Couch Potato Chaos- Gamebound

by Erik Rounds

  Level up!

  You have reached level 30. You have 4 unassigned stat points.

  Choose either a heart container or mana container.

  Ari’s HP had been fully restored, and he stood in the train tracks, covered in blood and motor oil. His martial-arts uniform was ripped and torn, but he was victorious.

  At the end of it all, they had saved the princess, killed a shit-ton of ninjas, experienced a crazy drunken adventure, and suplexed a train. Sure, maybe Tasha had accidentally gotten married to a pervy samurai toad, but on balance it had been a good day.

  Chapter 36

  They Call Me Player

  Last Tacoday evening, Dourmal, King Under the Laundry Mountain, was kind enough to allow our own Aranrhod Kefling to interview him on location deep within the Laundry Mountain. Little is known about King Dourmal as the mountain is closed off to most outsiders, so this is a rare opportunity for us to learn about those who dwell beneath the mountain.

  Aranrhod: Thank you for agreeing to sit down with me today, King Dourmal.

  King Dourmal: Don’t mention it, lass.

  Aranrhod: King Dourmal, I’ll get right to it, then. How would you like to comment on the advent of the menu countdown and rumors of Entropy’s return?

  King Dourmal: Rumors don’t interest me. Aye, I’ve heard talk of Entropy from visitors to the mountain, but the troubles of abovegrounders such as yourselves don’t concern us.

  Aranrhod: So, you don’t believe that Lord Entropy is actually returning?

  King Dourmal: Well, I can’t say either way. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past those pointy-eared bastards to destroy the world for their own personal gains. Eh… no offense, lass.

  Aranrhod: Of course not, please go on.

  King Dourmal: What I mean to say is that even if what they say about Entropy is true, we dwarves are safe enough underground. We kicked the layabout dragons out of our mountain, after all. No overgrown snake can stand against the might of the mountain kingdom.

  Aranrhod: Dourmal, are referring to the power of the Orb of Earth?

  King Dourmal: It’s King Dourmal, missy.

  Aranrhod: My apologies, King Dourmal… So… the Orb of Earth?

  King Dourmal: Yes, what about it?

  Aranrhod: How do you respond to the rumors that have been circulating among the hill dwarves outside the mountain regarding the orb? Many of them believe that the orb is no longer allied with you.

  King Dourmal: Pfft. Ridiculous. I don’t respond to such baseless rumors.

  Aranrhod: Then, if it wouldn’t be an imposition, would you mind demonstrating its use to me? That would go a long way toward quelling those rumors.

  King Dourmal: We’re done here.

  Article from the Sunwell Gazette, Puff 20th 3205 3E

  The dwarven city of Belcross was abuzz with activity. While some of the townsfolk were understandably concerned about the sudden and unexplained appearance of a dislodged train car just beyond their front gates, most of the revelers were there for an entirely different reason.

  The streets were filled with dwarves in celebration. There was live music and expertly choreographed dwarves dancing in the streets.

  Tasha looked to Ari for an explanation, but he simply shrugged.

  After a moment, she drew a breath and approached one of the revelers. He was a short dwarven man with a white beard tied in an elaborate circular braid.

  “Hello there, dwarf.”

  “Lalli-ho, human,” he answered in reply.

  “Yeah. Listen, what is everyone celebrating?”

  “You don’t know?” he said. “Open your menu and see for yourself.”

  Swiping her menu open, she examined it for a moment, trying to find what he meant. After a moment she saw the menu’s clock. It read 80:00:59. Though the menu wasn’t moving, it was very nearly at the eighty-hour mark.

  “The clock?”

  “Exactly. We’re celebrating the countdown reaching the eighty-hour mark. We dwarves are loathe to turn away an excuse to celebrate. We just celebrated the eighty-five-hour mark a few weeks ago. I tell ya, lassie, this countdown has been a boon for partygoers like myself. I hope this explains things, lass.”

  “Thank you,” she said and then remembered that there was a proper way to address dwarves. “Um… may your beard grow ever more elaborate.”

  “And yours as well,” he said politely.

  “Er… thanks.” She turned to her friends. “Let’s pay a visit to the save point.” There were wooden street signs with floppy disk logos indicating the proper direction.

  She made her way through the main street toward the city square, which contained the town’s save point. She stopped for a moment at a street vendor and ordered a fried something-or-other on a stick. It was not dissimilar to chicken, whatever it was.

  Ten minutes later, they’d reached the city square. Wondering how much time was left before it hit the big eight-oh, Tasha opened her menu. The clock read 80:00:53.

  “Hold on,” said Ari, “let’s stock up on restoratives at this item shop.” He was indicating a building with a potion icon on the door. Nodding, she followed him inside and spent the next ten minutes filling up on potions, antidotes, and campsites. Since she’d spent all of her money on a bug catching net, she ended up bumming some money from Ari to cover the party’s expenses.

  When she left the item shop, she heard the revelers cry a word out in unison. “Ten!”

  She opened her menu and looked at it. The moment she did, the word “Nine!” filled the air. The clock read 80:00:09. She tapped the menu closed.

  The party waited for a few minutes, but nothing happened. The game clock wasn’t going to change. Something was causing it to advance at different speeds at different times.

  “I give up,” Ari said. “What’s the deal with the menu clocks? Sometimes it seems to stay at the same for hours at a time, and other times it decreases by several minutes in a single instant. There must be a reason behind this.”

  “Maybe there’s a pattern,” Tasha suggested. “Like what if there’s something different when the countdown changes than when it stays still.”

  “I’ve not seen any pattern,” said Kiwi.

  Pan just shook her head.

  “Okay,” Tasha decided, “I’m going to watch the timer like a hawk and wait for the exact moment it changes.”

  “Good luck,” said Ari. “I’ve tried that quite a few times with no success.”

  She swiped open the menu and at that moment the word “Eight!” sounded out from the crowd. The clock read 80:00:08. That was just a coincidence, right?

  She closed the menu and opened it again. “Seven!”

  After closing it and reopening it one more time, the word “Five!” rang out. This time it had skipped over six entirely.

  “Ari,” Tasha said hesitantly, “I think I’m doing this. I’m causing the countdown to change. I don’t understand how, but every time I open the menu the clock changes by about a second.”

  “That can’t be right,” he said, “it must be a coincidence. Try it now.”

  She swiped the menu open and heard the word “Four!” being recited by an increasingly excited crowd. This time she didn’t close the menu. The blue screen floated there in the air just in front of her.

  “It’s no coincidence,” she said.

  “No, it can’t be caused by you opening the menu.,” he said. “I’ve seen it counting down as we traveled together. I would have seen if you were playing in the menu.”

  “Maybe there are other things that cause it to change.”

  “Try removing an item from your inventory,” Kiwi said.

  Nodding, she opened the item screen and searched through it for a handful of seconds. Highlighting the line:

  Chocolate Chip Cookie x 94

  She touched it with one finger and clicked on the take button. A single cookie appeared in her hands. The moment it did, a chorus of “One!” filled the air.

  She looked at the cookie th
at she had removed from her inventory, but Pan had already stolen it and was munching on it happily.

  She thought out loud, “Opening my menu reduces everyone’s clock by one second. Removing a cookie reduced it by three seconds. Ari, try opening your menu.”

  Ari swiped at the air in front of him. From Tasha’s point of view, there was no change, but she knew that he was looking at his menu interface, which would be visible to him alone. There was no change in the timer. The easily amused celebrating dwarves remained more or less silent.

  “So we know that I’m causing this. It’s only my actions that affect the clock. But why? How does my opening a menu reduce the timer?”

  Nobody had an answer. There was something to this, she was certain of it.

  Her thoughts turned to the day that she arrived in Etheria. She’d been standing in her apartment staring at the wall clock. The second hand had been slowly ticking in a counterclockwise motion. It had been moving at a normal speed, each second that elapsed causing the clock to move backward by one second.

  The speed of the clocks was normal on Earth, but operated at a slower pace here and at irregular intervals. The moment that the flow of time became slow and inconsistent was when she passed from her world to this one.

  But how had she done that? How had she actually traveled to Etheria while sitting on her couch? As she had this thought, everything clicked.

  “Holy crap! I think I just figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” asked Pan.

  “I know why the clocks are behaving the way they are. I understand how I arrived at Etheria. Ari, I don’t think I’m actually here.”

  “Of course you’re here. I can see you. I can touch you.”

  “I’m not actually here,” she insisted. “Right now, I’m in my apartment, sitting on my couch, and holding a controller in my hand. There’s a TV in front of me. I’m pressing buttons to open the menu and move around.”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t make sense,” Kiwi said.

  “There’s a sympathetic link between the menu clocks here and the clocks on Earth. It’s been close to twenty hours since I started playing. What’s happening to my body? There’s gotta be some way out of here.”

  “You said that you are sitting on a couch with a controller,” Ari said. “What’s a controller?”

  “It’s something that players use to make things happen in games. It looks like that thing that appears under the menu.”

  “No, Tasha,” Ari said. “There’s nothing like that in my menu.”

  Kiwi shook her head. “I’ve never heard of anyone having a ‘controller’ under the menu.”

  She examined the floating controller that appeared under her menu. She had assumed that everyone else had one too, but now she was forced to reconsider that assumption.

  “So, it’s just something that I have,” she said. She picked up the floating controller. When she had first arrived, she’d briefly experimented with using it but found the touchscreen interface to be more useful. Now she wondered whether the controller had a different function.

  Was there some way that she could escape this world? How did players normally stop playing? Well, of course, they paused the game by pressing the start button.

  “I’m sorry, friends,” she said, “but I have to stop the world for awhile.”

  Looking at the controller in her hand, she hit the start button. The long rectangular rubber button pressed in… and then everything changed.

  Tasha was no longer in Etheria. She was sitting on her couch with a controller in her hand and her finger over the start button. She released it and put down the controller. On her plasma TV was a pixelated tile-based representation of the city of Belcross. A 16-bit sprite avatar of herself stood in the center of the screen, surrounded by sprite versions of Kiwi, Ari, Slimon, and Pan. The word “PAUSED” blinked on and off in the center of the screen. Light shone in through the window, causing a sliver of light to appear over the screen.

  Then the pain hit her. Her eyes felt like they were on fire. Her head pounded rhythmically, more painful than the worst hangover she’d ever experienced. Her throat burned and had none of its usual moisture.

  She looked down at her body. Still dressed in her bathrobe, the weight that she had lost in-game had returned. Before she could continue to take in the situation, she was consumed by a desperately urgent call of nature.

  One bathroom visit later, she realized that she was exhausted, starving, and in dire need of water. She fished out a frozen lasagna from the freezer and threw it into the microwave. Needing a side dish, she opened a packet of strawberry Pop-Tarts and put them in the toaster. While she waited, she downed half a gallon of water.

  There were stories about people who had died of thirst because they became so engrossed in video games that they forgot to take care of their bodies. If she hadn’t realized her situation and found a way out of Etheria, would that have happened to her as well?

  Shoveling bits of lasagna into her mouth, she pulled out her smartphone. The time said 79:44:51 and was counting downward steadily, one second at a time. The battery had run down to 22%. This whole adventure started on Friday night. She had left work at 6:40 and should have gotten home around 7:30 p.m. If she had been playing the game for twenty hours, that would mean the current time would be about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. That meant she’d actually been awake for nearly thirty-four hours.

  She was late for work! A moment of panic and fear began to rise within her, but she pushed it back down. Why did she care? Neither of her resurrected selves wouldn’t have cared, but she had returned to her original body, and the thought of losing her job terrified her. Ultimately the question was moot. Even if she did want to go in, she couldn’t work in her condition. Tasha was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open.

  After wolfing down the Pop-Tarts, she made her way to the bedroom. The bed was covered in piles of laundry that she had never gotten around to folding and putting away. Her eyes began to close on their own. Her head continued to throb in rhythmic pain brought on by the combination of hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation, and exhaustion.

  She shoved the clean, unfolded laundry to one side of the bed. Her bathrobe fell to the floor as she sandwiched herself between the mattress and quilt. The moment Tasha’s head hit her pillow, she was already asleep.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She awoke to find herself lying facedown on her own bed. A small puddle of drool had appeared on her pillow, so she turned it over and made a half-hearted attempt to go back to sleep. How long had she slept? It must have been a long time. Turning on to her side, she saw the wind blowing against the curtain, causing it to sway back and forth. Sunlight shone through the open window.

  Slowly and with great reluctance, she forced herself to push away the covers and get out of bed. Quickly finishing the bottle of water that she’d left by the side of her bed several days earlier, she stood up and made her way to the bathroom. As she walked through the hallway, she made out the TV screen in the living room—an ominous presence with the word “PAUSE” still blinking on and off over and over. Some part of her still waking-up brain told her that it was important, but a more rational part of her mind remained focused on getting a shower. Pretending that she didn’t see the TV, she opened the door to the bathroom and went inside.

  She turned the knob, and cold water poured from the shower, falling on her skin. It took a moment for the hot water to travel through the pipes and reach the shower, and soon the bathroom filled with steam, fogging the glass. As the warm water washed over her body, the morning confusion and disorientation drifted away.

  Ah, yes. She remembered now. She had been sucked into a video game and had only just escaped last night. How much time had passed? Instinctively, she tried to bring up the menu. Of course, nothing happened, and she realized the futility of that action right away. This was the real world, after all.

  After showering, she threw on some clean clothing and went to the kitchen. Though s
he’d managed to escape from Etheria, the idea of not returning never crossed her mind. She was more concerned with how much time had passed since she had fallen asleep. Last night the clock showed less than eighty hours remaining.

  The microwave’s LED display showed 64 hours, 35 minutes, and 55 seconds. 54… 53… 52… She must have slept for something like fifteen hours last night. Time was counting down in its steady progression, and that was more than a little problematic.

  A part of her wanted to pick up the controller and unpause the game right away, but a low rumble emerged from the stomach. She imagined herself eating a big fluffy stack of pancakes covered in maple syrup. And whipped cream. And powdered sugar. And maybe sprinkles. And some sausages. Before she could return to Etheria, she would have to bring this wish to fruition. She was a woman of action now, and pancakes were well within her capabilities.

  She went through her cupboards and finally found some pancake mix. Adding some water, oil, and the last of the eggs in the refrigerator, she mixed them together in a wooden bowl along with some blueberries and poured the concoction onto the preheated skillet next to the already sizzling sausage patties.

  Ten minutes later, she was drizzling syrup over the stack of pancakes, which was already dripping with butter. Upon applying the whipped cream, powdered sugar, and multicolored sprinkles, her creation was complete. A few rogue splotches of syrup had escaped and covered the sausage. Sausage covered with maple syrup was the best. When she’d finally finished, her belly was full, and she felt satisfied. This would normally be the time when she’d take a short post-pancake nap, but there wasn’t time for that.

  She was about to return to the game and attempt to reenter Etheria when her phone started vibrating, moving slightly on the table where she had placed it. Tasha picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was her horrible boss. Of course it was.

  Tasha briefly considered ignoring the call, but an unexpected rush of fear came over her. She could lose her job if she didn’t answer. She tapped on the “answer” button reflexively.

  “H-hello?”