The room appeared after an explosion of light. "Please, don't be
nervous," said the man with a finger on the light switch. A clean-bone
color reigned from the ceiling to the floor; the ghost-remains of
cleaning chemicals went trough my nose to the now open door.
He
pointed to a freshly made bed and with a calm tone told me to wait for
him there. I laid for about five minutes before hearing the door
knocking. "This is is Sophie, she will be helping us today," said the
man with a hand on the shoulder of a young woman who modeled a lab coat.
My imagination overflowed, it passed my smirk and reached the bulge in
my pants. She didn't spoke a word, only stared.
And after some small talk they begun sticking wires to my body and attaching electronic pieces until I became a scrap-cyborg.
"Any last-second questions?" Asked the man putting some kind of helmet on my head.
"Is it true that you have God powers there? Like, no limits?"
"Yes, you can do whatever you always wished."
"Oh, really? So I can slap a child?"
"If
you really wish that. Well, you must respect the other players, but
there are not such rules with NPCS (Not Playable Characters.)
"But what I do goes straight to the internet and then there is a mob outside my garden telling me to leave the country."
"No
one will record what you do there. Sophie is only here to let you out
whenever you ask. Our objective is to test how real this prototype feels
before developing the personal market-version." He patted my chest and
leaved the room.
Then Sophie walked to a desk at the back and
sat on the chair. She slammed keyboard keys and the mouse played like a
hammer, her head moved like tugged in a no-motion."I guess cute girls
also have bad days," I said. No response. So I just moved my hand up and
down, watching how the skin stretched while being connected to the
cables.
When she finally spoke: "there, it's done," she smiled with
broken red eyes. "Let's see if this is enough, maybe after this you will
not forget me." The memory was shooted to my brain. Sophie, Sophie
Reed, my first girlfriend, and the first woman I ever cheated on.
The washing machine like sound from the helmet blared and everything went black.
-Initiating Paradise-
-Initiating Paradise-
-Initiating Paradise-
After
a blink I was somewhere else. It was a desert with immense waves, like a
fixed ocean. The sun heat-barked endlessly, all shadows had already
died. "Hey! Anybody!" I yelled removing sweat from my forehead, but I
was the only idiot there.
"So this is my Paradise? Yeah, because I always wanted to get the lobster-treatment."
I
tried creating stuff, changing the location, and the other things I had
been promised, but everytime I received the same error-message: "You
are not allowed to modify this world."
"And I suspect that my beautiful, reasonable, and well-hearted ex is not going to let me return to the real world, or is she?"
Silence.
Until, behind me, I heard the roaring. It was loud like a Bison
stampede. I moved my head and saw the motorcycle and her; they were
huge. My blood froze; the woman was like a living statue of liberty. She
decreased the speed and captured me with her hand. "What is this? Why
does it moves?" She said to herself. But my frantic words became literal
flute-notes. She laughed, her mouth was the size of a bedroom wall.
Tattoos traveled in and out her leather clothes and the reflection on
her sunglasses showed a plastic toy of a man. This was all Sophie's
fault.
I fought her grip with any force that hadn't melted yet, but
couldn't free myself. "Buddy, you are going nowhere, the others have to
see you," she tossed me on the seat and sat on me.
I felt like under
a inflatable castle being used, with the never ending bike's rattle and
the crushing weight over my body. I pinched, bit, tried to get out, but
she only moaned: "Thanks! Right there! Wow, I think I am going to take
my time coming back."
Enough time passed for me to be death. And
when she stood up I was expecting to look like chewed gum, at least
that's how I felt.
We were now in a mansion made of gold and jewels.
Shirtless TV stars and singers guarded the doors like butlers. At the
center was the entrance of a glass elevator that was more than 30 floors
high. She peeled me off from the seat and walked to the elevator.
Pressed the button and in seconds we were in the upper floor. Her hand
tighten harder and harder as we approached a door. And when we entered I
saw them: Three more girls sitting on thrones with a fourth one empty.
"Hi, girls! You need to see this." She said.
"What is it, Riley?" Said one called London. Her carbon-hair was wet and she was adjusting her purple bathrobe.
"Hope is better than the last amazing discovery," Said Casey with eyes glued to a virtual video game console.
"Hey! That NPC that looked like one of her math teachers was a great punching bag." Said Jenny exhaling fire like a dragon
"Well, imagine an NPC that looked like... This!" Riley showed me to the girls like an infomercial host.
"You made that! I have never saw anything like that" said Jenny.
"No, I found it," corrected Riley.
"Really, let me see it?" Said Jenny.
Jenny
held me with two fingers; she glared at my body, disgusted, like if I
was the cheapest Halloween candy. She raised me over her head and
dropped me on her open mouth. And the tongue catched me, it was as a
hungry and slimy anaconda on her dark cave. It traveled around my body
curious how each part tasted. Then came the teeth. Screams filled the
darkness as they went down. The crunch sounds of my bones continued
until I got mashed.
"And it's gone," said Jenny showing an empty
mouth. But Riley pointed down to the floor, I had appeared there. Still
screaming I checked my body, it was like if nothing had happened. I
wasn't going to die.