Domain

Don't worry its only a game.

She noticed the moon slowly rise above edge of the horizon. It rose slowly, as if pulled by fatigued soldiers. For a few seconds its light shone across the glades, but soon the endless clouds swallowed up the light. The sight spat deep inside her, with one glance, she knew the clouds would scatter, but that would be too easy.
The long road stretched out into nothingness before her. A breeze flooded through the fields of barley, sending a wave of pollen into the air. She smiled softly, it had become too dark to see. Opening her hand, a small bead of light formed and spread in front of her, "Let there be light," she purred softly.
The four men looked on from a distance. She seemed a physically healthy girl, short black hair, green eyes, a pleasing figure. One looked back at the others questioningly.
The others nodded, and it began to float towards her. They were strange creatures, humanoid in shape but effectively without legs, instead wings extended from their backs, and lifeless stumps hung down from their bodies.
She didn't even see him coming. Darkness blanked out the world around her, she sat up angrily, the top to the virtual reality chamber opening with a hiss. She'd forgotten about the dark angels in the glades, basic Domain rules, always be on the lookout for native life. The pits of the Domain spread around her, thousands of identical metallic coffin-like chambers, each with a small window displaying a sleeping body inside.
The floor stretched onto as far as she could see and the ceiling was huge, spreading upwards and outwards, with lights flickering on and off at odd points around it. She took in the spectacular sight for a moment but then waited for the voice to tell her to go. A warm flow of excitement once again raced through her, she still had two deaths, the voice announced. She lay back inside the coffin, the roof started closing slowly.
At first it had been hard to accustom herself to trusting the strange environment of the Domain, but eventually it had become second nature. She felt the chilling cold as metallic joints gripped her arms, the dull pain as the visual emitter attached itself to her head, and felt her adrenaline race as her nerves gave involuntary shudders as the machine tested itself.
The standby had appeared in front of her, a flashing panel in her view screen. Five, four, three, two, one. Suddenly she plunged into oblivion, her eyes blacking out, every sense in her body numbing instantly, for a second in the moment of oblivion, she died. Her heart stopped beating, her brain blacked out, every function that kept her alive ceased.

Then the jolt of electricity sent her heart back into action, and she awoke in a new domain. Her head throbbed softly, she smiled; it was beginning. She was sitting upright in a bed, a small control in her hand, a screen enveloping the wall in front of her. Domain worked simply, you chose your game from the list, or chat room, or surfing device. She quickly scrolled down into Domain One. Most went to Domain One, the fantasy game, all the players mind battled against each other in a deathmatch, growing stronger by fighting native life and doing expeditions for the native peoples. The eventual aim was to beat and therefore become the Domain king, a player who ruled over and controlled the whole of Domain One, and got unlimited game time till his defeat.

The others were mostly empty, the giant chess portal had ten grandmasters and fifty amateurs, while the futuristic science fantasy game only had two members, implying. She clicked on the 4352 digit beside Domain One and images began to flash up on her screen. Options, various game levels, passwords, saved games, she clicked on her face glowing in the screen and waited.

Suddenly the images blanked out and the screen went a blistering white. Out of the white a lean sparkling hand seemed to reach towards her. She pulled herself up out of the bed and without a seconds thought, dived into the screen.

White oblivion stretched out before her and then she was in Domain One. A forest stretched around her, the colours slowly focussing. The wind took a few moments to load and then she felt everything click into understanding.

A sword lay on the path in front of her. She smiled and picked it up. Images flashed through her mind as she began, instructions, she blinked them away. Straight to the Flying Natives of the fields, she’d show them a thing or two. As she made her way to the beautiful white horse standing attentively, something happened. She couldn’t quite place it, but pain jolted through her body.

She fell to the floor and looked around, the colours were slightly off, and everything seemed to be clicking out of place. A restart would do it, she thought sourly, "Restart game now." Her voice echoed incredibly, she tried again to no success.

Worry flooded through her, restart had always worked. Problems were half the fun of Domain but restart was a sure way to solve them. Everything was jolting around, slowly. Suddenly, as if night had existed all along, everything was dark. A slight light enabled her to see enough to realise she wasn’t sleeping. She felt her head swimming slowly, everything seemed strange. She looked around, it was night time now. The whole of Domain had clicked into place quite neatly. She looked down at her body and stared in amazement. She was wearing normal clothes, no sword, no body armour, nothing. She tried to access her menu, but everything seemed remarkably real, there was no menu, or even she tried clicking her head, no manual adaptations. Everything was real. She began walking around uncertainly, there were no trees it was an open field, but definitely Domain. She could taste the air, the strangely artificial texture of it.

Suddenly strange codes began appearing everywhere. Domain was being reprogrammed, she could recognize the strange patterns growing out of the ground. Her mind ached, this was not normal, this could not happen. But before she could process anything of what was happening in her head, existence shut itself down.

Silently you observe the screens moving. You are the single programmer in charge of the huge underground warehouse in front of you, filled with the coffined bodies of the gamers. You have lost all respect for the site, all awe, it’s just an endless room of coffins for you, with people entering and exiting periodically. Your eyes shift noiselessly over the endless status bars in front of you, all life signs normal.

You shouldn’t be doing this. You were trained as a computer scientist, top of the class; you could have been anything. Your mind whines as your fingers musically make their way along keyboards, accessing passwords, approving rewards, it yearns, it squirms, it screams but you forget about your worries and concentrate, the acceptance of the endless monotony of your job slowly sets in.

For three years you have compressed all your worries thinking about the incredible amount of money you earn. You have ignored the yearnings of your creative side, your intelligent side, your real side. But while you ignore your mind’s wants something has been wearing away, as if it was all slowly grinding away. You stare at one of your status screens, a life sign has gone down. You look again closer, and realize that your hand is holding down the restart button. You are killing her. You remove your hand but unconsciously it moves back, and you stare in a fascinated state as the digital heart reader starts flashing red. You tap a few buttons, reconfiguring a few protocols, no emergency signal is sent out. You take your hand off just as she is about to die. You smile. Something has snapped, and you have lost control.

Looking at the coffins and looking at your controls you feel suddenly enlightened. Part of your job, perhaps the most important and exciting part is the remodification of the games, but you have to get everyone out, and that only happens once every six months. What would happen if you remodified with them all inside, they can’t do anything, if you take away their ability to reset, you take away their ability to get out. You could even alter their memories, "memory adapters…in case of accidents…" the executive had said, "if an error occurs in the computer and someone is plunged through their worst nightmares, it happens surprisingly often you know…we don’t want to get sued.". You could do anything. Realizing the possibility of the controls in front of you, you try to stop yourself, try to summon some last degree of sanity but you begin typing.

Your mind, aching from the constant acceptance cries out in triumph.

The lunch time bell rung sharply. She woke up, for a second she seemed disoriented, memories of a strange dream felt real but she shook her head and grabbed her bags. What did she have? She looked at her time table automatically, Scripture. Everything moved around slowly, people were walking around dazed to each class. It seemed most of the school had slept through lunchtime.

She ignored the strange fact and made her way to class. The walls were remarkably blank, everything was either white or black, she noticed, and mused for a moment how she had not realized it before. She made her way to the room that was on her timetable.

Inside a blank classroom stared at her. It was another white room with a board at the front with the teacher beaming strangely. She stared at the teacher somehow he seemed familiar. He matched with her memory of the teacher, but something else. Déjà vu, she thought dismissing the thought. He began teaching, she removed paper from her bag. It was full of paper but no writing, strange she thought but dismissed the thought again. Around her people were staring at different things, everyone seemed slightly confused.

The teacher clapped his hands, her eyes were drawn to the front. The teacher grinned again and began drawing on the board, "Today we will learn about our God."

He drew a picture of a man on the board, "He is beyond our reality, beyond our perceptions, he lives in heaven, we live on earth."

"If we believe in him, we can go to heaven and live in eternal bliss, if we don’t, we will burn in hell." He smiled drawing pictures on the board.

She stared, it made perfect sense, she thought to herself unconsciously. For a second she tried to stop believing what was on the board

The unreality of the world soon became reality to her, the strange way the teacher appeared in every class normal, everything that seemed wrong became right. Weeks passed, without her mind really processing the time. Everything melted into acceptance.

It was an afternoon class, English when the teacher drew her aside. "You have been performing very well." The teacher said.

She nodded attentively, absorbed in his attention.

"You have been selected for a special study group." He said, signaling for her to stand. The rest of the students stared at her. She stood awkwardly, "What do you mean?"

"Follow me." The teacher ordered, she looked at her friends they stared at her in confusion.

She followed the teacher down the long corridor to his office. He pressed the teacher logo on the door and it opened with a hiss. She moved uncertainly into the room and sat down on a chair he pointed at.

He looked at her, and she looked at him. She smiled, "What is this special study Teacher?"

His grin spread wide across his face, as usual. She reflected that teacher was a happy man, "God has appointed you with a mission." He replied with his strange accent.

He explained the mission briefly. She listened gradually taking in her instructions and the strange reality that was being explained to her, "This is only faith, you can turn it down if you want." He finished with a wry shrug.

"No, I want to serve my God." She replied automatically.

He smiled again and told her to relax. She did and closed her eyes on his command. He removed a small cane from his pocket and tapped her on the head with it. She disappeared.

Everything was so perfect, working so well. I had devised a system with the memory adapter used all the time so people could come in and go out without even knowing about my control. But I didn’t go home anymore, I programmed a few slaves to bring me food and so forth. That was easy enough, offering homeless people permanent places in the chamber and then adapting their memory and mind expertly. It was all too easy to cut off any outside watching of my progress. But the real world had become so boring; I could do anything in my world.

They worshiped me on a regular basis. My character in the school was the teacher. There I kept the strange minds under control, the rebelling minds, it was easy enough after practice. Then I played games, war games, except real ones, they died and went to heaven and were reborn, I created a world. I was God. But I forgot; I forgot the simple principles that I should have known. I shouldn’t have loved, I shouldn’t have trusted, and overall else I shouldn’t have believed in myself.

There was one girl, who was reasonably pretty. She wasn’t beautiful, but her mind was amazing. Even at the pitch of memory adaptation, it still had doubts. My best efforts could only just bring it under control. As soon as I hacked in, I was in love. Her strange attitude, her love of gaming, it was her I felt guilty through, I even seemed to gain some of my lost sanity.

I thought if I gradually let her know the truth, gave her a mission to see her God, somehow I could woo her. Maybe somehow, she would love me. I should have known though, as soon as she got out of the coffin. The virtual reality chamber opened with a hiss and she kept lying for a while. She was remembering, people with minds as strong as hers could never be altered with crude machines.

I remember the moment exactly, I moved towards her as she sat up, step by step moving closer to her. She stared at the coffins and then let her gaze settle on me. The realization was obvious, right there I should have stopped her, I should have killed her, she knew too much as soon as she woke up. She still moved towards me, I kissed her, but it was a hollow kiss. Her thoughts were elsewhere, her lips moved blankly against my passion. It did not quench me, I tried to move closer to her but she just stepped back.

I had kept her the whole time. Her breathing was slow and deliberate, her eyes were still just out of focus, she was beginning to understand how to live outside the artificial world again. A boyfriend had come questioning, but I had answers I always had answers. I had kept her for so long, too long. She knew me well enough to know what I was. She rose her gun slowly, they all kept guns; the Domain women, I forgot that. It was a dangerous place, men waited on the streets outside for them coming in and out of the game. I didn’t even register it, I was immortal, I was God, a gun was child play.

But now I am here, lying in a pool of my own blood, waiting for something to give out so I can die. I can’t see her anymore, I could for a while, she stared at me for a long time. To kill your God is a hard thing, I’d know. The world is fading away now, I fear my time is up. It is the way things had to be, I have to pay for what I have done. Perhaps this is better this way. Another jolt of pain runs through my body, and I can feel my body giving up. The light is fading now slowly.

As the darkness engulfs you completely, you wake up. With a hiss, the lid to the chamber opens, "The End. You have five minutes to make your way to the exit. We hope you have enjoyed your time at Domain. Please visit us again soon."