“What the hell is this?!” I looked around me bewildered, taking in my new surroundings. I was in a boat with walls on all sides but no ceiling, surrounded by men in old-fashioned US Army gear. “This can’t be right,” I muttered, and turned to the man to my right. “Where am I?” I asked him, tilting my head, my helmet clinking with my glasses. Helmet? The man ignored me, just staring straight ahead, unmoving. Unmoving? He wasn’t even breathing. I stood up and looked to my left, over the side of the boat. I saw half a dozen boats just like mine, and a few more when I looked to the right. But why weren’t they moving? I could see the water splashed up in our wake, but it was just floating in the air, motionless. I just stared into the water for a few minutes in a daze. A hand on my shoulder finally broke me from my reverie, and I turned as someone began to speak.

“Hey, kid. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions, but let’s wait until everyone wakes up, alright? I only want to say this once.” I nodded slowly as I took in the man’s appearance. He was a bald, middle aged white guy, but he was just massive; almost seven feet tall and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. Like everyone else in the boat, including me, I realized then, he was wearing a World War II era US Army uniform. Muscle man returned my nod and walked down the line, shaking the other soldiers on the boat. Some of them woke up, or were already awake, while others just continued to stare forward motionlessly. All in all, fifteen others woke up, leaving seven guys still staring forward.

“Alright everyone, listen up,” muscle man began, as he stood at the front of the boat. “You are all dead.” This was met with murmurs, a few jeers and one “What the fuck are you talking about, old man?” Muscleman narrowed his eyes and glared at the man, then the jeerers, then the murmurers, just for good measure, I would guess.

“What I am fucking talking about is, you died, and now you’re here. I don’t know how it fucking works. If it makes you feel any better, and I should hope it doesn’t, the same thing happened to me, too.” How could I be dead? I remember going to sleep… But that’s it. What happened…? “As it turns out, death isn’t always the end for us. Some people end up in places like this, to do a Mission. I don’t know how people are selected for these Missions, so don’t ask. These Missions, and I’d say this is the most fucked up part, take place in the worlds of movies, TV shows, cartoons and even comic books and novels from back home.” The guy glared at everyone again, to quell the incredulous denials that were already arising. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me, and I don’t really care. Most of you are probably going to die again anyway. If you haven’t already figured it out, we’re in a movie right now. Any guesses as to which one?”

“Saving Private Ryan?” A younger man- no, a teenager, asked nervously. A chill went down my spine as I realized he was probably right. This definitely looks like the beach landing scene on D-Day, that starts right after old man Ryan visits the graveyard in the beginning of the movie.

“That’s right,” Muscleman nodded, a grim look on his face. “This Mission will be brutal, especially for a Team full of rookies like ours. Take a look at those fancy watches you’re wearing, they’ll give you our Mission’s objectives.” Startled, I held up my hands, to find there was indeed a ‘fancy watch’ on my left wrist. It had a square screen, maybe four inches per side, that displayed the time and date, as well as a countdown, with about ten minutes left on it. It really was June 6th, 1944, according to the watch. I tapped on an M-shaped icon at the bottom of the screen, and the Mission information was there, just like muscle man said.

MISSION WORLD: SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

PRIMARY GOAL: SAVE PRIVATE RYAN (100 Points)

If Private James Francis Ryan is still alive at the end of the Mission, all Players are awarded 100 points.

SECONDARY GOALS:

Kill German Soldiers (1 Point per soldier kill) (5 Points per officer kill) Destroy German Tanks (10 Points per tank) Capture German Soldiers (2 Points per soldier captured) (10 Points per officer captured)

TIME LIMIT: EIGHT DAYS

MISSION FAILURE: PRIVATE RYAN DIES

FAILURE CONSEQUENCES: All Players immediately leave the Mission world, all rewards are voided, and this Mission world is locked permanently.

I learned a lot from that thing, but honestly it brought up even more questions than it answered. What the hell are these points? I didn’t know what they would do, but I knew that I wanted them, and as many as I could get. What happens when we leave the so-called mission world? Do we go back to Earth? Some kind of hub-world? If failure locks this world, what happens if it stays unlocked?I looked back up at the muscle man, but he just glared at me before I could ask anything.

“We only have ten minutes until the Mission really starts- and these boats start moving. I won’t answer any questions, but I’ll tell you all a little more. First I’ll tell you about the most important thing in your new life, assuming you manage to survive this: Points. When we get home, you can spend your points. The possibilities are pretty much endless- you can buy weapons, super powers, even magic swords and all kinds of other shit. Most importantly, at least for a rookie, you can increase your stats. Strength, dexterity, things like that. I’ve emphasized strength and constitution with a bit of dexterity, and I have a few guns with infinite ammo. I will not be sharing them,” he said, throwing around his customary glare once again. Strength and constitution though, huh? That explains the muscles so massive they show through the uniform. He continued then, “Back to the Mission at hand though, this blows my last few out of the water. We have to go through the whole movie here, but there won’t be any time jumps like in the movie. Saving Private Ryan spans from June 6th to June 13th. We’ll be here for eight days, as long as nothing goes horribly wrong.”

Eight days? I hadn’t seen Saving Private Ryan in a few years, but I was pretty sure the first and last days were the most dangerous by far. Then a thought struck me.

“If this really is Saving Private Ryan, is Tom Hanks going to be here?”

“I said I wouldn’t answer any questions! But I was about to get to that anyway, so I’ll tell you now.” HIs glare intensified and was focused solely on me. “The fact is, I don’t know yet. It depends, really. In Jaws, we replaced all of the main characters and were on the boat by ourselves, but in X-Men all of the characters were there. I would guess that he is, but he’ll be Captain John Miller here. Tom Hanks hasn’t even been born yet in this world. That’s another thing; this world was created just for our mission but it is still a real world, in some sense. This isn’t some little dimension limited to Normandy, France; it is a fully fledged world, currently in the middle of the second World War, and it won’t go away just because we leave at the end of the Mission. We can even come back here, as long we succeed. We’re just about out of time now, rookies. I’ll offer you one last piece of advice: don’t hide. Don’t run away. Get out there and kill as many Nazis as you can, if you want to make something of yourself after we get home. Points are the only things that really matter now.” With that, he readied a modern-looking assault rifle, and took up a position in the third row.

I checked myself for weapons, finding a rifle, a pistol and a bayonet, along with plenty of ammo. I was pretty sure the rifle was an M1 Garand, but I had no idea what kind of pistol I had. I held the rifle in my hand, finding it to be much heavier than I had expected. I almost dropped the rifle when I thought about what we were about to do, and my heart started racing. I got back in my seat and tried to calm myself down, but it didn’t help much. I had barely sat for a minute when time suddenly started up. As the boat finally began to move, the sound of our boats cascading through the water reached me, drowning out the few conversations the other ‘soldiers’ like me had started.

I stared forward, determination slowly settling in. I really only had half an idea of what was going on, but there were two things I desperately wanted at the time. The first was to not die (which generally is my main goal, now that I think about it), and the second was to acquire as many points as possible.

We quickly approached the shore, and several of my fellow soldiers began to vomit, the nerves and the unsteady motion of the boat getting to them. Maybe I did too, but I will never admit it. Certainly not.

All too soon it was time, and the front of the boat opened up into a ramp, the first row of soldiers immediately charging out. They were met with a hail of gunfire, and the first four soldiers of our boat were gunned down in seconds, before they could even disembark. Not waiting for my turn, I hopped over the side, dropping into the channel. The soldier in front of me, one I recognized as another of the ‘Players’ from before, had the same idea and jumped just after me.

As I fell into the water, I realized it was a lot deeper than I thought, and my military gear was much heavier than it looks in the movies. I was still okay, though; I was a swimmer in high school. I couldn’t really swim while I was weighed down so much, but I had pretty good breath control. The other guy, though, was having trouble right away. With the gear weighing us down we sank down real quick and had to walk along the bottom for a bit, but he was struggling to make any progress. I waded my way over to him and grabbed his left arm, pulling him forward. He nodded gratefully, then went limp.

As soon as his body went slack I looked to my right, where the water was turning red. “Fuck!” I tried to shout, sounding a lot more like “ugg” followed by a few bubbles. He’d been shot! Two rounds had gone through the water and pierced his chest, the light in his eyes swiftly extinguished. The four men that had died barely a minute before on the boat were ‘normal’ soldiers, actual residents of this world, and I didn’t really see them as ‘real’ people at the time, so I wasn’t nearly as affected then as I was now. This guy was just some guy, like me, a guy from a relatively peaceful era thrust into a notorious battle for no apparent reason. I just stared at him for a few seconds, before I came to my senses and let him go. His body just drifted around in the water, still weighed down by his gear.

I made a mad underwater dash towards the shore, bullets constantly shooting past me me. Most of them were pretty far off, but one passed barely an inch from my left leg and another actually dinged off of my helmet! I sped up even more, feeling my lungs start to burn. It really was much more exhausting than just swimming normally would be! The water got shallower and shallower until I finally could stand with my head above the water, breathing in for what seemed like the first time in hours.

The clamor of the battle made me briefly consider diving back down, just to give my already-ringing ears some respite, but I shook it off and steadily advanced towards the shore. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of US soldiers all around me, and I’d completely lost track of anyone from my boat. Nothing left but to go forward, then. I gulped, and made a mad dash towards the beach. A mortar went off several feet behind me, blasting me forward and into the sand. I shot back to my feet, coughing and hacking the sand out of my mouth, disgusted at the iron-taste mixed in. I charged forward and dove behind the first real cover I could find.

I fell in with a group of nine other soldiers taking cover behind a collection of three of those giant metal X-things in the water. I later learned that they are called Czech hedgehogs, and are anti-tank barricades, but what they were didn’t really matter to me at the time. Bullets glanced off of mine every few seconds, and I took in the scene around me, huddled up with two other guys, trying to keep low and behind the metal.

It was pure pandemonium! I could see men dying all around me, the water of the channel quickly turning red. One soldier, a sergeant I think, came to our impromptu squad and ordered us to advance. He ducked behind my barricade and shouted the order.

“We’re sitting ducks out here! Get up the beach! Get up the beach! Forward, now!” I took a nervous breath and, left with no real choice, we abandoned our brief safe-haven and charged forward. I was in the middle of the group, and I felt true terror for the first time since I’d jumped out of that boat.

Even with the heavy load I hadn’t been too uncomfortable in the water, and behind the barricade we had been relatively safe, but now we were essentially running through no-man’s land. A spray of machine gun fire dropped three of my group, including the sergeant. One of the privates quickly got back to his feet, two fresh holes in his right arm, while the other had been hit in the chest and died before he hit the ground. The sergeant was hit in the side of the neck and lay there bleeding, trembling and reaching one hand out towards me, the other covering the bullet wound.

“Medic!” Someone called, and I rushed forward to grab his outstretched hand, pulling him behind another barricade. He didn’t think he had the strength to lift his arm anymore, the hand clutching his neck slowly sliding down. I held my hand over the wound, trying to apply pressure. Or something. I really had no idea what I was doing. I kept shouting for a medic, but none came. The rest of my ‘squad’ took cover with me, one of them working on the other wounded soldier’s arm. “Medic!” I called one last time, as the light faded from the sergeant’s eyes, and his arms finally went limp. I stared at my hands, trembling and covered in blood, for a solid five seconds before I came to my senses. The rest of my ‘squad’, now reduced to nine of us, wore grim but determined expressions. I got up, grabbed my rifle, and charged forward, leaving our cover once again. “Let’s go!” I yelled, and the other eight men were right behind me.

A couple dozen yards to our left there was a sudden blast of flame! I quickly glanced towards it and saw two soldiers consumed by the flame, writhing in pain as the blast grew bigger.

“Keep moving!” I yelled, as I glanced back at my ‘squad’. We’d lost three more while I wasn’t watching, only five of them left. Another of our men was hit while I was looking at them, a bullet blasting through his forehead, spraying a grotesque pink mist behind him as he fell. I turned around to keep going, but then a sudden explosion from behind me rocked me off me feet. I landed face first, the sand getting in my nose and mouth, again. I raised my head, coughing, and nearly gagged at what I saw in front of me.

A human arm, severed several inches above the elbow, lay not a foot away from me. A dazed-looking, one-armed soldier was slowly walking back and forth, looking for something. I called to him, but I don’t think he heard me. As I stood up, he bent over and, after a few tries managed to pick up his severed right arm. Then he just walked off!

Wait! I remember this! The fire, then they one-armed guy! Tom Ha- Captain Miller should be nearby!

“Take cover!” I yelled back to my ‘squad’ as I dove behind another Czech hedgehog. There were only two of them left at this point, and they took cover on either side of me. I actually recognized one of them- the teenager that was the first to suggest what movie we were in. The other one seemed familiar too, but I couldn’t quite place him. He wasn’t wearing a ‘fancy watch’ so maybe… Could he be one of the important characters? He certainly wasn’t Tom Hanks or Vin Diesel, so I couldn’t be sure. The only other actor that I knew was in the movie was Matt Damon, but he was Private Ryan so he wouldn’t have been here anyway.

In the relative safety of our cover, I scanned the water behind us and, sure enough, there he was! Tom Hanks is here! Uh, Captain Miller!

Captain Miller broke out of his stupor and rushed up the beach, his gun wrapped in a plastic sheet, and moved in with another group that were behind a larger barricade. I couldn’t hear what they were saying over the gunfire, explosions and screams, but the man Miller talked to dropped some metal box thing, picked up a weapon, and they moved out.

“Hey!” I said, tapping the teenage ‘Player’ “Over there!” The teen looked over and his weary eyes lit up and he tried to stand up, then he clutched at his arm. So he was the one hit early on?

“What is it?” The other soldier asked, and he saw where I was pointing. “Captain! Captain Miller! Over here!” He raised his arm, and motioned Miller over.

“Reiben!” He began to make his way to us, when his head suddenly turned to the right. “Briggs!” He shouted, and ran over to one of the many, many wounded men on the beach. I glanced at the other ‘Player’ and Reiben, nodded, and we went to Miller and Briggs.

“I know this scene!” The teen spoke up, just to my left. “Miller drags the Lieutenant forward for a bit but then he gets blown up!” Now that he mentioned it, I guess there was a scene like that.

“Fuck! Let’s get him out of there fast then!” I sped up, and Reiben and the teen followed suit. “Captain!” I shouted as we got near them.

“Get me out of here! I’m hit low! God!” Briggs was down, but in my inexpert opinion he’d probably have been fine if there was a medic around. Captain Miller called, but no medic came. The three of us arrived soon, and Miller looked up at us.

“Reiben! Get Briggs out of here! You help him!” The Captain said, the last part directed at me.

“Yes, Sir!” The three of us said in unison, as Reiben and I grabbed hold of Briggs. Miller stayed to argue with some other guy, but I was pretty sure he’d be ok. The main character can’t die at the beginning of the movie, right?

We dragged Briggs forward and, somehow, made it to the area Miller and the rest of the main characters met up at in the movie, the sandy hill just below a bunch of barbed wire and one of the pillboxes. We went prone against the sand hill and Reiben called for Wade, the medic. Wade was working on another patient with two other medics. He glanced over and nodded at Reiben, but continued working on the man in front of him.

Miller ran by then, and joined us. He said something to a Radioman, then turned towards us and yelled, “Who’s in command here?!”

“You are, Sir” The teenager yelled after a brief delay.

“Sergeant Horvath!”

“Sir!”

“You recognize where we are?”

“Right where we’re supposed to be, but no one else is!”

Captain Miller turned back to the Radioman and told him something again, then a few more soldiers joined them. Mellish, Caparzo and Jackson, they said. They started talking about their medic, Wade, and tried to draw his attention again.

Once again, Wade ignored them and continued to work on his patient, but then the wounded man took a bullet in the head.

“Fuck! Just give us a fucking chance, you son of a bitch!” Wade kept ranting at the German machine guns, as Mellish ran to get him. When they got back to the hill, Wade and an older medical officer took one look at Lieutenant Briggs and started working on him right away.

Miller and Horvath quickly discussed the situation and made sure we were in the right place, then planned out our next few steps.

“Gather weapons and ammo!” Captain Miller shouted, Sergeant Horvath relaying the order, so Reiben and I, along with a few of the other guys that I vaguely recognized as other characters from the movie, moved back. We basically looted our dead and dying comrades, grabbing up as much ammo as we could carry. I was about to turn back around when something caught my eye.

Two of the men on the ground around me were wearing the dark watches that I had- they were ‘Players’ from the real world like me. One of them was certainly dead; half his face had been blown off and his torso was riddled with bullets. The other one had half a leg blown off and at least one gunshot wound, but he was still barely alive. He was a young-looking asian guy, maybe a teenager, I thought.

“Help me…” He muttered, his unfocused eyes staring straight up, tears leaking down his face, blood streaming out of his nose and one of his ears. “Why….?”

“Reiben!” I called, seeing him nearby, “Help me with him!” I had crouched over the asian ‘Player’ and tried to drag him up the beach back to Wade and the other medics, but it was slow-going on my own.

“Okay!” He sprinted over to us and we each grabbed a shoulder, pulling him straight to the medics. “We’re all back sir!” He shouted, as we dove under another wave of machinegun fire.

Miller called for the bangalores then, everyone ready to get moving. Bangalores are basically big metal tubes with a torpedo in them, I learned a few seconds later. As they set them up, a stray bullet deflected off the helmet of the guy next to me. His stunned expression as he grabbed his helmet triggered another memory of the movie, and I pulled the guy down by his arm, pressing him to the ground. Not three seconds later, another shot fired right where his head had just been. I shook him a few times to break him from his reverie; he took a deep breath and readied his weapon. Miller and Horvath lit the fuses on their bangalores right then.

“Fire in the hole!” Miller yelled, and it was carried down the line. We all went down and took cover.

BOOM!

The explosions rattled my brain a little, but with that we could finally move on!

“We’re in business! Other side of the hole, go!” Shouted Sergeant Horvath, and we advanced, vaulting over the mound of sand and through the newly-made hole in the barbed-wire fence.

We quickly found ourselves pinned down by a German machine gun crew, behind the ruins of the bunker Miller had just blasted. Miller issued several commands to his guys, and I figured I was pretty much just along for the ride at that point. I laid down covering fire with my M1 Garand as the real soldiers got to work, the PING! of the empty clip ejecting itself surprising me. Luckily I had seen some of the others reload the same kind of gun, and it wasn’t very complicated. Pretty soon the only ones left behind the wall were Miller, Horvath, me and one of the other guys.

“Jackson! You see that impact crater? That should give you complete defilade from that machine gun position. Get in there and give me some fire discipline. You go with him,” Captain Miller said to me at the end, nodding towards the crater in question. “Wait for my command.”

“Yes, sir.” Jackson and I said, as we got ready to move. Jackson kissed his cross necklace, while I took a few deep breaths.

“Go!” The Captain shouted and jumped out, drawing fire towards himself, as we ran past Sergeant Horvath, booking it for the crater. A stream of bullets trailed me, mortars blasting holes all around us. Jackson dove forward and rolled into the crater, and I slid down, firing a few shots towards the enemy’s position. Jackson readied his Springfield rifle, and said a prayer so quiet I could barely hear him.

As soon as one of the German soldiers came into view, Jackson fired, blasting a hole through the man’s chest! He stumbled back, probably dead behind their sandbag barrier. After another prayer and another shot, the sandbags were blasted apart and tumbled down the hill, another German soldier rolling down with them. The rest of Miller’s guys lit him up on the way down, and I even fired a couple of shots before I heard the PING! again. I reloaded, faster that time, but he was dead for sure by then.

Captain Miller ordered everyone forward then, and men from all over the beach rushed to the hole we had made in the German defensive line. Jackson and I moved up quick, joining Sergeant Horvath, Private Reiben, and the rest of their group as they converged near the next bunker. The Sergeant took one of Reiben’s grenades, pulled the pin and lobbed it into the bunker. We all crouched behind a wall until the after the explosion. A chunk of concrete bounced off of my helmet, but otherwise we were all okay.

Reiben and I crept out as the dust settled, our guns trained on the bunker’s entryway, less than ten feet away and in a trench a few feet deep. A German soldier ran out and turned towards us, so we each fired at him twice, dropping him with three shots to the chest; one of mine had gone a bit wide. Two more Germans ran out then, this time turning left out of the door and trying to run away from us. I fired twice at the one to the right, Reiben doing the same to the one on the left.

We dropped into the trench, and I was ready to storm the bunker, but the Captain called over someone called Doyle. I glanced over to Doyle, and couldn’t stifle my grin in time. He had a fucking flamethrower! Someone threw another grenade through the doorway, then Doyle stood by the entrance and torched the place. The whole bunker went up in flames!

We got out of there quick, jumping into a longer trench a few feet ahead. We briefly exchanged fire with a group of German soldiers, but they surrendered before anyone on either side got hit. Some of our guys went over to secure them, but I moved on with Captain Miller and the others. I really had no idea what unit I was from or what I was actually supposed to be doing, so I just stuck with them.

Next we surrounded another bunker, that several German soldiers were running through, and opened up on them like a firing squad. I had fired four shots, killing two of the enemies myself, before I once again heard the now-familiar PING! of my spent clip ejecting itself. By the time I had reloaded, Sergeant Horvath had given a cease-fire order. Most of the surviving German soldiers had surrendered or been routed by now, and it seemed like we were done for the time being.

Captain Miller was talking on his radio so I stepped forward a bit, as some of the other guys stepped into the trench, looting the dead enemies. To the side I saw two more German soldiers climb out of a trench, one unarmed and the other dropping his rifle right then, both putting their hands up. I vaguely remembered them from the movie; some other American soldier shot them. Well, I wasn’t going to have any of that; if I captured them I’d get more Points!

I pointed my Garand in their direction, then motioned to my right. They nodded and walked that way, hands still raised, while I followed behind. I had them walk until we got back to the trench the other soldiers we had captured were in, handed them off to a Sergeant over there, and rejoined ‘my’ group with Captain Miller.

The battle was winding down at that point so I sat on the ground, my legs hanging into the trench, and tried to think for the first time in what seemed like hours, the adrenaline rush finally waning. My hands started shaking, and I tried to calm myself down, but it just wouldn’t stop. I’d tried to tell myself that none of this was real; that since, according to that big guy from the boat, this entire world was created just for us to go through this movie, this Mission, the people I had killed and the people dying all around me weren’t really people.

That was bullshit. Their screams, blood and tears were as real as anything I’d ever seen. I swore then and there that if I ever found out who or what threw me into this fucked up war, I would end them.