The habit of life is what we fear to lose, but are any of us truly living?

Chapter One

I love this.

My sun sword blazes through chains, stone, and wrought iron, freeing the imprisoned rebels—their cheers echo off the crumbling walls of black stone.

New achievement unlocked: Breaker of Chains.

CHA +2

You honor the great hero, the Lion of Adu.

Reward: 1000 XP

The triple moons cast their glow upon the savage ruins as Jonesy slashes through embattled Mahreb aberrations with a crimson arc of his two-handed great sword Inferno Claw. My strength ebbs with each swing of my sword, as I fight through the mass of attacking behemoths. Literally de-arming one of the Mahreb, I round through on my swing, sinking my sun sword into the chest of the man-creature, his innards roasted by the heat of my blade. Behind me, the surviving rebels disappear into the darkness of the forest beyond the ruins, shielded from the light of the moons.

Mahreb Warriors

Defense: 14

STR: 22

DEX: 14

CON: 24

FOC: 20

Weapons

War Axe: Melee Weapon DAM: +4 slashing damage.

These savage warriors seek to enslave the people of Adu.

Facing the demon-like Mahreb warriors, my back to the fleeing rebels, I down my tenth potion, my inventory low, my health at 20%—things aren’t looking good. Jonesy hollers in my ear to begin our retreat, simultaneously screaming at Paul , who’s nowhere to be found, his healing spells needed by everyone remaining in the group.

“Jonesy, I don’t think we’ll survive this quest!” Paul finally responds through our party chat. “I’m cornered by more of the mobs, but making my way to you out of the dungeon.”

“Damn it, Paul!” Jonesy hollers from beneath a huddle of Mahreb. The beasts hack away at him, his armor failing. There’s nothing I can do to get to him.

Lord Jonesy: HP 50/500

My primary attacker wields a long-shafted axe and a heavy shield, blazing with eldritch energy. The shield falls at the stroke of my sun sword. Tossing the fragments away, his gauntlet hissing, molten metal dripping, the monstrous man-beast’s war axe devastates the stone beside me.

Skill unlocked: Deft Dodge.

You dance like a deadly swordsman, sting like a savage beast.

Striking back, I slice one of the beast’s crown of horns from its bulbous skull, dropping and returning my swing across its legs. But with the speed clearly listed in its stats, the Mahreb bounds into the air, clearing my sizzling blade, his arms raised overhead. The heavy axe chops down atop me, glancing off my shoulder guard and I fall, hard. Towering over me, the beast hefts his axe for another stroke

Dark Dave the barbarian: HP 10/500

Slashing damage.

Back to my feet with a grunt, and with great effort, I bring my sword down in an arc that crashes full onto the enchantment around the Mahreb’s armored skull. The blazing blade shivers before slicing deep, melting through the sorcerous armor. Wounded, it’s HP dropping, the man-beast strikes with the full weight of his massive frame. His blind, terrible, enraged charge knocks me clear off my feet and we both hit the ground, the blinded giant tumbling dead with thunderous impact.

I buff Deft Dodge to roll away, as a new giant rains terrible blows around me. I guzzle my final potion, but it only boosts me back to ten percent.

Dark Dave the barbarian: HP 50/500

The Mahreb warriors engaging Jonesy roar and howl like the hideous things they are, as Jonesy swings his sword in great arcs, his berserker rage over-taking him.

A barbarian myself, I feel the charge of my own battle rage giving me a second wind in the form of a strength buff.

“Jonesy! I’m going to slice through the floor, follow me.” My voice is thick with battle lust.

Jonesy spins to dodge an axe blow and runs the last attacker through.

That’s when I hear and feel the rumble. I switch to third person view—the Mahreb have reinforcements. A horde streams across the clearing outside the ruined fortress, soon the great host will be upon us.

Tense, Jonesy and I stand together, he laughs like a madman as we face the oncoming wave. He rebuffs his greatsword along its Inferno skill tree, igniting it. Not quite a sun sword, I laugh to myself, turning to cut our way into the underworld below the ruins and to the rest of our party.

My office phone rings.

I pause the video and look up from my cell phone, pulling the single headphone from my ear and reaching across my desk. “Yes?”

“The general manager wants to see you.”

Glancing down at the paused video and into the past, almost ten years ago, I consider how things have changed since we played our first MMORPG. I think it was called Rebel Lion? Look at us, lost in a game, facing incredible odds, gathering epic loot. That was so long ago.

“David? They want to see you now.”

“Yes okay, I'll be right there.”

Now my life sucks.

*

I hate this shit.

Another hour of my life torn from me. Another meeting about having meetings. I rub my stomach as I walk away from the offices of the general and assistant managers. They made it very clear we haven't been consistent with the meetings and communication with our sales staff. Sure, I'm all about communication, hell, upper management is famous for leaving us all in the dark, unless it's to give negative feedback.

How is work to be done if meeting after meeting disrupts the business of selling? How do we coordinate a meeting with dozens of salesmen? All at once? One group each day? Multiple groups each day? Are we going to discuss how to sell better? Well I sure hope so. That is the point of our business. My stomach shifts, and it isn't pleasant. My shoulders and neck go cold as my fingers tingle and sting.

Wonderful, this again. My stomach roils as the uncontrollable urge to vomit overcomes me. I breathe deep and close my eyes.

After years of being a jackass to the system, loyal to the work, not necessarily the job, my health has gone to shit.

My cell phone beeps, a text message. The usual, problems with one of the sales devices. No internet connection, dead screen, heaven forbid they've dropped the damned things and somehow managed to crack the durable screens. If only the company would pay for voice communication and virtual screens. Ha. Communication. There's that word again.

As I pass the receptionist, I'm waved over.

“David, can you take this call?”

I shake my head. “No.” My first answer is always no.

“What?” She gives me that confused, hurt look, with a hint of annoyance.

“Who is it?” I continue walking.

“A customer.”

Well obviously. No, it could be a salesman or a supplier. Could be personal. But it never is. I shrug. “So pass it to customer service.”

Customer service, one of the few jobs where artificial intelligence isn't yet slated to take over, where the sound of a real human is all but demanded, even if most companies still layer it deep behind automated answering with a lengthy list of numbers to choose from.

The receptionist shakes her head. “No, they want to speak to you.”

Yup. Of course, with multiple, simple, customer service related questions. There's an entire department for that, but my dedication, my reputation and relationships with customers precedes me. I treat them like friends and family. They know I'll have or will find the answers they seek. They take advantage.

Another twenty minutes later I feel another temporal shift with no blue police box to win back the time I've lost. I lean back in my chair and breathe deep, expanding my diaphragm and back muscles. Some yoga or martial arts stuff. Whatever. It works, it strengthens the lower back too. My cell phone beeps again. Right, I haven't answered our sales person.

Brandon: You don't want to hear this. The screen on my sales tablet cracked.

Me: All by itself?

After a few minutes of waiting for an answer, I pick up my desk phone and initiate a video call. Gotta see what the damage is and look Brandon in the eye.

No answer. I snatch my cell phone from my pocket. These lot drive me nuts. I punch out a text message.

Me: Return to the job, please. Go see IT department. Explain yourself.

Resting my cell phone on my desk my eyes fall on my water bottle. It's eleven in the morning and I've not had a lick of liquid. No wonder I'm feeling light-headed. I'm as much to blame as the job. Nothing stopped me from bringing my water bottle to the meeting.

My cell phone beeps.

Brandon: You called?

Me: Yes. What are you doing if you're tablet is cracked? Please come back to the job.

Brandon: I can still use it. And I made a voice recording of the orders on my phone. See you at end of day.

Oh for the days of pen and paper.

Me: Get back here and report to IT.

I pause, then add to the text, just for the hell of it.

Me: Now.

*

On my way home, I receive several messages from Jonesy, long time friend, former cop, and part-time chef. What is it with him and shift work? Just my nine-to-five, excuse me, eight-to-five, is literally killing me. Slowly, oh so slowly.

Putting the text to speech, he's asking me if I got the old longplay video and reminds me to join up to the online Lenscape community. That if I don't start, and level up, it will be too late to join his gamer group. He offers to help guide me too, in the grinding realm called Haven. Grinding, just like my job—hell.

Work, it's always been work, not much time lately for gaming online and kicking ass. Fishing, hanging out with friends, with girlfriends sure, those were the days. Not anymore.

Now I'm lucky to get a few hours in watching movies and tv shows.

I enjoyed plenty of games, cartoons, and action figures as a kid. Bit of an outsider there, yet how “outsider” can you be when all your friends did the same? Shows, movies, games, comics—the real money is in the merchandise and toys, but so many of my friends always lost themselves in world-building games, online videos, and of course, social media. With the backlash of recent years, I see that I've always looked at it the same way. We don't embrace what our parents did. That's always the way with children, you rebel against the system and the system begins with your family. The Man is mommy and daddy. When did I become the Man?

Dark Dave and Lord Jonesy. I release a breath I'd not realized I was holding. My shoulders sag. We used to play in that game for days. Paul too, the warrior cleric.

I miss those days.

Jonesy is home so I make a quick call through the Bluetooth in my car—safety first.

He answers. “David? Got my video? Those were the days! You going online tonight or not?”

I laugh. “No. If you're home I'm coming over.”

“Sure yeah, you're probably in my area already.”

Jonesy knew me so well.

“Look, I've got a spare Lenscape setup and a free login guest pass. You can use my guest avatar.”

I roll my eyes. “I'm sure that's how they bait people in. Cool. Be there in a few minutes.”

*

Jonesy lived in his parents’ old house and they'd long since moved to live with his sister and escape the long winters. The place needed work, but it was his. Winters in Connecticut kept us honest, and Jonesy blessed Mother Nature for his lucky break. I still paid rent for a crappy place in an old apartment complex with questionable heating. As I pulled up toward the old place, the huge red maple we'd once climbed and built a tree fort in, loomed overhead, its leaves a deep scarlet. Winter was coming.

Knocking at the door I look around the rest of the old neighborhood.

Daniel Jones and I grew up together, terrorizing the estates in our suburban kingdom of imagined realms. As a duo, both in school and at home, people took to calling us Davy Jones—especially around the school lockers. Exactly. So funny, right? That friendship, like the bond with my older sister Stephie, never wavered.

Jonesy got into sports pretty early, but I drifted once we entered high-school. My interest in arts and science pretty much took over unless a friendly game was to be had. It wasn't my nervous system disorder, I swear that didn't start until the multitude of mergers that my job undertook. That's when I started working more and saw Jonesy, and everyone but my coworkers, less and less.

The door swings open behind me.

I turn back to the house and Jonesy is sporting a mock smile, his black hair still wet and smelling of shampoo. “Mr. David Grey, well hell, I thought you'd look older, it's been so long.”

I shrug. “Since I knocked.”

“Sweet burn. I was taking a shower.”

“For me?” I touch my chest.

“No. I just woke up.”

I grin. “Yeah, and then you showered for me?”

“Shut up and come inside.” He sweeps his arm around, inviting me across the threshold.

“Is that lavender?” I say as I squeeze past.

“Shut. Up.” He slaps my shoulder.

Assorted clothing and papers cover the tables and furniture of the living room, but as usual, the kitchen is immaculate. Years of working as a chef drilled Jonesy on the values of a clean and orderly work environment. Home life, outside his galley, not so much. Without making an effort to clear anything, Jonesy flaps his hand at the couch while he cuts through to the fridge for drinks.

“Another day of fun?”

My shoulders drop. “Sure. What about you? Gotta work tonight?”

“Nah, they're still renovating the restaurant, so I just have more menu planning.” He gestures at two piles of paper and several books on the coffee table.

Restaurants also remained off the list of possible AI infringement on our lives. Sure, the host still kissed your ass, and waiters served you, but what made a restaurant trendy remained the human chef. I sure as hell wasn't interested in eating a precisely replicated or randomly altered math sirloin with a side of 2.3 asparagus. Pfff.

“I know you're dying to get me into this Lenscape game. So what's the deal?” I fall into the couch.

“It's all over the news. You still ignore the news?”

I flap my hand in his direction. “Man, I work all day, I'm not checking my phone for news and sure as hell not once I'm home. I'm lucky to eat and watch a show before I fall asleep.”

“TV is watching you, eh?”

I wave my hand. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Don't understand you, games and sci-fi and stuff? How aren't you into both?”

Jonesy sits down before leaning forward with a cold bottle. Despite his years as a chef, sampling his finest selection of foods, he'd kept his toned frame honed from years of college football. While I failed to gain weight as my health suffered, I wouldn't say I was toned by any means, but I still had my full head of dirty blonde hair and a set of golden hazel eyes the ladies seemed to find fascinating.

Jonesy leans back into his chair. “So anyway, Lenscape, it's gonna stop AI before they even try to fully integrate the various tech into society.”

After a cautious “sip”, I wipe my lips with the back of my hand. “This crap upsets my stomach.”

“Non-alcoholic for you. Geez, I listen to you. Chill out.” He taps his beer. “Mine is the real thing.”

Nodding, I press on. “Sorry, so what'd you mean it'll stop AI in its tracks?”

“Well, the Lenscape company, the Conglomerate, they're developing a whole new approach to VR, to immersive technologies and dreaming.” He places his beer on the edge of the coffee table. “Get this, you go into the game, the Lenscape, and live there.”

“Live there? What about our bodies?”

He flicks his wrist. “We enter the game and we go through life out here in the real world, day to day, to work and all that, like sleep walking, but we're multitasking. Take work as an example. You don't argue with your boss or coworkers because you're...sort of in an autistic state.”

I laugh. “That's damn crazy and not very PC of you.”

He frowns.

“Autistic state?” I ask.

“They call it ‘Dream Walking’. Like when people sleep walk. They integrate a basic AI system hub with your brain and…”

“Like a friggin’ cyborg?”

Jonesy huffs. “No it isn't like that. They don't put it in your brain. Come on, man. You talk about that job like you're walking through it in a daze, time zips by.”

I raise my hand. “That's different.”

Jonesy raises an eyebrow. “How? Because that job sucks.”

“And you're gonna try this out?”

He slaps his hands together. “Hell yes. I ain't gonna just try, they're going to pay.”

My eyebrows shoot up. How many jobs was Jonesy going to go through in life?

“There's a focus group to further test the Dream Walker technology. Before the game legislation is put forward, we'll all remort, start fresh. It's the best time for you to join.”

“Like my job will agree with this crap. I don't think so.”

“Then leave that place. David, man, with your background in sales and marketing, you can work for the Conglomerate too, in and out of the game.”

He made a good pitch, but then he should, having worked at my job, before he quit during the mergers and became a cop.

“Look, they're hiring people to showcase before legislation is tabled in Canada, Europe, and here. You really haven't watched the news lately?”

I shrug.

He deadpans. “Of course not, always at work. Tired and burnt out when you get home. Sounds like no one would notice if you were in the Lenscape.” He shakes his finger at me. “You know, that's why what's her name left.”

I grunt. “No, no. People calling my girlfriend ‘what's her name’, was probably the reason.”

“Girlfriend? Did you two see much of each other? Maybe you did, would explain why I ain't seen you over here in months.”

That was true, but I was sick too often to spend much time out.

*

I wake up with Jonesy in my face, leaning over me with one arm hooked around my calves.

“Hot damn, David, you passed out. You can't let that place kill you.” He sits back, still elevating my legs. EMT training as a cop. “Maybe Lenscape can't come soon enough. There's a lot of talk regarding their medical tie-ins.” He raises his free hand and offers me a blue pill with a tiny Lenscape logo. The hell?

“Drugs?”

“Yeah man, it'll balance out your heart rate and settle you down. Sets you right to enter REM sleep and enter the game.”

“So LSD.”

Sitting up wasn't an option, my stomach roils as nausea claws up my throat. With a resigned sigh, I take the pill. “How do they get away with this?”

“That's not LSD and it's not a prescription drug. And anyway, that's what the legislation is all about, the whole thing is international now. Human rights, the lot. Whatever, this is legal, the Conglomerate already owns pharmaceutical companies too. It's what “conglomerate” means.”

Woozy, I refrain from nodding. “Uh huh. Give me my drink.”

Unbeknownst to me, both my and Jonesy’s drinks have soaked into his carpet after mine fell to the floor and Jonesy knocked his off the coffee table leaping to help me.

“Hook your heels on the back of the couch, I'll get some water.”

“So they use elements of the game in medical research?” I hear the fridge open and close.

“Yeah, all sorts. Nervous system disorders, brain stuff, sleep patterns. Military and training possibilities too. I've seen you go on the web, you don't follow social media, the heck are you doing? Looking for porn?”

I stifle a laugh. “No, I read up on mystery history and film and TV news.”

“You're still into that lost civilization, ancient alien stuff?”

I frown. “You think aliens are farfetched? How's that different than living in a virtual world?”

Jonesy smirks. “Uh, because it's real? And it's more like a dream scape, hence the name?”

“Oh,” I raise a finger. “That's cute.”

“And shit, Lenscape is all about that. It's lost civilizations, ancient magic and high technology of the ancients. It's right up your alley. I listen to you about what you can and can't eat, why don't you listen and give the game a try? You wouldn't hesitate in the old days.”

Taking the glass, I raise my head at a slow pace, breathe deep and pop the small pill. Ooo, sparkling water. Fancy. “What's next?”

Asked too soon. Jonesy stands over me with a headset and a round device with a central, blue lens. He takes the glass from me.

“Here, the headset harmonizes your brainwaves or some such.” He takes my right hand away from the headset and places the blue jewel on my forehead.

Laughing, I touch the device. “Shit, I thought it was a monocle. You know, ‘enter the Lenscape’, sight beyond sight.”

Jonesy sits on the coffee table, deadpan. “Yeah. No.”

“But it's a theme, right? Sight beyond sight? Get it? So my third eye can see?”

Jonesy shakes his head.

“Anyway, there's no way my job will agree to me coming to work in a dream state, dream walking.”

“Look, D, you've got to take some time for yourself. You say ‘no’ is always your first answer? I cry bullshit. You're always doing for others. We're young. If you really think your job is causing this illness, then you've got to get out now. Or sue them.”

He was right, it started as a summer job and I never left. Hours of overtime, often without pay, as time in lieu, and what did that get me? Laying on Jonesy’s couch.

“Alright.” I secure the headset and turn it on. I bet the jewel on my forehead glows. “What's next?”

Then it hits me, an overwhelming sense of release, euphoria, and relief, an escape from the pain I feel every day. A tunnel of light, like hyperspace, flows around me and I'm standing in a darkened room lit by an immense irregular crystal sphere orbited by four smaller crystal shapes. A man hovers in the lotus position below the central sphere, clothed in white robes set aglow by the irregular crystals.

“The hell?”

A voice sounds in my head.

Welcome to the Lenscape.