The visit to the doctors passed in a bit of a blur. I had expected to spend a few hours in a waiting room, but there were distinct advantages to having your own private set of doctors. No sooner had they logged my personal information than I was taken into a small classroom where I was given a series of personality and psychological tests.
To absolutely nobody’s surprise, they diagnosed me with severe anxiety, as well as a mild case of–you know what? It’s none of your business what else they had to say about my personality. You can figure it out the old-fashioned way.
But I will say that it was that series of tests and diagnoses that first gave legitimacy, in my eyes, to the “research experiment” concept. They really were going to do this again in a year and compare the results, because there was a possibility I would emerge more damaged than I already was. By that time it was far too late to change my mind and worrying wouldn’t do me any good, but you try telling that to someone with severe anxiety and a mild case of whatever.
Fortunately, before I could think about it too much, David appeared at my side.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
I just nodded; I was all talked out for the day. After the tests had been conversations, discussions about why I made some of the choices I made and what that meant about me. Some aspects of it had actually felt therapeutic, and I wondered if that element was being accounted for as they gathered their evidence of my psyche. Not that it was any of my business, or my problem. All I had to do was play a video game for a year, then go home with a fat stack of cash.
David led me to a car, which I had been hoping would be a limo but was instead, like much of reality, disappointingly ordinary.
“That’s the last of it,” he said when we were on our way. “Next stop is the FIVR Lab, which I suppose you could start thinking of as home.” He smiled like he’d made a particularly clever joke. “Do you have any questions for me before we get there?”
I saw him watching me in the rear-view mirror, so I just shook my head. I didn’t speak to him again until the FIVR pod was closing around me.
“Will I see you when my time is up?” I asked. I didn’t particularly like him, but it felt important.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I can arrange that,” he said.
Then the pod closed, and my world went dark. I won’t say that it was my first time in a pod, but it was definitely my first time in a nice pod, which means that instead of your standard vomit-inducing disorientation, it was like being weightless in a void. Super weird, but not in a way that was unpleasant.
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I won’t describe the loading screen because duh, we’ve all seen that before. However, once that had run its course, Dim Spirits automatically loaded without giving me any of the standard options for any other media. The black void that surrounded me filled with white fog until it was so thick I couldn’t so much as see my hand in front of my face.
CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER
The words emerged before me, and I was greeted by a list of options. There were all the standard classes: Warrior, Knight, Thief, Sorcerer, Cleric, as well as a few unusual classes: Wanderer, Pyromancer, and Deprived. I immediately discarded Deprived as an option; that was the kind of choice that those hard-core players might go for, who already knew what they were doing and had to raise the difficulty just to make it a challenge. I rarely played video games, but when I did, I liked to charge in with all the finesse of a bulldozer.
Without giving it too much thought, I chose Warrior and vowed to raise my strength so high I wouldn’t have to worry about silly details like dodging or skill. There were options to change my appearance, but that sort of thing…well, some people like being able to change their body, but that’s never been my thing. I skipped past those options until the only choice remaining was my Gift. I skimmed the options, but the item descriptions were painfully vague. Black Firebomb was fairly self-explanatory, but Pendant? “Trinket. No effect, but fond memories comfort travelers.”
What the hell did that mean? Why would anyone choose that? Should I choose that?
At last, I settled on the Master Key. It was entirely possible that the Binoculars (used to peer at faraway sights) would have been the optimal choice, but it felt too much like a gamble. A master key was something I understood, and it hinted at shortcuts and secret locations, which appealed to me.
Once I had made my choice, I tapped the Confirm button and the character creation options faded from view, leaving only the fog in their wake.
A woman’s voice echoed around me, her voice reverberating strangely among the mist. “In the Age of Ancients,” she began, “the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, archtrees and everlasting dragons.” The fog cleared as she spoke, slowly revealing a barren gray wasteland of spindly trees and dust and one massive dragon that looked to be carved of stone.
“But then,” the woman intoned, “there was fire, and with fire came disparity.” The world tilted sideways and I fell through the giant roots of a tree. Sparks slowly began to light the area around me as I tumbled deep into the earth.
“Heat and cold, life and death, and of course…Light and Dark.”
Sparks became fire. From where I was standing, it looked as though the entire horizon was ablaze. As the woman continued her tale, I watched the events unfold before me.
“Then from the dark, they came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame. Nito, the first of the dead. The Witch of Izalith and her Daughters of Chaos. Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, and his faithful knights. And the Furtive Pygmy, so easily forgotten.”
“With the strength of Lords, they challenged the Dragons. Gwyn’s mighty bolts peeled apart their stone scales. The Witches weaved great firestorms. Nito unleashed a miasma of death and disease. And Seath the Scaleless betrayed his own, and the Dragons were no more.
“Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights. And amongst the living are seen, carriers of the accursed Darksign.”
The show of battle against dragons faded into a brief scene of a beautiful city, until finally the darksign was all that remained, a pitch-black circle rimmed with flickering flames.