into the man he is now.
Aleku’s garments, however, were not indicative of his middle-class heritage at all, for his style had not progressed past the age of six: he wore a black t-shirt with an anime woman printed on it along with light blue wide-legged jeans, which did little to elevate his medium height and pudgyness; perhaps this was why he latched onto Rod in highschool – to elevate his social game. “Well,” Rod thought, “that isn’t going to happen a second time around.”
“Why, the most annoying thing about you is... that you look so cute as a little kid; you would make even I adopt you, even make you the heir of my empire! Oh, you would be such a cute addition to my household. Why couldn’t you stay like this? In fact, how have you failed utterly in life looking like that? It is the strangest thing that you got your first girlfriend at the age of 21 and not any earlier, and no more after that until 23. Ah, if there is a God, he surely wasted everything on you. Your parents must be so disappointed in you. As if you squandered your good fortune! I’d bet a vast sum of money that you wouldn’t be able to change, if only I could tell people about this experiment... What? Don’t take me so seriously, my good pal.
“Perhaps I’ll study to become a medical doctor this time round,” he said, inspecting his fingernails. “Not for the money, though, I have enough of that!” And the boy roared obnoxiously, his tongue slapping against all sides of his big mouth.
Then, the shorter of the three friends broke in behind his shoulder, anxiously:
“You gave the AI explicit rules to follow, right?”
“Sure did, bud; had the best people on it,” replied the Pole with boredom. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them, “All right... Time to get the party truly started.”
Rod looked at the two boys and saw in them the men that they still were. How could he be such a fool? He considered them best friends in highschool, but it turns out that they were just using him for clout. All the birthday and Christmas presents he had given them were counted for nothing.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” said Aleku, pouting mockingly, his fat bottom lip wobbling ridiculously like a cartoon. Evidently, the men had transformed themselves, like Rod, into younger versions of themselves.
The reluctance for Jam to step out of Aleku’s shadow was not lost on Rod, who tried to wrap his eyes around Aleku’s body to take a peek of his younger, little friend.
“I want to leave,” whined Jam.
“Come on, show yourself,” said Aleku. “How can you be a villain if you’re too self-conscious to even show yourself?”
“Shut up,” sniffled Jam, in a high-pitched squeal. “Just get on with it. I hate being in this body.”
“What do you want, Aleku,” asked Rod, frowning. “This is my childhood, not yours.”
“What? You don’t seem pleased to see your good friend.”
“What have you done with her?”
“Her? Boy, you can’t even remember your first girlfriend’s name. You are utterly pathetic.” He sighed heavily, and said, “This won’t last long. Shame because it took so long to get the investors on board.”
“The investors?” Rod snarled.
“The people who have a stake in your success. Basically, there are a lot of people betting on the outcome of this experiment. I personally think that you will fail miserably. Jam thinks so too. But surprisingly there are a few people banking on your success. I am doing this for many financial reasons, but also because of moral ones. I want to test my theory on whether a person’s success is entirely innate or influenced by the environment, so that is why I am also taking part, and so is Jam over here. Actually, Jam’s here more because he wants to observe you for psychoanalytical purposes. He kinda regrets not choose to study psychology, his passion, rather than programming.”
Aleku raised an eyebrow. “Kiddo, you’ve been given a chance no one on the planet has ever had; do you honestly think that I’m just going to sit back and not take an active part in this historical moment?” He let loose a terrible, interrupted laugh, which sounded like something was stuck in his throat. “You are an obnoxious little peasant. I want to see you be beaten and broken by life firsthand! Listen, I’m not going to bullshit you. I’m doing this for your own good. To get Jam on board I had to promise to make it... extremely difficult for you to achieve your goal. Ah, I almost forgot. What is your goal?”
“My goal?” repeated Rod incredulously. “Haven’t you been listening? I want to restart my life. I want to change the decisions that led me to ruin in the first place. I want...” he blushed and looked down sheepishly, “I want her back.”
Again, the Polish man roared in laughter. “Well, well, that is a big goal indeed. You obviously have no understanding of the particulars that you are in, so let me explain it to you. There are many things that you need to do along the way to achieve that big goal that you’ve set for yourself. We call these ‘subgoals’, or ‘SG’s’ for short-”
“You mean quests?”
“Yes, but that’s for fantasy games and stuff like that. This isn’t one of them. I picked the term subgoals because it sounds more science fiction-ee.”
“This isn’t a game,” spat Rod, his voice tight with apprehension. His mind was awhirl with anxiety and betrayal.
Aleku waved him away. “There’s some rules you have to follow, of course, since this is largely a videogame.”
“What are you talking about,” interrupted Rod, and he rose from the floor in a puff. He struck out his hand and pointed at him. His face morphed quickly into a scowl. “Don’t mess with me!”
“Don’t worry,” smirked Aleku, “your Will will be broken soon enough. Basically, the rule is that if you die you die in real life. That’s it.” He shrugged and folded his arms casually across his chest. “Not my choice so don’t blame me; blame him,” he said, nodding to the man behind him, who was still hiding behind Aleku like an exposed man. “Also, since this is a game, I’ve programmed some levels into this as well, and attributes and the like. I can’t be bothered to explain it all to you, so I’ll have the avatars do it for me because I’m feeling lazy.”
Rod was so confused and outraged that he was utterly speechless and immobile. He spluttered incoherently, flailing his hands about trying to articulate a sentence. Aleku simply looked at him with a smug smile, his childish eyes, untouched by hard sights and the reality of human suffering, twinkling with obvious glee. He carried on with his explanation.
“Also, one of your SG’s, or ‘quests’ if you prefer, is to get me a girlfriend, so good fucking luck with that,” he laughed hideously. “Damn, even in this simulated body I crave a cigarette.”
But Rod was not listening now; he had turned inward to his thoughts as a last-ditch effort to escape reality. He did not understand the reason for making his healing into some sort of game. He looked wide eyed at his friend. “Don’t do this,” he said flatly. The energy seemed to drain out of his body.
“Don’t do what?”
“Make my suffering into some sort of game for your entertainment.”
Aleku sighed and shook his head. He appeared to say something but stopped short, and instead began stroking his round, jutting chin in thought. “Show me that you can work hard at something, and then we’ll talk like men.”
“Get me out of here!” cried Rod; his face showed fear and misery. “I do not want to be a pawn in your capitalistic game. I’m not some monkey you can throw treats at and watch dance to the beat of your own drums!”
Aleku paused and studied him for a while but did and said nothing.
Jam laughed. “You are your own destruction,” he said, sniveling.
“What our mutual friend means is that if you choose to abandon this game before it is complete, you can expect to spend the rest of your life in jail.”