24 Hearts

My eyes fluttered open.

At this moment of awakening, I felt my stomach churn like a sloshing ocean of acid.

I sat up hurriedly, my entire body aching in a way that it had never ached before. Bile rose up in my throat as I almost puked, luckily gulping it down at the last moment. My hands rubbed against the fluffy blanket upon which I had slept or passed out. I got out of the bed in a panic, though my legs were weak, and after a few wonky steps, I crashed to the floor. In desperation, I tried to stand once more, yet to no avail. My second attempt had only worsened the gut-wrenching turmoil that gripped my innards.

Don’t hold it in, throw it up! This thought raced through my mind as I started heaving dryly, even sticking my finger down my throat in a desperate attempt to end my suffering. My eyes teared up, and spittle drooled from my mouth as I tried time and time again to empty my stomach, yet nothing came out.

At that moment, I became aware of a ringing in my ears. A chill raced up my spine, and my entire body started shaking. Was this what it felt like to die? At that moment, it sure felt like I was experiencing my last moments of life.

I lay curled up there for a long time. Each moment passed in agony. It felt like hours had gone by when my nausea began to gradually fade. My body was no longer trembling, and the ringing in my ears had disappeared completely. Thank God.

I took a breath in and deeply exhaled, feeling a semblance of control returning to my body.

What the hell had happened to me?

I turned my head side to side, making a quick study of the room through my tear-filled eyes. I had never been here before, in this unrecognized room. Every piece of furniture was crafted from wood with not a single piece of modern technology to be found. There was a bright light shining from the wall opposite me. I forced myself to slowly crawl towards the light, feeling a wave of heat radiating from it as I came closer and closer. This light was not electrical in nature. There was no wiring connected to it, and what I had assumed to be a light bulb was some other thing entirely.

‘Where am I?’

The sensations, the pain… This was all far too real to be a dream. I was awake. I was certain of this.

Once more, I scanned the room, noticing the sizable pool my spittle had made as it had drooled from my mouth. Closer to the bed now, I shakily got to my feet and, in one hurried action, flopped down upon it.

I came to believe that my location and the location of this room were the least of my concerns. No, what truly mattered was how I had gotten there as well as the reason for me being there in the first place.

As my body started to relax and my mind started to clear, memories slowly started to seep back into my consciousness.

I had been sitting in front of my desk, doing a test run of the RPG I had created. Now, some may ask why I had chosen to create a game all on my own.

The answer is this: The game that I wished to play has not been created by another human, so, if it does not exist, create it! That, at least, explains the philosophy behind my creation. Every year new technologies came into being, enabling the gaming industry to pump out titles that looked impressive, even if the storyline and the worlds were not that unique. No, players wanted more than old titles re-recycled ad infinitum into shinier graphics: They wanted news things, fresh ideas, and they wanted them constantly. They wanted to row down an eternal river of novelty.

Naturally, any gaming company would struggle to keep up with such a never-ending and voracious demand. So things became almost stagnant, especially with players like Yamche quickly finding every bug and exploit within a game and sharing it online for all to see and use. So that was the environment I had been used to, an environment where no game could evolve as fast as the expectations of its player base. So it was a given that Company K’s announcement caused tsunami-like ripples in the gaming world. They had stated boldly and bluntly that they were working on a new type of virtual reality game, something never seen before. Even if the release date was many years off, the project looked promising and went viral planet-wide within days.

While all this was happening, another game developer had released their pride and joy, which in simple terms could be called a 3D RPG map and scenario creator. It was a game of vast complexity and gave the users much room in which to let their wildest dreams bloom into pixelated reality.

There was no multiplayer component to the game, but for those who loved roleplaying, whether it had a social component or not, it was not a problem in the slightest. The release of the editor and not an entire standalone game had come about due to budgetary restrictions, as the developers could not afford to make the game they wished to make. Their second reason for the release was to share with gamers how difficult it was to make a game.

Their product surpassed all expectations and became a massive hit, sending their stock prices soaring overnight. Many players worldwide took this opportunity to create the game they had always longed for.

It was a bit messy in the beginning, with a lot of trial and error involved. Regular blog posts by the developers helped those who struggled, though, teaching them the basics and few hidden features.

The player had full control over their characters and could tweak the appearance and attributes of the non-player characters as well. New types of monsters and weapons were showcased by the company, and players could both download and upload these when they logged onto the website. The players felt like gods.

Well, I had felt like a god when I created ‘The Twenty-Four Hearts of Pernen’.

I started by crafting the basic geometries of my world. Soon I began adding environs and biomes as I laid down lush forests and jungles, vast arid deserts, lakes of lava, and great mountain peaks were hidden entirely under the ocean’s waves. I was over-ambitious from the start, with the world I had created becoming so vast that it became difficult for me to work on it alone as well as comprehensively beta-test it.

Ultimately, I wished to play in this world, and for that happen, there had to be life. I started from one side, the plan being to systematically fill the map with the life sector by sector. So my first steps in this regard were the creation of a village and villagers, adding dialog and quest prompts as needed.

The game became my life, and as I had started coding it when I was in high school, I knew I had plenty of time ahead of me to go wild with it. I never went out to bars to drink with my friends; no, ‘The Twenty-Four Hearts of Pernen’ consumed my free time.

I then made my creation public, accompanying it with a blog to keep anyone who liked my world up to date as to newer versions and possible tweaks. People played it, some liked it and left positive reviews, and a few even went so far as donating money to me and my project. A year passed since my first upload, and by now, I could scarcely believe how complex everything had become.

Had I truly created this on my own?

The company had by now featured my game upon its main page, even paying me a stipend due to my dedication and frequent updates. By now, a great many people had come to like my work, their patronage freeing me from the need to get a temp job. All the people who were playing it also meant that bugs and glitches were found and fixed at an increased pace. The biggest part of my project that remained to be done was the creation of the central political force. Unfortunately, I had to pause development at that point to serve my mandatory military service. This disappointed many people, yet they remained patient because they knew it was worth the wait.

So, finally, after four years in development, I finished my game. I had implemented everything that I had set out to implement. I had ceased all major updates, only adding a dungeon here or a quest there if the whim struck me. Achievements and titles were also added from time to time, as a form of fan service.

I was content with this state of affairs. Moreover, I felt deeply honored by the gaming community, for my creation was within the official list of ten games that every human should play at least once.

Then, many days after my ‘retirement’, Company K approached me with an offer. They had chanced upon the idea of converting my entire game into a VR experience. I jumped at this opportunity, knowing that no one made virtual reality games that could even come close to Company K’s level.

I scanned over their offer and promptly gave them every scrap of code, texture, and lore that they would require. Their estimated time-frame for completing the project was between four and ten years, which was a long time to wait. I was not fazed, however, knowing that such things did take inordinate amounts of time to create. The large, and I mean a large amount of money they had given me did not hurt either, so I left them to their labors. When I finally had time for myself after all the signing of documents and compiling of data, I decided to take a break and do the one thing that I loved above all else: Playing my game. I crafted my new character and…

That was the last thing that I remembered. Had someone kidnapped me? If that was the case, why lock me in such a spacious and luxurious room? I sat on the bed, chewing idly at my nails. Various scenarios flashed through my mind. There was something that felt very, very wrong, yet I could not figure out exactly what it was. My gaze fell upon my legs.

“Why… why are my legs so damned thin?” Suddenly the disparity in my surroundings and my relative size became apparent: The room was not over-sized, no, it was I who was smaller, almost child-sized!

How had I failed to notice this? With a mute sort of dread, I stared at my hands. They were not the hands that I knew, the hands that I had used since my birth.

“This isn’t my body!” As I shouted this, I realized that even my voice was not my own. Horrified by what I had observed, I stumbled to the dresser. A mirror, I needed a mirror! I pulled the drawers out in haste, throwing out various objects in my frantic search. In the third drawer, I finally found a small gilded hand mirror. The face I saw upon that glass stared at me in horror. It was the face of a stranger.

“This… This can’t be!”

There was no doubt. The visage I now wore was the face, the exact face, of one of the characters within my game.

At that moment, something materialized into the air in front of me. I nearly crashed into the drawer; such was my fright. Floating before me was a translucent rectangular window consisting of some strange energy. It was lined with a neat green border, reminding me of the style of old text-based RPGs. A line of text floated in the exact center of this window.

[Soul Sync Completed]

The window flashed out of existence, new ones soon taking up its place.

[We sincerely welcome Master’s participation!]

[All systems are functional]

[Authorization Granted: Initiate project ‘Destruction of Destiny’]

“Am I playing my own game? No… No!”

I briefly entertained the thought that Company K had kidnapped me and was using me as a test subject.

Yet, this was an impossibility. I had handed my data over to Company K less than a day ago. It was not within the realm of possibility for them to have created a VR version of my work within such a short span of time. A few more system messages flashed in and out of existence until they ceased to appear. This felt in no way or form like a dream, yet, the reality of the thing… I had to be dreaming! What other conclusions could a rational man reach in such a situation? As these thoughts rushed through my mind, I felt the hairs on my neck prickle under the influence of some primal instinct. I spun around, and my heart almost leaped out of my ribcage.

A man was seated in the chair, his fingers steeped as he stared directly at me. How he had entered the room was a mystery. Moment by moment, I felt as if I was losing grip on my sanity.

“How did… you…” I stammered, the words failing to leave my tongue. This stranger had a very weird look about him, and yet I knew his name, this without ever having met him! Just the mere act of looking at him had planted his name into my mind. And that name terrified me beyond all sense.

He smiled at me, maybe kindly, or perhaps like a vulture studying a carcass. I could not really tell.

The man was handsome in an otherworldly, almost alien way. His voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet yet had a strange modulation to it, almost as if he inhabited another dimension entirely.

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Creator. I know that you now know my name, which is Xian, Xian the First Monarch. Xian, the second being forged by your very hands. I greet you, and long I have waited to do so.”

He had bowed his head while he had spoken, perhaps in mockery or, and this possibility horrified me all the more, in worship.

I knew Xian, as a toymaker knew every groove and splinter of a wooden doll. He was a mighty being, one of the seven monarchs that I had chosen to rule over the nether realms of my world.

There was only one being in ‘The Twenty-Four Hearts of Pernen’ that was mightier than the man who sat before me, and that was Lord Pernen himself.

Suffice it to say; I was very confused upon reaching this point in time.