Dark Fiction: D.N.A
Written by Casey Douglass
Riz pulled over and
switched off the engine. The heat shimmered from the rusty orange
hood, managing to make it look hotter than the haze floating over the desert
highway ahead. It all almost looked real.
Chimes and alerts went
off, graphics hovering in front of Riz's face, arrows and tips as to
what to do next. He dismissed them with a flick of his eyes and muted
the alarms.
He opened the door and heaved himself up from the seat.
His neck and shoulders creaked as he arched them, the hot,
moisture-less air setting his lips stinging. He looked up and down
the road but nothing else was around, for now at least.
What was this game
again? He couldn't remember. Some post apocalyptic Mad Max style wet
dream no doubt. Most were, especially after humanity had partly
brought this idea into reality. Now they were just VR fodder, a
reminder of what could have been.
He walked around the
beat-up car, the chrome scuffed, the paint pebble dashed. An
explosion boomed over the horizon, the roaring of engines and cheers
blowing to him on the breeze. Shit it was hot. He knew he could turn
down the sensations the sim fed him, but that wasn't the point.
He climbed onto the
scorching hood, the hot metal searing his skin. He grimaced and laid
back, his neck sticking to the windscreen. The sun pounded against
his face, his eyes clicked as he blinked, all moisture rapidly
fleeing. The rumble of engines grew nearer, the vibration massaging
his backside as the heat stuck his balls to his thighs. Part of him
was glad that he was wearing the grubby overalls he found himself in.
More chimes and alerts
sounded. This game was more insistent than most. He read a couple out
of curiosity. “Go here...”, “Do that...”, “Kill this...”.
He shut them off. How original they all were.
He opened a recording hub and smiled into the glowing blue lens that appeared above him.
‘I’m Rizz, a member
of the Do Nothing Alliance. I'm in-,’ he searched briefly, ‘Desert
Kings 5, the latest slice of virulent reality entertainment, another
system to tell us what to do, where to go, who to be. Well, I’m me,
I’m by this road, and I’m going to sunbathe while the dip-shits
over the hill masturbate over their desert porn. As I do this,
thousands of my associates are doing the same in this and other
games, taking no part in their world’s events or economy.’
He paused and spat to
the side, his throat starting to tingle.
‘We humans have
become used to false pleasure, fake pain, false goals and fraudulent
realities. This has left us maladjusted to life in the real world,
which is why so many hide in these games. We are using the approach
of non-violent protest, in the hope that others will join our cause,
or at the least, give their situation more serious thought. We are in
these games, we are doing nothing. We are the ghosts of what humans
used to be, ploughers of their own furrows, wanderers of unknown
paths, and we are tired of society force feeding us tamed realities.’
He looked over his
shoulder as roaring metal glinted on the horizon. He looked back at
the camera.
‘We have found a way
to turn our safeguards off.’
He smiled.
‘Game death is real
death. And the neural feedback caused by thousands of deaths just
might knock these things offline for awhile, but that’s only a
bonus. There aren’t enough of us out in the world, so we will let
it crumble, just like you are doing by living your lives in these
games. If we died out there, no-one would notice. So here we are. Lemmings on the cliff.’
With an effort of will,
he sent the recording lens up out of harm’s way.
A rumbling sound grew
nearer. Rizz closed his eyes and took a deep breath. None of it was
real, except what his brain made of it all. He’d feel every pixel,
taste every line of pain and scream every byte of agony. He knew what
was coming, it was the nature of the game to kill without thought or
reason. He looked up at the sun.
A hulking lorry rammed
into the car, its spiked wheels churning, its flaming exhausts
burning and its horn honking as it ripped through the length of the
chassis, rending metal and flesh into bloody streamers of gore. The
effect was much like a piñata being blown up with C4, except instead
of fluttering pieces of paper, there were needle-sharp pieces of
metal and glass. These fell to the hot tarmac, skidding and
bouncing as they lost their kinetic energy. As the last of them fell
still, the truck that had continued down the road juddered.
It glitched up the road
a little further.
It stopped.
The clouds in the sky
froze.
Two realities held their
breath.
