by James Hunter
“Hey, is that right?” Sam called out, hoping the nurse would be able to hear him, but no reply came. “Hello? This says prepare for pain? That’s gotta be a typo, right? Someone? Anyone?”
He raised a hand to beat on the lid, but then a roiling liquid poured on to his face, filling his mouth, funneling into his nose. He coughed, hacked, but the liquid—oddly goopy and gelatinous—made it nearly impossible to move. Yep. Definitely should have read those ToS all the way to the end. He was already regretting his choice. He tried to hold his breath but couldn’t, and as he breathed in… air rushed into his lungs.
In the span of an eyeblink, the pod was gone, and he found himself in a blank, white room, utterly featureless save for the words hanging in the air in front of him like a storm cloud:
Welcome to Eternium! There is no saved data for your profile. Would you like to make a new character? Yes / No
Well, he was here to chew gum and play Eternium, and he seemed to have left his gum with a different body. Easy answer.
Great! You will only be able to have a single character profile at any given time while in Eternium—no alternates, sorry about that—so choose wisely! If you start a new character at a later time, all progress with the current character will be lost forever, including skills, items, and any gold which is on your character, though gold can be transferred through a secure, in-world banking account!
Would you like to select an available starting class or undergo tests and trials to see what the right choice is for you? These tests may unlock different or even unique classes based on your ability. But be warned! Taking the tests and showing low aptitudes may reduce the number of available classes! You can exit these tests at any time! Start Game / Take Tests.
Sam glowered. More tests. He didn’t want to take any more tests; he wanted to play the game. Some small part of him demanded he just select the ‘Start Game’ option and dip his toes into the waters. After all, he could always come back and recreate a new character later if he needed to.
But… he’d skipped over the ToS and was already deeply regretting that decision. Plus, he’d been gaming long enough to know that earning a potentially unique class—especially right out the gate before almost anyone else was on the server—could have some huge long-term benefits. Since he’d be in the DIVE pod for six in-game months, some added long-term perks definitely wouldn’t go amiss. As annoying as the idea of more tests was, starting off on the right foot would be worth whatever hardships or minor delays came with it. So, reluctantly, he reached out a hand and selected the ‘Take Tests’ options.
The air around him shimmered, and suddenly, he was standing in a cavernous hallway. The walls were a rough, reddish stone, eight or nine feet across and pockmarked from time and the relentless onslaught of the elements. Wow. The graphics were absolutely amazing. Uncanny, actually. He raised his hands, examining his fingers which were indistinguishable from the real things. There was a soft sigh of wind, the sound gentle in his ears, followed by a cool breeze brushing across his cheek. The cave was rather cold, which was another surprise, and the air smelled faintly of sea salt and ocean spray. He slowly tread over to one of the walls, trailing his digits across the surface of the stone.
Grit. Nuance. Texture. Heat. Every sensation was there. Orange County was beautiful, but the beaches down in San Diego were some of the best in the world; his family had often trekked down south during the summer months to soak up the sun and sand and surf. One of Sam’s favorite spots in all of California was the Cabrillo National Monument, nestled at the tip of the Point Loma Peninsula, due south of Ocean Beach and just west of Coronado. It wasn’t a flashy place, nor were there many beachgoers. Instead, there was a small visitor center and a long-standing monument to Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo, who was the first European explorer to set foot on the West Coast of the United States.
A stone lighthouse overlooked the expansive waters of the Pacific, but the real treasure of Cabrillo National Monument was a mysterious cave, tucked away near the waterline. Sam had found it with his sister. They’d edged past the tidepools then carefully picked their way down the Bluff Trail, which terminated at a set of stone steps that hugged the edge of a rather steep cliff face. At the bottom, hidden from prying eyes, was a beautiful cave gouged into the rock. Getting in was only possible at low tide, but the view inside was to die for. Literally, if you stayed there until high tide.
It was one of Sam’s favorite places in all of California, and this odd hallway reminded him of it. The same porous walls. The same sea-salt smells. He glanced down and found fine, white sand beneath booted feet. Sam smiled and shook his head. Already this game had blown his expectations out of the water, and he was only in the testing phase!
The air in front of him shimmered and danced, a single word materializing before his eyes: RUN!
Huh, that was crazy. Why would he run? This place was absolutely awesome. Truthfully, he wanted to explore deeper into the cave, see if maybe there was loot or some other cool things hiding in the nooks and crannies of the rocks. There was a thump behind him, the ground trembling beneath his feet. Slowly, he turned, moving as though he were stranded in molasses. Rolling toward him like a runaway semi was an action-movie-sized boulder, easily ten feet tall by eight feet wide, which took up every available inch of tunnel space.
Suddenly, the ‘Run’ prompt made a whole lot of sense. With a yelp, he spun and took off, legs pumping beneath him. Too late. He didn’t make it five feet. Fear and pain in equal measures flashed through his body as the boulder bulldozed him, crushing his frail form like a Styrofoam cup beneath a truck tire.
Chapter Four
Sam came to an eyeblink later, a scream tearing free from his throat before trailing off in confusion. The moment of pain was gone and so was the giant boulder that had crushed him seconds before. His heart thundered in his chest as he stared around with wild-eyed terror; this whole place was different. The cavern had vanished, the entire landscape replaced by a hauntingly familiar hallway—checkered linoleum underfoot, orange and blue lockers running off to either side, halogen lights overhead. Oh no.
The rolling stone had been bad—abrupt and traumatic—but this was even worse than a quick, grisly death beneath a massive, Hollywood boulder. This… this was the ultimate trauma—high school.
Sam shuddered as he scanned those lockers. He hadn’t visited the halls of Laguna Hills Unified since he’d picked up his diploma five years ago, and if he never went back, it would still be too soon. Yet here he was, the lights flickering like some bad nightmare, which was exactly what this felt like. Despite that, Sam had to admit that the graphics were absolutely the bee's knees, though he couldn’t even begin to fathom how the game had known about any of this. Seriously. He’d taken a brief psych exam before entering, and he supposed it had access to most of his public records—like where he graduated from high school, say—but the detail here couldn’t be coded in the few hours he’d been on site.
However the game was generating this content was beyond his imagining, but it was obviously on the bleeding edge of technological advancement. There was no prompt this time, nothing telling him what to do, but he couldn’t just stand around indefinitely. After a few more seconds of indecision, he set off toward the right, heading for what should be the exit… assuming this place mirrored the real-world version of Laguna Hills Unified.
He blew through a hallway intersection—the right branch heading toward the science wing, the left leading to the English department—bearing straight and toward the exit. He’d gone another ten feet when he heard a clatter and a grunt of pain drifting out from a door, which stood slightly ajar. A thin slice of light cut across the floor like a straight razor. The bathroom. He gulped but padded forward, angling toward the restroom. More grunts and the muffled sound of voices were clearer now but still not quite clear enough to make out.
He paused outside the door, crouched on his toes, trying to figure out what to do here. Just move on, or stick his nose in business th
at was probably better left alone? A word appeared in the air before him.
Decide.
Of course. The smart thing to do was move along, find the next prompt, complete it, and ignore whatever was going on behind that propped open door. Except he couldn’t. He’d grown a lot in college, even took a couple of judo classes so that he wouldn’t ever be on the receiving end of a wedgie or a swirly whirly, but high school Sam had been a different story entirely. He’d been almost everyone’s punching bag. Too rich to hang with the townie kids. Not rich enough to really fit in with the preps. Just smart enough to be a nerd but not nearly smart enough to run with the real nerds. Not particularly athletic or big or outgoing.
He’d worked hard over the past couple of years to put that Sam as far in the rearview mirror as feasibly possible, but he couldn’t let some other poor kid go through that. Not if he could help. New and improved Sam? He could help; he would help. Course decided, Sam shoved his way inside the restroom, urinals and stalls marching off along the left wall, porcelain sinks and cheap mirrors on the right. He was ready for almost anything except what he actually found.
Himself. Or, at least, himself as he’d been five or six years ago. Surrounding young, fresh-faced Sam were a bunch of jocks in letter jackets, led by none other than Barron Calloway. The same smug Barron Calloway who’d been at his graduation party—who was probably still hanging out in the pool, smoking cigarettes and drinking beers. The bullies pressed in, encircling young Sam like a noose, and as they did, they changed. Shoulders swelled, jackets ripped along the seams, arms lengthened, and skin turned an ashy shade of pale green.
They looked like trolls. Though trolls in letter jackets and expensive blue jeans. Sam briefly considered turning and bolting… but no. Not this time. He’d let Barron get under his skin at the party, but he wasn’t going to let that happen again. Sam had waited years to show these jerks he wasn’t scared of them anymore. Yeah, maybe these weren’t really the bullies who’d tormented him for most of his young life, but they were close enough to count.
Sam let the door slam behind him, the sound bouncing off the tile walls. Almost as one, the newly evolved trolls turned on him, beady black eyes fixing on him, glimmering with barely concealed joy. They were looking for a fight, and they’d finally found one. Sam did his best to keep his tone light but firm. “Leave him alone.”
“Will do,” Troll Calloway grunted, showing off a pair of jutting lower fangs. “We’ll take a piece out of you instead!”
Troll Calloway broke into a looping, gorilla-like gait, his knuckles scraping along the floor as he moved. Sam knew he should be scared out of his mind, but instead, he felt a jolt of excitement. He adjusted his posture, knees slightly bent, head centered over his body, feet spread shoulder-width apart. The creature closed with unnatural speed, arms outstretched, its hands now as big as dinner plates. Sam shot inside Barron’s guard, one hand latching on to the lapel of the troll’s letter jacket—pulling the deformed creature down and off balance—while his other arm wrapped around the thing’s head. Sam spun his torso clockwise, jerking down, dragging Troll Calloway up and over his hip in a common judo throw.
He’d never actually used a throw against a real opponent, but he grinned like a madman as the troll left the ground, flipping through the air in a sharp arc. Before his nightmarish bully landed, the creature in his hands simply dissolved, turning to smoke which drifted into the air and resolved into a new prompt:
Survive.
The high school disappeared just as quickly as it had come, and now, Sam found himself in a rugged jungle, stretching out around him in every direction. The ground beneath him was loamy—almost spongy—and covered in thick patches of twisted vegetation and a gnarled blanket of creeping tree roots. Enormous, moss-covered trunks reached up, up, up, and intermixed among them were palm trees with massive fronds and a thousand other types of trees that Sam couldn’t name. The leafy canopy completely blocked out the sky, save for a few errant sunbeams, and the air was hot and sticky—far more humid even than southern California.
All around him were the sounds of a rainforest—the hoot of monkeys, the chirping cry of colorful songbirds, the soft rustle of a breeze through the high leaves. There was a *snap-crack* as something big pushed its way through the foliage, followed by an odd gurgling noise that he couldn’t quite place. He turned, searching the tangle off to the left. Another *crack* in the deep brush and a purple-black blob the size of a minivan rolled into the open. The thing defied explanation—Sam didn’t even have a frame of reference for what he was seeing.
Spoiled Jell-O given sentience maybe? If he were playing a D&D campaign, he’d say this was a Dungeon Slime, but it didn’t look like any kind of Slime he’d ever heard of.
It had no face. No mouth. Floating inside it, suspended like little pieces of fruit in Aunt Jane’s Thanksgiving cranberry Jell-O salad, was a mishmash of bones: skulls, femurs, rib cages—not just bones from humans but from pretty much everything. It had a small army of rudimentary limbs, formed from the bones within, but none of those limbs seemed especially functional. With another gurgle, it lurched forward, moving at a swift trot, though nothing close to a run, its strange limbs waggling manically like one of those wacky, waving-arm, inflatable, flailing tube-men. On a purely surface level, this thing seemed far less formidable and dangerous than the troll-bullies from the high school, but Sam had learned his lesson from the first test.
Run meant run. Decide meant decide. Survive meant survive. In this case, it also meant run—survive, but book it.
Since this thing was part of the ‘survive’ portion of the test, then clearly it was a serious threat. Sam had no weapon, and he doubted very much that his rudimentary skills in judo would work well against a gelatinous blob that probably outweighed him by a thousand pounds and had no proper limbs. Judo was about leverage, and in a fight against that thing, Sam would have none. So instead, he turned and jogged away, making his way deeper into the dense bush. Survive didn’t necessarily mean kill, so maybe he could just run out the clock.
So it went for what felt like the next several hours. Where was the dang clock, anyway? Sam kept moving, always moving, tripping his way over exposed roots, forging past gently burbling brooks, and trudging through thorny vines that scratched at his skin and ripped at his clothes. The jungle shifted and changed as he moved, but there was no discernible way out; the blob of goo and bones kept on his trail like a bloodhound determined to bring down its prey. The creature never moved any faster, but it also never moved any slower. It was an implacable hunter, and Sam was soon sore, tired, and hungry.
There was no defeating something like that thing, so he pressed on. He didn’t have access to food or water, but there were berries and other strange fruits dotting heavy tree boughs. By hour eight or so, his stomach was growling in protest and his throat burned. The creature was maybe a few hundred feet back, working to get through a deadfall of downed trees, so Sam risked plucking a handful of the berries and plopping them into his mouth. The flavor was brilliant, like the sweetest raspberries he’d ever tasted. Then he dipped his mouth into a small stream, no bigger than his thigh. The water, like the berries, was crisp and refreshing, curing his raging thirst in an instant.
Another *crack* and *blub* brought his head back up; the overgrown Slime had cleared the trees. Sam turned and jogged off, picking up the pace. He made it all of a hundred feet before a railroad spike of pain doubled him over. It dropped him to his knees while bright barbs of fire radiated out from his belly. When he tried to gain his feet, his legs simply refused to cooperate.
Sam glanced back over his shoulder to find the creature steadily gaining ground on his position. He fought to stand once again, but when it became utterly obvious that it wasn’t going to happen, he gritted his teeth and proceeded to crawl away from the encroaching monster. He was pulling himself hand over hand, digging in with his knees and toes, but he wasn’t fast enough. Not even close.
“Wow, this game is the abs
olute worst,” Sam growled an instant before the gelatinous bone creep steam-rolled right over the top of him, the purple fluid eating at his skin like acid as he was pulled up inside the monster. No longer able to speak, he could only think, “Yep, the absolute worst. Why in the world would someone make a game like this?”
But despite everything, he wasn’t quite ready to call it quits. He’d already come this far, after all, so he steeled his resolve even as the slime devoured him. Sometime later, he opened his eyes to find the monster was nowhere to be seen, and the jungle had been swapped out for a classroom. Happily not high school again, thank the lord. This time, it was the comforting and familiar seating of a lower-level college class. Unlike many of the higher-level classes—which were smaller and more traditional—this room had stadium-style seating to accommodate large freshmen groups a hundred or more strong. At the front was a wooden podium, though there was no instructor in sight, and behind that was an honest-to-goodness chalkboard.
Written across the board in an elegant script were three words:
Do Your Best!
The moment Sam finished scanning the scrawled text, a paper test booklet appeared on the wooden fold-out desk in front of him, the pages filled with a host of questions. There was a sharpened pencil beside the booklet, ready and waiting to be used. Well now, this wasn’t exactly fun, but at least this was something Sam understood. Compared to being crushed alive by a huge boulder, facing down thuggish nightmare bullies, or being poisoned then slowly consumed by a giant, man-eating slug, this actually seemed pretty snazzy.
Sam broke the seal on the booklet and dove in with the reckless abandon of a kid fresh out of college, his head stuffed full of useless facts that had few real-world applications. He tore through the English section, answering questions about similes and metaphors, killing the reading comprehension portion, and then writing an entire long-form essay on classic literature. Next came mathematics, followed by a section of world history, astronomy—which was odd—biology and general anatomy, basic psychology, and even politics and religion.