METEM

THE BLIND CHEMIST

BY HANLONS AWKHAM

PART I

Chapter One

Cory awoke, head pounding, body in pain. The palms of his hands met his eyelids as he tried rubbing away the throbbing sleepiness.

Not again he thought.

This was not even close to the first time he had passed out while still logged into the VR world. Age, exhaustion, intoxication–you name it–any number of reasons could have been attributed to him doing this. It’s not all his fault though, the VR worlds have become so advanced; from true haptic accelerators to sensory engines imitation of real life, that being in VR versus the real world is almost a matter of perspective. If you were a true enthusiast and had some extra money you could port yourself into the world while your body essentially rested inside a futuristic looking cryo-chamber. They were fully functional, life sustaining and with a lifetime warranty: people could practically plant themselves in the VR world indefinitely.

This was frowned upon for a long time but eventually due to overpopulation, unemployment, food shortages, global warming and on; governments were left with little choice. Regulations were drafted, policies were enacted and after extensive voluntary testing in the prison population, it was approved for use in the general public.

None of these things concerned Cory at the moment as his body felt like he had been eaten and then shat out of a T-rex.

“Titus of Kon, log out,” he said, rubbing his eyes and temple.

Nothing happened.

Cory cleared his throat and with a little more authority said, “Titus of Kon, log out.”

Again nothing. His super secret VR log out phrase was not logging him out.

Annoyed, he removed his hands from his eyes and took stock of his surroundings. Cory sat in the middle of a circular room. Black stone blocks lined the floors and round wall, while four mirrors affixed to said wall emitted the only light source in the room. The mirrors were situated across from each other, creating a lit X on the floor that Cory now sat in center of. No door could be seen and arms of the soft light reached for a ceiling that wasn’t there, leading off into unknown darkness.

If I fell in here, no wonder that I feel like I got beat with a bag of oranges. Cory wondered.

The general pain and soreness seemed to be subsiding with each passing moment. Like the relief of making it home just before your bike wheel went completely flat, he rolled his neck around and stretched a bit. The pain faded and he soon felt normal.

“Ok, enough of the bullshit,” Cory said under his breath. Standing he closed his eyes and raised both arms. With a booming voice,”Tidus of Kon, LOG OUT”.

Only the echo of his words were heard as they chased the darkness up the funnel above.

Cory glanced around only to find his various reflections in the adorned mirrors, returning the same blank slate of confusion donning on his own face. He gave himself the middle finger and the gesture was returned.

Fine, manual it is, he thought begrudgingly.

With the necessary mental flexing required in all VR games, he willed his user interface to be visible. What should have popped up was a tall rectangular window filled with other windows and buttons. These other windows and buttons would then lead Cory through a slew of options, calibrations and preferences until locating the section that allowed a player to request a manual log out of the VR world.

A manual log out is akin to just unplugging your computer to turn it off. Sure, it might not cause damage, but in this scenario that computer is your brain. Unplugging your brain is painful, to say the least. So much so, it wasn’t released to the public and only used in emergency cases. Cory didn't even know if he was in an emergency, but his tinglers were tingling and at the moment, options were nil. He had known a guy from college that had done a manual logout. That guy ended up in the hospital for a week with a severe concussion and was thankful for it. So when the window he just summoned was empty, he had a simultaneous pang of relief and a sudden tremor of fear of being trapped.

While those two emotions danced together on Cory’s stomach, he gave the room a second and third look before he noticed two things: he was naked and he was himself. Being naked was generally how a gamer would start a new game but that was after you picked a race or a character. Cory, seeing his human form in the mirrors, seemed most off. You were never you in the VR World. You could be, but why would you want that when you could be literally anything else; An alien race, a fantasy race, a celebrity race or even a celebrity/alien/fantasy race. The point is, you never chose yourself in all the exact details. As he was considering the new information the mirror that he was facing started to emit a new hue. Silver words began to follow each other across its surface and an angelic, reverberating voice spoke along with them:

What Are You?

The shiny letters of each word looked superimposed atop a smokey back drop that played inside the pane of the glass. It pulsed ever so, prompting to be answered. Cory could still see his naked form reflected by the now smoky mirror. His eyes involuntarily twitching from side to side as if to ask, Me?. Cory, not knowing what else to do, answered the call, ”What?”

“What are you?” The voice repeated. This time a series of images played quickly across the smoke filled mirror, too fast to process. When the procession slowed down enough the images appeared like a flip book and he was like looking at a bestiary from some ancient D&D type game. Some of the creatures even seemed familiar to Cory: a goblin, short and green; elves, tall and lean with pointy ears; cyclops, bugbears and what looked to be a dwarf minus the beard, which was unsettling. The images kept this up for a short while until settling on one. Cory stood eye to eye with a blueish, human-ish being in the mirror.

“Choose.” The voice said, drawing Corys attention to the mirror on his right. This mirror had begun to take on the same smoke filled emptiness as the first. Instead of silver, it emitted a faint blue light. Four diamond shape symbols came floating through the smoke. Each bore a different symbol and Cory started to understand what was happening. “Fire, water, air, earth,” Cory said under his breath.

I’m either in a magic game or I’m choosing how I’d like to die, he thought.

Thinking that if the game was going through its start up then maybe the controls were also working again.

“Tidus of Kon, log out.” Cory said while looking back at the blue guy in the first mirror.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Nothing.

He willed his interface but it was still blank.

“Choose.” The voice said.

“Fire,” Cory replied.

After a brief silence, the voice repeated,”Choose.”

“I said Fire,” Cory did his best to remain calm.

“Choose.”

“Fire Motherfucker!”

The Air symbol came to life.

Grrr! Cory groaned, trying to keep his thoughts from lamenting the multiple uses of Fire magic. That is, in addition to the utter badassery of having the option to throw a miniature sun down the throat of anything mildly aggressive.

Let’s not forget the cooking! Cory finished his angst.

He remembered all too well the fallout from the release of Skyrim Realms III. It hailed the latest in fully immersive haptic VR, touted as the “real life experience”. It delivered too, a bit too well. In its first iteration, the game had these enhanced taste receptors that allowed the players to, well, taste the world around them. Smell receptors had long been perfected, but it wasn’t until SRIII came out that VR stepped up against the border of the real world. People died of course; some threw up in the game from trying exotic food such as dragon meat; triggering a reflux in real life and drowning the gamer in their vomit. People with fish or nut allergies, would react to the perceived ingestions of those foods and in extreme cases were fatal. Yet, the true Darwin of this group are the Starvers– they starved to death. The taste engine was so realistic that gamers simply never came out for food or water and died. This is also why now all mythical animals, beasts and non-verifiable meats taste like chicken. Dragon tastes like chicken, griffin tastes like chicken; a fish tastes like chicken! Sentient beings, like humans, NPC’s or any avatar, were said to taste like microwaved brussel sprouts mixed with cat food and stale milk. Most gaming companies frowned upon, even remotely, encouraging cannibalism.

Fast forward through all the lawsuits and technical revisions; a VR world emerged. Companies of all types came together to create a single gaming engine. It was thought, throughout the rise of the 1900’s and early 2000’s, that mankind would come together with the great purpose of reaching the stars. It was written in early sci-fi literature, captured on the big screen and then in video games; on hideous, space consuming, wire connected monitors. Advancements in the early 2000’s paved the way from clunky head and hand gear, to suspended haptic rigs until finally, the O.B.S.E.: Ocular Biological-Simulation Engine. Instead of reaching the stars, humanity turned inward and the VR realms were born.

Cory shook his head in confusion, ”Do I get a weapon?” he said to the room. The next mirror flared to life like the two before it as if to answer his question. It was, indeed, a weapons choice.

Say it, Cory thought

“Choose,” the voice offered.

As with the second mirror, 4 symbols appeared: a broad sword, a staff, a bow and a dagger. Cory perked up a bit, seeing a bow as an option. Though bowmen were a dime a dozen, the few that actually made their way to the master tiers of this weapon could wreak some serious havoc. Factor in Cory’s aversion to unnecessary pain and slaying foes from a distance just made sense. Cory chose, ”Bow.” The four floating symbols coalesce into one and were replaced with a single larger symbol bearing the image of two swords crossed like an X.

“So much for social distancing,” Cory murmured to himself. Giving into the understanding that he will not be listened to, Cory turned to the last mirror air quoting “Choice”. Not really understanding anything that was happening, he waited for the last mirror to produce four icons that would eventually choose for him. On cue, the mirror came to life. Smoke billowed inside its void, two words appearing through the mist: Infinity Bag and Speakeasy.

“These are boons to help you on your journey” the mystical voice said. “One grants spatial folding for mass storage, the other allows you to understand others more clearly. “Choose.”

Infinity Bag seems simple enough to figure out, Cory thought to himself. Every RPG since the invention of RAM had some sort of bag that allowed you to hold a dragon's trove of loot with a very generous weight reduction. These were coveted items and extremely useful. Speakeasy, on the other hand, was not so clear.

“Understand others better,” Cory whispered questioningly. Would that make me better at poker or better at knowing what a woman really meant when she said “fine”. Running a few guesses through his brain: A charisma boost? Trading skill? A negotiator? It could be all or none of them, Cory thought, Hell, it might just allow me to understand babies babble. Erroring on the side of caution, Cory began to choose the Bag but stopped. He had not gotten his first choices on the last two mirrors but those ones had four items each. This mirror only offered two. Cory gave it some thought:

The last two mirrors gave me a random item.

Air isn’t the opposite of fire…

and short swords aren’t really the opposite of bows…

In fact, short swords wasn’t even an option!

Stupid game!!

Focus, focus, breathe...

This blue elf guy over there def wouldn't be my first choice…

Pick the Bag and get Speakeasy…?

Speakeasy get the Bag…?

Cory settled on a solution,”Infinity Speak,” he said with a winning smile.

Nothing happened.

“Speak Bag,” he tried again but the icons just floated there and a small part of him missed crickets.

“Choose”, the magical voice said again.

“You Choose!” Cory shouted stubbornly.

“And give me some goddamn clothes!” Cory gestured to his exposed loins and in a softer tone said, “It’s getting cold in here.” The window flared and the Speakeasy icon was left floating in the mirror.

Cory pulled up his user interface, superimposed over his field of vision, and it was still blank. Shutting it off he did not have to wait long for what came next. It started off with the feeling of needles in his hands and feet, the sensation spreading through his limbs. It was followed by a growing warmth centered in his torso and his head began to feel a few leagues under the sea. Alone, they may have been bearable to experience but together they were growing quickly annoying. Worse still was the fact that Cory started to feel hotter, tinglier and more pressurized as the moments passed. When the now sharp needles sewing their way through Cory’s body met the burning sensation in his chest, his body seized and he collapsed on the stone floor. The burning jumble of needles pulsed through his body in brutal, crashing waves. Meanwhile, Corys head felt as though the full weight of the ocean's wrath was pressing down on him like he owed it money.

Cory screamed.

A deep, guttural, soul bending sound ripped through the circular room, shattering the mirrors. Bright lights and billowing smoke over took the small space like multiple dams breaking all at once. The smoke raced up into the darkness and the light shot straight into Cory’s clenched eyes.

When Cory was younger he enjoyed mixing the right amount of ignorance with a need for senseless adventure. Sprinkle in a healthy imagination and Cory found himself in all kinds of...issues. When on his uncle's farm in his youth, Cory thought it a good idea to use some old fence boards as a makeshift springboard. Logically, he calculated, it would propel him over a short electric fence that kept the farm life from the street. He would then land on the other side, in either a Superman power landing or roll into it like a ninja: he wasn't sure at the time. Thankfully the old springboard wood held, launching him just as imagined. Unfortunately he had no idea what he was doing and landed on the fence. Thankfully he was with his older cousin but unfortunately it took a well swung 2x4 to his back to end his relationship with the fence. He had only been on it for agonizing seconds but it felt an eternity.

Cory found that that particular experience paled in comparison to where he lay curled up now. His body seized and contorted, seemingly collapsing into himself and expanding at the same time. As this Shepard's Tone of pain somehow kicked into another gear, he muttered, coughed really,”Tidus...kon...log...out.” The pressure stopped, the angry fireball of needles racing through his body settled, and Cory’s world went black.