Chronicles of Ethan Complete Series: A LitRPG / GameLit Fantasy Adventure Read online

  More convinced than ever this was all a big scam, I stayed in my seat and nodded for him to continue. He did. At length. He even called me young man again. Then a soft tone sounded, indicating the end of our session.

  “Look at us, carrying on like chums,” Mike said, chuckling merrily. “Glad I could help. Now, if there’s no more questions…”

  I moved to get up, then shut my mouth and sat back down.

  “Hmm?” he said, smiling wider, and possibly with a hint of impatience.

  “I was just wondering … Could you do a check on someone for me? A friend who recently … uh, retired? Find out what world she went to?”

  Mike’s face switched from corporate-helpful to corporate-apologetic.

  Shaking his head, he said, “That’s one of the things we can’t do. I mean, we could, of course. There’s no legal reason we couldn’t. Once you’re in, you technically don’t have any rights.” He raised his hands in defense. “Don’t blame me, blame the law. Everlife is contracted with the government to do good by its citizens, regardless of rights. Privacy is very important. Some people simply don’t want to be found. Not saying that’s so in your case, understand. I’m sure your friend would love for you to join her. But as a matter of policy, we—”

  “Forget it,” I said, snapping it off a little harder than I’d meant to. “Sorry, I just … It’s a lot to think about.”

  Mike said, “It certainly is. Looks like you’re all checked out. Clear as mountain air.” He tapped his head again. “It’s all up here.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s our corporate motto.”

  “I’ve heard it.”

  Big smile again.

  I thanked him and left without shaking his hand.

  Chapter Three

  They’d given me a voucher for an Everlife clinic, and despite my misgivings, I walked in and ordered the procedure. I was sore afterward and had a scar where they’d shaved part of my head, and I couldn’t use a comb there for fear of rubbing off the scab they’d grown over the implant.

  The implant needed a few weeks to spool out millions of synaptic taps through my poor, perforated brain. The procedure, they said, was almost a hundred percent safe—unlike life, they reminded me. When I seemed troubled, they said, “It’s all up here,” and I pretended to feel better about the whole thing.

  A few days later, after it was clear my brain wouldn’t swell up and explode, I went to the restaurant and ordered dinner.

  I lifted the rail liquor George brought me and paused halfway to my lips. The technicians said not to use drugs or alcohol, though no reason was given. I suppose it was obvious. If the implant was streaming my every thought and feeling to a database, it probably made sense not to deaden my perceptions. Waking up in the game permanently slow-witted and clumsy wouldn’t help anyone.

  After a short struggle, I called George to take it away.

  “What are you, sick?” he said.

  “Heartburn,” I said, feeling like a drunk for the first time since actually becoming one.

  “If you want something else, lemme know.”

  “Yep.”

  I’d done some research on Heroes of Mythian. The game offered a twist only a few game worlds had: you could permanently die in it. Or rather, your personality could be erased completely, effectively killing you.

  The world was set up as four square-shaped landmasses called “wards.” Lined up north to south, they were separated by bridges over water. On each bridge lurked a guardian who had to be defeated before you could advance to the next ward.

  In Ward 1, you had infinite lives. After entering Ward 2, your lives were reduced to a thousand. Death in 2 was similar to 1 in that you’d spawn somewhere safe, but you’d permanently lose a life. Lose them all and you’d disappear forever.

  Ward 3 was even worse. Your thousand lives dropped to a hundred.

  In Ward 4, you got ten lives, and that was it. And if you beat something called “The Domination” you officially won the game. The prize was a doozy: you re-entered the physical world in a state-of-the-art skin frame so realistic nobody could tell it was a robot.

  This was the kind of tech only the ultra-rich had access to. Part of the reason these game worlds existed was to curb the demand. Couldn’t have the planet overrun by immortal robots, now could they? But people still wanted them, and Mythian offered a way to get one without money.

  Some of the worlds were a mix of science fiction and fantasy, but Mythian was all fantasy. No gamma blasters or warp drives. Which had me wondering why Melody had chosen to retire there. She’d usually played the science fiction-styled games…

  “Still,” I said, after breaking down and ordering a double whiskey. “Might be fun to run around with a sword…”

  As they wheeled me down a long hallway deep beneath the Everlife clinic, I kept peeking through the numerous doors in search of the dissection room. One of the threads I’d followed online had talked about them—said every Everlife clinic had one for rendering bodies down to reusable parts, which were then sold to hospitals around the world. There were no burials or tearful mourners, no eulogies or pathetically brief obituaries—which was the first thing about this business I was actually happy about. Fairly soon, my official government status would switch from Living to Retired, and the only one who’d notice my absence was George-the-friendly-waiter.

  “Twist your arm a little—there you go,” the lab tech said as she adjusted something on the little cart I was hooked to. My arms had been clamped down shortly after arrival. For my safety, they’d said.

  There were a surprising number of wires involved: twelve inserted into my spinal column, three in each arm, six in my legs, and a swarm of tiny electrodes in all of my fingers and toes. I asked why so many wires and the woman said a lot of troubling things about “synesthesia” and calibrating for the “McCollough Effect.” Using an “inductive biofeedback loop protocol,” they’d downplay any troubling “sensory meridian responses” that might carry over, all of which could cause a certain degree of discomfort once I was in the game.

  “So how does someone get a job like this?” I said.

  “Fail at everything else,” she said, then smiled to show she was kidding. “I need you to lie back. Head against the board and don’t move. That’s right…”

  The thing she used to clamp my head down felt like a medieval torture device.

  “Ouch! Hey, that’s sort of—”

  “It’ll be over in a bit,” she said calmly. “Now open your eyes wide, like you’re surprised.”

  I opened my eyes like I was surprised, and the bitch sprayed them with something that stung like acid … and my face went slack … and the world grew incredibly bright and blurry and I … seemed to have lost my sense of smell … and taste … and my head felt like a helium balloon filled with way too much helium.

  “Zheshush wuzha do da bay?” I said.

  “Hold on a minute, Mister Crane. I’ll be right back.”

  She didn’t come right back for twenty minutes. By the end of it, my slack jaw had drooled something like a gallon of saliva down my neck and chest and down my left armpit, and the world was a fuzzy ball of white light.

  “This won’t hurt at all,” she said.

  I felt a strange pressure around my sinuses, and …

  “Hoi, whaza da donna me?”

  “Try not to think about it,” she said.

  “Wha ca yi zee? Wha haba ma eyes?”

  “You don’t need them anymore, Mister Crane, and we need easy access to your optic nerves. Don’t be such a baby.”

  When I heard the door shut again, I started to scream. A while later, she or someone else came back and began fiddling with me again. Then came more sinus pressure, after which they put a bit in my mouth. It had a foul, antiseptic taste to it.

  “We’re going to do some tests now,” someone else said. A man this time.

  “Gugga a gugga?” I said around the bit.

  “Mmm-hmm. Hold on a second
, you’re doing just fine.”

  He gave me a shot in the arm, and a few minutes later I began to tingle all over. The effect was sort of soothing—like one of those lucid-accelerated massage beds that kneads you like baker’s dough.

  “Everyone loves this part,” he said. “Looking forward to my turn. Tell me when you see something.”

  I couldn’t see anything because the twisted freaks had cut my eyes out. But wait, no … there was something. I saw it again—a flash of green. A few seconds more—yellow.

  “Gugga!” I said.

  “Yeah? Colors? Shapes?”

  “Ugga. Guga ga ka.”

  “Ah … I’ll have to tweak it some more, then.”

  The colors intensified, swirling and twisting fantastically. Soon there were shapes all right: big, fuzzy, amorphous spheres and rectangles hanging in a gray expanse of nothing.

  “Ugga gu kaga gu,” I said.

  “Squares too?” he said. “That’s great. A lot of folks take longer, but you seem to be a perfect fit. I’m just gonna run through some of your other senses for a while. It’ll be boring, but worth the wait … or so the Everlife brochure says. I’m kidding, Mister Crane! Try to relax.”

  Chapter Four

  Hard to relax lying on my back with my eyes gone and my face feeling like melted wax. I did my best as the technician cycled my body through a wide array of physical sensations. I itched all over, as if covered by a million ants. Smells filled the air: watermelon, wood smoke, baby powder, vomit. Now I felt vertigo, as if spinning through space. Then, of all things, sexual urges so overwhelming that if my hands were free … but they weren’t free, and all I could think about was that female tech.

  Where is she?

  “You’re doing great, Mister Crane. Not long now. Hang in there.”

  Then that passed too. Thank God. Not that I’m a prude or that I don’t appreciate the sight of a beautiful woman, but never in my life had I felt such visceral, naked—

  Raw terror.

  It seized me from everywhere, as if a zillion niggling worries had suddenly ganged up on me. I was screaming, but couldn’t hear myself over a symphony playing somewhere … and a cat meowing—sometimes soft, other times unbearably loud, threatening to crumble my bones from the inside. Then came weeping, laughing, whispering, whispering…

  A man’s voice intruded.

  “Hello, Mister Crane,” he said, “allow me to introduce myself. I am Cipher. Can you hear me? Your transfer is nearly complete. Perfectly seamless migration of consciousness. Not suicide at all. We only have a few moments during this in-between phase of your existence, so I must speak quickly. Due to extenuating circumstances, I will not be able to meet with you. In my place, I’m sending a man named Jaddow, who will help you reach your wife in Ward 2. There she sleeps eternally amongst ancient ruins, lying on a stone bier in funerary fashion. But let me assure you: she is quite alive.” His voice grew irritated. “Unfortunately, Jaddow is … well, a bit of a character. He’s refused to help you until you reach level twenty-five on your own. For now, level up and acquire power. If you want to see her again, there really is no other way. Not in this world…”

  Then he was gone, and I was carried away on a mind-crushing tide of emotions I couldn’t escape.

  Nostalgia … shame … deja vu … suspicion … unbridled joy … hate without focus … And love. Love so pure and grounded I knew the universe was holy. From this towering peak of emotion, I plunged like a rebellious angel into a bottomless pit of despair. Now came feelings I’d never felt before but were somehow familiar: the need to feed on human flesh, to kill for fun, to betray someone’s trust and gloat in their misery. These terrible moments stretched into hours, weeks, days, eons, forevers and evers.

  Waves of experience flitted by so quickly I could no longer distinguish one from the next. And like that trick of the eye discovered hundreds of years ago—cycling translucent pictures in front of a candle to fake motion—a meta-experience began to coalesce. The endless swirl slowly faded into the background as a new reality asserted itself. This new thing seemed a little like the old thing.

  Then a little more.

  Then a little more.

  Then finally all the way more, and Ethan Crane opened his eyes.

  I was standing on a paved road of dark, smooth stones. In the distance rose a city with majestic arches, crenelated walls, and soaring spires with gossamer spans of light stretching between them. A city out of a fairy tale.

  Raising a hand in front of my face, I stared at it with disbelieving eyes, turning it this way and that, marveling at how real it looked and felt. How real everything felt. But also a little different. The wrinkles in my old living hand were gone, replaced by smooth, taut skin with no liver spots or silvery gray hairs.

  I took a deep breath and inhaled springtime blossoms and growing grass. The experience seemed just as natural here as in the real world, but better. Earth had never smelled so pure and free of pollutants. Granted, the world I’d left had done a lot to curb pollution in the last fifty or so years. But lingering always was the faint smell of hot electric coils from countless flitters zipping from place to place.

  My eyes closed of their own volition, overcome by the splendor…

  Of birdsong.

  Of wind through the distant trees.

  Of crickets.

  Of nearby rustling, perhaps from some furry creature with no fear of humans.

  An incredibly sharp object jabbed me in the back, and a woman’s voice said, “Move and I gut you. Say something stupid and I stuff your head up your ass. Then I gut you. Now drop your starter crap. Don’t make me ask twice. Or I gut you.”

  I yelped and tried to run, but didn’t get gutted for it. Instead I was collared and slammed to the ground. A foot in the small of my back pinned me there when I tried to clamber to my knees.

  “Stay put, you dumb noob,” she said. “You’re outclassed. Get used to it.”

  Anger quickly replaced my initial shock. “You’re an expert on class?”

  “I said shut up!”

  She kicked me in the side and I gasped for breath. Rough hands took what sounded like coins from something looped around my neck.

  My research had hinted of dangers on the road to Heroes’ Landing. All that had gone right out of my head when the physical and psychological torture began. If Earth’s future retirees knew what I did—how it felt to have one’s personality shattered and glued back together—far fewer of them would undergo the procedure.

  “I didn’t even know I had money,” I said. “But if they gave it to me, I probably need it. How do you expect me to survive?”

  “I don’t,” she said, laughing. “You get three tries before the game gives up. Then you stop loading with cash. Now get ready: here comes try number two.”

  She stabbed me in the back. I saw my own blood spurt out of my mouth onto the brilliant green grass. And wow it hurt. Not as bad as some parts of the transference, but pain was pain.

  Out of nowhere, someone was shouting in my ears:

  “DAMAGE 3,675. PIERCING, DEMONIC. Ethan Crane (Overkill: 3,665. RIP).”

  The voice was gone, as was the pain.

  Paved road to a distant city...

  Birdsong.

  Wind through the trees, and I was alive again.

  The murderous woman—whom I hadn’t seen yet—was nowhere around. After a quick look in every direction, I sprinted for the city. My research said I’d be safe there. Something about a binding stone … whatever that was.

  I yelped when I saw two decomposing bodies with stab wounds. They wore tunics like mine and carried their stunned expressions into death.

  Seconds later, I was tripped from behind. No conversation this time. I was simply robbed and gutted again.

  “DAMAGE 3,205. PIERCING, DEMONIC. Ethan Crane (Overkill: 3,195. RIP).”

  Chapter Five

  This time I ran in the opposite direction, away from the city toward a distant and dark tree line. My new body was
young, not very strong, and skinnier than I remembered it at this age. Half a minute later, I stopped to catch my breath.

  If I could put some distance between me and that lunatic…

  Light jogging behind me. I turned and finally got a look at my tormenter—a woman in her mid-twenties wearing a full set of golden plate-mail armor. Poking over her shoulder was the pommel of a sword. She had tawny skin and auburn hair with an acrylic sheen that dazzled in the sun, and her face was so pretty it begged to be stared at. Movie star pretty. Quite simply, I’d never seen a more classically beautiful woman. The guilt I felt at that realization shamed me because I’d always reserved such thoughts for my wife.

  “Take a picture,” the woman said, not panting at all. “This time, I’ll let you hand it to me. If I kill you again, you’ll come back broke anyway. So what’s the point?”

  I just stared at her. “What?”

  “Give it up. I don’t got all day.”

  Feeling hopeless and angry at the unfairness of it all, I reached for my pockets and … well, no, I didn’t have any pockets. I was wearing a tunic, like before, and another of those pouches around my neck.

  “There you go,” she said with a smirk. The sword was in her hand now, faintly glowing and leveled steadily at me. “That’s a good boy.”

  I pulled it off and said, “You’re a real bitch, miss, you know that?”

  The world pulsed briefly with light, and words appeared in my visual field. Having lived with smart lenses for years, I was used to it. But an announcer’s loud voice in my ears caused me to flinch: