Aeterno

Bolts of brightly colored screaming fire slam into the space your head had just previously occupied. The wall where they impacted warping, melting, then exploding violently. Blue, green, yellow, orange, and red; the bolts continue to fly through the air. The sight would be almost beautiful if it weren't so very deadly and being directed towards you. Plasma.

You run and run and run. Duck, dodge, dive, roll. The blasts continue to come and continue to miss, but only just barely. Despite your erratic movements, they're getting closer. Whoever or whatever is shooting at you is good. Hey man, nice shot. If things continue like this for more longer, you're going to be hit. You're going to be hit and die and explode. You feel a deep panic start to well up inside you. Things need to change, then. But how? You spot something up ahead.

What is it? A fork in the path? A grate covered vent? A hole? Something else?

It's somebody else shooting at you.

You see a hole up ahead, but it quickly vanishes, with everything else, because you find a hole right under you also.

It's a person? It's something person shaped, at least. Is that a.... oh shit. Not good.

A band bright of energy hits your shoulder. You don't warp. You don't melt. You don't explode. You don't die. However, you do hurt. A lot. You clench your eyes shut and wail, falling to the ground in agony while clutching your shoulder. Your screams echo around you. You still feel yourself falling. It sure is taking awhile to hit the ground. Time must have slowed down for you because of the adrenaline. That has to be it. Or your falling.

Through the pain, you open your eyes and look down. You are, indeed, falling. Well, sliding, now. You must have fallen into some vent or shaft that you some how failed to see in your panicking state. Well, obviously you did; you're falling, well, sliding. Moving in a direction as dictated by gravitational forces. Quite quickly, too. The creeping panic rises and takes control.

"This is fast. Where am I going? What happens when I hit the ground? What if I hit something else? Is that a fan? What if there is a dead-end? What if I don't hit the ground? Or anything? What if this just keeps going and going and going. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to..."

Breathing is difficult now. Things seem to be moving simultaneously both slower and faster. The walls of the tube around you seem to speed up as you look at them, but your movements feel slow. It as if you're moving in molasses that's been somehow balled up and then chucked down a hole. Your shoulder throbs angrily. Your lungs scream at you. Your legs twitch and spasm from overuse.

Each pain, a flavor. Each reaction, a texture. They ripple over you, through you. Your vision begins to darken, or is it just the light fading? Your pulse pounds in your ears, drowning out everything external. Suddenly, you find yourself on the ground in a dim room. You curl yourself into a ball and begin weeping. Blood pooling on the ground behind you. The friction of your descent had tore through your cloths and then your skin. You ached and hurt and agonized all over. The flavors spread throughout your entire being, like a rich, moist cake of delicious pain. You don't hear the coming footsteps. You barely even feel the sharp kick to the ribs; a hint of vanilla added to the mix. You see them though. Your pursuers. Your tormentors. Your killers. The figures stand over you. You don't see their faces. You can't. It is all too dark. You do see movement, then the barrel of a weapon. All at once everything is illuminated, and then there is nothing.

Game Over

---

God damn it. Do they have to make it so real. And so difficult.

You remove the holoset from your head and unjack yourself from the simupod. You reflexively rub your shoulder where you had just been hit moments before, only you weren't actually hit, you know. It was just the feedback system for the game. Makes it more real. It doesn't actually hurt. You know that you are not actually hurt, but your rub the phantom wound anyway.

Sitting up, you look around the room. It is dim. Early evening? Early morning? Hard to tell. It's not really important anyway. It is all the same to you. You feel the tugging necessities and unpleasantries of life pull at you. *Grrglgrrr* It seems that you are hungry. That would probably explain the comparisons of pain to food, you suppose. The simupod system is fairly good at incorporating your actual physical feelings and needs into the simulation.

Right. Let's get moving.

Getting up, you make your way to the sonic shower. You get clean, get dressed and...

Then what? Where were you gonna eat?

You could make something, the old fashion way. Always satisfying, but slow and rather inefficient. You could go out. There are plenty of shops nearby so you have a variety of selections. You could always just take a capmeal. The small pill-like capsules don't do much to immediately to alleviate the physical grumblings of your body, though they will with some time, but they are adaptive to the needs of your body and will provide you with all the nutrients of a well-balanced a meal. Or you could just ignore it, you suppose.

Eat hand.

>Admire Self

Get yourself a burger.

>Remember your diet. Nothing but greens. Doctor's orders.

Try making a very simple meal.

SpoilerShow

>Admire Self

Eat hand.

Try making a very simple meal.

Get yourself a burger.

>Remember your diet. Nothing but greens. Doctor's orders.

You take stock of yourself, your mind still readjusting to being back in your real body. Feet? Check. Legs? Check. Torso? Check. Arms? Check. Hands? Check. You stare at your hands for a moment. You think back to another instance of the game where.... where you had to go cannibal for a time to survive. You've eaten hand before. In your head in a game, sure, but it felt real and, to you, it was real. It was not a pleasant experience, too bony for one thing. To say you had difficulty eating meat for some time after that experience would be an understatement. Maybe something simple. And not meat.

You go to check your vacuum-cooler's contents. Tapping on its LCD, you bring up a list of currently stored foodstuffs. Brown rice, cooked. Collard greens. Dried black beans. Some quahls, an oblong-esque... fruit? Vegetable? Root? Whatever it was classified as it was fairly good and could be prepared a number of ways. And a whole bunch of other assorted foods, ingredients and condiments. Yeah, you could make something relatively simple. Though not on any sort of restricted diet or the like, you decide on a vegetable rich meal: a Rice-and-Bean Vegetable Burger with wrapped braised collard greens and onions; a baked quahl with a dollop of avocado butter; and a vanilla-bean milkshake. Getting out the ingredients, you start preparing.

After about 10 minutes of preparing and fifty or so minutes of cooking, it is all done. You're no master chef, but it appears to be more than passable. The work actually did a lot to distract you from your hunger, now that you are done though... You bite into your burger, greedily. So good. Savory and flavorful. You're about to take a second bite when... *Btoom* *Thmp*... you hear muted explosions and impact sounds? It is hard to tell how close or far away the sounds are. They seem to be coming from everywhere. You rush to the closest window and look outside. It is chaos.

What do you see?

>The annual parade has kicked off again. Though it seems to have gone horribly wrong, again. The Garfield parade balloon has crashed and set fire to the orphanage... Again.

>E A T. H A N D.

> It's a tank. Those are always part of the annual parade of freedom, but it seems like one's gone off by accident.

>A teleporter ray blasting your residence, slowly lifting the building off the ground and town. The ray seems to be of alien origin.