Short Story: Despair

Arcturus Bleak is not finding his job at Mephistopheles Software very rewarding. In fact, he does not find anything rewarding, for joy is an emotion foreign to this malcontent. When the negative game development stage passes, he suddenly finds himself obsolete to the programming team, and reassigned to the beta testing room. But this is not a game for fun, but a virtual nightmare designed to turn even the most gentle person into a psychopath capable of anything. Eventually, he finds this out, though it may be too late to salvage his sanity from the depths of the Void.
- Cricket

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Despair

What use is life? You work ?'till death
Eking out every straining breath,
All so we can see our children grown,
to raise little robots of their own.

Happiness eludes me. Forever have I been stuck in this endless thought-loop of misery and despond, twirling and spiraling and pulling me into a vortex filled with every iniquity, and the capricious disfavor of fate.


My name is Arcturus Bleak, and by virtually every measuring rod civilization has ever sworn by, I've led a great life. Affluence and success and every sort of blessing lights upon my back, yet I cannot feel their weight nor their warmth. A freakish chemical alchemy within my brain forever prevents me from remembering any pleasing event, so it seems I might forever live in this horrid state of distemper, this madness that allows no recreation, no joyful, teary-eyed moment to go un-blotted. Then, flip the coin, and tilt the measuring scales of Fortune against me yet further; every torturous moment of introspection, every misery and iniquity, seems embedded forever within my brain with indelibly burned-in neurons. I can never remember that which I forget (and that which I want), and I cannot forget what I wish to remember. So in this state I remain, though I know not why I bother, as all the things in life worth living for are condemned to be forever erased from existence, as if they never really happened . . . Had I not mementos, reminders of how my life prior to this malaise had been, I could have been easily convinced that my entire life was lived out sans joy, sans laughter, sans hope.


I work as a game developer at Mephistopheles Software, Inc., writing out line after meaningless line of code for a middle-class salary and the pride of accomplishment; at least, that's what Thanatos says I'm working for. Personally, I'm doing it for the salary, and accomplishments be damned.


I was settled into a long stint of coding in my sensory-deprivation cubicle (all pallid white rectangular walls, hideous in their conformity) when suddenly a hissing above my head made it known that an announcement was soon to be made.


"Attention, all workers," the detestable public address system declared, an announcement that something unpleasant and painful was about to be laid upon us once again. I despise that ******* box; the way it fills the room with our detestable manager's wheedling, high-pitched voice, the way it never has anything upbeat to say, and, most especially, the fact that it was placed, in a blatant show of sadism, directly above my cubicle. I wanted to tear the Goddamn monstrosity from the wall and break it over the manager's ugly head. I'd get fired, but I know it would be worth it, at least until it was stricken from my mind as all pleasant things are.


The P.A. squawked a bit as its' voice searched for the right words. It didn't find them. "We've received reports that there have been cases of exuberance on some of the upper floors. Let it be known that these outbursts have been met with immediate electrical comeuppance and detainment.


Great. So the happy people have been tazed and sent off to the reprogramming chambers or something, lest they dare show emotion again. That leaves those like myself, who aren't prone to flights of joy, with much more job security. Pass the love around, corporate America, and refrain not the least in sappiness.
I'll bet you're wondering how far in the future I am. Well, to keep it vague and my ridiculous premises intact, I'll say it'll be a long span of lots of tomorrows before our today will be even this super-futuristic time period's day before yesterday's eve.


My shift having ended, I made haste to my car, and drove home to my squalid apartment, made all the more poor by my roommate Jovia's slovenly theory on cleaning, which apparently consisted of spreading everything in the room around for maximum dispersion.


I tripped over a magazine and crashed my head into the apartment's wall, much to the amusement of Jovia, who had a good laugh over it before I could collect myself enough to tell her off.


"So, did you have a lovely day of wasting your life away, Arcturus?"
"Oh, absolutely. If it gets any more cheerful over there, the Grim Reaper's going to be added to the R.and D. team."
"Such a shame . . . want a hit?" she damn near shoved the gel caps into my throat in her eagerness.
"No thanks. It won't help. Hell, even if it it does, I won't remember it anyway."
"That's a rather negative outlook on life." She appeared genuinely concerned, and even if it was like putting aloe vera on a third-degree burn, the balm of her sympathy did help.
"Well, it's the only outlook I've ever been able to have."
"You sure you don't need a bit of frying? You seem even more down than usual."
"No, really, no thanks."


Jovia was a drug dealer, one of America's many testaments to that infernal rule of business that states that you can make far more money dishonestly than honestly. And she did her job well, inasmuch as it required skill.

"So, how much you make today?"
"I cleared ten thousand since this afternoon. Before that . . . well, it's sort of a blur."

"Understandable. Sheesh . . . you make more in a day than I do in a month."

"Yes, kind of sad, isn't it?"
I didn't answer. Sleep seemed the answer to the day's woes, so I popped a sleep aid and drifted into thankfully dreamless sleep.
I awoke with a start. Jovia was standing over me, pointing at her watch. Moments later, I realized why.


"Great . . ." I muttered as I threw my clothes on and ran to the car. My alarm had failed to go off, and I was already late. In one hurried motion, I opened my car door, slid the keys into the ignition, and punched the accelerator, taking off like a shot.


In spite of breaking several speed limits (and perhaps the sound barrier), I still managed to show up at the Mephistopheles building ten minutes late, and the plastic smiles on everyone's faces revealed to me that some new managerial perversion had been laid upon the populace. I may not be the happiest guy in the world, but I knew for a fact that every single person in this building could not possibly be unearthly happy all on the same day. They weren't supposed to start putting crack in the water supply for at least another week. Things were looking bad for me.


A faceless, utterly unimportant courier, seeing my usual fatalistic expression firmly laid upon my face like uneven concrete, tapped me on the shoulder. "Mr. Thanatos wishes to see you," he whispered, a hint of fear in his voice. A meeting with Thanatos right now was the last thing I wanted to find myself in.


Finding his office with relative ease (it was the only door along an infinite line of nondescript mahogany offices to be adorned with a golden crest above the frame), I entered it, nervously pondering what complaint he might have for me.

"What's the matter, Arcturus?" Mr. Thanatos inquired as I found a ready seat opposite his imposing desk. "The depressed section of the game's design has been finished; it is now time for happiness! Why do you not follow suit like the rest of the catt . . . associates?" His eyes darted and danced like daunting dervishes until they at last dwelt again on I, the Bleak One, still sitting there idly waiting for a good response be ushered through my internal critic's review board.
Suddenly, one arose. "It's a medical condition," I ventured. Ha! One can't argue with that, and indeed, nor can one be fired from it. For a moment, it seemed that at last I would have a victory in the workplace, for obviously I couldn't work on something happy, yet I obviously couldn't be fired for a medical disability either.

"Truly? Curious . . ." Thanatos' brows contorted into a freakish zigzag as his managerial instincts set to work about finding a loophole. And, damn the wisdom of age, he did!

"Well, then, I guess we have no choice. Recent events have left us without a primary beta tester for our newest product," he said, a twisted grin spreading across his face.

I had heard all about this tech. His name was Rayus, and the few times I'd met him, he seemed relatively level-headed. I pitied the poor bastard; in a fit of madness, he had flung himself from one of the breathtakingly high windows on the upper floors. Made quite a mess that the maintenance crew bitched to no end about cleaning up the next day. Imagine, a man's life is lost, and they have nothing better to do than rant about a bit of extra work.

Thanatos wasn't waiting for an okay. This wasn't a request. This was an "obey or be cast down before my greatness" situation I had on my hands. It was quite unpleasant, finding myself so wholly within another's power, even if he does write my paycheck. So, in spite of nagging doubts telling me to escape with my soul intact, I silently acquiesced, timidly walking to the R & D room in search of the fabled game.

I opened the door and entered the curious white room, surveying the equipment. There was a viewing monitor in the corner of the room, which I assumed was for the beta testers' partner to keep tabs on the tester's progress, the infamous tie-dyed suit which Rayus had so recently found himself a victim of, a television with an archaic console plugged into it. Also, sitting in the only chair in the room, as plugged into the console as the console was plugged into the wall, was Codex, ensnared within the bonds of interactive entertainment in its infancy.

Codex seemed to hardly notice that I was in the room, so intently was he banging away at a control pad, diverting his energies to some long-extinct gaming system. I had to ask what he was doing, so, despite any urging by my mental compass, I did.

"Trying to trace the path from past to present," he said reflectively. His fingers seemed almost possessed as he swung frantically every which direction in an effort to keep his pitiful helicopter alive amongst numerous oversized, slow-moving "bullets" that were being fired by the numerous sprite-based, two-dimensional enemies. They ranged from tiny grunts brandishing ineffectual automatics that for some reason only fired a single bulbous shot at a time to flying fortresses that seemed capable of wiping out much of the eastern seaboard with a single barrage (had they been real, that is).

"What do you mean?"

"Since the advent of gaming, we coders have always been in direct competition with non-interactive entertainments, such as television, movies, magazines, books and the like. But, at the same time, our medium, from the very start, contained a unique advantage.

"The limitation of all other forms of entertainment," Codex said with a grandiose flourish of his hands that nearly sent his tiny helicopter to Valhalla, "is that in the end, you view them once, and though you may find things you didn't notice the first time, it is the same movie, the same book that you saw every time. Even in these primitive beginnings, you are offered the unique opportunity to truly BE the star, not just watch another man play the part out for you. And no matter how old the game is," he said, turning around and relinquishing his controller, his helicopter exploding in flames and "Game Over" spelling itself out in stern block letters, "you never play through a game quite the same way twice. Now, we no longer have such things as virtual reality. In this day and age, you ARE the star, and actual reality is the newest industry buzzword. Every thought, every sensation you experience within the confines of this game, is as real to you as I or our megalomaniacal boss."
This was not at all reassuring. "So, what you're saying is, I can't distinguish this game from reality."

"No, what I'm saying is, there is no difference between the two. This game is truly the beginning of a revolution; imagine, total suspension of disbelief!

Codex laughed disarmingly as he spun around and hefted a tie-dyed chrome suit with fractal images of blue and green and yellows fading to orange before me, eagerly handing the unit into my unwilling hands.
"So, ever had an experience of total immersion before?" Codex asked as he fastidiously fastened the locking mechanisms together. Now I was trapped, my only reprieve being Codex powering down the suit after the beta test. It made me nervous. Could I trust this shmuck with something as tender and tentative as my sanity?

I decided to swallow such arguments, and do my best to keep my job. "No, never played a game like this before," I replied, although it became clear by Codex's absent-minded nodding that he was never waiting for an answer anyhow. "What's this game about, exactly?"
"Well, it's like nothing you've ever experienced, really. Your goal in here is to understand the Void, without letting it consume you. Hope you've got a strong constitution. Oh, and . . ." he leaned forward as if to emphasize the point he was about to make, and implored me, his voice barely above a whisper, "Don't fear what can't hurt you."

He threw a switch, and his face disappeared, replaced with a kaleidoscopic explosion of test patterns, which were then subsequently followed by a brilliant white flash as the first level began loading. I could hardly hold my stomach as the first world drew clear around me.

I ran in a dazed panic as scenes of horror flashed by my vision at a blistering pace. Severed heads and burning buildings, tortured puppies and festering wounds. The images came with such haste and malevolence that I presumed I should be reduced to a mental patient, a screaming, writhing mass of barely-sentient flesh capable only of destroying all that I held near and dear and thought I cared about. Which was absolutely nothing. There is nothing. I was becoming the Void, the absolute nothingness, the apex of nihilism. Any thought of resistance would be simply forgotten. I kind of preferred it when video game characters did nothing but run and jump.

Then, just as fast as they had appeared, these freakish things vanished, and the next level in the game began. Now there were a great many smiley faces, and I was walking upon a translucent cloud with a rainbow shining through it. From the way it looked, things would be all smiles and sunshine from here. How revoltingly smarmy. Someone needs to shoot this game's creator, or at least force him to play it. Of course, my company did in fact make this game, so I figured I'd keep any destructive criticism on the down-low for the moment.

"Quitting time!" Codex shouted eagerly as in his haste he nearly pulled my head off along with the helmet. About time. Though it brought me no joy to see the day end, at least I was away from that accursed game for the time being.
Upon arriving at my home, I realized that, for whatever reason, Jovia was not around yet, so I sulked in total silence as I cudgeled my brain for some form of release to manifest itself before me. The TV was idly begging me to watch it. Gaze upon me, it called, and be entertained. Watch longer, and be zombified. Get past the next commercial break, and you are ours. **** it. The last thing I needed at the moment was a telepathic TV. I shut the damned thing off. My present distemper could not be allayed by such an impotent tincture. I needed more than diversion. I needed direction, somewhere, something to occupy myself, that I might evade this parade of mental tortures that awaited any conscious endeavor. The room felt subjectively smaller, more cramped. I could stand it no longer. I had to go out.

The sun brightened my mood and lifted my spirit, but these minor tonics fell short of the underlying melancholy that presented a constant echoing doubt before me that would not, despite all my efforts, be denied. I walked on, my steps feeling progressively heavier as I went until I felt as though I would sink to the center of the earth, so heavy did my misery weigh upon me. I could feel a pain growing inside my head as I walked, a nagging pain that seemed to be growing with each step, even as the weight of my feet grew unbearably massive.

I stopped walking now, and kneeled on the ground, massaging my temples in a useless effort to allay the torment. The pain within my head grew stronger and more malevolent, and an audible buzzing sound within my earlobes grew into a cacophonous white noise, and as I clutched my ears in futility and dropped to the ground dazed with pain, I wondered what on earth was happening to me.. What the hell is my problem? I desperately queried my soul for answers. Am I hexed, vexed, maybe undersexed? Perhaps it's just some sudden migraine, and it will pass. Wishful thinking. The problem rapidly grew until my head pulsed with an unearthly energy, and I thought I might implode, the force was pulling so harshly inward.

With much difficulty, I found my way back to the house, and, dropping into my bed with the weight of a thousand superclusters pressing down on my back, I found unconscious to be an inviting alternative to agonizing pain.

I awoke with a start; wherever Jovia had gone to the previous night, she was here now, standing over my head, pointing at her watch just as she had before. There was a difference, however; it wasn't even bright out yet. In fact, it appeared as though the sun was setting . . .
"Wake up, ya lazy bastard!" she shouted energetically as she threw a smattering of clothing at me, which I hurriedly put on, thinking I was surely late again. Amidst my confusion was Jovia, laughing at my attempts to hurry.

"What's so funny?"
"It's not even 9 PM, genius," she said, mocking my haste, her car keys dangling in her hand. "You've only been sleeping maybe an hour at most. Anyhow, get yourself out of bed, we're going drinking."

Going drinking didn't sound like a tremendously exciting proposition, but perhaps I owed it to myself to get out on the town; after all, I couldn't even remember the last time I'd done it, and I'd say the fact that I forgot it surely meant it had been enjoyable.

The ride over to the bar was uneventful. The first few shots went down my throat in a blur, and within minutes, I was trashed, laughing at whatever stupid joke Jovia came up with.

Jovia twitched a bit as she poured me another round. "C'mon, take another shot, ya lil' bitch," she teased. It was not appreciated. But in spite of her obviously pushing it on me, I complied, downing it a little too eagerly. A wave of dizziness rushed up as the previous shot caught up on me. This next one would be . . . unwelcome.
"Want another?" She was inches from his face.
"Look, it pays to know your limits."
"Limits? The world is limitless, my friend. You must always be reaching out and snatching up the new and improved." Jovia gave me an ingratiating look of encouragement, which, unfortunately, had little effect.
"You sound like a commercial, but I'm afraid the ad's not working."
"Come on." She pouted. A cheap ploy. Absolutely shameless, really.
"Okay, fi-" I faltered. The room spun a rally-style donut, announcing to me that puking and passing out might soon be on my itinerary soon enough."
"How many have you had? Like, 4 or 5? Not nearly enough, I say."
"Look, I'm getting sick here."
"Oh . . . I'm sorry. You need me to help you to the bathroom?"
"No . . . I'll be all right. I think. Let's just stay sitting down for a while before we leave, shall we? I'd rather not tempt my insides."
"Good plan."

A half-hour later, I had left the bar, barely staving off puking by instead passing out on the ride home; I had felt sick deep down to my innermost being.

Jovia had laid me out on my bed in my unconscious state, and when I awoke the next day, it felt as if each half of my head had divided into its own faction, and now the two halves were viciously making war with each other, with me as the unhappy spectator. Not a great way to begin a day, lemme tell ya.

Making it to work that day was a chore, but somehow in a mindless stupor I found my way to the R & D room for the usual round of mental tortures. Codex had seemingly not even left the room since I'd gone home; in fact, he was still sitting in his chair. Doesn't he ever go home?

"Ah, hello Arcturus," he said, dressing me neatly in the psychedelic jumpsuit as he switched on the various gauges and adjusted them to the proper parameters (or maybe he just liked to make it look like he was contributing to the project somehow).

The world faded out, and once again I found myself trapped in the virtual. I surveyed my immediate surroundings; it was some dark and foul dungeon, and someone had made a mighty effort to recreate the stench of rotting flesh, because the stench almost made me pass out.

I realized that I was armed with a sword, so I drew it, testing its' sharpness on a nearby captive who had long ago expired. To my surprise, it was so incredibly sharp that, indeed, it split the skull of the unfortunate captive in two with minimal effort.

I had little time to revel in my swords' strength, however. A rustling in the darkness ahead of me informed me that sinister things plotted my demise, and the terror was made all the more intense by the lack of visibility in these dank corridors. I snatched up the single torch, the only source of illumination in the dungeon, and made my way slowly down.
A harpy of some sort, with a women's face, auburn hair and dreadfully sharp talons swooped down upon my person, tearing at my back with a savage ferocity. The pain was virtual, but the sensation was as real as if I'd truly been cut, and this realization was the last thing I wanted to know right now. I would not be struck again. The harpy made a second pass, and I split it neatly in two with my sword, quite satisfied in my skills.

The world shifted and twisted again, and now I was back in the realm of the sickeningly sweet, jumping mindlessly across flowers and over spikes with smiles painted on them, attempting to find my way to some curious metal structure that seemed to be some sort of curious factory that churned out sentient turnips by the droves. The turnips were not a problem, really; though hostile in spite of their benign features, they fell quickly to a few neat sword-strokes, and were really no threat.

I finally made my way to the fortress, seemingly made of all sorts of intertwined pipes, and entered the great steel gates, my sword being the only key I would ever need.

Within the fortress, however, the nightmare began again. I found myself rushing in a sewage aqueduct at a breakneck speed past thousands of hideously mutated chimeras born of the most diabolical genetic experiments, until I at last dropped from the pipe's outlet into a vertical shaft and found myself ensnared upside-down by thousands of mutant vines, as the chimeras approached and began to encircle me in a terrifying Carmagnole of the grotesque.

And then, without notice, they all began a hideous song, more like a scream than a tune, and the many chimera denizens of the fortress chimed in from all around.

"Mad, mad, mad, MAD!" blared the chorus of thousands, with backups ad infinitum, gleefully searing through my subconscious until the very inner workings were scathed. No therapy, no happy pill, no reassurance from a loved one could counteract this intent chorus that bespoke what I already knew. I seemed doomed to follow it wherever it might take me.

At this point, Codex pulled my helmet off, exclaiming with a gleeful voice that it was once again the end of the day. I nearly decked him, so touched was I by the visions I had seen scourge my eyes. How could I forgot such monstrosities? They had seemed as real as any day in my life had been. How could I fear what can't hurt me when I can't even distinguish it from what can?

What could I do about it? This question baited me again and again as I drove home, until a seeming solution presented itself. I needed help, professional help most likely, so that day I went to see a professional, shelling out good money for bad advice.

The surgeon/psychiatrist, (talk about a lot of years in school!) a slightly over 40 guy, did not look he knew what he was talking about. "Now, to elaborate on what you just said, what you are experiencing is a sort of total amnesia for all things that provoke a positive response in you."

"Uh, sure." Damn, this guy was an idiot. I already KNEW that, and I didn't need two different degrees to ascertain it either. I never had a high opinion of psychological studies. I say it's nothing but modern-day voodoo, all smoke, mirrors and complexes, and behind it all, a neo-shaman called a psychiatrist/psychotherapist/damned idiot, who writes esoteric notes on a sheet of paper as he scratches his moustache and says "Hmm, very interesting."

In spite of my doubts, I was in fact paying this bastard over a hundred fifty bucks an hour to listen to my ravings, so I figured I ought to start. "I can't remember a single good thing happening to me since I was a child. Not a one." My face fell. The whole concept was depressing.
"My, my . . . this is certainly a serious case. You seem to have developed an entirely new psychological disorder."
"So I get a mental disease named after me. Friggin' wonderful."
"Now, now, pessimism will impede the healing process."
"WHAT healing process? What am I supposed to hope for, that I'll wake up one day and my brain will be normal again? It's not going to happen, so don't even try to pretend you're fixing something here!"
"Hostility towards me isn't going to aid anything. Now, aside from mental exercise, another option is brain surgery. Perhaps we might be able to switch on the mechanisms within your head that have fallen silent."
This was the last thing I wanted to hear. "I don't want to get my brain dissected, I want to get WELL!" If I carried a gun, I'd have been pulling it out right now, not so much to use it, but for effect.
"Arcturus, your resistance is going to prevent me from helping you. At this rate, you will most likely have to find the answers for yourself."
"Figures. Thanks a lot, Doc; I suppose your lack of success isn't going to prevent a hefty bill, isn't it?"
"Hasn't before." Smart doctor. Perhaps I had appraised his intelligence wrong before. Nonetheless, I paid him the cash owed him and left, no better off than when I entered.
My drive home from there nearly overtaxed my already exhausted frame, and I found myself out cold before I could even adjust my pillow.
That night, in spite of my tremendous exhaustion, my mind still found itself to be fully capable of dreams, and so, despite my resistance, I began to see a dream unfolding before me.
It seemed peaceful enough at first. I saw an idyllic playground slowly come into focus, with a merry-go-round full of giddy children laughing and squealing as ?'round and ?'round they went in their contraption, which was essentially a roundabout means of going nowhere.
What a perfect and peaceful image I saw before me! I knew it could not last. No, my mind would not let such joy go unchecked. And, surely as my life is a joke, in stepped the ruinous element.
It was quiet, and rather soft, at first. A tiny orb of some curious light - no, not even a light, more like a forced darkness, a sort of anti-light that annihilates and replaces any true light upon contact. And it hovered in a haunting fashion over the center of the merry-go-round as the oblivious children continued their frantic revolutions.
Then, it took them. Not that it devoured them, or anything of that sort. I mean that they were tainted, that the anti-light floated into and through each one of them, scourging each in kind with its subversive powers. The playing had ceased; the merry-go-round slowed and drew silent, as the children momentarily froze, all of them staring at me with accusing eyes as if to say in one resoundingly soundless voice, "you have brought this upon us."

Then, with no warning at all, the carnage began. The children had all possessed weapons from the beginning, from guns to knives to flails to samurai swords, and in a terrible crash they descended upon each other, greeting violence with violence. The shots and slashes tore through the children like a pestilence, consuming all save the sole bloodied survivor, a stocky boy armed with a samurai sword who had just impaled the runner-up with his blade, and then, almost elated at his victory, he raised his sword into the air, the ball of anti-light spiraling downwards to meet the winner. It slowly settled behind the boy's eyes, and he looked at me with the crazed smirk of one so young locked into a battle-frenzy. The ball vanished as it was absorbed inside of his skull, and his newly-possessed eyes, green cross-hairs intersecting through both orbs, gazed upon me with such ferocity that I thought I would be consumed and rendered dead by my being those horrible eyes' foci.


His smirk vanished as he drove his sword deep into the still blood-soaked earth, and his ensnared voice spoke a single word to me: "Void."

This jolted me to consciousness. In spite of efforts to counter my remembering this awful dream, it stayed as concretely as if I'd lived it. The message it had delivered was truly clear: the Void wasn't out to get me. It had already possessed my soul from within.
And it wanted in deeper.

I was now tired of the sickness. I awoke that day with a new resolve. Thanatos would die by my hand this very day; that cold-hearted deviant would pay for the torture he'd subjected me to. So, grabbing a knife from my kitchenette, I drove to work with a new sense of purpose in my life. I was to be an avenging angel this day, descending upon Thanatos with devastating ferocity. Or so my delusions went.
In fact, when I burst into Thanatos' office, he seemed almost as if he'd expected to see me. "Something wrong, Arcturus? How's production coming?"


"Production stops today!" I shouted, revealing the knife. I stabbed at him, but with agility I did not expect in such an old man, he grasped my wrist as he pounded on the security call button. They were upon me within seconds, and resisting seemed futile in the face of such overwhelming numbers.

"Take him back to the beta testing room," Thanatos said as if no murder attempt had occurred at all.
I was tired of looking in as some freak, some outsider who can't even live the sordid life without screwing it up. I wanted to be down with the sickness too. Surely there had to be a way.
Codex acted happy to see me. I suspect he was just jovial that he didn't have to go into the damned game himself. He was playing around with some coding when I walked in. A sexy female tech was toying with a few parameters when an invisible tug at her dress caught her attention.


"What the hell . . ." she said, staring at her errant dress as it danced about her legs as if an invisible midget was raising hell under it.
Finally, the dress began pulling upon her violently until it actually lifted her clear off the ground! The dress then firmly upended itself, giving Codex and myself a perfect view, which I suspected was the intent of the prank all along.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked, as I watched her fall to the ground, utterly confused. "Glitch in the system," Codex said helpfully. "At times bugs in the programming allow elements in the game to interact with real life. Very, very bad for business, but good for entertainment purposes, like in this case." Something tells me this wasn't just some "bug" Codex had discovered, but something he'd written in himself for his own amusement.

"Oh, really," I said, doing my best to pretend I wasn't absorbing, mulling over, and debating with myself over how I would handle this newfound information. A little creative re-programming could make this program into something more than just a game.

For now, however, simple survival was my primary goal. As I found myself again isolated within the virtual world, it almost seemed more familiar than the real one now, but still no less terrible. I was surrounded on every side by hundreds of thousands of malignant spirits, all hurling accusations and bestowing upon me fell revelations, as I walked through a dark and evil swamp on a moonless night. The foul apparitions followed and danced around me with every step, telling me it was hopeless, telling me to give up in my futile efforts, telling me just to close my eyes and let the Void consume me. But I would not let it. I slogged on, determined to make it through yet another day of nightmares and ill phantasms so that I might have revenge upon he who was responsible for my plight.

Codex's announcement that it was time to go was a bit more subdued than previously. The week had clearly been bearing on him, so, in an uncharacteristic move, he actually decided to go home after quitting time today. Excellent! The consummation of my plans would now be simpler than ever. All night I mulled over the endless lines of code, endlessly seeking that tiny snippet of coding that would be the key I needed to unleash this horrid game upon Thanatos, so comfortable within the confines of his spacious office. He would soon perish by my hand.

Suddenly, with the enthusiasm of one discovering an asteroid made entirely of diamond, I happened upon the errant coding. EXCESS(6)-> . . . nothing. Aha! A simple memory leak had been diverted into so much more by the inventive Codex; somehow, he had managed to point this small portion of the memory into affecting the real world.

I cracked my knuckles with resolve as my fingers glided across the keyboard in a determined ballet of functionality and ill intent. Thanatos' time was drawing short.

I didn't sleep at all that night, so excited and eager was I to test out my newly revamped program. It was Codex's day off, and the female tech had called in sick, leaving me to be the only one in the beta testing room today. I couldn't believe how perfect things were turning out.

I donned the psychedelic jumpsuit as a great surge of confidence ran a wide course through me. Starting the system manually, to my great joy I found myself not in that freakish nightmare world like previously, but instead found myself standing in the beta testing room, girded in thick armor, my sword in hand! Success! With violent intent in mind, I sprinted at a wicked pace to Thanatos' vile office.

I entered Thanatos' office without knocking, my sword resting comfortably in its sheath at my hip. "Boss!" I shouted, tinges of psychosis tainting my normally soft-spoken voice. "I have a message for you from the afterworld!"

"Certainly, Arcturus, your input is always welcome." Subtly, almost unnoticeably, I saw his hand move towards the security call button, in an attempt to bring aid into the room. He knew already what I had planned, just as he had predicted it previously.

"Not today, Thanatos," I said cooly, almost cruelly as my sword found itself easily unsheathed, and a precision slice removed the tip of Thanatos' fingers.

He winced, covering the bloody nubs that comprised the fingers of his left hand with a cloth, which seemed to be ineffectual in controlling the drainage. His face went pale as he looked away from his hand and back at me.

"What do you want, Arcturus?" Thanatos asked, desperation in his voice. "Is this about the raise you never got? Did you want the window cubicle? Or is this something else?"
"Your third guess is closest," I said cryptically, as my sword lay idly by my side, still dripping from its' recent offense. "All these years have I worked under you, never appreciated, never recognized for my talents. You've done nothing for your employees save undermine them with your sick, twisted managerial games!"
"So, is this about revenge?"
"Not at all. I want you to feel the suffering of those under you. I don't know what sort of twisted sociopath you are underneath, but even you must understand the concept of pain. I am here to see you weep for me with tears of scarlet."

I raised the sword again for the killing blow, Thanatos lifting his right arm in a futile effort to catch the blade. I paused theatrically for a moment, letting the message sink in, then with a brutal slice I eviscerated arm from shoulder, then neatly sliced him above his eyebrows, watching him slump over, a flurry of vermilion tears flooding from above his eyes as he slowly realized that this was to be his last day on earth.

"This won't fix anything," Thanatos taunted me, obstinate to the end. "You're still the same miserable person you always were, Arcturus. Will you even remember this? I sincerely doubt it. No joy has a place within your head. Your self-destruction will one day be your end as well."
"Quit talking nonsense, Thanatos! Haven't you the dignity to die quietly?"
Thanatos laughed maniacally, and it seemed his dying frame was laughing within the threshold of the afterlife as much as this one. "Don't you get it, kid? This was never about the making of a game. Do you think it was coincidence that your predecessor dove to his untimely end all so recently? Not at all! It was all part of the perfection process. This game is so much more than a plaything for foolish children."
"You speak of madness as if the sane can understand you."
"You'll understand this," he said coolly, flipping on a monitor behind himself. A rough-edged, grainy video clip began playing, and there before me was Rayus, flinging chairs and overturning tables in a frantic escape attempt. A trio of security guards were attempting to subdue him, by the looks of it, but he tore away from them as if they were no more than chaff, and sprinted down the hallway.

The clip switched cameras, and followed his desperate sprint down the hallway. Another guard fired a round from a tazer into Rayus' neck, which he shrugged off, turning the weapon on its' owners' face and firing it again, then in one fluid motion shattering his neck with a savage pull. He looked directly at the camera's eyepiece with possessed, tortured eyes, and whispered, barely audible, "There is only one escape from the Void," and leapt through the window at the end of his hall to his death a tremendous number of stories below.

"Makes more sense now, doesn't it?" Thanatos said, a sadistic grin now splitting his face. "For years, opponents of video games have denounced them as murder simulators, nothing but violence begetting violence. But I have taken it one further. Imagine, a game that takes such a psychological hold upon you, that it actually drives you to kill! Psychosis is, for the cunning businessman, but a cunning business tool. Imagine how many hundreds of thousands of people, cults, factions, and anarchy groups will be knocking down our doors to get their hands on this, the culmination of all games before it! That is what the Void is, and that is why you can never escape it."

His eyes grew dark and weary. I shook him frantically, trying to get him to reveal the way out of this nightmare world, but he was silent, almost placid. With a shrug of his shoulders and a small exhalation of breath, he slipped from my fingers into the afterlife. I was loath to imagine what awful things awaited such a man after death.

His words echoed within my brain like a death rattle, as despondence once again overtook my momentarily lightened demeanor. I no longer had any idea how I'd gotten here, to this place, and committed capital murder. Was this even real? Surely it had to be. Warily, I removed my helmet, finding myself once again within the confines of the white beta testing room. It may have been only a game, but the results had been as real as any. Nothing could undo what I had done in a fit of rage. The Void had me playing its' malignant game once again, an unwilling player who could simply not locate the reset button. In the end, Thanatos' death had been the very victory he was looking for. I attempted to flee the testing room in a state of near-panic, when Jovia caught my eye.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?" I demanded of her indignantly. Surely she could not have witnessed the murder, as she must have been standing in the beta testing room all along.
Jovia seemed enraptured in a fit of delusion, staring incessantly at the ceiling, and giving no indication that she'd even heard me speak. Something seemed awry. The ambience evoked desperation and confusion, and there she stood, at the very crux of it all, holding a vial of acid in her ethereal palm. It seemed so unreal, I wondered for a few seconds if I'd unplugged myself from the simulator. But, surely enough, she was as real as I was.
Finally, after what seemed an infinite looping span of consecutive semi-moments, she spoke to me. "I came when you didn't show up at home last night. I was afraid something had happened to you. You've done something downright deplorable, haven't you, Arcturus?"
"I . . . yes."
"Can't hide anything from me. I can see it in your eyes. You are shocked and ashamed to what depths of depravity you have lowered yourself to. Do you deny it?"
"How . . . how could I?"
"You can't, can you? No excuse will stave off the truth, I'm afraid."
"Yes, but . . . how did you know?"
"I saw it all, every last moment of it. I followed you since you left the house; you seemed so odd when you left that I was worried for you. And I watched all that you did to Thanatos on the monitor. You're stuck in a game that you cannot end, aren't you?"
"But . . . I can shut it down and leave it, any time I wish."
"Nonsense! The technology part of it you can escape, perhaps. But there is something more insidious to the Void than simple technology. It's the part that remains within your mind that you cannot escape, that part of your mind that existed in the shadows of your darkest thoughts, and needed only an effective catalyst to bring its' intentions to the surface. You no longer live for yourself, Arcturus. Your every action is now controlled by the Void."

"Jovia, are you sure you're feeling okay?" She seemed so serious, so very unlike the blissful Jovia I remembered, that I halfway doubted it was her at all.

"As good as ever. But you are not. See this vial?" She directed my attention to the vial that she still balanced within her palm as she lifted the dropper from the top of it and lay a few droplets on her tongue. Then, without any warning, she flung it straight into my reflexively outstretched hand, where it shattered and poured its contents onto it. "Science has forever been drawn to that which it can easily deconstruct, synthesize and recreate. Acid, however, is not so simple, not so easily broken down and laid out on a flow chart. Technology fears what it cannot quantify; it forbids and denies that which it cannot measure, break down, and explain in conventional terms. Fairies, daimons, water-sprites and lycanthropes . . . do they exist? Not in science's limited view of the multiverse, my friend. But I didn't overdose you so you could meet mythical creatures. I've given it to you, that you might finally meet that fiend within yourself; tonight, you will finally face the Void within you."

Was she crazy? Was I crazy? There was no way to tell. Within this room, there was no reason, no sense of logic or concrete facts; there only conjecture, theory, a hyperextended "What if?" that begged for an answer that would not come.
Jovia seemed energized in her new sense of purpose. "Today, we will dispel the demons within! Are you prepared?"
"I doubt it." Was there any way to truly steel yourself to face that depravity, that ugliness within the whole of humanity, that which every person glosses over with a facade they call "personality?" I was going to meet the real me, and the prospect was unnerving.

It only took around 30 minutes before the tingling began. It was followed shortly afterward by every facet of the room melting away into irrelevance, replaced by a desolate desert wasteland that I thought must be the inner sanctum of the psyche (if there really is such a thing). Exploration seemed pointless; the Void would come to me.

This thought momentarily reflected into the infinite desolation before being manifested into existence. A demon that I immediately recognized as my own swirled and twisted itself into a grotesque being that was much more arms and legs than any actual creature could be. It shifted into an identical copy of myself for a moment, and I watched it as it aged at an incredible rate before me, dissolving into dust within seconds before the dust reverted to bones, and the bones reanimated themselves and slipped back into demon shape. The thousands of arms stretched out, probing for me, and eventually finding me. There was no running from it. Indeed, to flee from oneself is impossible.
"So," the demon-beast growled as a pair of bulbous, sickly yellow-tinted eyes bore into my soul, "are you ready to truly battle the Void?"
"Yes, more ready than ever," I said eagerly. A pair of swords floated down from the scarred heavens, ready for the duel. The demon metamorphosed again into a devilish version of myself, his hair ablaze and his eyes an infinite vortex of blackness which seemed inescapable. To look at the creature was to be all but consumed by it.

My shadow self seized his sword with a violent flourish, and drove it deeply into the ground, and a yawning hole opened below us.
We fell for what seemed an eternal span, exchanging blows but never scoring a slash upon the other, so evenly matched were we, as well as versed in each others' moves. Things seemed at an impasse.

Finally, perhaps with more luck than skill, a diagonal slash momentarily knocked his sword behind his head, and for a moment he was undefended. I took the initiative, plunging the sword deep into the demon's heart. The demon sneered, pulling the sword from his chest with seemingly no ill effect, and then brought his sword down heavily upon my head, a move I was utterly unprepared for.
I reeled. However fake, however hallucinated the pain must be, I felt it, every nerve in my head screaming in protest at the devastating blow.
We were descending now. I could feel an oppressive sense of resignation envelop my soul as it drifted further into the nether regions of my mind. This was a place unfit for any sane person to see (fortunately not a problem for me), a glimpse within a human soul so utterly devoid of worth and so worthy of pity. This was hell, a silent, all-encompassing blackness that sought to smother any hopes within its' sway. I was now in the very crux of the Void, looking directly at the source of all my woe.
The demon snickered as his face momentarily lost its' vicious disguise, revealing a mock image of my own face superimposed on a demon's body. "This isn't a game anymore, Arcturus. You can't reset anymore, and you will find yourself quite unable to simply remove a helmet and find yourself in the beta testing room again. This is your life you face, and I can see it in your eyes already: you know the desire is too strong within you. You try to deny your baser nature, but you will find it simply will NOT be denied."

I slashed at the demon again, with equal ineffectuality. This was not a final boss I was dealing with here, no simple imagined weapon could fell a foe so embedded in the very shadows of my mind that I deny.

"Would you care to visit the many other guests we have residing within the Void?" the demon asked sardonically. It was no request: even now I could hear them, thousands of tiny whispers of thought, little half-echoes of the new and ancient dead who had fell into the depths of the Void. And they came to me, and the sounds were now a dimension of their own, a shrill, grating orchestra of chaos and disorder, random thoughts, all crazed, chopped to pieces, and utterly devastating.

The orchestra played . . . "this is as it should be . . . No one will see where we hid him . . . Entertainment and money are the only driving forces in this world! A mere mortal such as myself dare not fight such forces . . . The only freedom from the Void is death, my friend, and perhaps not even then . . . Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever wake up from this dream . . . Do you want to go back?"

I caught the final snippet, and noticed that it didn't have the overall resignation of the rest. Indeed, it seemed almost to be a question, posed at me. I dared to answer it, not knowing what sort of help it might bring.

"Yes! I want an escape from this place! Show yourself! Who knows how I might be freed of this insanity?"

Slowly, tentatively, a hand began to mold itself out of the impenetrable darkness, gripping onto my shirt as though I were all that could liberate it from the oblivion surrounding us. In spite of my efforts not to, it startled me, and looked in a panic at what creature might be grasping at me as a lifeline out of the devouring Void.

To my great surprise, I did instead see Jovia, floating next to me where she had surely not been before. The demon looked visibly irritated at the intrusion, and rose his sword to struck her. In spite of the pain, however, I caught the sword as it bore down on her head: I would let no harm come to her, especially not at the hands of the fouler side of myself.

"I ask you again, Arcturus," she said, seemingly almost placid in spite of the darkness. "Do you really want to leave? Do you want to escape this fell place you've found within your own head?"
"Of course I do! Are you crazy? Can't you SEE what I'm up against here?"

"Only somewhat. My dosage was not as high as yours was. At this point, you find yourself in a place no man was ever meant to see. I can only view this Shadow Dimension dimly, at the fringes of my consciousness. You see it as the world before you, having now been utterly transplanted into this madness you see around you. You're having trouble conquering your demon, yes?"

"Thanks, for that COMPLETELY USELESS BIT OF INFORMATION! I need a way out! I . . . I don't know how much longer I can hold out. I can feel it already, the demon may have stopped moving, but only his body is static: he wants in, he wants FULL control of my body; he doesn't just want to be the expression of my anger anymore. I can hear him, suggesting to me on the fringes of my reality; he wants me to kill you next."

"Ah, but you go about it all wrong, Arcturus. You fight with a blade that which can only be subdued, never killed. The Void will forever be a part of you now. It will be up to you, however, to ensure it does not overtake you."

"You see?" The demon said haughtily as we continued the perpetual descent into the pitch-dark depths of infinity. "There is no defeating the Void. You seek to conquer that which cannot be killed."
An epiphany fell upon me at this point. Surely, though his words were tainted with ill intent, the demon had, in essence, pinpointed the problem at hand here. Violence would never kill violence, whether I landed a single blow or a thousand. The battle would go on forever at that rate; there was, however, an alternative.

So, indeed, as the demon stared keenly into my eyes, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike again, I presented it to him. I sheathed my sword, and folded my hands, ignoring the rain of slashes that scourged my body and tore my flesh. Then, tossing my sword aside in the great pit we had yet to reach the bottom of, I looked at it, waiting for it to make its' move. A swift strike to my shoulder drew blood and provoked pain, in spite of my efforts in convincing myself that the wound did not exist.

The demon seemed threatened by this lack of hostility, for without hostility, it could not perform its' duties to the universe. It cut me again and again now, rending my body into pieces even as I repeatedly shouted to myself that none of the pain was real, that it was but an imagined, hypochondriac sort of injury that was not worth the time or trouble to look at.

Even as my body found itself coalescing into a sort of tangled mass, the demon was wearing down. It swung now, but with less vigor, and significantly less enthusiasm. I could tell that, in the end, the destruction would only last so long as I allowed it.

Now I had the demon within my control, and, without even the slightest motion, I seized the demon's arms in mid-strike, ceasing his incessant slashing. He looked confused, and almost afraid now, knowing that I had discovered his secret. All of it could only go on so long as it had my own subconscious approval, and the second I removed that seed of violence, the infection began to recede. The demon was now desperate in his frozen state, holding his sword up ineffectually, no more useful than a paper plate in his arms would have been at that point.

And then, quite satisfyingly, I began to shred him to pieces. It seemed almost masochistic, to cast off a portion of oneself, and indeed a certain amount of me wanted to let it live, to give it an opportunity to . . . nonsense! I tossed away such thoughts for another day, and obliterated the demon utterly, watching as he quite satisfyingly vanished from my view at last. The darkness had begun to recede all around me, slowly swirling into existence the beta testing room from before as I at last escaped those awful depths within myself. I could not fool myself into believing that I had utterly destroyed my shadow self; I would have to remain forever wary of all thoughts that pass my subconscious filter.

As I touched down gently upon the testing room floor, I could see that the sun was out. It was midday now, and the sun warmed my spirits like I was convinced nothing could. Jovia was still sitting by my side, as she had been through the whole ordeal, though I did not feel her presence before.

"So," Jovia said, all seriousness having evaporated from her cheerful visage, "how'd you fare against the final boss?"
"Pretty well, I'd say," I replied, responding to her cheer in kind for the first time in months.

Now, if I'm not mistaken, I might've taken some of the things you said to me while I was in the Void to mean you have feelings for me now."
"Whatever you heard, you can just burn it from your memory, Arcturus," she said gratingly. You'd think she'd have a bit more understanding, I mean, after all, I had just made it through the worst ordeal of my life and all.
"Can I touch your butt?"
"**** OFF." There it was, my first flash of unfiltered reality. In spite of the meanness of its' intent, I reveled in it, knowing that at the very least, I was back into the world of what's-up-must-come-down and you-want-fries-with-that.

It was fuckin' smarmy, the way things had turned out. The old me would have hated how things had ended up, it was so full of smiley bunnies and big happy clouds that look like ponies. But, in spite of these reservations, I found that I was rather pleased with where my life was going now. I had at last remembered my first joyful event now, and it was Jovia telling me to **** off. Wonderful girl.

"So, not much to do now that you've beaten the game, eh?" Jovia asked him dreamily as she stared into the wandering sun as it slipped slowly towards the edge of the world.

"Perhaps, if it were truly over, but the rest of the game begins now." Indeed, in a way, I could never unplug myself ever again. I would have to play out the rest of my life now, and the prospect was daunting. My only solace was that in real life, nobody keeps track of who has the high score, and nobody ever "wins."

The End[/quote]

How do you like it?
(Sorry for the links, I couldn't find a way to upload files to this forum. You can remove them and put them on here if you please, just some way to allow someone to see the files)

I posted this in the wrong section the first time.If a moderator doesn't mind, please delete the post in the Books section, thanks.