(Streamer-man gets eaten by zombies before he was supposed to go Live in the Matrix console. He wakes up as one of the forgettable non-story NPCs in the game. Tags are a better summary than summary itself.)
[Re: Emperor of Man]
2044
I was having a great day, a fantastic day even. A Sunday, nearing the end of January. It started off with an awesome morning, I even committed to the majority of my little wake-me-up routine.
I worked out, which meant that I did my push ups, pull ups, hanging leg raises, the fucking burpees, hell, I even ran a couple of miles around the dirt roads and some of the trails that surrounded my mom's house. Surprisingly, I even prayed, well meditated to be specific.
Later on I prepped up my lunch which consisted of pan-fried chicken, scrambled eggs, fried black beans, sliced caramelized onions and sauteed vegetables, afterwards I doused the goop in sriracha tabasco of course. I wrote in my actual journal for the first time in what looked like months. To top it all off I even took a cold ass shower, screaming the latest song I was fixated on in my awful, warbly and hoarse singing voice, followed by one of the cadences I still liked after being forced to sing it damn near every day in San Diego. In total it was close to ten minutes of shivering, trembling and sweating just like I was almost a decade ago from alcohol withdrawals.
Lately, I had been playing less and less video games, outside of work related activities of course. Not counting "dates" with my sort of but not really girlfriend in our Minecraft realm, or when I was chatting with buddies in Genesis. After I had finished up with most of my little routine which ended with another ice cold shower to get the sweat off of me. I felt my phone buzzing and beeping, Dustin gave me a jingle. "Josh, my main squeeze, my dude, the little fella. I slept in my bed for the first time this year, I'll be home until summer starts up again! I'm pulling up to your place and guess what, I'm taking you out to lunch and you're even going with us to Bible study, because I know you loooove my church, well Morgan to be specific I guess." Click.
I couldn't even get a word in edgewise, and I definitely didn't want to go to New Life and deal with Morgan staring at me. Well to be specific, my eyes wanting to stare at her, or my brain constantly fixated on her or that fat ass attached to her mile-long legs. She was super duper nice, funny, cute, smart, and she was single. Which everyone liked reminding me of. Despite all of that, in a way, I knew that I was taken, in a way and Abigail is the closest thing to an angel that I've ever met. I've known her personally for years, she's one of the most intelligent, creative, loyal and drop dead gorgeous people that I've met in my entire life.
Within minutes I could hear Dustin rolling into my gravel parking lot in his brand new Lincoln SUV, music roaring, which in turn made my hound dog, Sadie throw a fit. She was yapping and howling, all but begging to go outside to play with my friends. "Yoohoo, Joshy boy it's time to go to church!"
“Dustin, give me five, no three minutes to change my clothes.” With that I rushed into my room, stripping down and changing like I was in boot again. Black jeans, a red and black flannel and a dribble of gel into my hair, putting a little bit of order into the mess on my scalp that had gotten a little too long for my tastes. Slipping on my socks I dashed over to my boots and slipped them on. Once I finished tying up the laces I reached over to the door, Sadie was howling and whining the whole damn time.
Letting her outside to harass Dustin and his kid, and hopefully shit or piss before I wrangled her back up inside. Filling up her bowl with fresh water and the adjacent one with dry food, an egg, and a scoop of peanut butter. I made sure to grab my phone, my journal, spritz on some cologne, and rub down with a stick of old spice and of course, I grabbed my wallet. Calling in Sadie was a chore in and of itself, after what felt like a minute of dog-wrangling involving a milk bone I got her ass back into the little cottage.
With all of my chores and the morning ritual finished up I hopped into the passenger seat of the Lincoln.
Dustin was big dude, vertically and horizontally. He kind of looked like an American, aryan version of Bubbles. The guy had thick glasses, blonde hair, blue cow eyes. Dustin and I had been close friends since highschool, and we graduated well over ten years ago, well he graduated. I dropped out of our highschool junior year and graduated early with a GED. Not too long after I signed my first contract with Uncle Sam.
Sophie, Dustin’s daughter was almost ten with his big ass blue eyes, blonde hair and most of her mother’s facial features. She was just as much of a nerd as us though, so it was easy to get her talking about Pokemon, writing, her experience at school, etc.
“Dustin, so why did you decide to kidnap me today? I have to work at 3 and the morning is practically over.” Despite my bitching, I had a big smile on my face. It had been almost a year since I had the chance to hang out with Dustin and his family. I missed them a lot, and facetime couldn’t replicate the fun that I always had with them. “On top of that, where’s Candace? Is she already at New Life or is she skipping out today?”
Dustin let out a little chuckle and before he could respond Sophie piped up. “Mom’s already there, Tom is helping her set up the food we made last night!” Candace all but yelled, she took after Dustin in so many ways holy hell. Neither of them were great at regulating their voices, and the both of them had no problems with jumping into conversations.
“Yuppers, I dropped her and the little guy off with our mac n cheese, cheesecake bites, annnd the big mac egg rolls. We conquered and vastly improved upon your eggroll recipe.” Dustin snarked out with a smug tone and that cocky grin on his face, showing off his damn near perfect teeth. I had white teeth but his fucking shone. "We scooped you up because I hadn't seen you in person for almost a year now motherfucker-shit dammit. Sorry Candace. We've all been talking about you pretty consistently since I got home so I decided to take you out of your little cave and help you socialize with some real people."
“By improve upon do you mean bastardized? And, I do socialize with real people, in our real world every week, if not most days. Not including a bar, club or restaurants, thank you very much.”
“I stand by what we said, the sauce and the filling are far superior to what your drunk ass put together on New Years.”
“Well my good sir, I hope you’re right.”
The trees in the background faded from view and the dumpy little town of Gladrock took its place. A couple of stop lights, a left turn and a roundabout later we were pulling into New Life’s parking lot.
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When I looked down at my watch, the clock told me it was 9:45. Fifteen minutes early to bible study, and luckily enough Dustin and his family hated the actual service at their church. They always made sure that they were busy so they’d have a valid excuse for dipping out of the hour of advertisements and singing, which was followed by of course another ad break. Supporting this specific denomination of Christianity and their branch of churches was definitely a good idea in comparison to most of the christian churches (companies) in my opinion since Dustin and I had been doing extensive amounts of research whether it was looking for dirt to dig up or talking to different preachers, ministers, etc. Online (anonymously) and in-person we got consistent answers, the money we donated went to exactly where they said it would go, outside of the advertisements there was zero pressure to tithe or donate, On top of that, all of the leading members of the branch, the owners of each church and the salaried members of the staff were paid fairly and far from extravagantly.
Popping open the glove-box and grabbing an envelope I labeled it with my name and the date, despite barely even giving them 3% of my yearly salary, the ministers still checked in on me and tried to convince me to tithe less. In total, I donated close to thirty percent of my earnings, donations, etc. However, a majority went to supporting other veterans or the families of those that passed away, specifically getting the older guys off of the streets and trying to clean them up. Tax write-offs were a truly beautiful thing.
Dustin popped open the hatch to his car while I finished labeling and sealing up the envelope. Once I got out of the car, with my journal and envelope in hand I could see Dustin and Sophie with a big grin on their faces. Dustin was carrying a five pound bag of ‘Tanzanian pea berry coffee beans’ while Sophie had a coffee grinder box in her hands. “I guess this is better than constantly complaining about the quality of the coffee and talking about how much Folgers or Maxwell House sucks eggs.”
“Damn right, I’d rather drink dog water or eat soap in comparison to that swill.”
“Daaaad, can I have some?”
“You’ll have to drink an entire mug by itself if you want to try it with creamer, honey, or sugar. You might not like it by itself, but I will not let my daughter turn into an uncultured swine. If you don’t like it just give the mug to me and I’ll gladly drink mine, and yours.” Dustin had a little grin on his face. “Make sure that mom doesn’t see you drinking it or we’re both in big big trouble and I will not take any responsibility for your actions in this instance. This is entirely your idea, and you never asked me for permission.”
“Deal!” Sophie was smiling like the Cheshire cat and she scampered into the building, holding the first door open for us while Dustin took care of the second. The pews were empty but there was all kinds of chatter throughout the building, kids Sophie’s age and younger were coloring, writing and playing in a room while the teenagers, adults and older folks were mingling and catching up in the kitchen, dining room and library.
My phone let out a little ding. ‘Queen Maya’ “Have fun at church today dork, call me when you get home! I miss you sexy;)” accompanied by my messaging profile picture specific for her, smiling down at the screen I opened up the messaging app and sent her a voice note. “Thanks Maya, I’ll be home after we go to the arcade and pick up lunch.” Muting and putting the phone into do not disturb, I slipped it back into my pocket. I decided to just follow Dustin around until study and discussion formally started so we made our way into the kitchen.
When we opened up the door we were greeted with the sight of Tom and Candace checking on the food they slipped into one of the two ovens in their kitchen. Switching the appliance to the warm setting which was somewhere around 150 degrees versus the 350 degrees it was set to prior so they could get the topping all crispy and nice which consisted of, of course more cheese and a seasoned panko breading all crunchy and wonderful.
Before Dustin had the opportunity to set the bag of beans down, Candace and Tommy rushed up and gave him a huge hug. Tom almost caught up to Dustin’s shoulders and the little dude just turned 14, whereas Dustin was around 6’5” and 300 lbs of corded muscle and fat. The big sailor towered over my barely 5’6”, hell Candace and ‘little Tommy’ dwarfed me and they were close to six foot. I could only shake my head at the gaggle of giants and soon enough my eyes met with Sophie’s. Shit. She was taller than me. Whatever, it was bound to happen but the years flew by so fast. In a lot of ways I still felt like a teenager. However, not having a biological family of my own, outside of my dog and the relatives including my mother had left me feeling more than a little lonely. Women, gaming and my community/business helped with the boredom and the loneliness to an extent but it definitely didn’t fill up the gaping maw nor ease the burden of waking up alone. It definitely didn’t help with that annoying feeling of going to bed by myself, especially after I had gotten used to the opposite for years.
By the time our study and the little festivities finished up, the food his friends had brought along was just about decimated. They wrapped up in their coats and double checked their pockets to make sure that they didn’t forget anything important. Soon enough the clock moved to 11:00 and the families who showed up for service carting in food or rubbing their wallets passed by their motley crew offering smiles and ‘little how do you dos’. I made sure to stuff the envelope in the bowl by the coat-racks, afterward I un-muted my phone and shoved it back into my pocket.
Soon enough I slipped into one of the 5 back seats in Dustin’s car, Tommy was on my side and Sophie crawled into the back since I'm an ‘old man’. On top of that, I got in the car first so I made sure to make that clear to the girl.
“Dustin, I know that you love the gaming industry just as much as I do. Are you planning on buying into the new Matrix console? I was bearish to say the least for the first couple years, but with over ten years and somewhere along the lines of two billion ongoing players as we speak. Along with the fact that the [Outside] will be carrying a five trillion market value for this year alone.”
“You’re talking about the pod and the trendy ARMMO right? I mean, maybe? It depends on the pay to win elements. The player-base and developer team”
“You can definitely invest, or specifically, reinvest into your character(s). Regardless of the race and class composition you choose to start off with, you progress at a quick steady rate for a year or so until you approach your first [Breakthrough], this is a sort of cultivation trope. It is determined by your goals, missions you’ve undertaken, the choices you’ve made in your character’s story, etc. This allows you to progress from the first class, G; into F. Despite the monthly costs of upkeep for the [Outside] and the matrix console you need for the most optimized experience.” Clearing my throat a little bit, swallowing a mouthful of spit and phlegm I began to speak again. “In 2033 I was invited to take part in the open beta testing, and reviewing team before they went public to all players around the world. Due to the English and Chinese background, education and veteran and streamer status it made everything into an easy sell.” I looked down at my phone which was screen down against the journal. “I’m one of the players with the most number of days spent in the console. I’ve only gotten into better shape, I feel better physically and mentally. On top of that, due to my status as an investor I got my mitts on a handful of consoles that I can have installed at various residences for friends, work, family, etc. On top of that they have become extremely competitive with the market, they’re cheaper than a number of the alternatives from the different manufacturers.”
"Yeah, but it's an American business game, made by politically lined individuals. Insane numbers of wealthy backers exploring the game and generating insane amounts of attention. Mainly due to it being a functionally scaling mega corporation." Clearing my throat with another choked cough I smile at everyone. "It has been extremely safe and insanely profitable for me and all of my friends. It is the biggest employer in the world, and one of many American products sold and owned globally."
Soon enough after my little tirade and with Dustin and his family we were pulling up to my home. Sadie howling at the window and eventually laying by the door on her bed watching the entrance.