Therapy in Session
“That was…illuminating,” my new therapist tells me. “But I was more hoping you would educate me on what compelled the decisions you and Craig made. As in from the beginning.”
“Sorry.” I shy away. She didn’t like my story? “I may have gotten a little ahead of myself. But from the beginning? That could take a while.”
“Perhaps. I’m intrigued though. The two of you are some of the last remaining survivors from wave one of the upload, and based on the rumors surrounding your names…” she trails off.
“Compromise,” I suggest. “I’ll start from the beginning, but focus on the key points I think you’ll need for the rest of the story to make any sense, because, as I’m sure you’ve heard, shit gets wild.”
She gestures me to continue.
Who am I to refuse?
***
In the year 2048, Earth became uninhabitable for humans.
The details were explained to me so many times, by so many people, and in such great detail, I got sick of hearing about it; so sick of hearing about it, in fact, that I inadvertently removed most of that information from my memory. It had something to do with climate change.
I think. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is the cold hard fact that Earth was finally done taking humanity’s shit.
With the apocalypse just over the (last) horizon, humanity desperately searched for an escape. Some way to preserve our meaningless lives. When all was said and done, there were three total options.
The first, and arguably the most popular option was a space voyage. The majority of the human population chose this option, but the vessels they took off in were untested, and they didn’t have a destination. Not for me.
The second option was to upload your entire consciousness into a digital world called Nearth, which I assume is a condensed way to say New Earth or Neural Earth but I don’t know for sure. It’s dumb as shit either way. Dumbass name aside, Nearth sounded pretty neat. They were able to combine several of the largest and most complete VR MMORPGs into a single virtual world that, I’m told, is several times the size of Earth. Only something like 4% of Earth’s population went that route.
The third option was to continue life as if nothing was wrong, and wait to die.
I chose the second option.
Believe it or not, my first choice had been option number three. Not because I didn’t trust the space mission, which I didn’t. And not because Nearth didn’t sound like fun to me, which it did. I wanted to stay on Earth until I died alongside the planet because I’d been in a pretty dark place when the options were presented to me. I’ve always struggled with suicidal thoughts, but never pulled the trigger. I’d had friends that did, and I’ll never forget how much the loss of their presence in my life hurt me. I didn’t want to hurt the few friends I had left in the same way. With option three, I’d stay and die with the rest of the idiots who chose the same death. It sounded pleasant, but that could’ve just been that there’s a certain beauty in the finality of our reckoning. Let’s be honest, humanity kind of deserved it.
But Colt came to my place to talk some sense into me. He’d been my closest friend since highschool, and this was hardly the first time he’d had to talk me off the ledge. Colt and I have an irregular relationship in that we’ve pretty much known each other forever. More like brothers than friends, which is fitting since I still to this day cannot figure out why anyone would be my friend outside of maybe entertainment value. You know, like how people laugh when they watch videos of epically hilarious fails. Because of that closeness, he had no problem telling me exactly what he thought of my decision. He didn’t even sugar coat it—siblings reserve the right to be assholes, but they mean well.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” he’d told me, kindly. “Staying here isn’t that different from putting a bullet through your brain. And what do I always tell you about killing yourself?”
“That if I do, you’ll kick my ass,” I recited. He’d threatened me with the phrase at least a thousand times over the years.
“That’s right,” he said, pointing at me and nodding as if I’d just spouted something incredibly profound, which I probably did. “And I pulled off a brilliant bit of programming that’s going to make life in Nearth so much better.”
I should probably mention that Colt was involved in the creation of Nearth. Programming wasn’t exactly his passion, it was just a job that paid the bills. That fucker’s the type of guy who could have done anything he wanted for a living. He’s always been good at everything he tried, and not just above average, really good. He plays several instruments, could have made a living selling the doodles he did with pen and paper while attending meetings at work, he… you get the idea. Needless to say, I kind of resented him for it.
I’ve never been naturally good at anything except being incredibly attractive. More on that later.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. I didn’t even look up from the book I was trying to read.
“Like, much better. The whole world is going to be governed by a game-like system, I’ve told you that. What I haven’t told you is how the game dynamics work in the system. There aren’t any character levels, so progressing and getting more powerful is all about items and increasing the level of skills.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Get to the fucking monkey,” I told him. I wasn’t mad at Colt or anything, but he tends to go on, and on, and on, when explaining something. And my attention span leaves a lot to be desired. If anything, I was being considerate by letting him know that his chances of keeping my attention were quickly dwindling.
“For you to appreciate what I’ve got waiting for you in there, you need to understand it.”
I finally looked up at Colt. He was grinning like a child. I sighed heavily. “Please go on. . .”
“So, everything is based on umbrella skills like you might see in a good RPG. Each skill has an insane amount of subskills. For example, with fire magic as an umbrella skill, you might unlock something like magic torch as a subskill. If you increase the level of your magic torch, it can do more things, like burn brighter, dimmer, move to follow you all on its own, that kind of thing. But a subskill can never be a higher level than its umbrella skill.” Colt must have seen my eyes glaze over. “Hey, almost done. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m trying,” I said. I was trying, too. My mind wanders even when I’m interested in what someone is saying. It always has.
“Here’s the fucking monkey,” he said excitedly. The pause that he left for dramatic effect almost lost me to my ADHD. “I hid a hacked item for each of us. They’ll boost one of our skills to level 100. During the beta for Nearth, nobody got a skill over level 70. We’ll be like gods man.”
I could be a god? (I haven’t said this already, but vanity is probably chief among my many, many character flaws.) “Why the hell didn’t you lead with that?”
“Like I said,” he remarked smugly. “If you don’t understand the way the world works, you can’t appreciate how fucking awesome the little presents waiting for us in there are.”
“Is fireball a thing in Nearth?” I asked, now imagining myself shooting off a fireball. Doing magic was always fun in VR games, and I had dreamed of being able to do magic in real life since I turned 11, but the technology to have a fully immersive experience had only recently been perfected. Back then I was lightyears from being able to afford the necessary equipment.
“Hell yes it is. And a level 100 fireball skill would be…” Colt trailed off. I could see the calculations taking place just behind his eyes. “You could probably blow up a whole mountain range with that.”
Like a god.
I was sold.
Believe it or not, this conversation saved my life.
Only a few weeks later, we went to have our brains uploaded to Nearth. I’d been expecting to have to wait in line for hours at the Nearth facility in Los Angeles, but the place was almost completely deserted. The handful of employees still manning the upload stations had given up wearing uniforms, or even a thin veneer of professionalism. When I asked Colt about it, he explained that most of the higher ups on the project had already completed their uploads, so these grunt workers didn’t have any fear of reprimand anymore. Personally, I was impressed that they still showed up for work at all.
It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be to leave my physical body. Maybe because I’d fantasized about my own death hundreds of times, and my ability to imagine the most terrible deaths made the little egg shaped pod they put me in seem gentle in comparison. I was told my body would be used as a part of some new fertilizer, something to help the planet recover from the damage humans did to it over the centuries, when the upload was complete. The only issue I had with the whole idea was the fact that I’d spent hours every single day perfecting my body in the gym. It was beautiful. And they were going to toss it into the fertilizer along with all of the people who never even thought twice about how that, admittedly delicious, peanut butter sandwich would affect their body fat percentage, and subsequently the definition of their abs.
If it were up to me, I’d have them preserve my body in an airtight glass container so that whatever aliens find this planet can see the perfect male specimen of our long dead species. But it wasn’t, so that perfect body I’d spent so much time and effort chistling is probably rotting in a million pieces somewhere back on Earth now.
Can’t have everything you want, I guess.
I laid there in that pod watching the progress of my upload, silently mourning the fate of my physical body, for long minutes. When the progress circle on the top of the pod reached 100%, I was congratulated for a successful upload, told I would awake in Nearth shortly, and then my mind went completely blank. If I’m being totally honest...that was the most peaceful moment in my entire life. The first time in all my miserable existence when my mind silenced its cries for self-destruction. And, now that I think back on it, that tranquil blankness is still the most peaceful moment I’ve ever experienced.
At least my lack of peace and tranquility here within the digital world of Nearth has been due largely to epic misadventures. While I do hope to one day experience that level of tranquility again, there was also something horribly claustrophobic about it.
***Therapy in session***
“When you said that there was something horribly claustrophobic about “it”, it almost sounded as if you were referring to the feeling of complete tranquility. Could you clarify for me?” Dr. Sweete asked.
She was a beautiful woman wearing a low cut dress, but I managed to hold eye contact. It helped that I could see my own reflection in her rimless glasses, and it was almost as nice to look at.
“I was,” I explained. Her head tilted slightly, prodding me to elaborate. “I was referring to the feeling of complete tranquility.”
“I see. How does that make you feel?”
A little less keen to suicide.
“If anything, I guess it makes me less curious about death. The last great adventure. The rest I always figured would accompany ‘the end’. How does it make you feel?” I asked.
“We aren’t here to talk about me, Levi,” Dr. Sweete said with a raised brow, challenging.
“I know,” I said, laying back in the therapy style leather chair. It creaked noisily. “You’ve mentioned that.”
“We don’t have much time left in today’s session. Before you go, I’d like to leave you with something to think about.”
Here it comes...
“I’d like you to consider why tranquility might make you feel claustrophobic.”
Because it felt so close to non-existence, probably.
“Okay,” I said, now looking out the window of her second floor office. There was a dragon soaring over the mountain.
“I do expect to hear what you come up with during our next session.”