The hologram of Ms. Gonzales passed out on the balcony gradually fades away from the center of the room.
The hurricane of energy in his brain has settled, leaving Ryan behind like a damaged boat drifting in an endless sea. Although the game is no longer policing his thoughts and dreams, it has left a quantum of grief in every single cell of his body and a scratch of despair on his heart that will surely leave a scar when it heals, if ever.
Ryan wakes up from the game, his face wet with tears. His mind is once again free to breathe. To ponder. And all he can think about is the last image of Lynda and the never-ending sorrow in her eyes.
Ryan becomes more and more aware of the helmet on his head; an alien entity that is not of his flesh and is not governed by his soul. Sitting up in the recliner, he slowly takes off the game helmet with so much pain it is as if he separates his head instead. He covers his face with his hands when he fails to hold back the sob that is gradually taking over.
“It’s OK, Ryan,” Michele says, touching him on the shoulder. “It was just a game.”
“I know that,” Ryan shouts, still crying. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Why are you crying then?”
“Is she up already?” Ryan asks, wiping his tears with his hand.
“Well… No, of course. She didn’t exit the game. You saw her suicide, didn’t you?”
Ryan nods.
“She is still in the induced coma,” Michele says, “over hear.”
Turning to Lynda’s recliner, Ryan notices her nose. “Blood. Blood!” he screams. “She’s bleeding.”
“This is expected after a suicide,” Michele says indifferently while wiping the blood with a napkin.
“That was in the game!” Ryan exclaims, almost accusing Michele.
“The physics of it, yes,” Michele responds, her gaze on Lynda. “But the mental pressure of the brain experiencing death is all real. There is no virtual brain… or heart for that matter. The same brain is shared between the two worlds.”
She throws the bloody napkin on top of the others that are piled up in the trash bin attached to Lynda’s recliner. Ryan gulps in fear and his gaze falls again on the gray hairs on Lynda’s temple and then on her twisted face that is screaming pain.
“So, if she’s not dead in real life,” he asks Michele, his worried eyes fixed on Lynda, “but she’s dead in the game, so… then…”
“Her character is dead. That doesn’t qualify her for the exit. Now, she will be playing another character.”
“Reincarnation!” Ryan guesses.
“That’s actually what I named the sub-module,” a male voice says from behind.
“Who the hell are you?” Ryan asks, turning to the man that is tied to an ergonomic office chair.
“That would be the chief coder of Uranus,” Michele responds, taking special pleasure in saying the word ‘coder’.
“The correct title is software engineer,” the coder says, “and I’m the creator of Uranus.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Michele snaps. “You just coded my intelligent design.”
“Intelligent design! Since when is the requirement sheet called a design?” the coder sneers and follows that with nervous laughter. “Oh, I love working here, with little people full of themselves.” The forced laughter quickly wears off, leaving the tone of hatred in his voice undisguised. “You know what? It’s always been like this. We, software engineers, create the system and you executives claim the credit. Without us, you’re nothing, but a stinky, all-mouth babbler who—”
“Excuse me for breaking your warm speech,” Senator objects, deep furrows on his brow. “But we do have a mission to accomplish.”
“Why’s he tied up?” Ryan asks, pointing to the coder.
“We strongly suspect,” Michele responds, “that the gamer’s inability to exit the game might be due to an intentional software bug to sabotage the product. He will be in our custody until the investigation concludes.”
“Is it really necessary to tie him up like that?” Ryan asks, a note of compassion in his voice.
“President’s direct order,” she responds, her voice emptied of sympathy. “An indignant software engineer is more dangerous than a wounded bear, a fact well known in our industry. You have no idea what this freak is capable of once he has his hands on a computer keyboard.”
“You miserable executives,” the coder growls, his voice hardened by probabely a long-suppressed hatred. “This is an obvious case of retaliation. I’m the usual target because I backed up my poor Intern in the sexual harassment lawsuit against President. Political; is what this is. It has nothing to do with my engineers’ competence. My hardworking, loyal team and I delivered exactly what your requirement sheet had specified. You just—”
“How can she exit the game,” Ryan interrupts the seemingly never-ending speech, fed-up with the rivalry between the two, “Mr… hmm, Mr. Creator?”
“Same way you did,” the coder responds, immediately calmed down after being addressed by his correct title.
“Same way I did?!”
“She just needs to want to exit. That’s all. Then the next time she hibernates, she exits the game.”
“Hibernate? Like a… like a polar bear?”
“No,” the coder sneers. “Hibernate is what software engineers call sleep. This is the time when 99% of Uranus connectors detach from the brain. It’s all up to her if she wants to disconnect the last 1% and wake up on Earth or reattach all of them again and wake up in Uranus instead.”
“Correct. That’s what my design specified,” Michele confirms. “But due to some coding glitch that we don’t fully understand yet,” she says, giving the coder a meaningful look, “somehow the gamers aren’t able to fully disconnect the last 1%.”
“There’s no glitch in my creation,” the coder roars in fury. “It does what it’s asked to do. You’re just jealous of my world. You’re jealous that she prefers to be asleep in my fantasy rather than be awake in your reality.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, ‘My world’, ‘My creation’” Michele spits, mimicking the coder.
“Yes. My world. And the only reason that the gamer might not completely detach from it, is that she doesn’t really want to.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to, Mr. Creator?” Ryan asks, deliberate on the flattering title. It works like a charm, again, calming the coder promptly like a bear that is shot with a tranquilizer gun.
The coder lets out a long sigh. “That is the nature of human beings,” he says as if he is beyond them. “They take games seriously. The more realistic it is, the more attached they are to the game. I was tasked to create a game as realistic as life, and that’s what I delivered. Of course, the gamers don’t want to detach from it. Who would want to detach from life?”
“But she did kill herself in the game,” Ryan says, his voice trembling. He gulps to swallow down the sob that is building up by the reminder of her suicide.
“She accepted her defeat, and that is not the same thing. She still believes in the game with all her heart. Even when she dies, she’s still attached to the game.”
“Aargh!” Ryan holds his head between his hands. “You guys are confusing me with all the jargon.” He notices something is missing: the slippery surface of the helmet. It sits on the recliner, winking at Ryan. Although Ryan is relieved of the game messing around in his brain, its absence has left a gaping hole in him that has not filled up yet. His mind craves for its presence, no matter how frightening it might become.
“Let me put it this way, Coder,” Senator says, stepping into the light. “Here are the rules of my game.” Cracking his knuckles, he approaches the coder. He now acts more like a mafia boss than a politician. “You’ll be tied to this chair as long as my daughter lies on that. The sooner we figure the issue with Uranus and my daughter successfully exits the game, the sooner you’ll be released. Now, your roll. Game away.” Senator finishes with his head awfully near the coder’s.
“OK, kid,” the coder says, turning his face away from Senator. “You wanna make her exit the game, you gotta play it.”
“I was. You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Nope. You were just acting back there. To truly play the game, you gotta stick with the character’s definition. Let me ask you this. Would you take advice from a financial advisor who doesn’t wear a suit and instead comes to his office in sweatpants? Or a doctor who dances the tango in the hospital?”
“No.”
“No-o-o-o,” the coder continues. “Because in society we expect a rational person to act within the limits of their persona. Once they don’t abide by the rules of the game, we assume they’re crazy.”
The helmet smiles at Ryan, inviting him to lie with it on the recliner. Ryan finds little to no resistance in him. “So, what should I do?” he asks, striding toward it across the room.
“Whatever you do in the game, always stick to your character. People, including Lynda, will ignore you otherwise, like you are demented.”
Ryan hops on the recliner. Eager as a junkie missing his drug, he snatches the helmet and slaps it on his head. His eyes bug out when the transmission begins. It is a bit painful, but the kind of pain that Ryan no longer rejects. “All right then,” he says, all energized. “Let the game begin.” He lies back on the recliner.
Leaning on the recliner, Michele whispers to Ryan, “Lynda is not doing well, Ryan. Her heart is giving up. I need you to really focus this time. This could be our last shot.”
“You can count on me,” Ryan says, “I’ll play as if it is GameCon’s final match.”
“Good. And…,” Michele adds, “Maybe try not to die yourself.” Straightening up, she steps away.
“What?!”
“We have reasons to believe that after reincarnation the gamer might fail to remember that he’s in the game. Ready?”
“What happens if I do die in the game?” Ryan asks, crunching up.
“And… Go,” Michele says and with that Ryan passes out.