“Ren you need to get going or you’re going to be late for school!”

Ren quickly woke up at the sound of his mother’s voice from downstairs and checked the time on his phone.

7:45am

“Fuck,” Ren said as he tried to untangle himself from his sheets.

He quickly threw on some clothes before rushing out of his room and down to the kitchen where he grabbed some kind of breakfast bar and an energy drink.

“Bye mom. Bye dad. See you later,” He called over his shoulder as he left his family’s town house and ran down the street towards his school. He checked the time again

7:50am

At least we live near the school Ren thought as he sprinted down the sidewalk and took a hard left into a narrow alley between two homes I should be able to make it... Probably.

He turned right coming out of the alley and then time seemed to slow down. He caught sight of a little boy, who couldn’t be older than four or five, jump off the sidewalk and run towards a ball that rolled onto the street. Then a truck, kind of like the ones used by delivery companies, barreled down the street right towards the kid. Ren reacted before he even registered what was going on. He leaped off the sidewalk and sprinted towards the kid, running faster than he’d ever run before, faster than he thought possible. But the truck moved faster. Ren knew he wouldn’t make it, but that only made him run harder.

When the truck was only a dozen feet away, the driver finally noticed people in the road and slammed on the breaks but the truck was too big, moving too fast, and there wasn’t enough asphalt to stop. But it slowed the truck down just enough to give Ren a chance.

By now the boy’s mother had seen what was happening and screamed at the top of her lungs. It was as if she thought that the shear amount of emotion contained in her screams would bring about some kind of miracle and, in a way, it did.

Kind of.

When he was close enough Ren leaped at the kid, using all of his momentum to hit him and knock him out of the way the truck. It worked. The boy, in shock by the sight of the truck barreling towards him, was unprepared when Ren hit him. He was shoved out of the way and the force sent him rolling to the other side of the Road. Ren, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. He had slowed down greatly when he shoved the kid out of the way and the Truck was right on top of him, the tires screeching, its horn blaring, the mother screaming and then…

Nothing

*************************************************************************************

Ren quickly sat upright, his eyes wide open. He was breathing hard and his heart was beating a mile a minute. It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t in his room and looked around. His mind reeled at the sight of what was around him.

Pure white nothingness.

Ren panicked and instinctively moved backwards. Bad idea. Ren had been lying on a raised, pure white, platform and when he moved backwards he went over the edge and fell to the ground, hitting his head. It didn’t hurt but the unexpected fall and subsequent stop stunned Ren for a moment and allowed his mind to start processing what was going on. At first he thought, and hoped, he was dreaming but quickly ruled that out since he could feel what was around him. The only other possibility he thought of terrified him.

He died.

Ren was just about to start freaking out when he heard some talk from behind him.

“If this were any other situation I’m sure I would find you falling funny but given the current circumstances it just isn’t.” a voice said from behind Ren.

Ren tilted his head back and saw what looked like an old man in a white lab coat walking on the ceiling towards him. He after a moment of confusion he remembered that he was the one that was upside down and promptly fixed that by standing up.

“My name is Dr. Avery. I’m a doctor in neurology and neuromuscular medicine at Jobkin’s University Hospital. I specialize in dealing with spinal cord and brain damage. I’m also your primary doctor,” the old man said. “I’m sure you are thoroughly confused and have a lot of questions but I need you to answer a few of mine first. Now, can you tell me what your name is?”

“uhh…Ren Taylor.” Ren said after a moment’s hesitation

“Good, that's very good.” The doctor said, writing things down on a clipboard Ren was sure he didn’t have a moment ago. “How old are you?”

“18”

“Do you have any family?”

“Yes. My mother and father and my younger brother and older sister

“Good.” The doctor paused and looked a little unsure for a moment. “The next question in a tough one. What are your most recent memories?”

Ren open his mouth to answer but paused. When he tried to recall his more recent memories he felt strange, like there was a big hole. He frowned and began digging through his memories to find the most recent one. He found one about his mom waking him up because he overslept. He remembered rushing out the door of his house and he remembered taking a shortcut through a narrow alley. After that it started getting blurry, like his mind didn’t want him to see more but Ren felt that he could remember and pushed harder at the memory. After a few moments Ren succeeded and he remembered. Ren’s mind went blank as he saw the memory. The kid running into the road, the truck speeding towards him, Ren running out to save the kid, and the truck hitting him.

Ren grew very unsteady on his feet and felt like he was going to faint or vomit, or both. Dr. Avery rushed to Ren’s side and had him sit down on the platform he had been lying on previously and put his head down between his knees and start counting. After a few moments the feelings passed and Ren sat up.

“Are you alright now?” Dr. Avery asked

“Yeah I think so, err no actually I don’t think so.” Ren said, remembering getting hit by the truck then he looked down at his body and patted himself down. “Or maybe I am?” confused by the fact that his body had no damage

“Physically no you aren’t but mentally you seem fine for now, though I’m no psychologist.” Dr. Avery said. “Right now we are in a virtual reality simulation. Your body is currently lying in a specially designed medical-use VR pod created and donated to us by Moonlight Arts, who happened to own the truck that hit you. I assume you’ve heard about them?”

Ren nodded. Who hasn’t heard of them? A few years ago they revolutionized the entertainment industry with the first low-cost and easy to use, but still relatively high quality, VR headset OASIS. They had recently announced a new device that was supposed to offer full immersion by sending signals directly the brain. They were calling the Dive unit and it would be shipping with a brand new fantasy FIMMORPG (Full Immersion Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), the first of its kind.

“The VR pod you’re in is a modified version of the Dive unit that will releasing in two weeks. Moonlight Arts, who’s also paying your medical bills by the way, donated this device as both an apology and, uh, quality of life improvement.” The doctor to took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts before he continued. “Your physical body isn’t in very good condition, very not good condition in fact. Frankly it’s a miracle you survived. While you don’t appear to be all that injured from the outside, you only had some bruising and abrasions, it’s the internal injuries that are most sever. The hit from the truck knocked you out on contract and caused you to ‘Ragdoll’, for lack of a better term. While the relaxed state of your muscles saved you from many other injuries it took away your head’s support, causing it to whip around and break your neck. You’re paralyzed from the neck down but unfortunately that’s not actually the worst of it. The repeated impacts between your skull and the road caused several important connections in your brain to either brake or became displaced, taking away your ability to see or hear anything.” Dr. Avery fell silent to let Ren begin to process everything

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

Once again Ren felt like he wanted to faint or throw up so he put his head between his knees and started counting. This time it took several minutes for Ren to calm down. Dr. Avery waited patiently the entire time without saying a word.

“Is there any way to fix my spine, hearing, or vision?” Ren asked after calming down.

“We can almost definitely fix your spine. Right now there’s a device undergoing clinical trials that would be able to restore function to those who became paralyzed because of an injury to the spine by bypassing the injured section. So far the trials are going well and should be ready for use in a year or so. As for your hearing and vision, we don’t know. It could come back on its own or it might never come back. Right now all we can do is wait and see what happens while trying to keep an open mind.”

Ren thought about the doctor’s answers for a moment before asking his next question.

“You said that the Dive unit will be coming out in two weeks. Shouldn’t it be a month?” Ren asked.

“While it was a month when you got hit, you were place in a medically induced coma for the past two and a half weeks while you underwent several procedures to fix some of the internal injuries you suffered.” Dr. Avery replied.

Dr. Avery went on to tell Ren about what kind of medical care he would be receiving as well as several things he had missed. Apparently as soon as Moonlight Arts found out about the incident the CEO herself reached out to his family and informed them that they were going to fire the driver responsible as well as press charges of criminal negligence. They had also told them that they would pay for any and all medical expenses as well as the legal fees, even if they took legal action against the company. Thirdly, they offered a substantial amount of money as compensation on top of all that. The mother of the kid Ren had saved also visited his family to both express her condolences as well as thank them for raising such an outstanding young man.

They spent close to half an hour talking about what Ren had missed before Dr. Avery said he had to go see his other patients. He showed Ren how he could access the system menu and do various things before just popping out of existence.

Ren quickly became absorbed in exploring what the system could do. His favorite thing was the [World Customization] menu. He spent what felt like hours making the white world look like something else. He did everything from making the bridge of a starship to the throne room of some evil castle. Eventually he settled for a close recreation of his bedroom, a place where he could always just relax. Ren also discovered that his Dive unit contained a pretty large collection of books and films and could connect to the internet.

While Ren was browsing the internet a message popped up and told him he had visitors. Ren opened the system menu and pulled up the external camera that was installed in the pod. When the camera window popped up he saw his family standing around him, all of them looking like they haven’t slept well in days. Ren activated the external speaker system.

“Hey.” He said, the voice coming out of the speaker sounding surprisingly like his own.

When he spoke mother, Kimberly, burst into tears and held his hand tightly, not that Ren could feel it. His father, Scott, stood behind his wife with his hand on her shoulders, tears of his own falling from his eyes. His younger brother Matthew did his best not to cry but failed miserably, his face a mess of tears and mucus. Nicole, Ren’s older sister, gripped his other hand, her shoulders shaking as tears streamed down her face. Ren was tearing up a bit himself, both inside his virtual world and in real life.

It took some time for everybody to calm down again, mainly because someone would start tearing up and set everybody off again, but by the end everybody was feeling much better. Ren’s family in particular, who felt like they had been carrying the weight of the entire planet on their shoulders for the past two and a half weeks, felt all that stress just melt away. Ren’s mother and father said that they were both very proud of him and what he did, saying that a few people had saw what happened and said that he just sprinted into the road seemingly without caring about his own safety and pushed the kid out of the way at the last second. Mathew said that he got to brag that his big brother was a hero. Nicole just said that he was lucky he was bed-ridden or else she would use him for sparing practice for making his family worry.

Ren and his family had been talking for a couple of hours when there was a knock at the hospital room door. Ren’s father opened the door to reveal a sharply dressed Hispanic looking women.

“Good afternoon Mr. Taylor, may I come in for a moment? I wish to speak with your son” she said.

Ren’s father stepped out of the way to allow the women entrance. She walked through the room and up to the pod Ren was lying in and faced the camera. The woman paused for a moment, seemingly to gather her thoughts, before speaking.

“Good afternoon Mr. Taylor. My name is Susan Bennett. I’m the current CEO of Moonlight Arts, the company that owned and operated the truck that hit you. I’m here, for both myself and the company, to personally apologize for what happened. I really can’t apologize enough for putting you and your family through this tragic situation. I’m also here to inform you that if you need anything, as long as it’s with reason and our capabilities, the company will do it’s best to help. For what it’s worth, this incident has affected our entire company, from top to bottom, and we all wish you a speedy and successful recovery.” Susan paused for a moment, probably to let what she said sink in. “I also come with an opportunity for you, if you wish to take it. As you probably know, there will a new fantasy FIMMORPG, We’re calling it Second Awakening, shipping with the Dive unit. Moonlight Arts would like to offer you a free copy of the game as well as have access to the game three days before anyone else. Of course you wouldn’t be able to talk about it until after the Second Awakening officially launched but you would be three days real time, fifteen with the time compression, ahead of the other players. You have up until when the day before the game launches to make a decision.” Susan finished speak and waited for Ren’s response.

It was actually Ren’s mother that spoke first.

“Go ahead and accept the offer Ren, you’re going to need something to do and I know you’re going to get bored with just reading and watching movies. It’ll be fun. You could visit fantastic places, meet new people, maybe even slay a few dragons for your dear old mother.”

After a moment of silence everybody started laughing, even Susan cracked a smile and chuckled a little bit.

“I guess I’ll be taking you up on your offer.” Ren said, the rest of his family still laughing.