Rohan's Calling Online

by A. J. Chaudhury

  In a matter of minutes, only one player remained. She was the level 130 player I had seen. She tried to dodge Death’s attacks by jumping from one place to another. She was a skilled player for sure, and it was on pure talent that she had got to such a high level. Too bad. Death ultimately claimed her.

  And then he hovered away from the bank, towards me…

  I felt like I had swallowed a giant ice cube, my stomach suddenly going cold.

  In a matter of moments he was only a few feet away from me. I looked at his red eyes and the face that didn’t exist. His eyes burned holes through my skin.

  “sfwe 8 823423,” he said.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said in a voice that was little more than a squeak.

  “fsoi 0934534 3453450 iji3,” he replied.

  I had no idea what he meant so I had to depend on the belief that at least he understood me. He said the numbers and the words in a way that no mortal tongue could pronounce.

  “I just wanted to know,” I began, a chill running down my spine. How was he going to react to my question? “What happens to those who you claim?—”

  “No!” a scream came from behind me. It was Grimguy’s without a doubt.

  I turned to see Daddy1 running towards me. His face was convulsing with great emotion. Grimguy was behind in the distance, his arms outstretched, as though he had tried to prevent Daddy1 but the latter had broken free of his grasp.

  “Where is my daughter?” Daddy1 cried. “Give her back to me!”

  Death raised his arm to claim Daddy1. I couldn’t allow that under any circumstance. I cast paralysis on Death and he froze. Daddy1 reached us and he grabbed Death by the neck. I grabbed Daddy1, and tried to pull him away from Death because the latter would defreeze any moment.

  “Are you an idiot!” I shouted at Daddy1.

  Too late.

  My spell’s effect ended.

  Death let out what was the most terrifying shriek I had ever heard in my life. This was followed by a flash of blinding light and then I knew no more.

  Chapter 12

  There was blackness.

  And there were ones and zeroes.

  It was the same all around me. A universe of ones and zeroes. I thought I was floating in space, but when I looked down, all I could see were ones and zeroes. My body was not there.

  And I stayed so for all eternity. Hours stretched to days, which stretched to weeks, which became months and years, decades, centuries, millennia, aeons…

  There was just one question in my mind all the while: Where was I? That one question plagued me for all eternity.

  And then eternity ended.

  The blackness took over the ones and the zeroes. Soon, I found myself staring at the roof of my capsule, cold sweat clinging onto ever single part of my body.

  I pushed open the lid of the capsule and sat up. I inhaled deeply, staring at the white floor. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was Serena.

  I nodded. Then I shook my head, changing my mind.

  “No, it’s not all right,” I said to her, looking her in the eye. A frown came over her forehead.

  “You had some problem in the game?” she asked. She seemed to be looking at me with the same expression as that of a school teacher when a student goes to her saying a classmate cracked an egg over their head. Except their head was clean.

  “I… I met Death,” I said.

  The frown disappeared from her forehead. A carefree expression came over her face instead. The student was talking about an egg cracked over their head many days ago.

  “Well, they had been talking about installing death,” she said with a small shrug.

  “But Death cannot be a person… can he?” I said.

  “It’s a game world. Anything is possible. It’s a world created by humans. Death can be a human,” she said.

  I nodded. I could still see the universe of ones and zeroes. I recalled the blinding flash of light before that, but the events that had preceded it felt of little importance to me. They seemed to have occurred in the distant past. I guessed I really had stayed in the universe of ones and zeroes for all eternity.

  “How long have I been in the game?” I asked her.

  “Six days,” she replied, and then ventured to ask, “so, is Death your friend?”

  I met her eyes again. They were beautiful eyes and had a sparkle in them. But then, blood diamonds sparkled too. What was I thinking? I didn’t know. My mind had been messed up by the universe of ones and zeroes. I needed some fresh air.

  “Yes, he is,” I said.

  “Friends are good,” she replied. And then she did something I never expected her to do. She lowered her head and kissed me. It was a long kiss, and she didn't let go for at least half a minute. Once she broke away, she took out twenty five hundred bucks in cash from her pocket and handed the bundle of notes to me. I took it. I felt like I was in a daze. Why had she kissed me?

  “Come tomorrow,” she said.

  I was confused as I went up the steps, and emerged in the blacksmith’s shop, and then went out to the sunlight. I waited for some time in front of the shop. Why had she kissed me?

  My hand motioned a taxi to stop on its own. My mouth told the driver my home address and I got into the taxi. I looked through the taxi window at the world outside. This was supposed to be the real world, right?

  I reached my apartment relatively fast. Without realising I stood in front of the door to my apartment for nearly ten minutes as my head kept replaying the kiss. Then I opened the door, finally coming to my senses. Come on, get a grip on reality.

  With reality being the most subjective thing there was, it was quite impossible to get a grip over it.

  I took a bath because I had nothing else to do. It was also a Sunday, and I wondered if I should go on a trip to Dev’s place. But I decided not to. Perhaps, next week. Today I would just read some of my fantasy novels. After the warm bath, I felt significantly better. My time spent in the universe of ones and zeroes felt more like a dream now, which was what it probably was. To maintain my sanity, I also told myself that Serena had not kissed me. I had imagined it totally. After the bath, I started cooking lunch. Once lunch was over I jumped onto my sofa and switched on the TV. I hadn’t intended to watch any news, but I mistyped the numbers and stumbled on a news channel.

  It was showing the war going on in Lovebird’s country. Apparently the war was escalating. There were visuals of jets flying in the skies over a city in ruins. Kids with faces devoid of hope stood next to a destroyed building, some of them sporting injuries. One had a patch of cloth covering his eye.

  I prayed Lovebird was well.

  The phone buzzed. It was Dev.

  “Hey,” he said, “So you are out of the game?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Come over to my place. I am bored as hell.”

  I thought over it. I had decided not to go, but with the invitation I changed my mind.

  Dev's wife seemed to have lost her sparkling smile when I reached their home, although she still talked to me nicely. I found the reason: Dev was saving up money to buy a Prithvi Online capsule.

  “Don’t do it,” I found myself saying.

  I might have as well hit him with a baseball bat

  “What! Why? I thought we will play together.”

  “Death has been installed, apparently,” I said. “The game has become… a bit dangerous.”

  “See?” Shalini said. “Death has been installed! You are not buying that stupid game capsule.”

  Dev’s face fell like an avalanche.

  “But… but it would have been all over the news if such a thing happened.”

  “He’s the one who is playing the game. He knows better,” Shalini told him.

  “Look Dev,” I told him, and I was really saying it because he was a good friend of mine, “the game is dangerous now. I will still play it because I don’t have an option. If you want, I can give you
half the money they pay me.”

  Dev seemed to be on the verge of tears hearing my words. I left him and his wife shortly after, because the tension had gotten really high in their home that day. I reckoned it was better to stick to my paperbacks.

  That night I received a phone call from Serena.

  “There seems to be some malfunction with your capsule,” she told me, “it won’t be possible for you to enter the game world using it. We’ll be fixing the problem soon, so you can come the day after tomorrow. You can take the day off tomorrow.”

  I very well knew what had caused the malfunction: Death. So this was what happened to non-perma players who faced Death’s wrath. As for the perma players, perhaps they were stuck in the universe of zeroes and ones for all eternity. An eternity that never ended. I caught a chill just thinking about it. I was never going to go any place where the hooded person was sighted again in the game. It was best to stay away from him. And I would also remove him from my friend list for the best.

  So it happened that the next day I stayed at home. I finally decided to call my boss at the hotel and told him that I wasn’t going to go to the hotel again. He didn’t seem much bothered, and said he had already hired someone in my place.

  I spent most of the next day with my nose buried in the books. I read two full length novels that day. One of the books was just above mediocre, while the other one was an absolute gem, and it was by a relatively unknown author. I marked her name in my brain. Whenever she released a book next I would grab it as fast as possible.

  For the first time ever since I took up the decision to play the game, my brother in the photo seemed to be smiling. Of course I was imagining his smile. But it was good to believe that my brother was smiling anyway, wherever he was.

  The next day I went to the blacksmith’s shop early in the morning, after a quick phone call to check whether the capsule had been fixed: it had.

  Thankfully, today the man was there, and not Serena. It was better off that way. I would have felt awkward otherwise with Serena around, especially after what she had done the other day.

  I drank the disgusting liquid, and lay down inside my capsule after sometime. Not a long time later I found myself in my room. In front of me was a very frightened Grimguy, who had been holding my birthstone in his hands.

  “I thought you were gone,” Grimguy said.

  “I just… got logged out, and found myself awake in my game capsule,” I said.

  Grimguy handed me my birthstone.

  “So Death cannot kill non-perma players, huh?” I said, touching my birthstone which was quite intact.

  “But it can destroy perma players,” Grimguy said darkly. “Daddy1’s birthstone shattered into dust inside his bag.”

  “He shouldn’t have done what he did,” I said. Daddy1 had just wanted to know where his daughter was. It sucked that his love for his daughter had destroyed him. “He should have stuck to what I told him to do.”

  “The idiot,” Grimguy said, “but then, I was never a father. I don’t know how he felt.”

  “What happened after you disappeared in the blinding flash of light?” Grimguy asked me.

  “I found myself in a strange place filled with zeroes and ones,” I replied. “I could have been there forever or for a matter of seconds. And then I woke up in my capsule. A malfunction occurred in my capsule due to the forced logging out. It took some time to fix which is why I have come today instead of yesterday.”

  “I hope the other players found themselves awake in their capsules too,” Grimguy said.

  “That’s probably what happened to them, at least to those who were non-perma players.”

  “Do you really think Death deleted all the perma players that he attacked?” Grimguy asked, searching my face for answers with his eyes though he seemed to already know that I couldn’t answer that.

  I shrugged with a sigh.

  “No idea… So did you just come back to Kapilpura after I disappeared along with Daddy1 and Death?”

  “I stood there for a while in shock,” said Grimguy. Suddenly a grin split his face for the first time, “And then I got a message saying that I had completed the quest and chased away the Raks. I levelled up by five levels at once, and I also received some cool spells. Wanna see?”

  Grimguy pointed his finger at my bed. He moved his finger. My bed began to move as well.

  “That is cool,” I said. At least something positive had happened that night.

  Grimguy suddenly slapped his hand on his forehead.

  “I forgot to mention. Death hadn’t attacked all the players. One of them escaped. He came to me and asked me about you, since he had seen you talk with Death just before Daddy1 messed things up.”

  “I wouldn’t say I was exactly talking with Death,” I said, recalling the weird words and numbers Death had spoken to me in his bizarre voice.

  “Either ways, the man came with me to Kapilpura,” said Grimguy. “He asked me to inform him when you log in.”

  “Where’s he staying?” I asked.

  “Right here in this inn,” Grimguy said, “he seemed really keen to meet you. You want to go to his room? His name is Mastermind by the way. Interesting name, huh?”

  I thought over it for a moment. Why did the man want to meet me so much? There was no harm in finding out, right?

  “Cool, let’s go,” I said.

  Grimguy knocked on the man’s door. The door was opened by an... interesting man. Most of the players chose well built bodies and good hair and an angular face. Mastermind had created his character with a round stomach that bulged out. His arms and legs however were of normal size and not fat at all, but they were quite flabby, like it had been quite a few months since he last worked out. His head had hair only on the sides. Thankfully he had not chosen to wear any half moon specs.

  I focused on him, and got a surprise to see that he was a level 75 Multi-tasker.

  “This is who you wanted to meet,” Grimguy told Mastermind, gesturing at me. Mastermind studied me up and down.

  “Come in,” he said. Once we were in, he closed the door. Then he seemed to have a second thought.

  “Um, I wanted to speak to you in private,” Mastermind told me, giving a sorry look to Grimguy. Grimguy shrugged and was about to open the door to get out, when I decided to speak.

  “I would like Grimguy to be here,” I said.

  Mastermind shrugged.

  “Not a problem for me. It was just that there were some things I wanted to discuss with you that you might have liked to be kept between the two of us.”

  “I trust Grimguy,” I said with much confidence.

  Mastermind nodded. He pursed his lips.

  “Are you a member of the Kartoshi gang?”

  “Karto-what?” Grimguy said.

  “Kartoshi gang,” Mastermind said, narrowing his eyes at me just a bit, “Are you a member of it?”

  “Never heard of it until now,” I replied honestly.

  “Don’t worry,” Mastermind said, “I won’t tell anyone if you are a member.”

  “Never heard of it,” I repeated.

  Mastermind made a small grimace.

  “If you are, you can tell me. You can totally trust me. I am a member of the gang myself. Don’t believe me? Wait a minute.”

  Mastermind suddenly took off his upper clothes. He surely had a lot of hair on his flabby chest. I exchanged glances with Grimguy. And then Mastermind turned around. There was a tattoo of the sun on his back.

  “See? I have their tattoo as well.”

  “Hey listen,” I said, “I don’t know why you wanted to speak to me, but I have no idea of what you are saying. I am no part of this Kartoshi gang you are speaking of.”

  Mastermind nodded. He put his clothes back on.

  “If you don’t mind, can you take off your upper clothes?” he asked me.

  “What?” I said, frowning hard. This guy was crazy.

  “Do you mean to say that he has a tattoo as well?” Grimguy aske
d.

  “Exactly.”

  “Hey, listen. I have no such tattoo,” I told the two of them.

  “Are you sure?” Mastermind said.

  “Of course!”

  “I guess you can just show us your back once, can’t you?”

  “You are crazy, man!”

  “It doesn’t hurt to show him your back, does it?” Grimguy said. Great, now even he was taking the man’s side. I grimaced hard and then took off my upper clothes.

  “See?” I said, showing them my back.

  “It’s the same as his!” Grimguy exclaimed.

  “Wait, what?” I said.

  “You didn’t know you have a tattoo on your back?” Grimguy said.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t understand at all how a tattoo had appeared on my back without my own knowledge.

  “Okay, you can put on your clothes now,” Mastermind said.

  “I really didn’t know I had a tattoo,” I told them.

  “And you also don’t know anything about the Kartoshi gang. Which means… wait a minute. You are playing this game for free, right? Perhaps even getting paid to play?”

  How did Mastermind know this? Grimguy meanwhile raised his eyebrows high.

  “Um, yes,” I said.

  “How!” Grimguy said.

  “Yes, I get paid to play this game,” I said with much hesitation.

  “Your real body is in a capsule in an underground facility, and there are also many other capsules in that facility, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, while Grimguy gawked. “Anything wrong with that?”

  “It just means that you are a member of the Kartoshi gang. Except you are one of the members at the periphery who doesn’t know a thing about the gang, and is just happy to have a salary for playing the game. I however happen to be not far from the very centre of the gang, alas, I must say.”

  I frowned. Mastermind kept speaking.

  “My friends, I happen to be the person who created Death13.”

  ***

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  It was like a blow to the face.