I am scaling a rockface, watching myself from behind with a drone pumping 4k footage into a VR headset I had been wearing for the last 48 hours. I reach up to a nodule of rock the same shape and size as some lips pouting, putting all of my body weight onto two fingertips. I dangle.
Lets take it back 48 hours and five minutes. I am being induced into a real life video game.
"This suit will make me stronger?" I ask, arching my hands back and forward. I am wearing a chassis over my body, the hydraulic pumps shift as I flex my arms and legs.
The CEO points to a 500kg dumbbell.
"Try lifting that over your head." I oblige, able to lift the weight above my head in one clean motion. It was like lifting a cat.
"Now the piece de resistance." He says, lowering the VR visor over my head. It was dark. I hear a vibrating behind me, and suddenly I can see the back of my own head.
"Whoa." I say
"Whoa indeedy." goes the CEO, stuffing tobacco in a hundred dollar bill, rolling it up, sucking on it a few times before lighting.
"So what’s the point in this real life video game?"
"What’s the point in any game? You need to get the high score." He points at a monitor. There is a list of numbers accompanied by 3 letters. AAA. CEO. FCK.
"I got it." I say, beginning to run.
3000 miles later I was hanging off a piece of rock,
dehydrated, filthy, happy. My game experience had been life changing. The tools
supplied to help make the game work also worked on me. I had access to a HUD,
giving me real time information on my HP, serotonin levels, temperature. I
could fast forward through boring sections of my life by injecting myself with
a syringe that simply read ‘Skip’. And best of all, nothing mattered. I
could run into a shop, grab things, run out. Anybody got in my way, well that
was going to be a punch, buddy. A super-powered overhand haymaker that could
shatter bone, rip through walls. After finally finishing the city level I
realised – this shit just got open world.
I sprint across fields, up along hillsides, jumping from street light to street light. As I speed along a road, a child looks out of the window, the figure he had imagined running and leaping next to him becoming flesh. On and on I go, the horizon rolling towards me, the slight fisheye lens of the drone made the edges of my vision distort and gave the impression the world was small and I was massive. With my strides across moorland, across rivers, I felt as if I was one of the giants, the race of humanoids that had existed on this planet thousands of years before we did. My elbows and knees continued swinging, I leant back and began to scream with laughter that never seemed to end.
And so that brought me to my current predicament. The grip of one finger slipped. All of me balanced with a white bit of meat and a dirty fingernail. Exhaling, I pulled myself up, grabbing at a handful of rock, kicking a hole into the side of the cliff to rest my feet. Up I went.
The top of the cliff was a flat rock, as if the mountain was an ancient tree that had been felled. Across from me was another player in this real life video game. It was the CEO himself.
“Surprised to see me?” he yelled. In the distance I could just make out the camera drone flying behind him. He was wearing an augmented robostrength suit like mine, though had also covered himself in thick armour plating made from gravestones.
“I didn’t know this was multiplayer. A/S/L?”
“Right now this guys stood on a mountain. And we’re going to fight.”
“Think you’ll get the highscore?” I say, hitting a vape. He punches his fists together and runs towards me. I keep hitting the vape. His speed is incredible, accelerating faster and faster over the red rock. I keep hitting the vape. Ten metres, five, zero. Stamping his left foot forward, he swings his hip round, rotating his shoulder, throwing out a deadly sonic punch. If it could hit me. I simply stepped to the left, leaned forward then exhaled the vapours I had been storing in my mouth and blowing in his face.
“Is that a cherry pit vape?” he says, inhaling the grey smoke around his head.
“Close. Its cyanide.” I whisper, watching as his head starts
shaking back and forth in his robosuit. Blood spills from his nose, he begins
spitting and coughing more blood over his gravestone suit, beneath the VR
headset. As he falls to his knees he reaches up to me. I crouch down, shoving
another vape in his bloodied mouth. He obliges and hits the vape.
“You just vaped a cocktail of yeast and smoky bacon. The preservatives in the bacon bond hemoglobin to the cyanide. The B12 in the yeast nullifies the poisonous effects on your body.”
The CEO starts to breathe normally, standing up like a baby deer. In a few seconds he takes up a fighting position again.
“Fight me, without any poisons or tricks.” He says. I pick up a rock and throw it as hard as I can at the drone behind him, it explodes. The CEO screams, grabbing at the VR headset. Blinded. By the time its off I have delivered a karate blow directly to his forehead. The shock against his central core makes his armour crack and fall away, followed by the robotic armature that ran across his body. Then his clothes flew off.
“Game. Over.” I say, beginning to walk off.
"You're not just a player. You've become...the game." he says, mouth hanging open in shock.
"If life is a game, then I guess I have a GameShark"
“Wait, you got to carry me down off this mountaintop.” He says, hiding his privates in a single hand.
“Maybe this will help.” I say, tossing the cyanide vape over to him. “When you meet God, tell him I sent you.”
And with that I jump off the cliff.
