It was only a couple days later when Sevs made his move. He had, without much effort, finagled some television time. His parents had planned to limit his screen time, but since he was always busy doing other things, he had never asked to use it before. Mother had even been a bit relieved that he had wanted to do something so normal.

Working the remote wasn’t too hard with his little hands. As long as Mother didn’t see him typing words, it would be fine. She would assume that he was watching whatever channel she had put on, or Sevs had just mashed the buttons.

Sevs found just the thing he was looking for. He didn’t even have to use his parents' credit card to get a pay-per-view or anything like that. It was an old program. One involved a little kid singing and dancing in black and white. It was one his real Mom had loved back before she had ascended like everyone else.

Sevs had never been one for people in real life, nor in any of his play-throughs. However, the extra emphasis on charisma during character creation had to count for something. Sevs did know how to dance, though. It was a guilty pleasure of his. One that he had never shared with anyone but his Mom, who had taught him. He had always been too self-conscious. After he had matured enough that he might have been comfortable opening up, everyone he had known had ascended.

With a deep breath to calm his nerves and another to quell the anticipated shame. He muttered to himself, “Full send.”

“Mother look!”. The usual refrain of all little children rang throughout the house.

Unlike most parents, Sevs mother had not become numb to it at this point. Most parents would say something like, “wow, dear, that is very impressive,” without looking up as their kid jumped up a 6-inch curb.

Her enthusiasm was likely because it was the first time Sevs had ever bothered to include her in anything since he had remembered his past lives.

So this brought Mother running. When she arrived in the den, she saw her little Sevs, dancing in front of the television. A little red flush on his cheeks, as he moved perfectly in time with the little figure on the TV.

***

After figuring out how to unlock Mother's phone, Sevs thought it really couldn't have gone much worse. As he waited for the ambulance to show up he tried to open the freezer to get a compress to put on Mother's head. But the stupid child lock wasn’t letting him open it.

It was one thing to know how they work and another to have the finger strength to actually squeeze the spring mechanism shut.

Sevs eventually gave up on opening the door and set up a little tool. He used a pair of tongs with a couple of erasers placed midway down their length to get enough leverage and grip. Bracing one side of the jaws in his armpit, he pulled with both hands on the other.

The door swung open a crack. Quickly Sevs jammed the end of the tongs in to leverage it to open the rest of the way. With that ordeal out of the way, he went with the ice pack to tend to Mother, still lying on the floor.

***

By the time the paramedics showed up, she was still not awake. When he answered the door, the paramedics looked very annoyed. However, he led them to the TV room and his Mother on the floor. They got right to work.

They did all the things he had read about in his history books. Back when medical conditions were still prevalent. Mother was still breathing, but as it had been a little more than a half-hour since she had collapsed, there was cause for quite a bit of concern.

While the other paramedics were busy, one of the people who had arrived from the call pulled him aside.

“So little guy, can you tell me what happened?” the man asked in a gentle voice as he laid a hand on Sevs shoulder. Sevs took a second to compose his thoughts. How could he believably convey the events? I probably don’t need to do anything fancy, Sevs thought. So he just told the truth.

“I was dancing with the music on the TV, and I called her in to look, and she fell over,” Sevs said. That should cover it. There was nothing too complicated beyond that honestly from an outside perspective. And it was something a kid his age should be able to understand.

As they wheeled her out on the stretcher, the nice man offered Sevs a ride in the ambulance as Father was on the way directly to the hospital from work. Sevs accepted.

It was actually the first time he had ever ridden in an ambulance. And enough of him was still childish enough to enjoy it a bit. Though it was mostly overshadowed by a genuine fear for his Mother.

It may have seemed like Sevs didn’t care too much, as, after all, these were just NPCs. But they were his reality for now, and he needed to treat it as real with real consequences as it was harder to get more real than that. Until he had reached level 18 or his play-through ended abruptly, he was stuck here.

Beyond just the selfish reasons, Sevs just could really see them as anything but people. They were as real as anyone. Artificial intelligence was not his field but talking with any person in the tutorial, he was not capable of distinguishing a real person from them. Because of that, they were real to him. Also, he had seen what happened to people who lived for too long treating everyone around them like trash. They were not people he wanted to become.

So the appreciation was authentic as the nice man helped them into the ambulance and shut the door behind them. The sirens flared to life as they started to pull away. On the way to the hospital, less than a mile away, they got stuck behind a crashed tanker truck. While they waited for the wreckage to be cleared, the sirens fell silent.