Somber Expectations - Printable Version

So far I have been living strange adventures in the distant past and modern cities. Oh no, I was not alone for Wulfo, Mel and Lani were my companions. It should be self evident I was the only reliable party member there. All of our challenges and misfortunes did not prepare me very well to assimilate the fact I knew nothing about what modern lifestyle actually was all about. Admit it, my dear reader, you would have done the same if you ever believed you had seen it all back then. I know I certainly did, to my own dismay.

A fellow online board member kept talking about how much he had fallen in love with a weird and problematic redhead that I would dare to call a trigger happy girl without doubt. How could this nonsensical feeling ever get associated with my own troubles full of misunderstandings and nasty surprises? Well, that is the part I wish I could simply skip, still, I cannot do that or it is not recommended. No, I cannot, especially if I want you to get a grasp of what would come up next. Even so there is no guarantee you will not end up yelling “screw you!” at me after you have finished reading this chapter.

According to him, that girl had a partner and both of them worked as an unusual kind of consultant. They were the type of contractors you would ALWAYS regret you had ever considered hiring them in the first place. The ginger one never got separated from her blaster or so it seems to me. Keep in mind that I am unfamiliar with them, I really am! Even so I feel I can relate to them somehow.

Oh no, this story has nothing to do with those girls at all. Why? Because I do not want to get sued by anybody ever, he, he. Besides this is more about what I could vaguely recall after I showed up in the middle of a large city. Scratch that! I should describe it as the first megalopolis a simple guy like me had ever seen in his entire life. Forget about New York, Mexico City, Tokyo or any other settlement you would love to visit at least once in your lifetime. They truly are nothing but tiny marbles if compared with such a place. Curiously there was no central park or anything the like and believe me when I tell you I took quite some time mapping almost every sector.

Nope, I cannot tell you how many times I got lost and not in translation precisely. Citizens did not doubt to call me a weirdo for I was using pieces of paper instead of some very well known electronic device. Do you want me to tell you what kind of computers or handhelds they were selling at the stores? Then give me some 2,000 or 3,000 e-coins to go buy one for me and keep waiting for over 1000 years to let your descendants watch my product review on their very own ultra modern version of the “tube”. You see, even the worst tuber could get not less than 20,000 visitors a couple of hours he had uploaded or streamed it. Hey! I had told you it was incredibly LARGE, hadn’t I?

Another curious fact I got to mention here would be that it was divided by the spoken languages, sort of. Those speaking either European or Asian languages usually stuck together. They all speak some kind of slightly altered version of English. I guess we could evidently say here that tongues keep evolving non-stop if given enough time, right?

Nope, swearing pretty much remained the same except for a couple of recent additions. Forget it! I will not teach you what is the best way to insult a human in the future.

Those strange situations lead me to join any side that was fighting against some Chinese community. OK, I also loved to pick on some Japanese because, you know, they are well known for being crazy. Thank their mangaka and their animators for that, he, he! The samurai is no longer supposed to care about haiku nor calligraphy, they could just be the latest incarnation of pure evil. Here is another curious fact, they did not air any isekai kind of animé for they had replaced stories focused on parallel worlds with space operas long time ago.

Obviously, I did not hesitate to run away if gangs got involved and lasers kept opening holes everywhere. Somehow I cannot stop suspecting, not even now that I am back in my own time, that all those Chinese guys and a few gals were actual spies and not just your average gangsters. I ignore if that would be a synonym for hackers in the far future. Anyway, it seems bad customs never die…

Do not take me wrong! I seriously liked talking to some Chinese girl I was seeing for a few weeks. Her long black hair killed me for sure but her seemingly bottomless stomach not much. When Mike learned about her, he pushed me to make her a confession and steal a kiss or two from her because “she was hawt”. As a joke I told him he should go after that bratty Amelia that was stalking him long time ago so we all could dine together at the restaurant they would pick for us.

“Heck, if I ever, EVER wanted to date any troublemaker in the meantime, I’d call Pelosi or Pocahontas at once!” he exclaimed.

“Well, they definitely like the idea of celebrating Christmas in May or June so why don’t you go get her phone numbers?” I humorously replied back.

I never disclosed to him I would had to ditch her because she was a cyborg. Do not ask me about it, she could perfectly be an android instead. Their advanced technology makes it difficult to make clear distinctions between them. For Mike loves to take risks, I do not think he would give a damn thing whether or not she was a complex machine. Yeah, well, I SERIOUSLY prefer to stick to my time traveler’s hunch before I could end up tasting some futuristic coolant or oil.

Where would his shop be located in that city? Err, you got to know it will not be in that megalopolis for sure. I was talking about the very same American pawn shop where he has been working in like a slave for several decades now. You would have a better chance to contract covid-19 there than finding a hi-tech blaster or some light saber of sorts. He surely hates it when I tell him such things, he, he. Nonetheless, I cannot help it, my worried reader, for I love saying such hurtful things every so often.

True, I did not tell you this, yet. Right now I am writing this chapter back at home in cloudy and rainy Costa Rica. So there is no slight chance I am in need of buying some flea killer spray or tablet, he, he. The down side is that I can never foretell when I will be back in that somber mega city. Really, I cannot take my eyes off my glass or coffee mug or my computer screen when I suddenly find myself again in the middle of its dangerous streets and alleys.

“Helluva… What da hell are ya doin’ here, geek?” a drug dealer or the like screamed ferociously after I had interrupted their ill negotiations.

See what I mean, my dear reader? Here I am tapping on my cellphone as fast as a roadrunner for I have already got my own set of cyber coyotes chasing after me. Poor me!

By the way, let me leave a short but important final note here, just in case I do not survive this time. In the future they had found out I was the superspreader not of SARS-CoV-2 but one dangerous instance of the dreadful Corona-chan computer virus. How did I manage to pull that off unknowingly? Err, well, you see, my friend, it was by innocently posting this very same chapter on your favorite videogame board, of course! Yes, the same where you can find hundreds of my smileys.

You should know computers still running on XP and Vista got in serious troubles. At least that was what they told me in the nameless megalopolis last time I was there. Hey! I think it was that cyborg girl I mentioned a while ago the one who once let me learn everything I know about it, if I remember clearly…

“Essence of living beings detected! Notifying our leaders now…” the stupid drone full of advanced sensors claimed after he got to have found me and some rodent!?

Since then I have been wondering if Cheesie James or his relatives have joined me there.

If you don't come back to kill me! Laughing

As you would expect from any videogame, especially any role playing game, I managed to enter an invisible chamber. Inside it surely seemed to be empty, dirty. That made me wish I had not come too late for I was craving for finding a treasure that justified the whole darn search. Right before I would give up my foot unwillingly hit a wooden box. Yes, it was the treasure chest I was talking about and I had finally found it!

Now my fellow players would not dare to laugh at my efforts or so I thought back then. I kept kicking it hard just in case it would open automatically. No changes in its appearance made me grow desperate and I felt the sudden need to cut through its ancient wood with my trustworthy sword. What happened next was mind blowing, I had awaken the horrendous monster! Or was it a robot? Err, anyway let us say it was a hybrid of sorts for the time being. I had triggered the monster in the box trap but I did not care at all! It was damn exciting and my heart definitely wanted to scream and run away.

Mentally I was working hard to be prepare to face this new enemy. It was not at my level so I could not call it my archenemy but I was determined to not let any other player take the credit for defeating it. Mike would probably die right on the spot if he knew that I did not call for backups. Suckers do not deserve a single chance to show their magnificence and heroism! That was mine because it was written on stone since the dawn of time.

Something made me think Mike was getting close to the hidden room so I felt a strong urge to finish this mob at once. One or two perfect hits should suffice, right?

“Well the hell did you go?” my friend asked out of the blue. Then I finally understood how peer pressure really works in a videogame environment.

First strike, a total mess was guaranteed! Instead of hitting its head, I only provoked it to spawn spikes that hurt a lot even if they do not touch you. Could they have been electrified or what!? Maybe, just maybe my initial risk assessment was terribly wrong after all. I feared I would lose all my precious experience points I had earned so far. Taking one or two hits could make them vanish in thin air at any time. Does fear even exist in a virtual world?

Here comes a high jump, followed by the second strike. Crap! It was totally blocked by my darn foe. What is worse, it made me fly at high speed before I finally hit the hard wall. A loser, that was the nickname I should have picked at the beginning. Only an unlucky guy like me would ever think there was a way to slice that terrible monster like butter.

It might be interesting to notice that I should have lost my ears back then or Mike simply disappeared all of sudden. Anger and frustration were overtaking my consciousness when I hit a block on the wall quite hard. “Darn idiot!” was the thought crossing my mind at that moment. After a few seconds I heard a crumbling noise. So did that mean I had triggered another trap!?

Nope, it was no trap, I confirmed that once the newly found wall fell down on top of the mob. It turned out the very same monster helped me find the means of its own destruction by mere chance. Still, there was enough space to crawl under it and so I did. Then I looked for any prize I might have earned with sweat, and probably even blood that I got to have shed during our lengthy combat. At least I had no doubt my bones were aching badly. Did painkillers exist there?

The mob’s weight did not make it any easier to grab the stupid wooden box that served as its hiding place. Besides my broken bones were not cooperating. No, they were not. Anyway, let us talk about the prize. Inside I found a strange silver coin with unreadable characters and some modern envelope. Of course, guys, I had to open it to read the letter. The contents were disappointing or even a blatant joke in my humble opinion. Nonetheless, the term weight returned a second time it seemed.

Ignoring how I noticed the slight difference I had to examine it thoroughly. Usually players would not care about that. Why would I then? That did not stop me but pushed me to cut it again and again. Dropping a small piece of thin cardboard was a quite unexpected result. Why could they not leave some extra coin or a special ingredient of sorts?

“Keep exploring the map!” was the message I found printed on the virtual note. It might have been originally attached to a large piece of cardboard that was missing for some unknown reason. Yeah, I knew the mob was not at my level, did I not tell you this before?

“Game designers do not ever dare to insult players for free! Include better prizes next time, damn it!” I tweeted soon after I had packed the piece of cardboard carefully. Knowing that medium’s current practices, I was right to suspect they would soon add some stupid fact check warning including its lame link. Hey! They could also barefacedly block my post for possibly being a mean of spreading hate among the gaming community.

Now speaking about my virtual wall, I would foresee that Zuckerberg’s minions would not take long before they simply delete it. Wait a second! Apparently they did it already. Darn social media! They have added the “ist” suffix to their social business focus.

“Hey, Kyonides! Where the hell have you been this time?” Mike furiously inquired of me. That took me by surprise for I did not want him to learn I have earned a strange coin.

“Whatcha talking about? I’ve been here the whole time, you bag full of fleas!” I replied back thinking it was a funny punch for a nosy player.

“Shuddup! I’ve got no fleas, you idiot! Plus, you kept disappearing every so often since we started this game session” he reacted letting me know things were not as normal as I first thought.

“I did not disappear, you blind werewolf! I was just here facing that tricky mob you can see over there!” I told him hoping he would then calm down and disregard his concerns for good.

“Now I know you gotta be tripping already! You know very well that monsters vanish after being defeated by players like us!” he explained it all to me. He did it in a way that made me doubt he could be speaking the truth.

“Don’t be an idiot!” I yelled at him before adding “The mob’s still laying on the floor under that heavy wall! Can’t you see it? It’s still over there as I had told you just a few moments ago.”

“And I’m telling you that’s definitely NOT the case here!” he exclaimed to make his point excessively clear, worrying me sick about why we did not share the same perception of our virtual reality.

“So does that mean we’ve found a hidden bug in this game?” I suddenly asked him just because.

“Dunno ‘bout that, Kyonides!” he answered being unable to find a better explanation.

“OK, but you’re able to see there’s a wall that’s still partially open, right?” I quickly queried in order to find out what else was different in both worlds.

“Huh? Those shrooms gotta be hitting your head quite hard indeed!” he claimed laughing at me. I could only stare at him, especially for not finding the root cause of his strange disbelief.

Returning to My Own Reality?

The scene got dissolved as if they had applied some strong acid to it, and I did not believe Mike when he suspected I could be on drugs. Man, that acid got to be quite strong for I never noticed it was not your usual computer game. Heck! It was a whole virtual reality room! I had been playing the most modern version of the same videogame we both had purchased in the twenty first century!

“How the hell did you get here?” a somber voice questioned me, giving me the creeps.

“I wish I knew that answer for sure!” was the only thing I could tell him back then. Not even now I can explain it, I never left my room. Nope, I am not saying I might be some sort of Western hikikomori.

“Security? This is the VR sector, please send some guards here at once!” another guy ordered without giving me a second chance to get out of it gracefully.

“Don’t worry about it! We’ll just kick the nonsense out of your stupid head, that’s all!” the creepy voice announced, even if I wished he had never done that.

“Haven’t you ever heard that popular catch phrase?” I then made an attempt to earn some badly needed time to escape.

“Keep your #$ mouth shut, you imbecile!” the security guard commanded out of frustration.

“Oh no! It actually says ‘Keep exploring the map!’” I informed him as if that could ever matter under such dire circumstances. Desperation got to make us depend even on silly stuff if we are under extreme pressure, I guess.

The gloomy voice ordered the guard “Stop! Please discharge him. It just happens that I wasn’t aware of the permission he had submitted quite early in the morning.”

Believe me, that was all I ever needed to get out of those videogame development facilities. Nobody cared about any queries anymore, I was free to go anywhere I wished just because I could do so. I do not recall reading any voucher or email or private message telling me I had to depend on any password to get access to that mysterious place… Only available in the thirty first century or later!

I was beamed out of the building. The process was so fast I did not see anything that happened inbetween. An empty plaza. Where the hell did the thugs go? Do drones take coffee breaks as well?

Ask my inspiration not to take a long Coffee

break this time! Laughing

Based on my experience as a gamer and forumer, I might assume people like us end up wishing they could make their own game. Sometimes it is just a remake alias a terribly stupid version of it but the developers simply ignore its flaws for good. Yeah, I was one of those that would love to collect monsters and make them fight other horribly deformed monsters. My game project was as lame as many other games that have been uploaded to web hosting sites around the world. Gladly it got lost, now it is impossible for it to stalk me for the rest of my life, he, he.

Time changed my stupid mind. I suddenly cared about original stories but I did not plan to buy lots of graphical resources. Thus I kept using many default assets the game engine I had picked offered to all of us, the inexperienced indie developers. Naming it was not difficult for me at all, it was called “Detective Alex”. This game featured a young cop pretending to be an actual detective of sorts. His very first case was high schooler murdered right in front of its large gates. His main problem was that he did not care about preserving the scene intact for he dared to kick the body several times.

A dry tongue made me stand up later on. I decided that it was a good time for drinking some cold soda. The day was cloudy as usual so I would discard the heat as my main motive to leave my computer. Even so I could not get rid of that stubborn thirst of mine.

“Didn’t you hear about her? She’s been killed early this morning!” a worried mother told her ignorant neighbor.

“Huh? Just don’t tell me they assigned the case to Detective Alex, please!” I asked of them.

“Who’s Alex? Oh wait a sec! You mean Alex Comey, right? I think they actually did!” the woman seemed to have remembered him somehow.

Just in case you still ignore it, I had jumped to this futuristic world once again. Your servitor was surrounded by lots of gossipers out of the blue. Those who were not talking were texting or emailing their contacts at a fast pace. Finding out I had predicted their future while making that silly game of mine was terrifying indeed.

“Oh crap! If I were his superior, I wouldn’t trust his interrogation skills at all!” I sadly had to warn them about him.

My mind badly needed some rest so I left the neighborhood at once. I preferred to worry about my next parttime job, I would definitely need one if I ever wanted to survive there. Few blocks from my starting location I found the Blueberry Cake bakery, a small but lively store with some unique smell. That quickly reminded me I had not have lunch, yet.

The baker was truly desperate because his shelves got empty in no time. Normally that would be great news for his business, still, he had no helpers and he had to take care of completing every single task one could think off. Really, I looked for a cashier to no avail. He soon hired me and thought me how to operate the cash register that appeared to be more advanced than those present in the twenty first century. I was thankful and did not worry a lot about my future there. How foolish!

“Hey mister! I’m detective Alex, Alex Comey and I’ve got a few questions for you!” the blatantly stupid cop stated right in front of poor me.

“I’m sorry to tell you this but I’ve started working here this morning so I doubt I can ever help you with your investigation, sir” I warned him just in case I could get of that ugly situation.

A worried Alex then asserted “Oh I see! Then you might not know if there’s any pistaccio cupcakes left here. How terrible!”

“Boss, I told you so! We had to come before noon but you never listen to me!” his assistant grounded him from a distance, not caring about the other patrons present there.

Usually I would be in need of talking about Comey’s partner but that was not his case. My educated guess would be that he was not being treated as a real detective by the police department so he had to hire his own personal assistant instead. Based on my game project, he was appointed as a detective after his grandfather had made some calls to his captain to ensure he would never ever dare to reject his grandson’s job application.

Seriously, dear readers of my sad story, both Comey and his lackey did worry me for a moment. Their mere presence at the Blueberry Cake bakery was capable of driving me crazy. What happened next seemed to be a real nightmare to anybody who had tested my videogame back in my own timeline.

“Ho! Ho! It’s my old friend Alex! Why took you so long?” my new boss commented to my dismay.

I later realized Comey might have become one of his best patrons ever for he was addicted to his cupcakes. He always tried to pass by two or three times a day if possible. Out of all the available job positions I had to pick exactly the one that would force me to deal with that loon on a daily basis!

“By the way, sir, aren’t you the same guy that had left the renowned VRex Studio late at night?” the detective had to question me.

“Dunno whatcha talking ‘bout, detective!” I replied unable to come up with a good excuse at all.

“I see. Well, it doesn’t really matter!” Alex added. “For some reason I thought you were the same man that stumbled upon me back then making me drop my coffee. I’d have sent you the dry cleaner’s bill otherwise, ha, ha!”

That was definitely the kind of stuff I had to avoid while visiting the future. That comment made me recall a time where I thought I had hit something but I could not tell for sure what it was. I was in a hurry after all. If Comey was right about his coffee, how was I supposed to pay such a bill? I would only have earned nothing but a few e-coins by the end of the shift!

After such a traumatic experience I vowed to begin the development of a whole new game that night. It was nicknamed “A Short Odyssey”, a project based on a lot of ideas I had dropped long time ago. My goal was clear, I would finish my first role playing game and several improvements I made for the game engine strongly motivated me.

For some reason making a game has never been interesting so I wound up crafting custom scripts due to my natural affinity to writing fantasy stories, composing poems and working with large amounts of text.

The graphics design department still looks like a mirage, something I could never grab with my own hands no matter how many hours I spend on drawing or editing any image. Right, the only exception I could recall now would be those over one hundred and sixty smileys I have published on the board. This lead me to depend on default graphical resources for the gazillionth time.

Don’t you hate when you have to come up with clever names for your game characters? I certainly do, like the day I could not even name the protagonist. Getting bored of not finding any decent inspiration, I ended up calling that guy Kyonides. Yeah, I know I am not quite original, though I can tell you it is an unusual penname for sure.

My next developer’s block was how to prevent him from becoming just another Gary Stu. How could I pick the least number of my personal traits as building blocks for his own personality? Things were getting more and more complicated, making me wish I were a newcomer that does not care about quality but just telling his darn story to his target audience. At the end the lead character was a young guy that usually wears some jacket, a black one if available. He was living alone at a peaceful town that would be located far from the capital city.

Later that night I came up with other characters like Arylianna the rebellious elf girl who wanted to explore the world. Do never ask me why I am obsessed with adding a female elf to my cast, I just did. After a few weeks or months I realized my list of heroes was insipid so to say, and I still needed to write a story about how they would begin their journey.

Such a troublesome disconformity lead me to creating another female character, namely Mel. She was Kyonides’s younger sister with a personality loosely based on a board member. Thus she had to become a dreamer no matter what. Her struggle would be not to sound like a total lunatic every single time she wanted to tell other people about the strange dreams she had the previous night. Believe me when I tell you it was hard to overcome the temptation of making her behave like a true paranoid or a zealot of sorts.

It turned out I preferred to write the siblings’ story, making it a slightly unrelated light novel, before I would continue developing the game. This decision allowed me to take a break from gathering and customizing character sprites and battlers. Nonetheless I had had a weird sensation for quite some time since I started writing it. You see, it feels as if I were suddenly disguised as a mage of a very distant land in my dreams. Then I seemed to be trying to reach some girl, probably my lovely Mel. Becoming a night stalker was not my goal at all I can assure you, he, he. Anyway Mel has never been born in this world or anywhere else right?

“Hey Wulfo! I’m suspecting I’ve been having weird dreams as of late” I let my cyber friend know.

“Man, it’s late! I’m hitting the sack now for I’ve been falling asleep a few times by now” Mike told me one night while talking in the chat room.

“/quit” I entered in the chat box and closed the connections at once and turned off my computer in order to get ready to sleep like a baby. Sadly, I could only fall asleep after midnight, though I soon had a very realistic dream.

There I was searching for a certain dreamer, namely Melana. Oh and this time I, the mysterious mage in black, was chasing her down. In my humble opinion it appeared that I was trying to seduce the naive girl. My real intentions were later revealed, I actually wanted to steal her dreaming powers to increase my own at once. After a while I managed to kidnap her as if I were compelled by some strange force to do so. When I woke up I just thought, while laughing at me, that I envied Mel for her ability to sleep for nine or twelve hours a day.

Next time I was transported to a parallel world, I was no longer in the megalopolis full with its virtual reality rooms. This time I was in the middle age or something the like. Why don’t you place your bet on how I was dressed that evening? You know, by now you would have won lots of money if you had picked the black robe. Oh yes! I had become the evil wizard somehow! By the way, I was sitting at the table and a waitress approached me then.

“What would you prefer? Maybe you’d love some beer or ale or even mead” she quickly suggested.

“Bring me some Lomena, please!” I jokingly ordered, knowing beforehand that beverage did only exist in an old story of mine.

“Wow! You’re lucky, sir! We’ve just bought a few kegs this morning!” the gorgeous waitress continued. “Please be patient, I’ll be bringing you three jars of Lomena in a blick of an eye!”

Surprisingly, she kept her word and brought the jars full of my fictitious drink I do not know how. Not long after I felt like I had crossed to the twilight zone or the dream world had caught me off guard. For I could never believe that was happening for real, I simply got wasted and even forgot if I ever ordered some dish at all.

Here is where things got a bit complicated. You see, I had no money to pay my tab. They would hardly accept dollar or euro bills there. The bartender would kill me if I ever tried to use my credit card to make my payment.

“Your face makes me think you’re in troubles, my friend. Feel free to keep drinking, I’m gonna take care of your tab. Thus you’d only need to do me a lil’ favor in exchange” a man in his forties explained after taking a seat.

Since then I have been trying to find any clue leading to the virtual reality rooms I visited in the futuristic world but all my efforts seemed to have been futile. Besides I have other questions that remained unanswered. Who was that middle aged man? Where did he come from?