I pushed a slice of Meat Lover’s Delight into my mouth, munching away as I turned on the tv. All the cables and chords were plugged in and the Nexus was humming like a little space craft, a faint blue glow coming out from beneath it. Never had I seen such a thing of beauty! It looked positively futuristic. Yes, I’m a bit of a cynic but when seeing the unit in the commercials, I never actually expected it to look as good in reality. It’s not just a piece of electronic; it’s a piece of art. I fingered the visor. It wasn’t immediately obvious how I would attach it to my face. Shouldn’t there be some kind of strap or something? It was just a flat mask, like an old-fashioned goalie mask in hockey.

The tv burst to life and made me forget the silver mask.

On the screen was the woman with the purple lips, the tip of her fingers pressed to her temple. I’ve always argued that Super Mario was the cream dela crema when it came to graphics. What I was seeing now just boggled the mind. It was like a photography. Not like a photography, it had to be a photography. A photography that somehow had been placed inside the unit’s memory, because a video game just couldn’t create graphic like this. The picture was as crisp and real as reality itself. How the hell… My state-of-the-art Sony tv was good, but not this good.

And then it became really fucked up.

The woman with the visor smiled. Not a photograph, then.

I wetted my lips, staring like transfixed at those smiling purple lips.

A flex on her finger. She pushed the button and the visor became translucent.

She smiled, yes, she smiled at me, those dark beautiful eyes looking right through the screen as if she really saw me.

Maybe she did?

Don’t be silly. This is freaking weird but… don’t be silly.

“Hi there, I’m Alara. Welcome… to a new world. You’ve been chosen. Do you wish to play?”

If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn that she was actually talking to me, not just the random player in the couch at the moment. And, of course I wanted to play, but how?

I looked at the mask. The inside of it looked different now, shimmering in a strange way like if I was made of liquid silver.

Well, here goes nothing.

I put the mask to my face, feeling like an utter imbecil, thinking the Candid Camera crew would burst through the door laughing their asses of any second now.

There was a coldness to the mask that made me jolt, but then it was like my face melted into it, and then it was like it wasn’t there at all.

Alara stood before me, an elegant curve to her hip.

She wasn’t in the tv any more. She wasn’t in the god damn tv, anymore! She stood in my living room; on the crème colored rya tug Melinda had insisted she couldn’t live without. I opened my mouth, but closed it again. Did she, Alara, expect me to talk to her?

“Hi…?”

She leaned her head and her smile became wider.

“Hi there. Do you wish to play?”

I’m ashamed to admit it, but some dirty thoughts went through my head right at that moment. She was pixels god damn it. How hard that might be to believe she was pixels, produced by a computer. She wasn’t there. Not real. My mind bucked at the thought.

“Y-yes. I would like to play.”

“all righty then,” she said with a seductive smile and turned her back to me and started walking.

I followed her, of course.

Where was my living room. I walked down a corridor that looked like something from Aliens, my feet thudding against the floor of metal grating. Thudding? Yes, I was wearing armored boots, yellow with marks and dents. I stared at those marks and dents.

Programmed?

Had someone really programmed these boots, these marks and scratches? Had someone actually spent time placing these marks there, making the one close to the wrist a bit deeper than the others, like if it had been scratched by some vicious claw?

My mind revolted, again.

It isn’t real. It can’t be real.

But hell, my brain wasn’t already aboard the crazy train. I felt my feet in the boots, as if I was actually walking behind Alara, her hips swaying, in this futuristic hallway, towards a door that looked like some kind of air lock.

Suddenly everything in me screamed to turn back because whatever was on the other side of that air lock, it couldn’t be good. There was a mechanical whirring as I walked and it wasn’t until now, I realized my hands were tucked into armored gloves in the same yellow color as the boots. I looked at one of the metallic side panels as we passed. I was in a full combat suit, an armored exoskeleton of some sort. If I’ve been in my right mind, if my mind had worked properly, I should’ve just stopped and gawked at myself, but I wasn’t in my right mind so I continued down the hallway together with Alara, or if it was the suit that walked me. Didn’t matter, did it, because I just came closer and closer to that dreaded air lock. Alara was dressed in full body suit that clung to her figure, black and white, with shades of gray, electronical circuits imbedded in the fabric. Her dark hair bounced lightly against her shoulders as she walked, every strand of hair visible.

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

Programmed?

Like hell it was. You would need the computational power of the whole of Pentagon, combined with the resources of Reagans Star Wars program to make this happen. Or no, even that wouldn’t be enough.

Fuck, was I tripping? Hadn’t touched acid since I left Nam, never got the taste for it, but surely this couldn’t be real?

The fear making my heart thump like a fist in my chest was real enough, though.

Alara stopped at the airlock, turning to me. She brushed a strand of hair from her face.

“Listen, and listen carefully. This is just a basic battle drill. You’ll be educated on the Citri 7 Plasma Rifle. What you will see on the other side of the door might be daunting, but remember, it’s just a drill. You can’t get hurt or injured.”

The Citri 7 what you say? Plasma rifle? Okay couldn’t very well get any stranger. She pressed the red button on the side panel. The door hissed and shunted open with a bang.

Holy crap…

The night was lit up by flashes of purple and green. From a distance there was the hollow ha-ka-ka-ka from a heavy machine gun. Tracer rounds fanned in the sky. Something exploded, a black wing fluttered one way and a burning wreckage the other, drawing a line of fire in the sky. I was standing on a metal ledge. The terrain below was rocky, strewn with twisted, burnt metal. A group of six soldiers, wearing the same bulky armor as me, came running between the metal carcasses. From the other side, another group advanced. From my vantage point I could see what was about to happen.

Contact.

The two groups opened fire against each other, purple and green rays of energy crisscrossing the narrow space. Two in each group fell, smoke billowing from the gaping holes in their chest. The others shot back from each other, as if repelled by magnets, became airborne while still shooting at each other. They twisted upwards to the sky, out of sight. I stared after them, blinking slowly. Rain pattered at my face, running down my face, dripping from my chin.

Programmed?

“Okay, soldier. Get in battle order.” Alara’s voice had gone from soft and seductive to commanding. “Visor down.”

It was pure instinct, or something, reaching at my temple as I’ve seen Alara do. There wasn’t a button or anything there, but nonetheless the visor dropped, giving the darkened world a yellow tint.

Everything suddenly appeared more clearly. Green numbers floated over the screen; a distance gauge ran along the bottom of my vision. Green dots floated over the screen, even though I couldn’t see what they were marking, since they were still behind the half-collapsed buildings.

“Now, ready your rifle.”

“How? I don’t have one.”

“You know how.”

And she was right. I made a whipping motion with my right arm and a huge rifle materialized in my hand. I grabbed it with both my hands. It had a weight to it, but the suit compensated for it and it weighed next to nothing in my hands. The barrel was long, maybe five feet, and the scope on top was matte black and big enough to run one’s fist through.

“Check ammo,” Alara demanded.

A green number came up in the top right. 1,7 GW.

“You got a charge of 1,7 gigawatts. That should be plenty.”

I was about to ask, plenty for what? But one of the floating green dots flashed up in red, framed by a rotating red square.”

“You’re under attack, soldier. Take down the target.”

I licked my lips, heart thumping. It’s just a game. You can’t get hurt. Oh fuck, I needed to keep telling me that because my body reacted now as it had in the balmy rainforests of Nam when we walked into that ambush. My fingers numbed; my hands began to shake.

Get it together, got damn it. Get it together.

My vision zoomed, rushed over the broken landscape to one of the collapsed buildings. One of those tiny aircrafts came swerving around it, lining me up. I raised the massive rifle to the shoulder, steading my breath. When looking thought the scope, my vision made another zoom jump and the aircraft seemed as if it was about to run right into me. I drew a deep breath, the sight lifting, exhaling and the approaching vessel came into view again. It started swerving from side to side.

“His systems are warning he’s in your line of fire. He won’t make it easy for you.”

The vessel went back and forth in my sights, a high beep every time it crossed in front of the barrel.

Beep…. Beep…. Bee –

I pulled the trigger. The world flashed up in purple. There was no kick at all to the rifle. The purple beam slashed thought he darkness and the black vessel exploded in a fiery star. The bang hit me a second later, burning wreckage raining from the sky.

5th Marines – scout sniper unit, motherfucker.

From somewhere in the maze of stone and metal I heard someone scream:

“Hooray!”

And then the sky lit up again as people shot at the stars in celebration.

“Very good,” Alara said, that soothing and seductive voice back again – as if rewarding me with her approval. “Now we’ll switch to the MR9.”

“No, were not,” I said, shaking my head. “This is… this, fuck I don’t know what…”

“It’s your mind rebelling. It’s normal, but it will pass.”

“Sounds great, lady, but right now I want to get back to my living room, eat some pizza and watch Dynasty, okay? Got a thing for Joan Collins.”

“I understand. You can leave whenever you want. Pull up your HUD and hit EXIT.”

“HUD? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” fear creeping into my voice.

I don’t know from where this fear came, but it felt like my mind was all wrung inside out, that up was down and back was forward. Nothing made sense. I just wanted to get back to what I knew, my Meat Lover’s Delight and maybe a cold Bud in the couch. Fuck, I wanted that so bad.

“Heads Up Display. The menu is to the right.”

I saw it and realized it had been there all the time. Or had I pulled it down without thinking about it? Didn’t matter. At the top of the drop-down menu, I saw it – EXIT – in large letters. I hit it with some kind of mental push. Alara gave me one last smile before fading out of existence.

“I hope to see you soon again, Mr. Richards.”

I ripped the mask from my face, panting, staring down at the cold liquid surface.

“What the actual fuck…”

I blinked, looked around. The afternoon light shone in from the window. Dust motes drifted in the air. The cream colored rya rug, gave of its synthetic smell. On the tv, Alara, once again anonymized by the visor over her face, stood with expressionless mouth and the tip of the fingers to her temple.

Nothing will ever be the same.

“Got that, right, lady.”