READY PLAYER ONE (Fan Fiction)

[RIP-Felix]

Seek and you may find, a tomb of horrors!

Acererak the Demi-Lich says, "what is it that you seek?"

"I seek the key to immortality", then I remembered I was speaking to a king and added, "my lord".

"Of course you do", said Acerarak, "but you must first prove you are worthy."

"How may I prove my worth Noble king Acerarak?", I said.

     Instead of answering he stood from his thrown and lowered his head, his neck creaking and popping as He did so.  His eyes began glowing deep red, increasing in intensity until a brilliant beam of hellfire spewed forth. He raised his head and gazed in my direction. The unbearable heat incinerated everything in its path as the beam scorched toward me. I barely had enough time to move as I watched its path cross where I was standing a split second before. The radiant heat burned the hair off my arm and singed my face as it narrowly missed. I heard the sound of the inlaid stone floor crack from heat shock behind me as I landed and rolled out of the way. To my surprise I had instinctively unsheathed my sword. I stood and simultaneously casted a protect spell. Then I lunged forward at Acerarak with my sword raised over my head, ready to bring it down on his crown, when He held out his bony hand and said...

"HALT!"

     I could barely move! It felt like trying to run in a dream. My arms were paralyzed, my legs were like lead. I was trying with all my willpower to take another step and bring my sword down, but it was like Acerarak had slowed time and encased me in wet concrete. His immobilizing spell easily overpowered my pathetic 3rd level protect spell. His gaze had fixed squarely on me now, eyes no longer glowing. I resigned myself to imminent annihilation when Aserarak spoke again.

"You have done well. I will grant what you seek."

     He then sat back down on his thrown and waved his hand. The immobilizing spell wore off immediately and my arms dropped to my hip, the sword clutched tight and ready in front of me. Acerarak opened his mouth wide. He reached up and unhinged his jaw, bringing it down in his hand. With his other hand he reached down into the hole where his heart would be. It came back up clutching a key. He reached out, palm up, and offered it to me.

“The Key to immortality”, he said.

     As I cautiously scaled the final step toward his thrown, he re-hinged his jaw with his other hand. Now I got a closer look. The key was black onyx, with iridescent streaks of orange and red. They seemed to emit light, making the key glow in Acerarak's mummified paw. I reached out and took the key...

     The very moment my finger touched the key my perspective changed. I was confused at first, because I was no longer in the throne room. Instead I was watching a baby in the womb, then it’s birth. After a bit, a doctor placed the baby into it’s mothers arms. Then I recognized her. It was my mom! The baby was me. As images kept playing I realized I was reliving my whole life, like a movie reel in full VR.

     Get a hold of yourself Wade, I told myself. How could the OASIS simulation be showing me real memories? GSS was able to playback simcaps of events that had taken place in the OASIS or those caught on camera in the real world, but not intimate, private moments. Currently my mother was rocking me in her arms, singing lullabies. I didn’t remember these events, I was just a baby then. So this could be an elaborate simcap that just inserted stock animation of my mother. GSS certainly had her in its reistry. They kept maticulus records of everyones data just in case. Even after a user had died.

     The Wade Owen Watts life story progressed further and I began recognizing scenes from my past. I saw my mom before her death, and the events afterward. Moving in with my aunt Alice and the unpleasantness of abject poverty. Currently I was running from bullies in the stacks on my way to school. Maybe there were cameras outside, but how could they be showing me moments too private for anyone but me to know? I was getting a bit spooked now. I reached up to feel my visor, just to reassure myself I was still in the OASIS, but all I felt was my face. My visor wesn't there.

      I tried to bring up my console and log out, but the commands didn’t work. Nothing worked. All I could do is watch. Now I was playing Ache in one of our epic battles of Joust in the basement. Ache's basement was in a private chat room. Everything we did or said there was inaccessible to GSS. I knew it couldn't be an elaborate simcap now. There was no way these memories could be simulated unless they had direct access to my brain. But this wasn’t the Matrix. I'd never heard of any technology that could tap directly into your memories. I had seen an old NOVA documentary where scientists genetically engineered a fly brain expressing electrically sensitive fluorescent molecules. They could watch them fluoresce as neurons fired. Essentially, they could see a fly think in real time. It was limited to a few fly neurons at a time, but that was 35 years ago. Could the technology have matured? I tabled that line of thinking for the moment. It was too fantastic. There had to be a simpler explanation. Then a terrifying thought occurred to me.

     I always thought it was a cliché that when you're about to die, you see your whole life flash before your eyes. Just some made for TV legend. Or maybe that’s just what you experience while your brain cells started dying. This also explains the tunnel of light or meeting dead loved ones during a near death experience. No one could really know what you perceive after this initial brain cell die off, because if it went on longer you weren’t coming back to tell anyone what you saw. Maybe you just became aware of less and less, until all awareness is replaced by nothingness. This was my least favorite topic to indulge. It didn't do any good to dwell on it. I usually tried to force those thoughts out and focus on something else. There was nothing I could do about it after all, so why worry about it? I had resolved to try and enjoy my life until I couldn’t anymore. But right now I couldn’t help myself. I was reliving my whole life after all, just like all those other NDE survivors. It was me Now! Was I dying at this very moment? Did I suffer an aneurysm while logged into the OASIS? I was worried now.  WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON?

     A few moments earlier I had been seeking the key to immortality from the Demi-litch Aserarak, now I might be dying? I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that right at the moment I reached out for the key I began a trip down memory lane. But how could the two things possibly be linked. He couldn't actually hurt me. Parzival sure, but me? I weighed the facts. I was in the OASIS the moment before, but now I can’t possibly be in the simulation. I've already established that. Okay, what if there was some terrible hidden use for VR technology. Could it trigger a seizure? Could someone at GSS have programmed this dungeon to actually kill someone?

     There were supposed to safety measures. Built in software filtered out repetitive flashes that could otherwise cause epileptic seizures. Video game designers had known about this since the early 90s when certain games with flashing lights triggered seizures in kids with photosensitive epilepsy. Sure you could just design a dungeon without the safety in place, but that would only work on people with epilepsy. You would have to get around GSS' software, but it could be done if someone was determined enough to do it. What if some secretive group of designers had figured out a way to weaponize this phenomenon, to target people without epilepsy? Maybe that was happening to me now. But I didn't believe it. Maybe they really could read my mind and feed me images of my past. I was grasping at straws.

     Occam's Razor, a problem solving principal famously misused to justify asinine pet theories, states the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.

1. GSS could read my mind.
2. I had been been punked by some psychotic secretive designer who had weaponized this dungeon.
3. My sedentary lifestyle had finally caught up to me.

 With how much time I was spending in the OASIS lately, if I had suffered a massive coronary, I probably would be logged in. The fact it happened just as I grabbed the key could be an extremely unlikely chance occurrence, like winning the lottery. Except I got the Darwin award. I couldn't admit which seemed like the most likely. I was in denial. I was officially scared.

     Was I asking for trouble seeking the Key to immortality from Aserarak?  Never once did I ask myself what had to happen first. I told myself the worst that could happen is he would kill my 3rd level avatar and I would have to create a new one. Not much to loose. He couldn't really hurt me. I now began thinking he could, and had. My mind was racing. It was too late. I had taken the bait. Some asshole at GSS had fried my brain because I stumbled into his trap dungeon. All those years of studying D&D modules, fantasy titles of countless books, movies and video games, and still I had blundered into my doom. However, I was still holding out hope for option one, the only scenario in which I didn't die.

     The "Wade Owen Watts" movie was nearing its end. I continued to watch helplessly as, what I desperately hoped was a simcap, of my life story relentlessly trudged through the events of the past few minutes. I saw Aserarak’s eyes glowing and then my near miss. I watched as he paralyzed me, released me, reached into his gaping, jawless mug, and produced that evil key. That key represented death to me. The uncertainty of what it now meant, why I even wanted it in the first place, or what would happen when I touched it again was unbearable. I hated that key with all my being. I shouted at myself...

"DESTROY IT! KILL HIM! DO SOMETHING!!"

     It was useless. I watched in slow motion from above as my earlier self reached out for the key. Why hadn’t I just cut it in half right then and there, I thought to my self in regret.

"NOOO..."

     I watched as Parcival's fingers made contact with the key. Then I watched in complete terror as the inevitable events of the past caught up to the present, reliving my life story to the present moment, all colliding in one horrific surge. I closed my eyes in mortal fear. Then, I felt myself being forced backward, as if I had been ghost punched. Then I had an out of body experience.

     I slowly opened my eyes, but I was no longer looking at myself from above. Nor was I in my former position in front of Acerarak. I was now looking at myself...THROUGH ASERARAK'S EYES! It took me a moment to notice this detail however, I was still reeling from a sense of impending doom. I felt immensely relieved that option one was correct. So much for Occam's Razor, I thought. I hadn't died after all, not really, otherwise I wouldn't be around to ask stupid questions. Questions like, HOW IN THE HELL DID THAT JUST HAPPEN? How could the OASIS simulate a replay of my whole life? It was entirely too spooky. Only James Halladay himself could have programmed a transfiguration so convincingly. But, it made no sense. It didn't fit Halladay's MO. That had gone...WAY...too far. It wasn't fun. Talk about blurring the line between simulation and reality. I thought if it really were possible for a person to switch places with a Demi-litch, what I had just experienced would be how it'd feel. Things get really freaky once the simulation starts showing you things It couldn't possibly know. My mind was still reeling from the implication of this when the entity across from me spoke...

"You have attained that which you seek". 

     He then turned around and left the throne room, my former body (and its mortality) with him.

     ...My mind was still racing. Had Aserarak just conned me out of my mortality? I mean, It was too easy to "prove my worth". While It hadn't been easy to avoid his hellfire beam, he did give up relatively easily. On the other hand I did just trade a puny 3rd level humanoid avatar for a badass Demi-litch. I thought to myself, How do I get out of here? Wait, can I get out of here? I mean, if Aserarak could leave why wasn't he enjoying his immortality on a tropical pleasure planet sipping Mai-tais on the beach? Maybe his putrefying body wasn't immortal. What if it was just his intellect that was immortal, not what it was bound to?

     I began to understand. I recalled a black comedy fantasy film released in 1992 staring Meryl Street and Goldie Hawn called “Death Becomes Her.” Two middle aged women take a mysterious elixir that gives them immortality. However, it came with a huge caveat. Their bodies were not invincible. They could still die and decompose, but remain animate. The two women get into a blood feud with each other and their bodies suffer the consequences. A hilarious series of escalating retaliations ensue and the movie ends with the two, now friends, attending a wedding. They are walking down the steps leaving the venue when Helen, Goldie Hawn’s character in the film, trips and teeters on the edge of falling down the steps. When Madeline, Meryl Street’s character, doesn’t immediately react to help, Helen grabs Madeline and the two tumble down the stairs together, their disentegtating bodies breaking apart, limbs flying. The two women’s decaying heads, patched together with glue and makeup land facing one another. Helen scornfully asks Madeline, "Do you remember where you parked the car?" just before the ending credits roll.  

     Aserarak had to choose a place where his body would not decompose. Someplace like a tomb. There in his…my… tomb I became aware of something strange. Well, everything up to this point had been strange, but this was strange for a different reason. It was another of my stupid questions. My new body was all bone, cracked leather, and sinew now. If it had any organs left they had dried up long ago. So why did I have to pee so bad?

"Wade...Wade" Samantha's soothing voice was calling me... 

"Wade...It's just a nightmare." 

I was jerked back to consciousness. I sat up. Sweating and breathing heavily, I took a few moments to collect my bearings and let out a relieved What...The Fuck!

Samantha said, "I expect to hear what that one was about, in the morning." Then She laid back down.

I sighed heavily, then went to the bathroom. I doubted I could go back to sleep.

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This has been an original fan fiction by RIP-Felix. It does not represent anything except the desire to write something in the RP1 universe for fun. It's also a work in progress, and so I have and may continue to edit as I please. Enjoy or don't, as you please. And feel free to post your own fic.