My eyes fluttered open, and I lifted my hands to protect my view from the harsh light. In front of me, a petite doctor was taking notes while a machine had a flickering flashlight over my face.
“Where am I?” My voice came out gravelly, and my throat stung as if I had just swallowed rocks.
“You are on the Thinker, a voyager hovering above mars, prepared to leave for Jupiter in two days,” the doctor replied.
“Jupiter? What about the albino man? What about my family? What's going on?” My head and throat throbbed. I saw my heart rate spiking on a monitor in front of me as uncertainty set in. A red light came on, along with a hissing sound. I looked to my left, and a transparent liquid flowed through an IV and into my arm.
“Do not worry. It's just pain medication to nullify some of the pain. Your patron requested to stop nanobot usage after your body healed, so we had to go a bit old-fashioned.”
“Patron? Do you mean Mr. Greene?”
“Yes. He will be arriving here shortly, but I have to go and finish prepping for your surgery. Just wait here, and If you need anything else, feel free to use the buzzer to your left to call a nurse over.”
The doctor left in a hurry. Throughout our exchange, she did not lift her eyes from the holo-pad once, which I found quite disconcerting. Whenever I visited Doctors, they always made it seem like they had other patients who had more pressing issues. It could be accurate, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.
My hospital room, this time, had been equipped with similar medical instruments enlarged to befit the size of the room. The room had its sitting area toward the right side and a small kitchen with a fridge to the left. It mirrored the apartments I had stayed in when I still attended university. As I sat there studying the room, my face tightened into a frown. I had much better living arrangements, but now I had much more to be stressed about. I had killed a man, and I didn't even know what for. To protect myself is one thing, but I had approached him intending to kill, and evil lurks in the intentions of good men.
The sliding door opened, and Hylion Greene limped in with a smile. He wore the same suit and leaned heavily on his silver-handled cane. He didn’t carry his briefcase under his arm like last time.
“Good to see you are awake. You took quite the spill on the staircase yesterday,” Mr. Greene said. There were seats throughout my room, but like last time he found his way to sit on the edge of my bed.
“Is that what my record says? Because that’s not how I remember it. I remember being choked to death as my life flashed before my eyes. I remember you forcing me to kill a man, or my family might be in danger.”
“You did not kill a man. You protected yourself from danger; there's a difference. Your family was never in danger. We just gave your wife a job to help ease your wariness toward the experiment.”
“There is a difference when some man approaches me and gives me a weapon to kill a man. If I were a betting man, I would accuse you of instigating the albino man rather than Keenan.”
Mr. Greene tilted his head to the side and said, “Even if we did, that would not have changed the outcome. You owed that man Keenan a lot of money, and he would have grown tired of you eventually. We gave you the power to decide yourself, and you did.”
“You forced my hand in something that could be left up to chance!”
“Do not delude yourself into believing that chance is the determining factor of life. You're the type of man who knows what it takes to be a winner. A winner prepares his whole life, and he executes when the moment is ripe. I just wanted to remind you that there are risks to every reward, just like in gambling, but when you prepare, you can swing the chance into your favor.”
The expression on Mr. Green’s face had grown so severe that his hand had begun to shake on the handle of his cane. He looked off into the distance, and from a side angle, he looked like a younger and more powerful version of himself. He still had wrinkles and wispy white hair, but he exuded the confidence of a man in his prime.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Wesley, you have an impeccable resume for what is required. The job is perfect for you because you understand the need for perfectly laid plans, and you are not scared to leave it up to chance at certain moments. The experiment will require you to face people who are stronger and smarter than you, and ultimately your survival will come down to your preparation and your willpower to carry on in the face of insurmountable odds.”
“Why did that require me to kill a man rather than just taking me out? I already agreed, and you had taken my family under your wing.”
“The experiment might require you to take a life, and we had to ensure you could go through with it. You might never encounter that situation, but your patron set it as a requirement for all players on their team.”
I hated feeling guilty when the albino man had planned to kill me. I couldn't help but think that I possibly had been driven by revenge rather than Mr. Greene forcing my hand. The thought of being placed in a situation again sickened me as I reminisced on the albino man’s placid expression the moment he went still. Though I would never say it aloud, It made me nervous about my future.
“What is the experiment you have been preparing me for? One that would offer billions and require me to kill a man for it,” I replied bitterly. Mr. Greene reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black remote. He pressed one of the buttons on it, and the doors locked with a loud click and turned a dark tint, common in private rooms.
“The job is an experiment but is more akin to a game. Individuals host it, but I do not know their names. Your patron, the person who I work for, tasked me with finding five people of specific skill sets to take part in this iteration of the game.”
“What does the game entail?”
“I’m not completely certain because only the commissioner knows what the game is before it takes place. Your patron and other team owners like them will have the ability to see the contents of the game once you have entered it, but as of now, all we have is the five positions that we will need to fill. The positions are Ruler, Attacker, Defender, Strategist, and Bishop.”
“I assume I will be the team strategist?”
“Your guess is correct,” Mr. Greene said with a smile. “As a strategist, your job will be to acquire information about other teams, relay information to your team, and make plans to increase your team's chances of winning. The commissioner also released to my patron a picture of a war map which led us to the conclusion that someone proficient in strategy games like chess might be beneficial for the team.”
The doctor who woke me up earlier said we were leaving for Jupiter tomorrow. That's a four-month-long voyage, and you still haven’t told me how long the job would last. If it’s going to be long, I’d like the chance to see my wife and daughter before we go.”
“Our final destination is not Jupiter. We will get off at a station near the asteroid belt before heading to our final destination.” Mr. Greene stood up and lumbered over to the kitchen, and grabbed a glass out of the lower cupboard. He opened the fridge with a slight tug and pulled out a glass pint of milk. “Your family will have to wait. I pulled some strings, but the authorities would not grant me any extra leeway if they discovered you on Mars. In addition, we will need to begin the surgical process and mental suggestions to prepare your mind for the game.”
“Why does my brain need to have surgery for the game? I don’t want you messing with my thoughts.”
“The game you will participate in does not take place in the real world. Groundbreaking discoveries in technology and research surrounding the brain have led to the creation of the reality machine. It allows the human subconscious to combine with a virtual world of collective consciousness, indistinguishable from reality besides the controls put in.”
Mr. Greene poured himself a glass of milk and downed the drink in one sitting. It left him with a slight milk mustache. “The technology is still in its infancy which is why I’m referring to it as an experiment. The technology is very safe in a general sense, but certain drawbacks have kept the machine from the public sphere. The main one is death. While plugged into the reality machine, your mind will be connected in a space along with various other teams to compete. The competition will carry risk.”
“What if I refuse you plugging me in? I have no desire to put myself at risk for your boss. I’m fine going back to prison if I have to,” I asked. I thought I knew what type of situation stood before me, but it seemed I had grossly underestimated the whims of an affluent society. I had been hired for jobs by rich people on Mars before. It had usually been teaching young rich kids to gamble or making bets with tycoons that I knew I would win.
“There is no going back. If we send you back, you will stand trial for the murder of Cosmo Bryant. The man you refer to as the albino man.”
“I thought you didn't want to force my hand? I feel very forced right about now,” I quipped. Mr. Greene had walked back toward the door with a pained look as he adjusted himself on the cane.
“You made your choice. There is no rescinding it.”
“So what now? I get some risky surgery, and then you upload my mind into the reality machine.”
Mr. Greene gave the tinted glass three quick knocks. He turned the privacy mode off, and the woman I called on the phone while in prison walked into the room pushing a cart. Instead of the bright pink hair she had the last time I called, she had dark green bangs in her black hair. She wore a matching black suit to Mr. Greene.
“Nice to meet you, Wesley. My name is Cara. I heard you had a call with my sister earlier this week, so I should look familiar. I had a wonderful conversation with your wife earlier about her move to Luna. She will work directly under me, so everything should be perfect.”
The woman talked a mile a minute and did so with a smile. Her cheery attitude caught me off guard, and I could not help but stare at her as she made her way from the door to right next to my bed.
“Let’s go ahead and choose your anchor,” Cara said as she slid the door on the front of the cart open to reveal a tray full of metal trinkets.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Mr. Greene said. He limped out and left me staring up at Cara’s beaming smile.