by Erik Rounds
She couldn’t write this off as a trick or delusion. Whatever was happening now was a consequence of her decision at the crossroads. She had chosen to go on an adventure, and now it seemed that one had found her.
Chapter 2
The Inverted Clock
Tasha spent several minutes transfixed, staring at her wall clock in wonderment and confusion. Its second hand continued to tick backward along its slow counterclockwise rotation.
She was roused from her stupor by a sharp buzzing sound. It took her a moment to realize that the sound was from the door buzzer. Someone was outside the building and wanted to be let in. She made her way back to the entrance and touched the button on the speaker linked to the box outside the building.
“Hello?”
The box replied in a staticky male voice, “Delivery service. I have a package for Tasha Singleton.”
She hesitated. Who would be making a delivery at this hour, and through the storm? She pressed the button on the box, allowing the man entry to the building. After a few minutes, there was a knock at the door. Keeping the security chain fastened, she opened the door a few inches. It was indeed a delivery guy carrying a brown cardboard box. The man smiled at her. She closed the door, undid the lock, and opened it the rest of the way.
“Tasha Singleton?” the man said. “I’ve got this package for you. Could you sign for it?”
The first thing she noticed about the man was that he was completely dry. If he had been out in the storm, his clothes ought to have been dripping wet.
“Uh… yeah. Sure thing. So… I guess the rain has stopped?”
The man looked at her quizzically and said, “I don’t know what you mean. It hasn’t rained a bit all week. You must be mistaken.”
She scribbled her signature on the man’s tablet and received the small brown parcel. While doing so, she snuck a surreptitious glance at his digital watch. It read 99:48.
“Hey, can you tell me what time it is?”
The man glanced at his watch and said, “It’s 7:23. Good evening, miss.” With that, he turned away and left.
After closing the door and securing the lock, she placed the package upon the kitchen counter. It was a plain brown cardboard box. Turning it around in her hand, she found the label and saw who it was addressed by.
The sender was her father, Jak Singleton, who had died ten years prior. She considered the box for several moments in bewilderment before noticing that the label indicated it had been sent seventeen years ago, seven years before his death. This package was a time-delayed delivery.
That shouldn’t be possible. She had only moved into her apartment a few years ago, so logically her dad wouldn’t have known where to send it. Somehow her father had pulled a Back to the Future II and sent her a package almost two decades before he could have known where she would be living.
Well, the mystery wouldn’t solve itself. There was nothing for it but to open the package and see what was inside. She dug around in her utility drawer for some kind of cutting instrument. There were scissors somewhere, but she couldn’t find them, like usual. Finally, in desperation, she pulled out her apartment key and used the sharp pointy edge to cut through the tape. Having opened the box, she found one of those metallic static-proof bags. Setting the box aside, she carefully removed a single object from the bag.
It was a Super Nintendo video game cartridge. The label on the cartridge featured a crossed sword and staff against a black background. The words “Legend of Etheria” appeared below them in bold red lettering.
Both she and her father had been avid video gamers. It had been one of the few things that they had in common while growing up. After his death, she had inherited his rather sizable collection of video games, but she’d never heard of this one. Why had her father sent this to her?
She decided to postpone the luxury of panic until after she took a shower. She was still cold and dripping wet. She set the game on the counter and headed to the bathroom.
Chapter 3
The Gamebound Traveler
Her body was wet and chilled to the bone. What she really wanted was to take a long, soaky bubble bath with her favorite rubber duck, Mister Quackers. Regrettably, she felt that she couldn’t afford to take any more time than necessary. Nothing inspired haste more than an impossible and mysterious countdown.
After the all too brief shower, she bandaged up the cuts on her knee and face. They had already stopped bleeding on their own, but it wouldn’t do to let them get infected.
Her favorite PJs were sitting on top of the laundry pile in the hamper. They weren’t technically clean, but in her personal estimation they still qualified as clean-adjacent. She threw them on and donned her comfy red bathrobe. The bathrobe was old and worn out, but she still liked it. It was warm, and she would occasionally use it as a makeshift blanket while vegging out on the couch. The finishing touch to her ensemble was her trusty bunny slippers. She slipped her feet into them and returned to the living room.
She was distracted by a low buzzing sound coming from the kitchen. Her cell phone was vibrating in place on the counter. The front surface of the phone indicated another incoming call from her boss. She reluctantly hit the answer button.
The voice that came over the speaker was harsh and abrasive, not unlike the caller himself. It was her boss, Hubert Stensly.
“Tasha! Why didn’t you answer the phone earlier?”
Because I was trying to avoid having to talk to you.
“Hey, boss. I was taking a shower. What do you need?”
“Next time, bring your phone with you into the bathroom. I don’t like having my time wasted. Listen, Tasha, we lost some people, so I’m going to need you to work this weekend to take up the slack.”
“What do you mean you lost some people?”
“The entire programming team quit except for you. It was right after you left the office.”
“You mean Harvey and Lenny both quit at the same time?”
“Apparently they both got hired by some startup on the east coast. Can you believe that Harvey complained about the working conditions and mandatory unpaid overtime? Those ungrateful traitors. Don’t worry, though, we’ll just hire some fresh meat right out of college. But until that happens, you’ll need to work weekends.”
“But you said I could have this weekend off. We talked about this.”
“Listen, sweetheart, do you have the first clue how privileged you are to work in the game industry? Let me mansplain this to you in a way that you’ll understand. Eighty-hour weeks and unpaid overtime is an expected part of life as a game developer. You’ve been in the industry for long enough to know this.”
“Maybe if we made games people actually wanted to play, your employees wouldn’t mind putting in the extra hours,” she said. “Besides, if we’re behind, it’s only because we overcommitted.”
“That’ll be enough of your sass, woman. I expect to see you at work tomorrow morning. This game isn’t going to write itself. So unless you want to be begging for scraps out of a cardboard box on the sidewalk, I better see you in here early tomorrow morning. No sleeping in will be tolerated. Good night!”
After her boss ended the call, she let out a short string of profanities as she put the phone into her bathrobe’s single pocket. She had really been looking forward to having a weekend off.
Hopefully she could deal with this metaphysical crisis in time to get to work in the morning. She turned her attention to the other object on the kitchen counter. The game cartridge loomed ominously where she’d left it. With no small amount of trepidation, she picked it up and examined it from all angles. It appeared to be no different than any other Super Nintendo game in her library.
She brought the game cartridge to her bedroom, fired up her netbook, and pulled up Netscape Navigator. A Google search for “Legend of Etheria” brought up no positive results. There were a number of books with that title, but nothing that looked like a video game. “Etheria SNES” and “Etheria game” bot
h came up negative as well.
Having exhausted her other options, she decided that there was nothing for it but to plug the game in and see what happened. She kept all of her video game stuff that she wasn’t using in the closet across from the bathroom. It was the same closet where normal people kept towels, bedsheets, and washcloths. Her Super Nintendo was stashed in there somewhere. She finally found it sandwiched neatly between her Colecovision and OUYA.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the clock. It was now 99:12 and still ticking backward. Clearly she was on a time limit. Whatever it was that she was expected to do, she had better get on with it.
She carried the game system back to the living room and set it on the coffee table between the plasma TV and her cushy sofa. Fortunately, her TV was old enough to still have the composite video inputs needed to use the system.
She threw herself onto the couch and searched through the cushions until she finally uncovered the remote control. After the TV finished its ten-second warmup cycle, she reached over and hit the power switch on the game system.
There were none of the company logos or splash screens that normally appeared on these games. Instead, after a moment, she was presented with a highly pixelated vista showing an ocean backdrop, which scrolled by via a Mode-7 effect. Epic-sounding game music played, setting the tone. The view settled and panned upward to reveal clouds that surrounded the game title “Legend of Etheria.” An animated serpent coiled itself around some of the letters.
The Mode-7 effects weren’t bad, and the music was nice, but so far it didn’t seem much different from the multitude of the other games of that era. Certainly nothing that would explain this situation.
Two options appeared at the bottom of the screen: “New Game” and “Continue.” The word “Continue” was grayed out. She pressed the A key, but nothing happened. Apparently this was one of those games which used the B key to select and A to cancel. She pressed B, and the screen faded to black.
The words “Enter your name” appeared at the top of the otherwise black screen. Using the controller’s direction pad, she entered the name “Tasha,” taking care to use lowercase letters where appropriate. She liked to imagine herself as the protagonist, so she used her own name when video games gave her the option. With luck the protagonist would be female or gender neutral, otherwise the name wouldn’t make much sense.
Having entered her name, she selected confirm and pressed the B key. The moment her finger depressed the controller’s button, she was overcome by a rush of dizziness and vertigo. Her vision faded, and everything around her was shrouded in blackness.
Her body was stuck in a standing pose and resisted any attempt at movement. She tried to inhale, but the air was thin and it was difficult to breathe. She thought she could hear tense music playing. Was someone there?
“Help! Someone! Anyone!” she called out, but her voice sounded muffled.
Her body seemed to be encased in something. There was pressure pushing against her arms, legs, and chest, holding her in place. A well of panic rose up as she realized that she was facing the very real danger of dying. She had to get out! She needed air!
She struggled to breathe, but the air wouldn’t come. After leaning forward, she felt a momentary sense of motion. She leaned forward again and felt the same sensation of motion. She began to rock back and forward, pushing her weight against whatever was holding her. Her center of gravity abruptly shifted to her abdomen as she fell forward. For a moment she seemed to be falling, but that moment came to a sudden halt as she hit the ground.
There was a jarring sensation of pain as whatever had been confining her shattered into fragments. At least she could breathe again. She took in several desperate gasps of air but then erupted into a coughing fit, having inhaled dust.
Rubbing the dust out of her eyes, Tasha looked around and tried to ascertain her situation. It seemed that she was lying prone on the ground in a dimly lit room. Clay fragments lay scattered around her body. It was too dim to see them properly, but they were pieces of what had been confining her.
Slowly she removed the last of the clay pieces that covered her and got to her feet. She was in a large chamber and was surrounded by walls lined with intricate carved designs and murals.
Along the walls were tall pedestals that displayed statues of different people. There were dozens of men, women, and children. Six of the pedestals were empty and had fragments at their base. One of them was the pedestal that she had fallen from. Had she been inside one of the statues? That would explain why she couldn’t breathe and was now surrounded by clay fragments.
She could still hear the music but couldn’t place a source for it. The melody was coming from all around her. The music was less intense and more atmospheric now. It didn’t seem to be coming from any external source. It actually sounded like the music was playing inside of her head.
There were several dimly glowing objects that she hadn’t noticed before. They floated in her view and looked suspiciously like a heads-up display from a video game. There was a compass floating at the bottom of her field of view, and three red hearts at the top. One of the hearts was empty, and the one in the middle was only half full. There were several other status bars that she didn’t recognize right away.
Her heads-up display aligned with her torso rather than her head. As she turned her body, it remained right in front of her. She found that she could turn her head without it getting in the way. Although there wasn’t any visible surface, it seemed as though the HUD was projected onto a curved screen that centered around her. Finally, there was an animated green arrow growing upward right in front of her on the inside of the HUD.
After she swiped her finger upward along the green arrow, the arrow vanished. A floating blue curved rectangular screen appeared in its place, similar in form to the one that she’d seen at the crossroads earlier that day. On the left side of the screen was a rough stylized portrait. The portrait showed her dark skin and frizzy hair, though the lips seemed a bit off, and Tasha never looked anywhere near that wistful in real life. The words “Tasha Singleton (Level 1 Couch Potato)” appeared alongside the image of her face.
At the bottom right of the screen was a clock. It read 99:03:14 but wasn’t ticking downward.
Along the right side of the floating screen were options for Items, Quests, Stats, Abilities, Map, Tools, and Options. When she reached out and touched the screen, it resisted her touch. It was actually there, and she could interact with it. She tapped on Stats, and a second screen appeared:
Tasha Singleton (Level 1 Couch Potato)
Race
Human (Player)
Subclass
None
Weapon
Unarmed (ATK 1)
Armor
Cozy Bathrobe (DEF 0.25)
Heart Containers
1.5/3
Mana Containers
3/3
Amusement Index
5.1
Strength
2
Intelligence
8
Agility
2
Precision
4
Charisma
4
ATK
2
MAG ATK
7
DEF
2
MAG DEF
6
This was clearly a menu from an RPG video game. What else could it be?
“Hey,” she complained to nobody in particular, “what’s the big deal giving me an agility of 2?”
At least she had a reasonably highish intelligence score, but her strength and agility were just embarrassing.
There was a Super Nintendo controller hovering just below the screen, but she decided to ignore it for the time being. She was only capable of dealing with so much weirdness at a time. She closed the stat page and dismissed the menu by tapping the red X in the corner of each screen.
Just as that screen vanished, another appeared in its place.
/> Quest: Welcome to Etheria
Class: Main questline (Compulsory)
Welcome! You’ve been summoned to Etheria and are trapped in the Temple of the Player. Find a way to escape. Beware, for monsters lurk in the darkness. Good luck!
Conditions for success: Find a way out of the temple.
Conditions for failure: None
Reward: 50 XP
Well, that settled that. It was now an inescapable truth that Tasha had been sucked into a video game. Just then, the thought occurred to her that she may well have gone mad. Considering the events of the past few hours, that did seem to be a reasonable hypothesis.
Well, if I have gone mad, the very least I can do is take my madness seriously and find a way out of here.
The walls were covered in a faintly glowing bioluminescent moss. It wasn’t enough to fully light the vast hall, but at least it offered some indication of the room’s boundaries. The statues formed a wide semicircle, and there was a large door at the far end of the room.
Tasha began walking toward the door but only made it a few paces before tripping over a step that she hadn’t seen in the darkness. Breaking the fall with her hands opened up some additional scratches.
She got to her feet and pulled out her cell phone from her bathrobe pocket. Fortunately, it appeared to have made the journey with her and was undamaged. Like most city dwellers, Tasha was lost and confused without her phone. The screen said that it still had 69% of its remaining battery life, so hopefully it would last long enough for her to find a way out. The time on the front read 99:03:12, but it was no longer ticking downward as it had been doing back in her apartment. She watched it for a moment longer to make sure, but the time didn’t change. Hadn’t it been higher before?