Prologue
Nicholas POV
Like many, I have laughed at the idea of a grown man holding his mother’s hand, but when you’re approaching your eighties and she’s in her nineties time doesn’t offer you the luxury of caring about what others think. Every moment together is precious, irreplaceable, and counting down to the final conclusion.
From the moment we’re born, the Grim Reaper searches for us. Like a child playing hide and go seek in a house with a thousand rooms, he dashes about searching with frantic anticipation. If we’re unlucky, he stumbles upon us in our adolescence, catching us unprepared, and shattering the lives built around us. If he fails to find us in our youth, he might catch us in our prime, pulling us away before we can see the conclusion to everything we’ve built. However, sometime, if we are exceptionally lucky, like a child he gets bored of his frantic searching, giving up on his hunt. When he does, he throws a tantrum and goes to wait in our room, that one place in the house that he knows we’ll inevitably return to when we are too tired to hide anymore. The one place he will always find us, if he waits long enough.
In a galaxy far far away, my mother and I sat on a park bench holding hands, taking comfort in a simple touch, ignoring the world around us. The feel of her thin wrinkled skin against my age weathered fingers was a constant reminder that her time was near, that she was getting tired of running from the Grim Reaper and was ready to find her room and rest.
Sunlight, the eternal comforter, baked our skin as a gentle breeze blew through gardens humming with bees. NPC children ran and played, chasing robotic dogs, unaware that my mother’s story was soon coming to a close.
The abrupt invasion and conquest of Earth had pulled my mother and I into the Game, where we experienced a few blissful days without the pain and weakness age had bought us. We’d used this gift to go hiking, eat foods we no longer could, and generally enjoy our time together, accepting the miracle for what it was, a reprieve from the ultimate agony of life.
In the corner of my eye, I watched the countdown to the end of the Cycle tick below a minute and felt my mother’s grip tighten. For us, the Game was heaven, and we were about to be thrust back into hell. We didn’t say anything as the timer ticked down, only held each other’s hand tighter. Everything that we needed to say had already been said.
As the second reached zero, I felt myself get tired and closed my eyes.
***
Pain can be constant in your old age. You can get used to it, making you think it’s normal. However, even a short reprieve can remind you that it’s there. So, pain was the first thing I noticed when I returned to my body. The constant aches that I’d live with over the past few decades made themselves known, causing my arthritic elbow and knees to throb.
I stifled a groan as I felt a gentle tug at my hand and opened my eyelids to see my mother’s bewildered gaze. The whites of her eyes were streaked with yellow, due to organ failure and she was propped up in a medical bed, inside a private care room at the Meadow View Retirement Home. Age had thinned her white hair and skin leaving her frail and weak. Wrinkles covered every inch of her, making her almost unrecognisable as the woman who raised me.
Her eyes darted down to my hand which was holding hers and she frowned before gently pulling it away. “Who are you?” she asked, her once rich voice now burdened with years of frailty.
I forced myself to put on a false smile. After the past few bliss filled days, I’d held hope she would remember me, held hope that she would remember herself. The Game had showed me she was still in there. But she hadn’t remembered. She was the same woman out here as she was before we went in.
“I’m Nicolas. I work here taking care of you,” I lied.
My mother smiled, face filling with delight, as it had so many times over these past brutal months. “I have a son named Nicolas. He’s going to be starting school soon.”
I keep up the false cheer when all I wanted to do was weep. “That’s a lovely coincidence, Irene. Would you like a cup of tea?”
She shook her head and waved away the offer. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be a bother,” she said, trying to downplay the thirst that had to be biting the back of her throat as much as it was mine.
“It’s no trouble. I’m making one for myself.”
Her face lit up ever so slightly. “In that case, I would love one.”
I carefully pushed myself out of her bedside chair, aware of my own advanced age, and shuffled over to the door heading for the tearoom. When I’d arrived here in a drug induced daze, compelled to come by the Peacekeepers, I knew that most of the staff had gone home. I had no clue how long it would be before they returned, but my mother needed around the clock care, so I would stay until they got back.
I couldn’t leave her alone to fend for herself.
My mother had developed Alzheimer’s several years ago. It had progressed to the point where she no longer recognised me. It had been six months since she knew who I was, making the few days we spent together in the Game the single greatest gift I had ever been given. It was also the most soul crushing as coming out was like returning to hell.
I stuck my head out the door and saw one of the younger nurses walking down the hallway. Martha was a bubbly young woman who never seemed to run out of energy. She’d been dragging a dead nurse, who was marked by the Peacekeepers as an angel of death, out of the building when I arrived in the dazed state. Now, she seemed back to her usual self.
Her face lit up as she spotted me. “Mr Thistlebush, I’m glad you’re here. Would you be able to help me take care of the residents until the rest of the staff come back?”
I nodded.
***
At the end of the 2nd Cycle, my mother and I sat on the same park bench holding hands. The fears from our previous visit no longer stalked through our peaceful moments. We knew that she was still dying and that our time in the Game was precious, but we were now content with the idea that she would spend half of her remaining time senile and other half as her old self. So, when the timer went down to zero, I didn’t feel like I was returning to hell.
I opened my eyes back in her room to a very strange prompt.
The kind and generous Morgan Bartholomew Winchester has purchased a rejuvenation therapy package for you. Before the beginning of the 3rd Cycle, you will receive a rejuvenation treatment free of charge, resetting your age to around 25 years old.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The kind and generous Morgan Bartholomew Winchester has purchased a complete medical correction therapy package for you. A medical treatment drone will be dispatched to your location to administer this therapy package before the 3rd Cycle of the Game.
The kind and generous Morgan Bartholomew Winchester has purchased a recurring rejuvenation and medical pet package for your pets. A medical treatment drone will be dispatched to your location to administer this pet package before the 3rd Cycle of the Game.
“Who the bloody hell is Morgan Winchester?” My mother asked, her voice sounding stronger than it had for a very long time.
I felt her squeeze my hand firmly and stopped looking at the prompt. I turned, ready to see to what she needed, and for several moments couldn’t speak. Lying in my elder mother’s place was a young woman, with pure white hair. Every wrinkle and blemish had gone, replaced my smooth features and taunt healthy muscles.
Age had fuzzed the memories of my younger years, so I only remembered seeing my mother look this youthful in photos developed with black and white ink. Then she gave me a radiant smile and childhood memories came flooding back.
I felt my throat constrict as hope rose from my heart. “Do you remember me?” I asked in a small weak voice as the world went blurry.
She pulled me towards her engulfing me in a hug that was so tight it hurt my old joint. “Yes, I remember you, Son.”
***
An hour later, youthful men and women with old grey and white hair ran through the Meadow View Retirement Home hallways celebrating their health and youth. They danced, sang, made phone calls to their loved ones, and tried to live life to its fullest, overcome by the change that had taken place.
I stumbled in a dreamlike state through hallways filled with laugher, carrying my mother’s suitcase, smiling ear to ear. My mother stopped every few meters to say goodbye to someone, promising to visit in a few days, so the three-minute walk to my car took nearly an hour.
It was a wonderful hour, filled with more joy than I’d ever witnessed in a single time or place.
I remember putting my mother’s luggage in the back seat, but barely recalled the drive home, only coming to my senses when I parked out front. Thistlebush manor had been in our family from its creation in 1623 until 1929 when my great grandfather lost everything and was forced to sell.
The manor was extremely modest by Elizabethan standards, only a little larger than a large modern family home. The exterior was rough hand cut stone, from a long-abandoned quarry, and the tiny windows were barely enough to provide natural light. Seven bedrooms sat on the upper floor, but because of the manor’s heritage status, they remained extremely small.
When I made my humble fortune in the 1970s, I knew I wanted to reclaim the manor for our family, but what I should have done was ask why no one else had. By the time I signed on the dotted line, most of the outer buildings had two centuries of disrepair and the cost of renovating them was more than I could afford. So, a new roof and few modern improvements like indoor plumbing and electricity were the only major changes that it had undergone, because life got in the way of my larger plans.
My mother sighed from the passenger seat, pressing her lips together so she wouldn’t say something she’d regret. She had never liked Thistlebush manor. She had never liked how much I was tied to our family history. She thought of herself as a modern thinker and didn’t care for past attachments.
That was the sort of perspective you needed when you became pregnant out of wedlock in a time when it was still frowned upon. Instead of putting me up for adoption like her family wanted, she’d cut ties and raised me alone.
She found a job at a department store in London, working twice as hard as everyone else, so she could pull us out of poverty. By the time I was five, she was the manager. By the time I was ten she was the regional manager which was almost unheard of in those day. She used to say, it was me and her against the world and we came out on top.
Today that felt truer than ever before.
I opened the car door, and stepped out into the damp autumn air, before removing her suitcase from the backseat. I carried it down the two-hundred-year-old cobblestone path to the front door, carefully watching my step on the wet uneven surface. I opened front door with the old iron key, before stepping into the entrance to remove my coat, and shoes, replacing them with slippers.
Stale air greeted me as I flicked the switch beside me, turning on the lights. The front entrance opened to a hallway with a staircase which I preceded to climb, dragging my mother’s suitcase behind me. Halfway up my mother placed her hand again my back to steady me as I threatened to fall.
“Give me that,” she said gently trying to take her suitcase from me.
“I can do it,” I said hearing the weakness if my own voice.
“Nicholas Thistlebush, you are seventy-nine years old. I look and feel like I’m a third your age. Until you receive your rejuvenation treatment, let me help you.”
I considered arguing for only a second before realising the sense of her words. My mother wasn’t a frail old woman anymore. But I was still a frail old man. And this short climb was more taxing than I cared to admit.
I passed her suitcase to her.
Gripping the banister rail a little tighter, I proceeded up the staircase, past the photos of my late wife, Claire. I led my mother down the hallway, past the nursery’s permanently closed door to the warmest of the spare bedroom I had.
My mother carried her suitcase inside and placed it on the single bed, while I opened up the dresser and wardrobe for her to unpack her things.
“What do you plan to do now?” she asked, beginning to undo the old leather straps with quick nimble movements.
Her suitcase was nearly as old as she was, having carried everything she owned when she left her family behind. It was the only keepsake she had left. And despite not being sentimental, it was well cared for.
I used my handkerchief to wipe the dust from inside the top draw of the dresser as I answered. “I’m going to take a bath and put on a fresh change of clothes. These are a little well-worn at this point.”
I chuckled at my own poor joke.
Having very few staff at the retirement home had left me unable to return home to change for over a week and the thought of a hot bath was very inviting.
“I wasn’t talking about out here. I was talking about in the Game. You’re about to be as young as I am, Nicholas. We have an entire lifetime ahead of us and a galaxy to explore. We can’t continue spending our time hiking and visiting restaurants. We need to do something productive. We need to contribute.”
My mother had strong views on work ethic. To her the only useful people were those that contributed to society. Our family history was something she detested because the majority of our ancestors were lazy in her view. She had worked herself to the bone to provide a life for me, and in her mind that was the only respectable way to live. When I made my fortune as a young man, she didn’t let me retire, telling me that since I didn’t need to worry about money, I could find something useful to do with myself.
I ended up opening a bookstore in the village, spending my days reading and giving book recommendations. It barely made any money, but it kept us both happy.
I slid the slightly cleaner draw shut, hoping that the next wasn’t as dusty. “I haven’t really thought about what comes next,” I said, honestly.
My mother turned around to face me, pressing her lips together the way she did every time she was deep in thought. “What about those alien ruins you keep mentioning? You read the articles on what they discover at least three times a day. Why don’t you go help them dig?”
I frowned at her. “Would you be interested in that sort of thing?”
She shook her head, seeing my confusion. “Nicholas, I’m not going anywhere anymore. You’re not going anywhere either. I love how much time you have spent with me over these past few years, but you’re about to have a new life, new opportunities, and I intend for you to live this new life to its fullest. You know I love you, but I also love my independence. When I only had a few weeks left to live, you were the only person I wanted to spend it with. Now, there is an exciting world for me to discover and be a part of. And I want to do that. I want you to do that too.”
When I had seen her regain her youth, I had been too overwhelmed with joy to think about the greater ramification. But she hadn’t.
Suddenly, I was very excited.