“Ram! Ram!”
I was in my room with the door open reading a novel when I suddenly heard my name being called by a familiar voice. It was my mother, and she seemed to be calling me a hint of urgency. I sighed as I lay on my bed holding a novel that I had been reading at that moment.
“I wonder what happened?” I thought, curiously.
“Ram!” she called for a third time.
“Coming!” I replied, raising my voice to a loud volume so that she can hear me.
Getting off of my bed, I straightened up and walked out of the room before heading downstairs. My family, consisting of my father and mother, along with me live in a two-story duplex house. This is because the stairs were connecting the ground floor consisting of the hall, kitchen, garage for our car and the first floor consisting of the three bedrooms, a study and a bathroom.
I quickly walked down the flight of stairs and arrived at the ground floor before walking into the hall. Both my father and mother were seated on the couch with father reading the evening newspaper while mother was cutting up an apple to eat.
“Oh? You’re here. Good,” said mother, beaming at me.
Hearing that, my father put his paper down and smiled at me, saying, “Ah. Ram.”
“Why did you call me, mum?” I asked my mother, staring at the both of them in perplexity.
“Yeah. There’s something we need to talk about,” his father said, smiling at him and gestured for him to take a seat. As I walked over and sat down on the couch next to them, my father continued speaking by saying, “Do you know what today is?”
“Today?” I asked, staring at him in surprise. “Today’s the Wednesday of the August 20XXth. Why? Is there something special on today?”
“Mmm.”
He just made a sound out of his mouth and smiled at me with a cheeky kind of grin on his face. Well, that was how it looked to me as he and mum constantly threw glances at the clock for some reason. I wonder why they did that, and I went to ask them about it when both of their expressions suddenly changed to that of great happiness.
“Happy Birthday!” they said in unison, turning to face me with grins on their faces.
I was momentarily surprised before I thought about today’s date and that was when the realisation dawned on me
“Today’s my birthday!” I thought, feeling a wondrous feeling. “I can’t believe I forgot my own birthday? How the hell did I even forget my birthday? Mmm… I think it’s to do with that really hard assignment that I handed in today in my biology class. It was a pain to do and made me concentrate on it a lot, making my completely forget about my birthday! Stupid biology class!”
“No reaction?” my father asked, making me come out of my thoughts and see the disappointed look on his face.
“Ah! Thanks, dad! Thank you as well, mum!” I replied, smiling cheerfully at them, which made them smile again.
“We’ve got you some presents,” said my mother, pulling out two large objects that were neatly wrapped in decorative paper. “Come and get them.”
Obediently, I rose out of my feet and nervously walked over to take the presents from my mother’s hand. One was large and the other was small, but whatever in them was not that heavy for me. Well, I might not be the strongest guy around, but I still performed the usual daily body exercises in the morning to stay fit.
“Those are from both of us. I hope you will like them,” said mum, smiling sweetly at me.
I was feeling very happy and although I expected a bit more, this was still great, so I quietly said, “Thank you, dad. Thanks, mom.”
Turning around, I began to leave the room when my mother asked in a disappointed voice, “What? You aren’t going to open them in front of us?”
I got surprised by hearing her sad voice, and I turned around to make up an excuse to reassure her. Truth be told, I want to open these up in my room where I felt safe and besides, I’m not a kid to open these in front of my parents anymore.
As if understanding my chain of thoughts, dad cleverly said “Ah! Stop being so negative, Devi. He’s growing up, so let him open them wherever he wants to. Besides, how do you expect him to open it while observed by the crying face of his mother?
At that joke he made about mum, dad laughed while mum looked unhappy, pinching him on the shoulder and said, “You really need a beating!”
Smiling widely, he winked at me and said, “Go on.”
“But come back soon! Dinner’s almost ready,” said my mother, finally smiling at me.
Grinning, I quickly went out of the hall and ran up the stairs before charging into my room. Once I placed the boxes on my bed, I closed the door shut before walking back to sit on the bed. It’s exciting me very much at seeing the presents as I keep wondering what was inside them.
I pulled out a drawer near me and took out scissors that I used to cut the wrappings around the boxes. A few moments later, the boxes were opened, and I put away the scissors before turning my attention to the contents of the boxes.
One of the boxes contained a watch that’s most likely the give from my mother, which was looking stylish when I placed it on my wrist, it certainly looked quite good on me. I took it off and placed it aside before turning my attention to the other box that was most likely given to me by my father.
It still had wrappings around it, so I quickly removed them and took a look inside only to become amazed. I pulled my head away and shook a bit while blinking my eyes, making me feel a little dizzy. This was done to check that I was not hallucinating what was inside, and I went back to peer into the contents of the box.
It was the newly released Role Playing Game or RPG for short and it’s called “Infinity.” It was released a few days and the sales on the news reported that it sold over million copies in almost a single day worldwide! The rating it received from the buyers and reviewers were praising it for its noteworthy interface, graphics and gave mechanics. It also proved to have greatly entertained my friends at school, making them recommended me to buy it someday.
I wondered why the name sounded so familiar, though.
It took me a moment to realise the familiarity as I said, “Ah!”
The game I received as a present is “Infinity” but it had a prequel titled “Infinite” which is also an amazing game. I heard in the Gamer Reviews television show of the new additions they added to the game and they sounded pretty cool in my opinion.
I felt very excited to have the game in hand and decided to immediately play it. So I switched my computer on and sat on the chair in front of my desk waiting for it to completely load. After logging into my desktop local user account, I opened the disk drive and placed the game cd on it. Then, I pressed the button on the drive and it smoothly withdrew back into the drive.
There were a few seconds of silence in the room except for the disk drive making slight sounds as the cd was being processed. A moment later, a window popped up on my computer screen asking me to install the game. I clicked “Next” and then a window titled “Terms and Conditions” appeared on screen.
Without pausing to read the text, which was a lot, I automatically moved my mouse over to the radio checkbox button that read “I accept the terms and conditions” and clicked it. A tick mark appeared over there and the “Next” button, which was looking greyed out, suddenly became active. So, without further ado, I clicked the “Next” button because I want to play the game and the window opened showing a progress and the necessary files it was copying.
Once the progress bar completely filled up, the window showed the completion of the game’s installation with two options that read: “Run now” and “Run later”. I clicked “Run now” and the windows disappeared.
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I was surprised when the screen began flickering. This often happened when the computer cables were not set right. So I got up, moved the desk a little forward and pushed the cables firmly inside their sockets. When I sat back down, the screen was working fine again and the game window appeared with a “Loading” message while showing progress bar that was slowly filling up.
At that moment, I heard a knock on the door to my room and heard my mother say, “Ram. Come down. Your dinner’s ready.”
“Coming, mum,” I said, but I wanted to see the game load first before I go.
A moment later, the door opened and mum stood framed in the doorway as she looked sternly at me, saying, “Ram...!”
“Yes, yes. I’m coming.”
I heard the sternness in her voice and I felt I’ll get into troublesome if I kept her waiting. So, deciding to have dinner first, I got off the chair and went away to let the game finish loading in the meantime.
The dinner was amazing with mum making me everything from my favourite sweet to the dish I liked to eat. Dad complained that mum never does anything for him to which she replied that it was because dad was fat. This made everyone laugh and dad told me to keep on exercising and not get fat like him.
“Stress at work and all doesn’t help matters,” he grumbled, and I nodded in understanding to take his advice.
It took me several minutes to have my dinner and once I am done, I cleaned my hands thoroughly and used a cloth to dry them. After that, I headed over to the living room where my parents were sitting at like before watching a show being broadcast on our television.
“Thank you for the gifts. I really like this!” I said, smiling appreciatively.
Both of them looked at each other in surprise. Then they rose to their feet and came over give me a warm hug.
“We love you, Ram,” they said together, and I hugged them back in happiness.
After breaking away, I headed back to my room and closed the door as soon as I entered it. I walked towards the computer and there, on the screen, was the loaded window of the game.
The excitement of the very thought that I will be able to play the game made me feel very energised! I quickly sat down on the chair and started moving my mouse to click on some buttons displayed on my screen.
I clicked on the “Play” button and a message popped up saying “You need to create a new character!”
Below it, I saw the button “Customise” and I clicked on it. It took me to a new page where it was asking my details. I was about to type my details in when I suddenly faltered.
I remembered mum and dad telling me not to trust strangers or giving any unknown person my personal details. They were really worried about me but this was a game. Surely, a single player game with no access to the internet would do anything with my details even if I give it to them. Coming to a decision, I began typing the details it asked for.
Name
Ram Shankar
Age
16
Height
179cm
Weight
70kgs
Eye colour
Dark Brown
Hair Colour
Black
After entering my details, I clicked “Next”. The same window remained, but my info got pushed to the side as a list of text and numbers appeared with the heading of the current page showing “Stats.” I believe this is like the characteristics that my character would be possessing once I start playing the game.
I realised the stats looked similar to the previous game with a few changes in the names that I didn’t know about. I quickly swirled the chair around and emptied its contents onto the bed where a book fell out of it. The book was the manual for the game, and I opened it to the table of contents page. I slowly went down the list and saw where it said stats. Then I flicked to the indicated page and read about what they are.
HP
Health Point
CON
Constitution
STR
Strength
INT
Intelligence
DEX
Dexterity
WIS
Wisdom
CHA
Charisma
LUK
Luck
I read through them quickly and memorised them. I wasn’t interested in finding out what they are or how they work because it is quicker to play game and learn from it. That’s what I thought for every game that I played, although, I will admit I only played the games for fun and would not seriously call myself a true gamer like so many others.
I put the booklet aside and swirled the chair around before continuing to setup my character.
There was a button at the top of the table of stats saying “Randomise”. Then there was a number “100” on the right-hand-side of the window. Each time I pressed the button, the stats were filled with a number between 1 and 20.
After that, a “+” and “-” appeared on each side of the stat. I experimented with them and noticed how the values in that particular stat went up or down depending on which button I pressed. The number, at the side, also increased or decreased because of it.
I tried to get the maximum number possible for the status, but I quickly realised there will be a few numbers short due to the uneven designated number of 100. So, after some time of constantly clicking the button, I finally settled on a set of values for the stats.
STR
20
INT
20
DEX
15
WIS
15
CHA
10
LUK
20
I nodded to myself in satisfaction with the numbers and thought, “This is good, but I wish they had a plus and minus for each to manually add or remove the points to the designation areas that I preferred, but this is the best balance that I could find. Better to stick with it, otherwise, I might end up going through the same hell as before.”
I was referring to the number of times I clicked that button to finally arrive at this point, and I am not patient enough to try my luck again. So, pleased with this, I clicked the “Next” button and the window got pushed to the side and brought the stats containing my HP and CON values.
“Mmm?”
I noticed that there was no button showing any method of customising these two stats. I sighed as I realised that these two are the only stats that I could not change and that they were merely shown to let me know of their values. I wished they were a little more customisable, at least make the CON similar in number to the HP, but fat chance of that.
HP
42
CON
20
Once that was over, I clicked “Next” and it shifted the content to the left and showed a row of names. The heading of the page read “Abilities” which meant the kind of abilities I want to have for my character. Near the header, I saw the number “3” and I took it to mean that I can only pick three abilities.
“Right. Better choose the right abilities,” I said, cautiously.
I slowly went through the list while ticking on the checkbox at the side of each of the abilities I want to have. When I tried to click more, the tick box would not change. I looked up at the heading and saw the number “0”, making me realise that I allocated the maximum abilities that I could possibly have.
“Oh well. I can still gain more abilities in-game anyway,” I said, shrugging my shoulders indifferently.
I checked through my stats and abilities carefully to make sure that I did them all right before clicking on the “Finish” button at the bottom. A window popped up with a message asking me, “Are you sure you are okay with these settings?” and I clicked “Yes” in agreement.
That window disappeared and the main window appeared again, only this time, I am ready to start playing the game! Feeling excitement coursing through my body, I moved my move up and clicked the “Play” button.
At that moment, a message window popped up and asked me, “Are you ready to play?”
By now I was pumped with pure excitement, and I clapped my hands together from sheer energy. Then I took a deep breath and clicked the “Yes” button.
In that instant, my screen flickered like crazy and my computer started making weird noises before it got switched off and everything became quiet. An eerie silence filled the room as I blankly stared at the screen because I don’t know what just happened!
“Huh?” I asked, feeling very taken aback by my computer suddenly shutting down on me like that.
I tried to turn the computer on by pressing the power button, but the desktop did not start. I tried several more times but the result was the same. I moved the desk forward a bit, pulled out the wires and plugged them back in. Even then the computer continued to remain in shutdown mode no matter how hard I pressed on the power button. It was really frustrating, and I felt really angry with the computer for robbing me of the chance to play the game.
Just then, the door to my room got knocked, and I heard the voice of my mother say to me, “Ram. Time to sleep, otherwise, you’ll be late for school tomorrow.”
“Yes, mum...” I called back in an unhappy voice while continuing to stare at the computer.
Noticing the sadness in my voice, she opened the door and walked in with a concerned look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
I told her that the computer crashed on me, and she told me to not worry about it and said that my father would get it fixed tomorrow. With those reassuring words and a kiss to my forehead, she left the room and closed the door behind.
“Ha...” I sighed, still feeling a little disappointed.
The computer crashing on me was a disappointment because I couldn’t play the game, but I was feeling okay. The day was not a total disaster. I was able to hand in my assignment on time, I had surprising birthday presents given to me, and I have the best parents in the world anyone could ever have.
Feeling slightly happier, I switched off the lights and got into bed. As I turned to the side, I closed my eyes and gave thanks to god for giving me such a wonderful life. I think I slept right afterwards from feeling happy and relieved, but I never suspected that I would find a nasty surprise waiting for me when I woke up or that I would never be able to see my parents or my friends ever again.