In my first life, I was born to a white middle-class family in an obscure little town in California. I was one of two daughters, having always lived in the shadow of my older sister, Jennifer. My parents worshiped her, and truth be told, Jen was as close to perfection as you could get. Picture a five-foot-ten, high school valedictorian, supermodel who graduated summa cum laude in college with double majors in physics and literature. Yeah, that’s Jen. If the gods ever played dice on looks and smarts, they must have really loaded it in her favor.
Then there was me - the freckled, lanky black sheep of the family. I was an underachiever who preferred the comfort of online pc games to frat parties. In my first year in college, I made friends with a nerdy group of outcasts and avoided the college campus social scene like the plague. I think I became this way because I resented having to conform to my parents’ expectations. They wanted me to be more like Jen, but they didn’t understand that not everyone had the charisma to charm a crowd or the right body shape to confidently strut down a catwalk.
I had learned early on that no matter how hard I tried to emulate Jen, I’d never achieve the unrealistic standards that my parents set for me. To be fair, I knew they loved me in their own way, but the attention and care I received paled in comparison to Jen's. I’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to notice the way their eyes always lit up whenever Jen entered the room or how they subconsciously managed to slip her name into every conversation.
Despite my lot in life, I never hated Jen. Did I occasionally curse her under my breath? Yes. Would I give an arm and a leg for her looks and talents? Hell yes. But did I resent her? No. She was genuinely an amazing sister. She never judged me for my faults but encouraged me to be myself and forge my own path. When I had a big falling out with my parents for wanting to study history as my major, it was Jen who stood up for me. My parents wanted me to do accounting because in their words, it was a degree that even “someone like me” could use to pay the bills. I told them to fuck themselves, which you could imagine caused a domestic shitstorm. But Jen passionately came to my defense, and it was the first time I saw mom and Jen have a screaming match.
When I asked Jen why she had stuck her neck out for me, her response was rather cryptic at the time. “I want you to live freely,” she had replied with a deep look in her eyes. I didn’t understand what she meant then, but looking back, I suppose as perfect as her life appeared, Jen also carried a lot of baggage. She was just too damn good at hiding her own problems. I wonder how she felt having to be constantly put on a pedestal.
Among my many regrets, my biggest was I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Jen before I died. It was the summer after my freshman year. Finals were over. The dorms closed in two days, and all my friends had already gone home. I stayed until the last possible minute because I didn't want to put up with mom's antics. Jen was abroad in Milan, looking to catch a break at one of the local modeling agencies there. With no school obligations and the dorm room entirely to myself, I did what any reasonable gamer would do. I booted up my gaming pc and spent two sleepless nights spamming as many games as I could. When I said games, I meant one game in particular - Legends and Lores, LaL for short. It was a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game boasting over two hundred million active monthly players worldwide. It had dominated the top of the gaming charts for nearly a decade, a testament to its long lasting popularity.
Having played LaL since beta, I’d say I had gotten pretty good at it, especially after the tenth season. The elo system ranked me at the top 5th percentile of the player base, which only served to inflate my fragile ego. I spent my last two days in the dorms playing one ranked game after another until I lost track of time. I think it was a Saturday when I died.
I call that fateful day the instigating event. All good stories have one, so mine has one too. This part of my story turned out to be very important, though I didn’t realize back then.
It started with a premonition of sorts. I felt something wrong, a discomfort, but I initially shrugged it off as fatigue. After all, I had just pulled two consecutive all-nighters, so I was only awake by the combination of caffeine and willpower. I shook myself and concentrated harder on the LaL game in front of me.
Then it happened.
My chest suddenly gave way to a horrible pain I’d never experienced before. Have you ever stubbed your toe against the corner of the drawer? Well, imagine that in your chest but a hundred times more painful. I clutched my chest and slumped back into my gaming chair. Every breath took monumental effort and sent pain radiating to places I didn’t know could hurt. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was an African bull elephant sitting on my chest.
They say when it rains, it pours.
As if debilitating chest pain wasn’t enough, soon I proceeded to develop a killer migraine, the type that’d make you want to swallow a whole bottle of Tylenol just to make it stop. Of course, that much acetaminophen was bound to kill me, but the pain was so bad the thought definitely crossed my mind.
‘Breathe in, breathe out. It’s going to be fine, girl,’ I told myself, trying my best to stay on the chair.
Five seconds passed. Then ten. The pain seemed to only exacerbate with time. My vision blinked in and out. A sense of overwhelming doom swept over me, and that’s when I realized I might be having a heart attack.
Chest pain.
Shortness of breath.
Nausea.
I refused to believe it. I was only nineteen, hardly in the high risk category for fatal heart ailments. There were still so many things I wanted to do, like visit the Incan temples in Machu Picchu or go snorkeling off the coast of Maui. Jen had promised to take me to Hawaii next summer for a sisters-only trip.
I scrambled around looking for my phone, but you know how it goes. Things have a habit of disappearing when we need them the most.
Desperate, I tried typing for help in the game, but the sudden loss of hand-eye coordination made that option impossible. Oblivious to my crisis, my teammates were less than cordial to me. They flooded the chat box with the type of toxicity that’s well known to LaL.
[To Team] getRekt22 (SludgePudge): OMFG. IS OUR FKING JUNGLER AFK?
[To All] SmurfyKing (Polka Lord): pls report noob afk jungler
[To Team] xxYonaMidOnlyxx (Deuce): you **** suck jg. go die
The comments I saw fueled my disgust for my fellow gamers. My symptoms were getting worse, and soon I could barely stay conscious.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
I felt myself slip off the chair, then all was black.
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“Welcome to the Terminal, Miss Fleming.”
I awoke to the sound of an unfamiliar voice. It didn’t take long for me to take note of the unfamiliarity of my surroundings, and I wondered how I got here in the first place. I looked down to find myself sitting on a floating blue armchair. I found no purchase for my feet, so I didn’t dare stand, lest I fall through thin air. Small colorful lights and spherical objects, which looked eerily reminiscent of the cosmos, drifted in and out of my peripheral view. The source of the voice, which I noticed, was the strange entity sitting on a red armchair facing me as we synchronously drifted in blackness.
I examined the stranger with equal parts fascination and equal parts suspicion. The man was dressed in all white, but the color of his hair was a neon shade of pink that looked oddly cyberpunk. He, or it, stared at me with irises of the deepest blue, virtually bordering on black. I felt a primal urge to flee. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I knew in my bones that this being was ancient and absolute, someone I shouldn’t trifle with.
Confused, I groaned and rubbed my eyes, muttering, “This dream is all sorts of messed up.”
“It’s not a dream, Miss Fleming. Dreaming would imply that you are still alive, which is simultaneously the furthest thing from, and the closest thing to, the truth,” responded the stranger. I swore I heard a measure of glee in its tone, but glee is an expression used to describe human behavior not whatever the fuck he was.
Then the implications of the stranger’s words finally hit me.
“Am I...dead?” I croaked, swallowing hard after the last word slipped my tongue. It left a bitter taste in my mouth, like it didn’t quite belong.
The stranger smirked. “I would say yes, but death is a poor description for your state of being. I merely snatched you from the Cosmic Flow, reconstructed your body, and brought you to my sanctuary.” He gestured at the space around us like it was supposed to mean something.
“I don’t understand,” I began. “I mean who are you?”
“You can call me White. I am a regent.” The confusion on my face must have prompted White to further elaborate. “You can think of me as a god in your crude language, but what I really am is neither here nor there.”
If I wasn’t so scared and confused, I would’ve laughed out loud. A personal audience with a god was about the last thing I expected. I was never the religious type even though I believed there was some transcending truth out there.
“Is this the afterlife? Are you here to judge me?” I inquired skeptically. This whole situation was sliding into the category of bizarre. Did I really die or was I just dreaming? An elaborate dream if it was one.
“No, Miss Fleming. This is not an adjudication. Perhaps, the more accurate way to think about your situation is an ascension, or descension, depending on the point of view.”
White chuckled at his own joke, if I could even call it that. The sound he made sent shivers down my spine, possessing a screechy quality that vaguely reminded me of the xenomorphs from Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise.
“I can’t be dead. You’re just a figment of my imagination,” I blurted in irrational denial, despite the feeling that White was quite real. My head suddenly started hurting. “I was playing Legends and Lores, I was…,” the words came to a stutter in my throat. I couldn’t finish the thought because my memories were a haze.
‘Why can’t I remember?’ I contemplated. I recalled playing LaL. We were winning, and then nothing. I drew a blank. White seemed content to sit there in silence while I tried to organize my thoughts.
“I’m not saying I believe you, but if I died, how did it happen?” I eventually summoned the courage to ask him.
“It was not a terribly interesting affair. Your fragile mortal body simply failed you,” said White, steepling his fingers. “The events concerning your past life matters little to me. Your future, on the other hand, is far more interesting. I would prefer to discuss that.”
Having my life trivialized, however short it was, caused a surprising well of anger to surge within me. Damn the cosmic entity. It mattered to me. I wasn’t ready to accept the reality of my death and leave my family and friends behind.
‘Okay. Now is a good time to wake up Val,’ I told myself, hoping to the powers that be that this all turned out to be some sick nightmare.
White sighed and snapped his fingers, which caused me to jump in my seat.
“Miss Fleming, I’ve entertained your doubts and trivialities for long enough. My patience is wearing thin,” White intoned, his words suddenly laced with a power that could only be described as a soul crushing weight. It evaporated any resistance on my end. I felt an existential fear course through my body as the thought that he could obliterate me if I made him angry enough crossed my mind.
“If you’re really a god, then it means you can send me back right?” I pleaded in earnest. “Please, I’ll do anything.”
“I could,” White spoke slowly as if he were enjoying my begging. “But it comes at a steep cost. The question is are you willing to pay the price?”
“Yes!” I nodded almost instantly before catching myself to pause and clarify. I’ve read enough books to know it never ended well for those used as pawns by higher powers. Then again, most of those poor fools never had a choice. Was I a fool for wanting to go home?
“What sort of price? I don’t suppose you want my soul?”
“Tempting as that may be, you are fortunate that I’m unlike some of my more uncivilized brethren. What I require is the completion of a quest in an alternate world. If you succeed, I can return you to your old life.”
His offer seemed super sketchy. I scrunched my brows, suspiciously pointing out, “Why do you need me to do anything? Couldn’t you just snap your fingers and will it to be?”
White exuded amusement at my question.
“I will advise you not to dwell too much on the technicalities. Far more complex plots than you could possibly imagine are afoot. Infinite loops of games within infinite loops of games, played by entities older than time. We have played these games long before you existed, and we shall continue long after you are gone. I will ask you once and only once. Do you accept the agreement? I can always return you to the Cosmic Flow, but then you’ll never see your friends and family again.”
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “And what happens if I fail?”
It was painfully clear I had no leverage in this bargain. Who knew if White actually needed me or simply wanted to use me for entertainment. Maybe he could force me to agree. Was there even free will in my situation?
“These are good questions, though unfortunately I cannot answer them. You’ll be briefed on the nature of your task after you accept our arrangement,” White replied with a sadistic grin.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” I complained. “How am I supposed to decide with barely any information?”
“This is simply the terms of the arrangement. Think of it as a test of your determination,” White said nonchalantly. “Either you accept or don’t. The choice is yours. I should warn you, though, if you accept, failure will have unpleasant ramifications.”
White’s warning shook me to my core. I drew a deep breath and looked into White’s creepy eyes. It was a big gamble, and I knew it. But I wanted to go home badly. If I got my second chance, I promised I'd never yell at my parents again, even if mom could sometimes be a big pain in the butt.
“I accept.”
“Good. I appreciate your decisiveness. Now if you wouldn’t mind keeping your eyes on me,” White requested. A blue glowing sphere, the size of a golf ball, appeared above White’s palm and began to expand. My eyes gravitated towards the object, drawn in by its mesmerizing glow. Before I knew it, I was promptly launched head first into the expanding blue light.