Chapter 4: Age 21
I sat on the bench of the mall staring blankly at the shoppers passing by. It had been a year now since I had left college, and I had spent nearly every day playing the game. I managed to keep my parents from kicking me out or discovering my secret by starting an online course in Computer Science. I made sure to join them in the lounge with my study material every now and then, that seemed to keep them satisfied and also gave a convenient explanation for why I spent so much time alone in my room. In my defense I even did some of the work and passed too!
I made sure to go out on occasion as well, I had made a few friends online who were into the game and we would meet up and swap ideas and chat about our experiences. It actually felt like a normal life to a degree, however I was still barely sleeping at night and was spending at least eight hours a day jacked in.
Then the new game expansion came out and my life took a rapid turn for the worse.
Recent advances had brought to the market 3D recording cameras. These cameras could be mounted on a car or just carried around in your hand, they were lightweight, about half the size of a paperback book. With this new technology anyone could go out into the street and replicate whatever they recorded on their computer in full 3D. It didn’t take long for people to start recording and copying their whole neighbourhoods into the game.
Some of the friends I had made had joined together and managed to replicate most of our local neighbourhood and even populated the area with many of the people that lived nearby, ones that went out anyway. The voices were different and their personality matrices were nothing like who they really were but superficially at least, it was a copy of reality. We even took the cameras to each others houses so our home’s would be included in the scenarios making it even more believable.
I didn’t have the money for one of these cameras but my friends were nice enough to give me a copy of what they had put together. It quickly became my most used scenario in the game.
I had grown tired of the countless murder and rampage scenarios that were out, after a while none of them seemed real enough. I didn’t know the places they depicted, didn’t know the people that I became or the people that I killed and once I had killed them once, I rarely got any rush from the experience. It became hard for me to get that emotional high when I was bashing someones brains in for the fifteenth time. I needed a new release and to be able to unleash my inner demon’s on my own neighbourhood was perfect.
The first time I logged in I could barely believe it. I was standing outside my house, my own house in all it’s mediocrity in My Own Universe. I grinned and walked up the path to the front door. I opened the door and looked inside, everything was perfect. The curtains, the dining table, the wall unit with the family photos. I walked through to the staircase and climbed the stairs straight up to my room. I opened the door slowly and peeked inside. I almost expected to see myself sitting in my chair in the middle of the room with my rig on. The room was empty however, but it was clearly my room. Admittedly some things were in slightly different places, which made sense as the recording had been completed a couple of weeks ago, but it was as close to perfect as I could imagine. Now I just had to introduce people to this scenario.
A few days later and a couple of tweaks from my friends and it was finished. I spent the next two weeks spending the majority of every day tearing up my neighbourhood in my own fantasy world. I was surprised at how many people I recognised in the game, there was the stuck up lady across the street with that little poodle that she walked religiously every day. The man in the park who always fed the birds. When I visited the local mall it was filled with people I didn’t know but that was normal and the shopkeepers and workers were all familiar making it feel just like reality. I was impressed.
I didn’t need a plot or a story to keep me enthralled in this place, having the ability to murder anyone I liked, destroy anything I liked and even create my own fantasy persona was far more exciting and fulfilling than anything else I had experienced. I was God in this place, lord of the realm and when it was in my own neighbourhood it really made it feel real.
I snapped out of my daydream and looked around the mall watching the crowds go by, a little smile on my face as the possibilities ran through my head. I had stopped using powers in the game recently, it took away the realism, these days I wanted everything as real as possible, it gave me a bigger rush.
I looked over at a group of three teenage boys hanging their heads off of the edge of the barrier overlooking the ground floor. One of them was trying to spit on a group of seniors sitting on a bench much like mine on the floor below while the others laughed and cheered him on. It disgusted me and made me happy at the same time, one for how evil kids could be and the other for how realistic the game had really become now.
Rising from my bench I decided to stop dithering and start enjoying myself. I walked over to the group of boys.
“Hey guys how you doing?” I said, walking up to them casually.
“What? Who are you?” One of them said, turning around from peering off the edge.
Before he could think I grabbed the front of his shirt and threw him off the barrier. Before he even hit the ground I grabbed his friends legs who was standing next to him and flipped him over the edge too. I grinned, this was more satisfying than I thought it would be.
The last boy, the one who had been spitting, turned around to face me, eyes wide in shock from seeing his friends flung off the edge. I could hear distant screams of pain so I assumed the boys survived. I darted forward and punched him square in the nose feeling the cartilage break beneath my fist. His hands flung up to cover his face as blood started to pour down from his broken nose. I seized my moment and flung him off the edge too, he had enough time to scream as he fell. Satisfyingly I saw him land on the bench the seniors had been sitting on, his back snapping as he landed and his scream coming to an abrupt halt. I laughed and turned away from the barrier.
The other shoppers were busy fleeing from me, fleeing from the mad man who had just thrown three young boys off the top floor of a shopping mall. A pair of security guards were running towards me, hands reaching for the pepper spray on their hips. Time to jack out and load a new scenario I decided.
I reached up to remove my rig only to grab nothing but my unkempt hair.
There was no rig.
Then it dawned upon me. I wasn’t in the game, I had jacked out late this morning to go to the mall to buy some new hardware. My little daydream on the bench had thrown me off and made me forget where I was.
Panic set in, my stomach dropped. Those kids, I killed at least one of them, what the hell was I thinking! I turned and started to run from the security guards who were rapidly approaching, people scattered as I ran towards them which at least made it easier for me to run through the crowd. I saw the escalator leading to the lower floor and ran down it pushing past an old lady who seemed oblivious to the chaos around her.
Reaching the ground floor I headed towards the exit which fortunately was in the other direction from the boys I had thrown over the barrier. Racing towards it I came to a screeching halt when I saw another pair of security guards manning the doors, they saw me approach and I guess my description must have gone out or they recognised the fear on my face as they immediately started walking towards me reaching for their pepper spray. Behind the guards I could see a police car pulling up in the distance, my panic almost overcame me. I looked frantically around for another way out as the security guards drew closer. Swearing to myself I noticed a bank of elevators to my right with a door leading to a stairwell. I bolted straight towards the stairwell, crashing through the doors and sprinting up the stairs three at a time. My heart was beating faster than it ever had before in my life, my breath was ragged and I could feel my stomach starting to cramp from the exertion. I pressed on though, I had to escape. I hadn’t thought of the fact my face would be clearly shown on several CCTV cameras and unless I was prepared to run for the rest of my life I would be caught
.
I didn’t stop at the second floor or the third, I kept going until the stairs ended at a door marked ‘Roof”. Apparently opening it would trigger an alarm but with the amount of trouble I was already in I didn’t think it would matter too much, I could already hear footsteps below me and voices shouting at me to stop. I needed to move fast.
Pushing open the door, immediately a loud bell started ringing near deafening me. I ran out onto the roof and took a quick couple of seconds to decide where to go. The roof area was huge and scattered with various chimneys, pipes and air conditioning units amongst other things I couldn’t name. I thought of hiding then decided against it, they would eventually find me. I decided to just run to the far end and see what my options were there, perhaps there would be a ladder down to the ground or at least something to break my fall.
I started running to the end of the roof, behind me I heard the roof door crash open. The alarm was still ringing but I distinctly heard someone shout for me to stop. I glanced over my shoulder, it was two police men with their guns drawn and pointing right at me. Instinctively I darted behind an air conditioning unit just in time as a shot was fired, ricocheting off a pipe nearby. Weaving between the myriad of obstructions I ducked my head as I heard another shot fire behind me. Losing my footing I slipped and skidded along the ground, falling onto my back.
My heart was pounding, I could feel my vision start to dim as I started to lose consciousness. I had never exerted myself like this before in my life. Shaking it off I leapt up to my feet and kept running. I could see the edge of the roof finally coming towards me, bringing a smile to my lips. As I approached the edge I reached up to the rig on my head to turn powers back on so I could fly off the edge and to safety.
As I reached up I realised that I had forgotten where I was again. I tried to stop myself but I was running too fast and the end of the roof was only a meter away. Skidding I went over the end of the roof falling three storeys onto a garden bed below.
Luckily the fall knocked me unconscious and I didn’t have to feel the shame of being publicly dragged into a police car in handcuffs. The next thing I remembered was waking up in a hospital bed, one arm handcuffed to my bed. A doctor was standing over me, an older man with greying hair and kind eyes. He said I would be in hospital for a few more days for observation before my release to the county jail and court appearance, he was nice enough while I was there and never once referred to the reason I had been admitted. Apparently if it had been concrete I had landed on I could have died or suffered a serious permanent injury, I was lucky enough to escape with a broken leg and some cracked ribs.
My parents visited me shortly after I woke up. It wasn’t pretty, my mum couldn’t stop crying and asking me “Why?” My dad just stood there shaking his head at me and telling me what a failure I was. I didn’t see them again while I was in hospital.
A cop came in soon after to formally charge me with second degree murder, battery, resisting arrest and a bunch of other charges that I can’t remember. He asked me if I understood. I nodded, swallowing hard as tears ran down my cheeks.
“What were you thinking son?” He asked sternly, looking down at me.
“I thought it was a game.” I replied hoarsely.
The cop just shook his head. “Get a lawyer kid, and make it a good one.”
He left after that, left me alone in my room with nothing but the noise and bleeps of the hospital equipment around me. I cried myself to sleep that night, and the night after that if I remember right. My hospital time was one big blur of misery.
Eventually I was transferred to the county jail, I was lucky enough to have a room to myself due to my injuries which helped alleviate many of my prison house nightmares. The cells were only divided by bars however, allowing free view of the other inmates around me. Most looked at me in disdain, or ignored me completely. I was happy to keep to myself.
By the time my first court appearance came around I was still on crutches with a taped up chest from my cracked ribs. I nodded as the Judge asked if I understood the charges. A bail was set but I knew my parents wouldn’t pay it. I saw them up the back of the courthouse, my mother weeping softly into a tissue, my father stone faced and refusing to look me in the eye. A few hours later and I was sitting back in my cell wondering how I had managed to fall so far so quickly.
Not much changed over the following few weeks. I sat in my cell, read some books, slowly healed. I made friends with the guy in the cell next to me, Tyrone. He had been busted for stealing a car. We were around the same age, both liked video games so that helped us get talking. By the time he left after we had spent a couple of months together I think we knew everything about each other. I missed him more than I thought I would when he left.
My parents never visited me in jail, although I did get a letter from my mother. She told me she was sorry she couldn’t see me but was having trouble accepting what I had turned into. She promised to see me when I was sentenced.
My final court day came around four months after I had first been thrown in jail. It felt like four years. I no longer needed my crutches and walked with little more than a slight limp. My lawyer had even given me a suit to wear, I honestly looked the best I had in years.
My lawyer had tried to plead insanity but the judge wasn’t having any of it, apparently thinking you were in a video game had been tried too many times in the past. I was found guilty on all counts. The judge took into account my young age and clean record and sentenced me to twenty years with a fifteen year non parole period. Apparently this was quite a good deal, I found that hard to believe when I was faced with the fact that I would be 36 at best by the time I got out. If I got out. My parents never turned up for the sentencing.
I sat in my cell that night for the last time before I got transferred and cried again. I hadn’t cried since the hospital but I cried now more than I ever had before in my life. I was surprised that none of the other prisoners said anything but I guess they had heard what happened and understood, either that or they just didn’t care.
The next day I was escorted out into a secured bus and driven the three hour drive to the jailhouse. I don’t even remember the drive, I just remember seeing this big imposing grey wall topped with razor wire with a massive grey building behind it. My new home.
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