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The Atare 2600 was made in September 1977. I remember knowing that. That is, in fact, very close to exactly fifty years ago.

The VR setup that is sitting in its box was made in 2026.

In the time between those two dates, high-end computing went from something that needed whole rooms to something that can fit in the palm of your hand. Advanced cogitation has been met by quantum computers. The fucking internet didn’t exist in 1977, wasn’t available to the public until the mid-80s.

But the cartridge in my hands, carved with one word, looks to me like it would fit just right into that very same headset.

It’s like saying you can plug a USB into an arcade machine and send emails.

But… the shape seems right. And it looks right. And…

Yeah. Ok. Fuck it.

I lock the door to my room, throw my jacket off, and walk over to the headset.

It doesn’t fit the same as MEAT does: where the newer cartridge fills the slot in completely, BLEED is much smaller, and clearly not designed with the entire framework in mind. Even still, the actual port to connect game-to-machine is remarkably similar, and as I reach in, the older cartridge hilariously small next to the size of the slot… it fits.

At first it seems to just sit there, as if it’s too small to work, but I give it a wiggle and- it clicks into place.

I stare at it. Wiggle it some more.

It fits.

…

Well, in for a penny, in for a pounding.

Not much left to do but dive right the fuck on in.

It takes a few minutes to set things up, swap over to indoorsy-shorts to fit the haptics on properly, get the gloves on right, but once its done, and the headset is powered on, there’s really only one thing to do.

I put it on over my head, and press the start button.

MEAT

Begin?

I look around, but… nothing. No other options appear. I frown, taking the headset back off to try maybe disconnecting MEAT and-

Oh. Well. That’s stuck in there nice and tight, ain’t it? I try to give it a tug, a wiggle, a yank, but it doesn’t even move. It feels superglued together, as dense as if the whole headset is just one solid piece now. BLEED pops right back out into my hand, so it shouldn’t be a problem with the ports themselves…

Fuck.

I dive back in, connecting BLEED back to its port and slapping the headset back on.

I hit begin, speed through character creation again (the minimal EVOLUTION stat continues to mean that nothing has carried over from my last run), and run my way through the animation into the game’s spawn-in area.

Once again, I find myself in a prairie-field of open grass and white trees, staring out at a horizon of dark-red mountains and a sky of dripping stalactites. The landmarks, to my surprise, are familiar- it’s hard to tell, but I’ve got a pretty good memory for locations, and I’m pretty sure I’ve walked by this specific set of hills before.

Looking to confirm the deduction, I stumble out of the mucus of my spawn-point and traipse down the hill, looking for… there! A small pile of ooze in the middle of the “valley” between two hills. I killed a couple sludgelings on my last run, even without actively hunting for them, and there wasn’t a need to bring everything with me, not when the game’s inventory space is so literal. But there, on the ground, is a dead sludgeling, with two shattered “digits” and a spray of slime from where I popped it.

It’s the same sludge, so this is the same world. It’s not resetting, like I sort of assumed, it’s a true open-world, and I’m coming in with new characters each time.

Fuck it. Why not, right? Might as well at this point. Just another thing no headset has the processing power to handle in this day and age, not like that’s anything special.

But that also means…

Shit. My old body!

If the world is constantly running, then that means that there’s a chance that my old avatars are still out there somewhere, and still dead. There’s a non-zero chance that I can get back some of my equipment that way, following a trail of dead slime back to where I was last time.

Except… that thing. The “other player” or whatever it was.

Well, it’s probably a good idea to find out if it’s still hanging around anyways. Or if they spawn-in when I reach a certain point.

Either way, there’s only one direction I can really go now: forward.

I collect a few more pieces as I walk, taking the scraps from prior victories, but there’s not enough to really make anything, so for now, I just hold it in my hands as I walk. If that creature does respawn it’s not like I can do much to fight it, but it’s still frustrating to be carrying around… well, kind of nothing, really. Especially since the respawn rate seems surprisingly slow- that, or sludgelings avoid areas where other sludgelings have their innards splattered everywhere.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Which, honestly, good for them, but I did not think they were smart enough for something like that. Goes to show. No idea what it’s showing, but-

Well. That’s new.

As I turn the corner of a hill, I catch sight of a weird little lump on the ground, like a scab. Unlike the rest of the world all around, which looks as real as reality, the scab-lump looks practically 8-bit, like one of those original arcade games from… well, from the 70s.

I approach it cautiously, but it doesn’t seem to react to anything. It’s only when I’m in arm’s reach that I can really see much more about it- the gravel-dirt beneath the grasses has been pushed aside, like a mole has dug its way up to the surface. The low-texture hill that has emerged is dark red, but doesn’t seem active.

Bracing myself, I reach over and… poke it.

Around the impact-site, an over-exaggerated crack appears, three-pronged and dramatic, making the most of the weirdly two-dimensionality of the shape. I poke it again, and the cracks grow, and then a third time, and-

It breaks open, and begins to bleed.

A lot.

I stumble back, but it’s already flooded into the low-land area I’m standing in, flooding out fast enough that the haptic feedback on my legs starts to vibrate in response to the pressure. Pretty soon it starts flowing out into other valleys, spreading between the hills, turning the prairie into a crimson swamp.

And then… it slows.

The movement controls feel even worse than before now, my “Fleshling” avatar struggling to move its already awkward limbs through a wading-pool of blood, but even as I watch, it’s beginning to drain away, being absorbed by the soil. While a trickle still remains, the original flood has abated, leaving just a broken crust around the original spout of the blood.

And there, in the exact center of what was once a pool of blood… is a red blood cell.

A bright red circle, plump around the edges and delightfully round. It floats there, atop a constant flow of blood that leaks out from the 8-bit scab and into the ground, unmoving.

Hmm. No tools to really interact with it, just… my hands.

I reach out a second time, going to poke it, and-

SYMBIOTE ACQUIRED: Divine Bloodling

Before I can react, the blood cell rolls, its edges like kevlar and ooze at once as they scrape against the sides of its scab-nest. Blood continues to leak from it, constantly, making for a perpetual pool of red liquid around it that it floats atop as it moves- and as it reaches back to my hand.

And then everything goes white.

It’s a weird expression. “Everything goes white”. It doesn’t, really, it’s just that “everything goes black” means you’ve passed out, while the alternative means that something has happened to knock out your senses. A hard blow to the head, a flashbang, a sudden feeling or effect that shuts off your brain’s awareness of its other senses as it tries to prioritize the signals it’s receiving.

In this case, the half-second of stunned paralysis ends as my right arm spasms, cramping violently.

I thought that the vibrations from getting digested alive were bad, but they were nothing. I can actually feel the skin burning from friction as the feedback tries to rip itself off of me, the sensors making a noise like a high-pitched whine from the vibration. I can feel it in my bones. The vibrations travel up my arm, into my shoulder, intense enough that a breath I take hums like a bass-beat in my lungs and makes my ribs ache.

I’m on the floor, and I don’t remember falling. I’m trying to rip the haptics off, but my other hand isn’t responding right, spasming as the effects spread, and I can’t help but wonder if this is what a stroke feels like.

And then it spreads further, and I try to scream, and I can’t.

The haptics are on my lower back, on my shoulders, and somehow they synchronize in a way that tells me there’s something moving in my body. My bones ache, my muscles scream, and for a few seconds I can’t breathe, like I’ve had the wind punched out of me, like my solar plexus is spasming-

Huuuuuuuuuuuuuh-

Finally, a hint of air enters my lungs again, and-

The pain is gone. That moment of inhale somehow shut down the pain, like it was waiting for it, flipped off like a switch. I look around, blindly, and-

The air.

It doesn’t taste right. It has a smell to it. Like… like a steak, just as it hits a grill. Not a bad smell, but out of place, weirdly meaty.

I reach up to the headset, ready to tear the fucking thing off, and-

Oh.

I can feel that.

That’s a face.

That’s my face. Where the headset should be. Felt by a palm that feels stiff and weird and kind of numb.

I blink, and I feel eyelids wetter and heavier than mine have ever been close over my eyes, opening slowly and in the wrong direction. Diagonal instead of vertical.

My gaze finally sharpens, my senses coming back as the vertigo and disorientation begin to fade- and I see a roof up above me, like that of some vast cavern, with its heights so far they’re almost invisible. Clouds of condensation, not-quite-white in coloration, float through the air, often splitting against the side of stalactites so vast that they rival skyscrapers in height.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I go to get up, and- oh. Oh no. Oh that’s all wrong. My body moves like I’m wearing a wet sack of my own flesh, like I’m wrapped in layers of loose skin that I can feel shifting in ways they shouldn’t. Moving feels like wearing armor made out of raw steaks, and it takes everything I have not to vomit from the sheer dysphoria of the sensation. I manage to roll over, barely, and sure enough, there it is.

Grass, made of incredibly fine red hairs, rolling in a vast carpet along a strange prairie.

Some of it waves with a slight breeze and brushes against my face, and I feel it.

My body (this isn’t my body this can’t be my body even my normal body doesn’t feel this wrong) heaves, reacting to pain that even now still lingers on the edge of my senses, and to my disgust, I feel muscles I have no name for clench as bile crawls up my throat.

I can taste it. Like rotten juice, sickly-sweet and alien, coming deep from a gut that aches with its own brand of pain, separate from what’s still radiating from my chest and arm.

I choke back the puke, clacking together teeth that are too numerous and too random to fit in any reasonable jaw to stop myself, and force my eyes back towards my hand.

My right arm looks distended. Abominable. It’s a bright and gleaming red, thicker and heavier than my left arm by far, its reach extended and skin inflated. Off-white skin has turned near-maroon, like an overstuffed sausage, and as I watch, despite the lack of any visible cuts or gouges, it begins to sweat blood.

Part of me can’t take its eyes off the limb. How thick crimson beads up to the surface, leaking through like syrup from beneath the skin. How the whole limb pulses with my heartbeat, the bloody sweat oozing out all the way up to my bicep, my heart straining at a feeling of strange thickness to its usual liquid burden.

Another part of me finally lets go, turning and vomiting onto the ground.

Detached, somewhere behind the body I’m in, I watch as the bile eats its way into the soil, sizzling and smoking as it digests everything, including some of the teeth in my mouth.

It hurts so bad.

My tongue is smoking from the acidic vomit, my lips and jaw aren’t shaped right, but I try to speak anyways. I try to beg, I try to plead, I try to demand that the pain stop, and-

There is a sensation like a thousand needles piercing my arm at once, a feeling like being drained, a lightheadedness, and-

And then the pain is gone.

My throat and mouth still hurt like a motherfucker, but it fades past, either beginning to heal or simply going numb from the acid’s effects. For a moment, I’m just meat, organized wrong, shaped wrong, laying on the ground. It almost feels familiar.

And then I feel something wet bump into my stomach.

I flinch back, my body slow to respond but still responding, ready to flail at whatever the danger is-

The blood cell is there again.

There’s a weird puddle of blood on my arm, floating there against the laws of physics and biology, but my arm is normal again, pale-white and no longer stretched to bursting. Leaking out of that portal is a blood trail, draining away into the soil but leading to an ever-renewing puddle of more of itself- atop of which floats the bloodcell.

Gently, like a worried puppy, it bumps into my stomach. Makes a weird sort of squelching noise, bobbing in place, bleeding eternally, staring at me.

This time, everything goes black.