Daemonorg Prison-Lab: A Dark LitRPG / LitFPS SciFi-Shooter (Overtaken Online Book 1)

by Ben Ormstad

  “Holy fuck,” I mumbled, for a second believing the corridor somehow had seamlessly transferred me into the game already. Realizing the big bastard was made of plastic, I let out a sigh of relief. Plus, holding a black screen with the following message written in old-school, green terminal letters:

  Greetings, Dexter Jonathan Walsh!

  Having a nice day thus far?

  The cursor was blinking patiently after the question mark. I stared around the empty room, realizing the walls were decorated to resemble one of the dungeons in the game. A blip came from the screen as a new message appeared:

  Dex Walsh, are you having a nice day?

  I scratched my head. “Uhm, yeah. Sure.”

  A new message flashed:

  Grrreat to know!

  Ready to have the most intense gaming experience known to Man??!?!?!1?!?

  Seeing the number ‘1’ thrown into the over-the-top-punctuation, I laughed out loud. Classic. Maybe I’d soon meet those informal, relaxed game developer types after all. Still laughing, I said: “Hellz yeah!”

  The screen bleeped again.

  Hellz yeah, indeed, Mr. Walsh!

  Your personal merge-assistant awaits you in the room next door.

  Feeling kind of weirded out having a conversation with a screen that even repeated my exact words, I said: “Uhm, my personal merge-assistant?”

  That’s right.

  Her name is Lily Devroh. She will assist you in the process of merging your consciousness with the game reality.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Probably detecting the slight uncertainty hidden in the tone of my voice, the screen added:

  Don’t worry, Mr. Walsh, everyone’s a bit nervous the first time.

  Luckily, Lily is a pro.

  Just do as she says and you’ll be enjoying the sweet smell of sci-fi dungeons and scorched beast-meat in no time!

  “Yessir!” I said, laughing. This AI was pretty damn hilarious. As I turned and moved toward the (hopefully) last door in a while, the demon suddenly opened its mouth and growled at me:

  “Good luuuuck, Mr. Walsh. I’ll be seeing you on the insiiiiide.”

  Honestly, it scared me shitless. Shivers swirling all over my back, I hurried the fuck out before it could say anything else.

  3

  Lily Devroh, a 20-something with marble white skin, puffy lips, red glasses and purple hair in a ponytail that wiggled every time she moved. She studied the results from my blood test. The fat silver rings in her ears reflected light from the desk lamp beside her.

  “So, what’s the verdict, doc?” I asked.

  She giggled, looked up from the tablet screen. “Well, thanks for the assumption, Mr. Walsh, but I’m no doctor.” She leaned closer and whispered: “I’m not even a nurse… but shhh, don’t tell anyone.” She winked.

  I laughed. “But really, though, please just call me Dex. ‘Mr. Walsh’ sounds so formal I can practically taste legal documents and boring, corporate meetings.”

  Her lab-coat rustled as she leaned back in the chair and placed the tablet on the office desk next to a microscope, some medical equipment and the machine that had processed my blood sample. She hooked one leg over the other. “Generally, your test results are good. No visible diseases or the like. However, your dopamine and serotonin levels are relatively low, which is to be expected seeing as how you’ve been depressed for a long time. Also, you’re low on the vitamin B12,” she said and smiled. “But for that one, just eat some broccoli, fish or even walnuts, and you’ll be fine.”

  Remembering my previous year’s lifestyle, a gush of nausea came over me. Sitting inside, secluded, alone and physically inactive, in front a computer screen, playing video games or binge-watching series more or less every day – combined with an almost unlimited amount of ingested frozen pizzas, chocolate bars, soda, beer and weed. Hating the world, despising life, missing my wife. Multiple times I had contemplated grabbing one of the replica katanas off the wall in my living room and committing harakiri – but not for the honor, like a ninja, but to check the fuck out, like a pussy. Generally, with each passing day, I sunk deeper and deeper into the abyss of my own misery.

  Sucking in air, trying to rid my mind of these bad memories making my head spin, I stared at my shoes and nodded. “Yeah… I’m not proud of how I’ve dealt with all the shit that’s been going on. I’m actually pretty disgusted by it.”

  Her eyebrows curled. She leaned forward, touched my shoulder and said in a soft tone: “Don’t worry about it, Dex. There’s no right or wrong way to tackle adversity. We all need to process what happens to us in just the way it naturally unfolds for us personally. Each psyche is unique, each recovery valuable.” Her lips went from sad to happy. “What’s important is that, after a period of letting everything go, we’re able to rise from the ashes and step back in the game. If you know what I’m saying?” Again she winked and squeezed my shoulder before sitting back up.

  I swallowed my mental shitstorm with a sip of the cold water filled with ice cubes and smiled at her. “Thanks. I needed that.” I met her eyes. “You sure you’re not a doctor? Or a psychologist, perhaps?”

  She chuckled. “Nope and nope, but as a player’s merge-assistant I need to have a basic level of knowledge of how to help people find a way out of despair and hopelessness. Plus,” she said, and I noticed a dampening of the light in her eyes, “I’ve had my share of, let’s just say, personal losses and dysfunctional relationships.”

  “Life’s hard,” I said, wanted to place my hand on her knee, but was afraid she’d take it the wrong way.

  “Life’s a fucking bitch,” she agreed. “Sometimes. At other times, it’s more beautiful than anything we could ever imagine.” She clasped her hands on her thighs, switching mood and smiled. “Anywhooo, that’s not why we’re here. You’re about to embark on a journey. Are you excited?”

  Happy to change the subject, I grinned. “Damn right, I am!”

  “Great. There’s no point in dragging this out any longer.” Standing up, she removed her lab-coat, folded it and left it on the chair. Underneath, she wore a tight, pink top that perfectly accentuated her womanly features. As a hopeless man that would probably never really ‘grow up’, I swiftly turned away, hoping she didn’t see me grinning like an idiot. It didn’t exactly help I’d been sitting inside alone playing video games the last twelve months, either.

  She threw me a half-smile as she passed me and said: “Follow me.”

  A peachy perfume trailed after her. I breathed in the sweet scent and tried my best to not stare at the upper parts of her rather tight pants. Keeping instead my eyes locked her wiggling ponytail. “Where we going?”

  “Your last stop before merging.”

  “Cool,” I said and followed her through different sections of the building. People dressed in white lab-coats sat around doing stuff I didn’t understand, almost as if this was some kind of research facility rather than a game company.

  We passed two ladies hunched over a table, studying some tiny computer chips. One of them smiled at me before moving the chair in order to block my view.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly what they’re working on right now,” Lily said, “but generally we’re always trying to develop new bits of technology to optimize different elements of the virtual game world – either through software or hardware.”

  After a few minutes of walking we were back in the first room I entered, the one with the creepy demon and the talkative screen. The metallic smell still hung in the air.

  “So, you’re a pretty hardcore gamer, right?” she said when she caught me staring at the beast.

  I nodded. “Been playing all kinds of games most of my life.”

  “Ever tried any VR games?”

  “Sure, most of ‘em. But I’ve always found the headsets too heavy, and the lenses either being too small or suffering from too much annoying bloom effects.” I shrugged. “Hopefully your VR experience
is a bit more advanced.”

  Swiping her ID card next to a door at the end of the dungeon-decorated room, she laughed. “I guarantee this is an entirely different experience,” she said, giving me a glance before opening the door. The hinges let everyone know they needed greasing.

  “I hope so,” I continued, “because based on the lack of information on your website, you’re really keeping the technology part close to your chest. Not one word about the equipment, which is a little strange.”

  She waved her hand toward the bright lit room on the other side. “All your questions are about to be answered, Dex.”

  Without moving my feet, I leaned closer and squinted to see what’s on the inside. The metallic smell originated here.

  “Don’t be shy,” she said and patted my back to usher me inside.

  As I stepped into the new area, I gaped at what I saw. Probably stretching a hundred meters across, and twenty meters to each side, the area was enormous. As if taken straight out of a science-fiction movie, the floor, walls and even ceiling was smooth, polished metal. Every surface reflected the sterile, white glow from hundreds of fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

  Jaw hanging loose, eyes wide open, I stared at the walls to each side. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of rounded metal boxes the size of coffins were stacked on top of each other – from floor to ceiling, perhaps twelve meters in the air – like enormous monster-cocoons waiting to hatch. Thick cables connected them to gigantic rigs between each row. More wiring connected the rigs to control surfaces placed a few meters further in, where computer monitors displayed detailed information about, I guessed, whatever happened inside the cocoon-coffins.

  I had seen enough movies to know exactly what was inside, and I felt a deep-seated claustrophobia wash over me like a wave of suffocating gas.

  “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

  4

  I felt Lily’s hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s big, huh?” she said, smiling.

  “Big? That’s not the problem. I mean… what the actual fuck?” I said, dizzy from all the sci-fi cocoon-coffins surrounding us. Holding her gaze a few seconds before I spoke, trying to figure out whether or not she was devious. But unlike the three suited interviewers, I truly didn’t get the sense she was hiding anything. “This just looks wrong. I mean, there are people in all those… boxes, right? Like, living people?”

  Lily chuckled. She actually chuckled. “Of course,” she said, wearing a broad grin that revealed her strikingly white, but somewhat uneven front teeth.

  I shifted my weight, uneasiness seething through my veins.

  “Relax, Dex, it’s not a big deal,” she said, underlining the statement by waving her hands. “Now, I understand it looks a little unorthodox, but once the players are securely merged in the game reality, they’re not at all aware of their body still laying in the VR-pod. Just like no-one’s aware of still sleeping in bed while dreaming.”

  My head exploded with multitudes of questions. This was in truth something entirely different from just putting on a VR headset. This was some next level shit. So far out, in fact, by the looks of the equipment alone, that it would probably be investigated by the state, and potentially deemed illegal. No wonder Virtuality Inc. showcased none of the technology on their website – or anywhere else, for that matter. Slowly, I realized I perhaps knew too little about all of this. The game itself had looked so incredibly cool that aside from the potential psychological repercussions, I hadn’t even cared to research how the process of ‘merging’ with the game world actually worked.

  I hate small spaces, I thought, unable to pull my eyes away from the cocoon-coffins. I vividly imagined the cables connecting them to the control surfaces was sucking the life energy out of all the poor bastards stuck inside – while they were playing the game, blissfully ignorant of the ugly truth.

  Even though I knew the answer, I still had to ask: “What happens if I want out?”

  Lily gave me a worried look. “Once inside, there’s no way of getting out until you’ve completed the quest you’re currently playing. Well, unless you decide to capitulate and want out immediately.” The worried expression on her face deepened. “But you know why that’s a problem, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling mentally distant. I paraphrased the information on their website: “If a player deems the game too overwhelming and needs to be extracted ASAP, it might cause serious physical discomfort and/or psychological complications to the individual.”

  “Yes. In other words, once inside, I suggest you keep going until you reach a natural break point,” she said, touching my shoulder again. “You look a little pale. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Drawing a deep breath, I nodded. “Yeah, totally, of course. This place just looks a bit more intimidating than I suspected.” I tried to laugh, but it sounded half-assed and shaky.

  “Okay, then, uhm, good,” she said, obviously not entirely convinced. “Let’s find your personal VR-pod.”

  I cleared my throat and, trying to sound as relaxed as possible, I said: “Cool.”

  “It is cool, Dex. Come.”

  While passing a man busy typing on a laptop connected to one of the control surfaces, I caught a glimpse of his screen. It was split into four windows of varying sizes – one showed an image of a young boy’s face. At 33 I didn’t consider myself particularly old, but I doubted this kid was over 18. His expression seemed calm, although a few barely visible twitches around his mouth and closed eyes appeared during the few seconds I watched. The window next to it probably streamed what he actually saw right now while playing the game. Lots of flashing colors, quick movements and blaring guns. I felt a tickle of anticipation in my stomach and realized I was being too damn dramatic in my reaction to this place. From the looks of what happened in the game world, this kid was having the time of his life. The other two windows were filled to the brim with text and rapidly changing numbers.

  “So, how long does a quest last, ish?” I asked, while following Lily’s wagging ponytail. “I don’t remember it being stated anywhere on the website.”

  “That’s because it’s an unanswerable question, really,” she said. “It could be anywhere from an hour to a couple of weeks or even more, depending on a bunch of different things.”

  “Wow. In other words, it’s possible to be, you know, stuck in the game world, say, an entire month at a time, for example?”

  “Yes. Longer even, if you choose to accept side-quests while working on a main quest. We have people here who’ve never been out, even after six months of continuous play.” She greeted a fellow merge-assistant sitting beside an open VR-pod, helping a dark-skinned, young woman into the pod. Only dressed in underwear, she carefully stepped into the cocoon-coffin. She didn’t seem too comfortable, standing there almost naked. I remembered her being one of five others in the waiting room when I arrived. She was the last to be called in, about half an hour before my interview began.

  “But, playing continuously a week or more, what happens if I gotta take a leak or… similar stuff?” I asked as the other merge-assistant and the half-naked woman disappeared behind us.

  Lily chuckled. “You won’t be doing any ‘leaking’ nor any ‘similar stuff’ while playing, regardless of quest duration.”

  Rubbing my eyes and shaking my head, I said: “What?”

  “That’s right. Eating, bowel-movements and the like are automatically taken care of by our ingenious body-maintaining system, which even prevents bedsores and muscle atrophy.” She stopped in front of a control surface full of buttons, sliders and what not. The computer monitor hooked up to it was blank. Behind it, I followed the cables with my eyes to the rig powering the ten VR-pods shelved upwards in the air. “Anyway. Here we are.”

  Letting go of all the follow-up questions I had about body-related practicalities, I glanced up at the pods. All just laying there, cold, silent, unmoving. Not even windows to let the players look out – or enabling outsiders to see
what happened inside. The only thing that stood out were tiny LEDs on each pod, glowing an intense green color.

  Feeling fear spike again, I massaged my neck, but made it look like I just scratched an itch. “Are any of these being used right now?”

  “Of the ten VR-pods in this row, all of them are active – except yours,” she said, walked up to the control surface and began clicking buttons. Loud clacking sounds smacked in my ears every time she pushed a key all the way down. The monitor awakened with a beep, and she opened a program. Pointing at a row of blocks with strings of text beside them, she explained: “This is a representation of all the pods in this specific section, plus the names and general details about the players using them. If I select any of these, we’ll get in-depth information about their current physical and psychological condition, as well as their game-related data. All the active pods are marked with a green dot, and as you see on the pods themselves, they have a green light on the front letting us know everything is good. Except number eight, which is set to standby, hence glowing blue.”

  Counting every pod as I looked higher, I had to squint to see the blue light on the eighth pod which was probably ten meters up in the air. A sensation of vacuum made the muscles in my stomach clutch.

  “You see it?”

  “Uh, yeah, barely.” My throat clicked as I swallowed. “It’s so far up.”

  “No worries.” She smiled. “We’ll get it right down for you.”

  I can’t fuckin’ believe I’ll be placed up there. But I refused to comment on it. Enough with the pussy shit. It was still better than committing harakiri with one of my replica katanas. Probably. Hopefully. My gut twisted. Small spaces and high heights. Fuck me with a popsicle and call me Lolly! I heard my wife’s voice say sarcastically, like she so often did when she knew the shit was two seconds from hitting the fan.