Sunday Pilots 1 [14.10.2018] - Golden Hearts [1/2] – An Isekai [Sent into a fantasy world] Story (Patreon)

Alone.

That would have been the easy answer for someone that would have asked me who or what I was. That single word would encapsulate most of my existence. Alone. I didn’t have a family, Not by tragic but also not by happy happenstance, they were all either dead or naturally estranged. I didn’t have friends, I had colleagues and some people I knew at a local bar that I sometimes talked to, but that was about it. Of course, I didn’t have someone I would have been able to call my significant other either, no girlfriend or wife to speak off.

As to why that was, I would say it was because I didn’t make the effort. People sometimes invited me to events outside the bar or the workplace, but I would just say no. I couldn’t tell you why, I just felt detached from everything. Starting anything new felt like a waste of my time. I had my rhythms, I wasn’t unhappy, I just also wasn’t feeling like I was in the right place.

The one exception I had were online games. The feeling of discovering other worlds gripped me. It reminded me of something I had lost between my childhood near the woods and mountains and me joining the workforce to slave away at my office job in the big city. It paid the bills, it didn’t make me miserable, but there were no prospects to go upwards either. Even if there had been, I wasn’t looking to spend yet more time slaving away at a higher position to have more money doing what I actually wanted to do less. The difference between a shared complex and a solitary bureau was null to me.

It often occurred to me that I was alone because I stayed where I was. I clearly had something else in mind with my life, something more adventurous and less railroaded. Even a farming job would have pulled me into a world that was immensely more like what my nature wanted me to be.

As much as I liked the sound of that, what great adventure would that be? Even worse, there was no guarantee that I would get there, the job market wasn’t forgiving and I would potentially leap out of my current boring security into a stressful hell of unemployment. Alone as I was, there was no family to catch me once I fell there.

The window that had appeared on my computer screen ten minutes ago and I had since been starring at thus wasn’t my only out. Not that it was an out in the first place, in all due likelihood.

‘Would you like to quit this world?’

It began with something that I could easily answer with a no, I wasn’t suicidal.

‘Begin anew in a world different from this one? Full of mystery, treasure and opportunity? Yes or No?’

Now that was harder to answer. What was the better question, however, would have been who had managed to subvert my firewall. I had two different anti-virus programs and security from work, must have been a new kind of virus. Not that I understood a lot of software engineering. Pretty stupid of whoever did that to use it as a prank message. It wasn’t even asking for 50$ to some bank account to unlock my PC again. 

I couldn’t close the window, as was usual for malware, it was as if it was burned into my screen and it blocked me doing anything else. The game had frozen in the background and nothing I did changed that. There was no reason to throw a tantrum. Of course, the lack of reason still made it somewhat difficult to not throw my mouse against the wall, every gamer knew the frustration of being blocked (particularly without real explanation) in the middle of a session.

‘Did I skirt into the darkweb by accident recently?’ I asked myself as I got out of my swivel chair. I had enough of contemplating those questions for now, as fun as philosophical side tour that had been, I wanted to try to get back to being the first to beat that boss solo.  The challenge of those things was simply the best part about any online games. I could have the same in single-player, Dark Souls sprang to mind, but it just didn’t have the same bragging factor. Either that or I already beat it.

The chair was an old thing, fit for replacement, and creaked as it turned on the metal axis. Normally that sound would have hunted me until I reached the kitchen, but today it just suddenly stopped. I didn’t pay it any mind. I made my way to the fridge with a calm heartbeat. This wasn’t the first time I got hit by a virus. I had downloaded dubious stuff before and paid the price for it. Although I had learnt in time and it had been a while since my last encounter.

I opened the small fridge under the grey counter, cleaned recently to an acceptable level, and raised an eyebrow. The light didn’t go on, leaving my food and beverages in relative darkness, only illuminated by the light from my screen shining through the tiny apartment. ‘Strange,’ I thought, flicking the on and off switch a few times to see if it was just a minor case of damage. When that failed, I accepted this was going to be one of those days and grabbed a can of iced coffee. Then I made my way back to the computer.

My chair was waiting for me exactly as I left it. The game was still frozen. I sighed and decided to go for a restart of the computer. I clicked the button once. The machine didn’t react. I sighed and opened my coffee, taking a few sips while I held the button pushed down. I counted to five and the light vanished. I glanced at the monitor, still glowing with the frozen frame. The window and the bosses stopped attack remaining as still as always. I looked back at the computer, it was still off.

My heartrate increased, not in frustration but in confusion. That should have been impossible. I rose out of the chair again, once more the creaking, once more it suddenly stopped. I checked the cables running around my desk, hoping against better knowledge to find it connected to some other device. There wasn’t. “What the hell?” I asked out loud and went to just put out the monitor. The second I touched, not even pressed, the power button, it went black. As the only source of light in my room, aside from what little cut through the closed curtain, everything went dark.

Except for the words on the window, which hovered in the middle of the flat device in harrowing white, like scars in the darkness. The ‘Yes or No?’ part slowly dissolved and moved, until only the Yes and No remained underneath the questions, hovering in front of the screen, framed like buttons to push. 

I normally did not dream this vividly. I grabbed my chin and pulled, it hurt, then I panickily started scratching my neck, that too hurt after a while. I even went as far as doing the nose-pinching trick they taught me when I got my first aid license. I hurt like a bitch and it stayed. This was one hell of a convincing dream.

“This is not a dream,” my voice assured me, guided by someone else’s hand. “I am bored, so you are one of many I give this chance to. Who I am? God. This is the only time you will hear from me, my only desire is to drop pieces into another field. This one has become stale through human ingenuity and safety.”

As I spoke to myself (yet didn’t) I pulled open the curtain on my only window. My mouth was doing its own thing, but I had full control over everything else I was doing. I was met with birds hanging in the air, people in the street several stories below locked mid-step, a kid stumbling over its feet and frozen in a position that should have been impossible to maintain.

In shock, I dropped the can of iced coffee I was still holding. Almost immediately it halted in the air. Time was frozen for everything that wasn’t me or what I touched.

“Make the choice,” god demanded through my voice. “I can only give you the opportunity. People like you have been drowning in leisure, you need to take the step. Take the leap and you will have a new life full of all the mystery, treasure and opportunity. Stand still and you will never move.”

I was alone. I would leave behind no one. What did I stand to lose? My life, in all due likelihood. Mystery stood for unknown dangers, treasure for the caves they rested in and opportunity never came without risk.

But what kind of life would that be? Could I life with the version of myself that had the opportunity to get out of the life he barely liked presented to him with a binary choice and still went with no? Would I be able to wake up each day, stare at the white ceiling of this tiny apartment and remember that it was my choice to still lay under it?

Right there, in front of me, was a clear declaration that I would have a new life in another world. No risk in applying for a job I may not have be accepted, no attempts of getting a house in the area, none of all of those modern problems that came with an orderly society. None of the safety, all of the rewards. What would I be if I said no to that offer? What kind of man would I become?

I would change from my uncertainty guided stagnancy to a self-confirmed stagnancy. The dream I wanted, endless exploration of unknown areas, denied to me by no one but myself.

My hand raised slowly at first, then it moved with certainty. The colour of the ‘Yes’-button inverted as I confirmed by decision. “Good decision, I wonder what fate has in store for you,” I said to myself, not sure if it was me or god talking. Then I lost myself.