I suck at first person shooters. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a horrible gamer - I'm in the upper ranks of raiders worldwide, I get endless kudos on my White Mage, and my Zergkers are best Zergkers. But... when it comes to FPS I'm just... not there.

And by not there I don't mean average - I don't mean I'm not the best and I don't mean I'm sort of good. I mean I really, really suck at it. Like, bottom 10 percent suck at it. So why do I play? Funny thing is that was exactly what Bob was asking me, that day so long ago. I was flying around, healing, throwing out a few rounds here and there (I'll be it with a sub 50% hit rate...), and talking on the comms when he asked the question. "So... Mim. Why do you keep logging in if you think you're so bad at the game." Straightforward question, right? Well, you would think. It took me a minute. Finally, left with nothing else, I just made a short statement of fact. The tautology that every gamer would give, really, if they looked deep enough inside (like, all the way to the cervix, which is kind of deep. Like, uncomfortably so, yanno? Yet, for me, it was likewise a place that it felt kind of good to go), "However bad it is, It's better than reality." He didn't hesitate at that. If I had thought, it might have struck me that his response was prepared, scripted, but I really wasn't thinking. My mind was fixated on the barrel of robo-death, even then baring down on my character. "Do you think a fantasy world would be better than this one?" he paused, "...any fantasy world at all?" "Without a doubt," staring at my corpse now, waiting intently for respawn, "I'd give anything to actually live in one." "Anything?" Was his quiet answer. It struck me that he wasn't shocked. More, I think, he was pacing himself, being very careful not to trigger a defensive response. "Anything at all." "Of course," I shot back into my Mic. Watching the last few seconds of the respawn counter slowly tick away. "Your soul even, heh." He said it with a laugh. Like it was a quiet joke. And perhaps it was, though the joke wasn't shared. Wasn't between him and me. "Ya," I said offhandedly, as the counter hit zero, as the rush of a new chance at life stirred my cooling fingers again into action. "For like, eternal life in a fantasy world with magic and levels and quests? I'd give my soul in a heartbeat and be grateful for it." "I heard him laughing through my headphones as a headshot split my screen. The read death counter ticking down once again, barely seconds after I had respawned. But that wasn't the only sound that bothered me. The fan on my computer had started to grind. A whirling, whistling sound, screeching and almost screaming in some sad fit of electronic agony. And my system turned itself off. Shutting the respawn counter down, plunging me into the even more painful blue screen of death. Shit. __________________________________________________________________________________________ It's rare to know that you're dreaming, you know? Usually, dreams are stuttering landscapes, thrown together at the whim of a mad god, and we are left much too busy trying to keep up to leave us any time to ponder philosophical questions like, "where is my real body right now? And What The flying Fuck?" But that is what made this whole experience special. For I remembered clearly shutting my eyes, seemingly moments ago. And I knew for a fact that the only way I could be here is by some soon to be forgotten dream. I was in a white room, barren walls, and in front of me, the only bit of life was the flickering of a... of a holographic screen flashing. In neon, translucent letters, I slowly read: Would you like to honor the deal that you have made? Y/N It's strange that such a sense of foreboding came over me then. That the hair on the back of my dreaming self's neck seemed to rise. But I'd be lying if I said that I was unmoved. The words flashed brightly into my eyes, quickly overriding the sight of the rest of the room as I slowly adjusted to the brightness in front of me. My commitment? I assumed it meant the deal I had made earlier that day. The day I so clearly remembered before I laid my head down to sleep. But I tried to piece together dream logic to determine what the best answer would be. I considered that hitting 'yes' would likely take me to some fantasy world, as was a part of my deal - and though I worried about the whole "selling my soul part" (which seemed liable to be more the stuff of nightmares than nice, happy dreams), overall I decided that continuing the dream with unicorns and fireballs would be worth the risk. My fingers reached out and gently brushed through the flashing "Y" on the screen. The words flickered and died, quickly reforming a new question. As if the light was a surface of invisible water that my hand had crossed - ripples carrying letters and reflecting into new, different questions before my waiting eyes. Choose your race: Human Elf Half-Elf Dwarf XHalf DemonX XChimeraX 'Half Demon' and 'Chimera' where grayed out. And my fingers lightly brushing through the word "Chimera" confirmed that they were not selectable options. With barely a second of thought, I reach out and touched the word "Elf." For me, at least, the choice was a gimme. Especially if I was to be locked in this world 'forever'. Or, you know, however long the dream would last. New options now, of course, assaulted my eyes in the dark room: Select your class: Witch That was it. One option. Stupid dream. Still, I figured, if given choices I would tend to grab Witch or Priest. And even if I would have tended toward 'priest', based on the assumed greater emphasis on healing and buffing spells, it's a choice that would have pained me. I ran through the other options quickly. Now they were mostly gimmies that didn't take much thought: Sex: Female Height (5ft - 7ft): 5ft Hair color: White Eye Color: Purple It wasn't until the last question that I hesitated, really. When the words flashed on the screen showing an option I had never seen before: Choose your soul's affinity: Damage CC Buff/Debuff Healing/Curing It seemed odd to me that all the roles were there except Tank, though when I considered it I guessed that it's lack had something to do with the class I had chosen. I somehow doubted that Witches would be much the type for heavy armor and shields. Damage, I assumed, were fire spells and the like. The favored option for most, I supposed, but it wasn't really for me. Especially if I was going to end up in some kind of an FPS mode - I could see a good dozen ways for my traitorous brain to turn that into some sort of horrid nightmare. CC sounded good, but without knowing the game mechanics it would be hard to know how viable it would be. A lot of CCs in RPGs end up being level capped or came with heavy restrictions. Not really worth the risk - plus, knowing my dreams, the spells probably wouldn't even work in the first place. Subtleties like 'frozen for 6 seconds' didn't strike me as something that my unconscious mind would be all that careful tracking. Buff/Debuff was tempting, especially considering their exponentially growing power the larger the group receiving the Buff could be. And while my dream had said that these choices would be forever things... it struck me likely that I would just wake up in a few hours and never come back to this strange, neon-haunted place. So long term investment abilities didn't seem like they would really work to my advantage. No, the choice was obvious to me. Healing/Curing. Especially with the "Curing" thrown in there like some kind of amazing freebie. Healing wouldn't mean much if your target was crippled or diseased - but the ability to both heal and remove that kind of debuff was too much to pass up, really. My fingers reached out and selected my choice. The next screen didn't seem interactive in the way the others had. It was labeled "Ability Points" and next to each attribute were a set of rolling numbers with "Calculating" flashing next to them. Like some kind of loading screen. The first attribute popped up, finally, with a small description next to it after a few seconds. I read it carefully. Strength: 5 Base - 6. Slightly below average in post-industrial pre-AI society. -1 for selection Race:Elf The other numbers started flashing up underneath, finalizing one by one before I could even express my indignation. Below average my butt. Dexterity: 8 Base - 6. Subject is somewhat of a clumsy ditz. However, finger dexterity is slightly above average due to excessive writing of rather terrible 'fan fiction'. +2 for selection Race:Elf Jesus. This dream was not shaping out to be one of the better ones. It briefly crossed my mind whether one can slap a hologram. Though I ended up giving up the thought, somewhat reluctantly. Vitality: 9 Base - 9. Average for lazy city girls. Intelligence: 16 Base - 16. IQ is noted (as subject would be happy to tell you, probably in large, pretentiously unnecessary words) as within the top 1% across all populations. Now we were talking... I guess. Wisdom: 19 Base - 17. While difficult to measure, we are taking wisdom to represent herein a formal measure of pig-headed willfulness, bleeding heart compassion, sometimes manipulatively used empathy, and down-right nit-pickiness. Subject exceeds most commonly used metrics for these areas and qualifies for our extended scales. +1 for selection Class:Witch; +1 for selection Affinity:Healing. Charisma: 16 Base - 15. With the subjects physical imperfections being corrected in assumption of Avatar body, this measure shall reflect manipulation, presence, and sexual appeal regardless of gender bias. Subject is noted to have been described as a "Cold hearted bitch" on multiple occasions, after receiving what she sought. High marks in Manipulation. Subject is noted to often be loud-mouthed and direct, while able to avoid serious oversteps or breaches of edict. High marks in presence. Subject has been described as "desirable" and her personality has been remarked on only three times in her life (two of which by jealous competitors) , however, subject is a noted flirt and receives an escalated rank on the "Slut Scale" (see protocol 3Ab) despite her noted celibacy. +1 for selection Race:Elf. It... was a lot to take in. I was about to take advantage of my skills in "Wisdom" and "Charisma" to unleash some 'loud willfulness' on my own smart-ass subconscious when the hologram started fading out and the room began to spin around me. It was a relief that this dream, as cool as it should have been, was now over - so I held back vertigo as I waited to transition into the land of talking bunnies, or whatever else my stupid brain decided to drag me through next. Do... do you get vertigo in dreams? It probably should have bugged me more, if I wasn't still fuming. The next thing I heard was a voice. A familiar one, in fact. As my vision swam together again in much, much too bright shades of spinning green and blue. "Welcome to my world, Mim. I trust I didn't keep you waiting overlong?" I opened my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out save soft choking sounds as my stomach struggled to vomit...