In the beginning, there was Chaos. Chaos was nothing but a lifeless and shapeless form of matter that was spread throughout the dark solitude that it was stuck in. This matter of nothing was destructive and wild, a place full of anarchy and dark shadows, a substance full of everything yet nothing. Amidst the disorder Chaos has created, Night and Erebus were born as shapeless nothings and as the children to Chaos. Night and Erebus represented silence and endless darkness just like Chaos, and they both continued the legacy Chaos has created. Night became the pitch-black realm that would overcast the realm while Erebus was a pit that was down far below, home to the idea of death and their dwells. The universe continued to live in these circumstances however, the universe was truly never alive.

As far as I was concerned, the universe was still chaos. We try our best to put some sort of order to it, but the quest is in vain. Hopeless. Order is a human trait. The universe does not care. Everything returns to chaos, no matter what we do. We are mired in the dark and shapeless night.

I was floating in a formless void, my mind detached from all that was real. Or maybe nothing was real. I could hear disembodied voices in the distance that slowly got closer. A couple of male voices and a female voice.

“His heart rate is dropping,” I heard one of the male voices say. He sounded clinical, a doctor maybe?

Suddenly I became aware I had a heart.

“That’s good,” the female voice said with a note of relief. “It was too fast. We need him calm. I was afraid we might have to give him a sedative.”

“Can we turn down the lights?” Another male voice said. “We don’t want him blinded when he opens his eyes.”

Now I was aware I had eyes. I open them.

They had indeed dimmed the lights, but they still seemed bright to me. I squinted in the light. I saw three silhouettes surrounding me. The woman noticed my eyes were opening. She said. “Just relax Jaxson, take your time. You just set a new record.”

“Jaxson?” I questioned. “It’s JR.” And what did she mean by new record?

“He still thinks he’s in the simulation, maybe?” One of the men questioned.

Wait, what? A simulation!?

“I think it’s alright to unhook him from the machines,” woman, clearly a doctor said. “Let’s get him in a sitting position.”

That was a first time I became aware that I was lying down on some sort of cushioned table. The table began moving, up pushing me up and forward as it transformed into a chair.

“Where am I?” I finally managed to croak out.

“Get the man a glass of water,” one of the male voices said.

“Welcome back to the Continuum,” the doctor said. As my eyes adjusted and began to focus, I could make out her face as she was standing in front to me. She was pretty, wore a lab coat and had tanned skin like someone from India might.

I was now aware that there was a place called the Continuum. I felt them pulling stuff off me. Monitoring devices with leads and electrodes and I think there was an IV that was removed, but the pain was very vague. Mostly I felt tired and a bit anxious. I was disoriented and confused, but some of it was starting to come back to me. It came in drips, a memory here, an image there.

“I’m sure you’re experiencing some bewilderment right now,” one of the men said to me. I could see that he was also dressed in a lab coat, but underneath he wore a suit and tie. “I’m not surprised. You just set a record. No one had ever been in the simulation that long before.”

“How long?” I asked. I was vaguely aware that there was head gear with dozens of wires coming out of it resting on a chair next to where I was. Those wires connected to a large computer terminal close by. The room was big and there was various equipment scattered about.

“Sixty hours,” the woman beamed at me.

“Sixty hours?” I questioned. “Felt more like three months.”

“That’s probably the effect of the Opaldrine,” one of the men stated.

“Opal… What?” I questioned.

“Opaldrine,” the woman repeated. “It helps to solidify the VR world, making the simulation more… realistic.”

“Boy, did it ever!” I admitted to them. “It felt more real than this does right now.”

There was laughter from them at my statement. Someone handed me a glass of water. I drank the whole thing. I had no idea how thirsty I was, but I guess it had been sixty hours, so I was very thirsty. The IV was probably to keep me hydrated.

“Good,” one of them said. “That means it worked like it was supposed to.”

“Oh my god!” I exclaimed. “My name is Jaxson Dean… Greenwood. You know, I couldn’t remember that when I was in the VR world.”

“Hmm,” the woman pondered. “That’s a curious side effect. Maybe the dose was too high?”

“JR must have been the name you choose when you first entered the simulation,” one of the men commented. “My apologies Mr. Greenwood. You probably wondering who I am. We never met before. I’m James and this is my associate Devon. We are part of the game design team.”

“That whole thing was a game?” I questioned. I was aware that James was the tall thin one and Devon was a shorter black man. They looked youthful and friendly.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Devon replied. “There were many choices you could have made and side quests that you could have explored.”

“Really?” I was surprised. I wonder how much I missed.

“We could not see what you were seeing, but we could register the choices you were making in the simulation,” James explained. “Obviously we can’t anticipate every decision you were going to make. And the AI does have limits placed on it… for obvious reasons.”

For obvious reasons was basically code for, so it won’t try to take over the world like a bad terminator movie.

“Is he going to be alright doctor? Can we do a quick interview?” Devon asked the woman.

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“All his vitals have returned to normal, so I’m sure Mr. Greenwood will be fine, although a little disoriented for a while,” the doctor replied. “How do you feel about talking to them, Jaxson?”

“It’s fine,” I had to admit I was pretty curious about what they had to say. My memory was still fuzzy and if they could fill in some details that would be great.

“So, you chose to have a relationship with the girl from the diner, Maggie,” James started in by explaining some choices. “Alternatively, you could have also had a relationship with Sherry, Tammy and Ms. Williams.”

“Ms. Williams, really? She seemed like such a bitch,” I commented.

They both laughed. “Yeah, she was meant to be a hard one, but you still could have went for it,” James explained.

“When she was serving you drinks at the bar, depending on how you played it, that was your opening to unlock that relationship tree in the game,” Devon pointed out.

Something occurred to me. “What was with Dominic?” I asked. “He had this whole thing where he brought me in and showed me his lab. He went off on all these crazy ideas.”

“Oh that!” James replied. “Yeah, so Dominic had an entire side quest for you that you apparently skipped.”

“Are you talking about the genetic experiments?” I asked. “That whole thing was a side story?”

“Yes, it was,” Devon confirmed. “Just out of curiosity, why didn’t you pursue that further?”

“Dominic was weirding me out. The whole thing seemed too bizarre,” I told them.

“We could tweak it maybe?” Devon suggested to James. James nodded and wrote something down on a clip board he had with him.

“Let’s talk to story design about that later,” James said to him.

“I have another question,” I said. “What was with the hallway colors?”

“Well, you see, the game has no head up display. We felt that it would take away from the immersion of the simulation,” James explained. “So, the hallway was actually an indicator as to how far through the game you had actually progressed. The darker the color, the further along you were.”

“Wow,” I said. “Now that makes total sense. But in there I had no clue, it was just freaking me out.”

“Alright, I’m going to make a note of it in the file for next time,” Devon said and wrote something down on his own clipboard.

“Yeah, maybe something more obvious,” James said to him.

“So Frank was there as a catalyst and side kick to help you out along the way. How did that work out?” Devon asked me.

“Very good, actually,” I said. “I liked the character, he was very… relatable.”

“Frank was also a love interest, if you had been gay, or played a female character,” James commented.

“He seemed a bit old for that,” I pointed out.

“Oh, the AI would have made him younger in that case,” Devon said.

“Holy shit! I have a wife and kids, don’t I?” I blurted out. It was just something that had popped into my memory.

“You sure do,” Devon confirmed.

“I need to see them,” I stated.

“And you will, but you have to be debriefed by the psychologist before we are allowed to officially release you,” James said. “You were in there an awfully long time we have to make sure that you know who you are and where you are now.”

“What did you think about your time in the simulation?” Devon asked. “Was it positive or negative?”

I had to think about that one for a moment. There were a lot of things I liked about the experience and a few that I didn’t like or were just too weird. “I would say… mostly positive,” I told them. I mean, it was kind of true, right?

“Would you do it again?” James questioned.

“I don’t know about that,” I replied. “I mean yeah, it was good, but finding out it was all a simulation after believing in it so much seemed like a letdown. Besides, I wouldn’t want to run the same story over and over again. It would feel like Groundhog Day.”

“Well, that was our breaking bad simulation, but there are others,” Devon told me.

“Really? Like what?” Now I was curious.

“Gangland, Chicago in the mid nineteen twenties, a nineteen forties LA private detective story, a holy land templar knights sim…” James listed a few of them off.

“There’s a fantasy sim we are working on called Gaia…” Devon added.

James cut him off. “That one is still classified,” he gave Devon a look like say no more.

“Wow, it sounds like a lot of thought has been put into this,” I commented.

“Research and design are a big department here in the tower,” Devon said. “We have a Sci-Fi one we are working on. That will be our biggest simulation yet.”

“Alien invasion?” I suggested.

“Sorry, we can’t talk about anything still in development,” Devon replied.

“Also alien invasion is a touchy subject for obvious reason, am I right?” James joked.

I didn’t get the joke. There were still gaps in my memory that were slow to fill in.

“Okay, so what is the point of all of this? Is there a VR game being produced that people will be able to buy?” I asked.

“Sorry, but that’s also classified,” James pointed out. “That should have been explained to you when you signed up. Just review the agreement that you signed off on before entering. That should explain it.”

“His memory is still a little fuzzy, remember? Side effect of the sim,” the doctor told Devon and James. She had been hanging around in the background, but never left the room.

James nodded. “Sorry,” he said to me.

“It’s alright,” I said. “Listen, there was something that happened at the very end that seemed kind of strange.”

“What do you mean?” Devon asked.

“Well, after I was shot, I was lying there on the floor and a man approached me. He wasn’t Mexican like the others, he was white,” I explained. “I couldn’t make out his features, it’s like his face was being blurred out.”

“Hmm, that is strange,” James commented. “We are going to have to go through the game record to find out what exactly happened at the end.”

“He spoke to me,” I added. “He said ‘when you wake up from this, tell them… that they are not going to stop me like this… with silly games and such. And I’m certainly not going down without a fight. They will understand.’”

“That is strange,” Devon commented. “Did the character give a name?”

“Brent Alexander,” I told them. “Is there something going on? You think it was a simulated character?”

“Could be,” James said with a shrug. “It’s nothing that we created, but AI does create fill in simulated characters sometimes. But not giving it a face goes against the programming protocols though, which doesn’t make sense.”

“That name sounds familiar,” Devon commented. Then he asked James. “Isn’t there a man with that name working in the MIB department?”

James just shrugged. “I’m not really sure. There are so many people over there coming and going all the time, It could be anyone really.”

Neither of them seemed overly concerned about. I felt like they should have been. Something about the encounter just wasn’t sitting well with me, but I couldn’t explain why. It was just a feeling, a six sense that it was important.

“Anyways, how do you feel?” Devon asked me. “Do you think you can stand up?”

“Yeah,” I said. I was a little shaky, but I managed to get to my feet and take a few steps.

“Excellent,” the doctor commented. “He’s probably ready to go upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” I questioned.

“The psychologist office, remember?” She said to me.

“Oh, right,” I said. How could I have forgotten that already? Maybe that drug was still in my system and still playing tricks on me? It did feel very powerful. It was able to anchor me in a VR world and make it feel more real than the world I was currently in.

I thought about for a moment and looked around a bit. This still did not feel right. The room was too perfect, too clean, too neat. There was a quality to the artificial light in the room that seemed wrong somehow, but if asked, I could not explain why. There were no windows here. I didn’t know what the outside looked like and when I tried to think about it, I couldn’t recall anything. Does that seem strange to you?

Do you remember that show Severance, when the people are at work in that strange office building, and they have this weird job that doesn’t make any sense? Well, that how I was feeling. Like this was only half of my true self and the other half was cut off or missing. Or maybe it was just brain fog. I know that fucked up, right?

The name of the place, The Continuum sounded familiar, but it didn’t help me form a picture of it in my mind. It was like I had a block there for some reason. Had I been brainwashed, like some type of posthypnotic suggestion so I couldn’t recall important details? I kept coming up with more questions than I had answers for. It was starting to give me a sick feeling in my stomach.

I decided to test something out. “Hey, I need to walk around to get my legs going. Can we go out into the hall at least?”

“Well, you need to go upstairs anyway to see the psychologist,” the doctor related. “So yeah, we can walk there now if it helps. I’m sure James and Devon have a lot more questions, but they will have plenty of time to ask you tomorrow, I’m sure.”

The two men nodded in agreement.

“We can come by your apartment tomorrow, when your more relaxed,” James suggested. “Maybe you will remember more then?”

I agreed. The two men left the room.

“Are you sure you can walk alright?” The doctor asked me. “The elevator is all the way at the end of the hallway?”

“I’m okay,” I reassured her. I was still a little unsteady, but I could do it. “Let’s get this over with so I can go home.”

“Alright,” the doctor said. And with that we went though the door and left the room.