Chapter 3

Thingus

Perhaps the reason Jessica didn’t like Jake so much didn’t have to do with his personality, but…no, it was his personality. He was kind of an enigma, having a goofy, if somewhat childish personality. But we all shared one thing in common; we loved gaming.

Jake had come along recently when our move into High School had opened a new world of friends and enemies. Jake was pretty much a floater, not really having any purpose as he went from class to class, but he was a gamer. We’d stumbled upon him by accident in a science class when he and the teacher got in some kind of debate about weaponry in Halo. Apparently he thought he could finally argue his case that these designers had come up with something for a change that worked. Either way, both Jessica and I instantly recognized his inner gamer, and the rest was history.

His house was a little ways further, and took us across two separate neighborhoods. This one was a little more middle-class, and showed it by the smaller size of the houses. Most were either split-level or just plain one-story. Jake’s place was split-leveled, and was covered with white vinyl siding.

“What you guys doing here this early?” he said sleepily through his front door. Another trait to Jake was that he was kind of lazy. We probably just woke him up, and this idea was only reinforced by the fact that he was wearing a flannel shirt and sweats.

“We’re finally going to play Anon as a group,” Jessica said.

“Yeah right. No way I’m hauling my computer over to your house just to clutter it up with extra wires.”

“You don’t get it.” I smiled and winked at Jessica. Jake eyed us suspiciously.

“What’d you two do…?”

“My dad is testing out that virtual-tech, and he’s using it on Anon.”

Jake frowned for a second, and then his eyes shot wide. “Holy…! You’re joking!”

Jessica laughed. “Nope. This is for real.”

Jake quickly disappeared behind his door, and literally flew back out only a moment later, now fully dressed. He dashed past us, and jumped onto his own bike.

“Come on you slow pokes! We’ve got a date with virtual reality!”

Jessica and I quickly jumped on our own bikes, and the three of us began our trek back to my house. Jake fantasized the entire way.

“Imagine where we can go… We can go into space! We can use any weapon! Hey! We could even explore Denver, and visit our own houses!”

Jessica chuckled, and smiled over at me. I smiled back, but then something unusual happened. Our eyes connected, and held. The smiles from our faces faded, but we continued to gaze at each other. We were still on our bikes, and separated by about five or so feet, but we just stared, starting to slow down to the point where we were almost at a standstill. However, Jake’s fantasies snapped us back to reality.

“…and not to mention the space-warfare! Any ship you could ever want!”

“Uh, yeah…” I quickly shifted my gaze. “Actually, I just found an awesome ship hidden in orbit of Earth.” I remembered the elite vessel I’d found earlier today. It was still docked at the station.

Jake asked, “Hey Chris; does this thing let you interact with other people?”

I shrugged. “Somewhat. You kinda need to do stuff for your character, so yeah. You can interact with other people…”

“Will we be able to interact?”

“I don’t really know. I still don’t know what it’ll be like.”

“Man, if we can interact physically…that would just be awesome.”

A short while later we finally came down my street. The gray vans with company logos were now parked all over, and there were several black wires and cables piling out their backs and streaming in under the garage door into the house.

“What the hell are they doing? Sterilizing this place?” Jessica asked.

“No; they needed all of this for the physics engine…I think. Hell, I don’t know. They need somewhere for all that memory to go, so this is probably all backup…”

“No! No, no, no! Tell him to stop! He’ll get himself killed!”

I turned back quickly, and realized that I had overheard one of the workers. I walked over, and peered through the driver’s window. Inside I could see two of the researchers hunched over a computer panel, with a single screen in the middle. On the screen was the game’s avatar. However, this avatar wasn’t wearing their regular battle-armor, but instead some sort of combat suit. And on top of that, the character looked just like my Dad.

“What’s up…?” It was Jessica. She had wandered over, and was now looking in too.

“I can do it! Just give me a second. If we pull out now I’ll have to restart the entire system!” It was my Dad’s voice that spoke back

I could now see his avatar was under fire from sort of army. He was obviously on an alien world—the sky was greenish orange, and there were three moons on the horizon. The aliens were using some sort of plasma weapon, and it was coming awfully close to him. All he had was a basic particle-gun. While powerful, it wasn’t affective against an entire army!

“Holy crap! Is that your dad?!” Jake was looking in too now, witnessing the battle play out.

“Get out now, or restart! We don’t know the affects of death in the game!”

Then it happened. A sizzling bolt of plasma swooped through the air and exploded at point-blank range. My dad’s avatar was thrown back, and it was only after he landed that I saw the burn marks covering his body. No one could have survived that in real-life.

“No!” A series of warning alarms went off, and then it all became apparent.

I dropped my bike, and ran inside the house. My mom was startled to see me and said something, but I was gone too quick to hear what it was. I jumped down the entire basement stair case, and crashed in a heap at the bottom. I groaned, but quickly pulled myself back up.

Directly ahead was what looked like a dentist’s chair wired up in front of my computer monitor. My dad was sitting in the chair, sensors covering his body and a white helmet over his head. His head was slumped to the side, and the same alarm was going off.

I rushed over, and tried shaking his head, but nothing happened. I looked at the screen, and saw his character still lying dead on the ground, burn marks everywhere. I tried checking his pulse, but he was flat-lining. He was dead.

I kind of froze up at that point, and slumped over onto the floor. How could this have happened? Wasn’t there something that prevented these kinds of disasters? How could you die inside the computer?! It wasn’t possible.

As I stood there in my daze, an arm came around my shoulder, and I felt Jessica sit down next to me. Jake was nearby, but seemed to be looking at the screen more than anything.

“There was nothing you could have done,” she said bluntly.

“How do we know that?! What if they had unplugged him?! Would he be like— like this?!”

I leaned against my arm, shaking slightly in panic. And the day had started so well…

“Uh, guys.”

I glanced up, and suddenly realized that Jake was looking wide-eyed at the screen.

“Guys, what is going on…?”

We both stood up slowly, and looked at the screen. The avatar still remained lying on the ground, but there was a line of black code floating in the middle of the screen. I had to get close enough to read it, it was so small.

Thingus_X-hault_User error: Avatar KIA: Controller MIA: User Default_Repossession Center

I gasped. I may not understand computer-speak, but this was basically saying that although the character was dead, the user wasn’t. In fact, the computer didn’t know where the user was. He was somewhere still inside. As I read, several of the workers came down, and looked at the code themselves.

“So it is true…” He turned, and looked down at me. “It looks like your father isn’t quite dead yet. The computer didn’t know what to make of this unusual connection between his mind and the system. He’s still in there somewhere…”

“Wait, his mind is in there?” Jessica asked disbelieving.

“Sort of…but it has taken the form of something called the Thingus. Whatever that is, we need to reunite it with his body.”

The workers cleared the room, and quickly headed back upstairs. The three of us stood silently, watching the screen curiously.



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