Part 1: Character Creation / Chapter 12

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“You really think all this is happening so that you can cure me?” Robbie asked.

“Why not?” I answered.

“Seems like a nutso way to get there. I mean, you could die.”

I thought about all the stories I’d read about Gods or whatever testing people.

“Maybe it’s a Job situation,” I mused.

“What’s that?”

“It’s another thing from the Bible,” I explained. “God bets the Devil that this dude, Job, won’t lose his faith, no matter what. And then to settle the bet, God kills the guy’s wife and kids and ruins all his crops and gives him boils and blisters all over.”

“Does Job lose his faith?”

“Nope.”

“God sounds like kind of a dick.”

“Yup.”

I’d taken Intro to Christianity in college because a girl I liked was taking the class. I never worked up the courage to talk to the girl, but I’d read a bunch of the Bible and learned something about the nature of faith. And deciding that RIP was all about changing Robbie’s stars was a matter of faith, plain and simple. I was kind of starting to see where Job was coming from.

I noticed the janitor had missed some trash under Robbie’s bed. Then I realized it wasn’t trash. It was the XP slips Nancy’s mom had left behind. I stooped and craned my arm under the bed to gather them up.

“What are those?” Robbie asked, as I winced in response to the tingling in my forearms that commenced on contact with the slips.

“Rewards,” I answered, gazing down at the slips, which each displayed a value of 110 XP.

I rolled up my right sleeve to display my stat-laden forearm.

“Whoa!” Robbie exclaimed. “Cool.”

At first, I hadn’t been able to make sense of why the game had served up my stats this way. Seeing how it was warping reality left and right, it could obviously have gone with an ultra-futuristic holographic HUD or something. But now I understood. The aesthetic was mostly practical, B-movie effects that harkened back to the 80s movies I’d viewed on repeat with my dad, from Clash of The Titans to RoboCop. Just about every facet of the game was painstakingly harvested from my life experience.

As Robbie leaned closer to study the tattoos, he frowned.

“These aren’t standard RIP stats,” he said. “And some of them are just . . . insults.”

“Yup,” I confirmed.

He tilted his head to read one of the cut-downs branded on my arm.

“Did you really have a crush on a Transformer?”

“Relax. It was Arcee. One of the girl ones.”

“How do you know she’s a girl?”

“She has a female voice.”

“Maybe by human standards.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Transformers are built not born. They don’t have babies. Why would they have gender?”

“All I know is she was pink.”

“Fair enough.”

The conversation had veered a little off course.

“So you really don’t recognize any of these stats?” I asked.

“I can guess at the meaning of some of them,” Robbie replied. “But . . . a lot of them look like a crazy person wrote them. A crazy, mean person.”

I nodded and sighed. But then something occurred to me.

“Wait,” I said, as I recalled sensing his Life-O-Meter dropping from ten to nine after his run-in with the ferret.

“If you’re my mentor, shouldn’t your forearms be full of stuff and shouldn’t all the numbers be way higher than mine?”

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“Yes and no,” he answered. “I should definitely have stats, but they’d be nerfed. When players are in mentor role, their stats are capped at base levels to discourage them from helping too much. What about your stats? Are they increasing?”

“A little, now and then.”

I supposed those increases explained my surreal accelerated healing, though my numbers were still miles below Marty Malomar’s. Meanwhile, as a mentor, Robbie was basically at zero—which explained why the minor ferret scratch he’d sustained was lingering. My regret about his involvement jumped another notch.

He didn’t share the sentiment.

“It’d be dope to be all tatted up,” he said, looking down at his pristine forearms.

“Yeah, your mom would be thrilled.”

“Lemme see your other arm.”

I rolled up my left sleeve to see a new crossed-out quest objective had appeared beside the third number listed in my Quest Summary (10035822). The completed objective read “Ferret Fisticuffs.”

I also noticed I was now level three. Surviving the One at This Price quest had bumped me about three quarters of the way through level 2, and apparently this most recent encounter had put me over the top to three.

Most notably, in addition to the changes to my existing ink, I noticed a brand-new section above Inventory and Quest Summary. The new section was labeled “Race?”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s new.”

Robbie looked over and his eyes lit up.

“Did you just get to level three now?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “How’d you know?”

“You don’t pick a race and a class and all that stuff until you hit three—after you’ve done all the easy tutorial stuff.”

“Easy?” I cried. “Car Guy’s Muscles stat was seven times mine!”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s weird.”

It was all weird, but this was bad weird. I was starting to get a sinking feeling.

Meanwhile, I had a question printed on my forearm and no idea how to answer it. But apparently, Robbie had a hunch. He reached out and touched the new tattoo gingerly. As he did, the ink started swirling around. He looked up at me, wide-eyed, apparently surprised and excited that his hunch had panned out.

The tattoo reconfigured itself to read “Human” and a short description materialized beneath it:

Sure, you could pick this. If you’re bo-ring. You’ve been human your whole lame life. You know you’re a mercurial, erratic creature, driven mostly by your appetites. If that’s your bag, make it official and earn an ability boost of +3.

Below that, there were two small buttons labeled, “confirm race” and “keep looking.”

Robbie jutted out a finger and tapped “keep looking.”

“What the hell?” I exclaimed.

“You’ll thank me later.”

“What if I can’t go back?” I cried.

“Eh, big whoop. Who wants to be human anyway?”

“Me! I want to be human. A lot more than I want to be . . . ”

I looked down at the next option . . .

“A gorilla?” I croaked.

“Don’t be so sure,” Robbie said, skimming the new description. “Gorillas are ‘a big-hearted but fierce race, well-suited to the damage role.’ And you’d get a +6 Muscles boost!”

“Yeah, that’s great. But I would be a gorilla!”

“Maybe it’d be like a super smart gorilla. Like Koko.”

“Who’s Koko?”

“She could speak sign language. And she had a kitten.”

I rolled my eyes and tapped “continue.” I was hopeful that if I kept going, “human” would eventually come back around.

The next entry was totally illegible. It was like the ink had been smeared. I frowned and looked up at Robbie. He shrugged.

Nothing I’d seen so far suggested it was a good idea to take a chance on a mystery choice. I examined the entry more closely. There was a big smudge of ink I took to be the description and two small smudges below that. I figured the one on the bottom right would still be “keep looking.” I tapped it. Bingo. The next race choice appeared. It was “Bear.” The description read:

Big and furry, with claws for days! Does a bear crap in the woods? Yes, and anywhere else it wants. It’s a bear, bitch! Great for tank and damage roles, the bear race will earn you a +3 boost across all base battle and endurance stats.

I sighed heavily and reached for the “keep looking” button again, but Robbie grabbed my hand.

“Are you sure?” he said. “+3 on all those stats would come in pretty handy.”

“I’m sure,” I answered him firmly.

“I don’t feel like you’re being very open-minded,” he said.

“About turning into a bear?” I asked.

“Or a gorilla,” he qualified.

I hit the button. The next option was another smudge.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed.

“Man, this is jacked,” Robbie said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

That sinking feeling I’d felt was hitting me harder.

“Okay, you’re fighting bosses that are way above your level,” Robbie said. “I’m your mentor, but I’ve got no HUD. And even if I did, it’d be full of whacko stats I’ve never seen. And now half the race choices are glitched?”

He paused, adding it all up.

“This release needs a patch.”

I shook my head.

“I’m living in a deadly video game and the game’s on the fritz.”

There was no other conclusion. I could easily have been killed before I even knew I was playing RIP. And I had nothing but a gut feeling as to why I was playing. But as I looked at my nephew, I realized none of that mattered. Because if I came out on top, and my gut feeling was right, it could mean a new life for him. It could mean the life he deserved. I’d wondered, “Why not me instead of him?” Well, now I might have a chance to put my life on the line to save him. And I was going to take it.

I felt my fear melt away and my resolve harden. Heck, maybe the next racial choice would be a winner. I tapped “keep looking,” and the next option materialized: “Desk lamp.”

The description read:

It’s a desk lamp. What else do you need to know?