Hollow Henry

The three most exciting days in Henry's life have helped define who he is now. The first was when he was 8 years old and made his first slingshot. He'd spent the whole afternoon practising his aim, and was damn good for a beginner. At the end of the day, he was ready to put his new arsenal and skills into action, and took aim on the possum that kept beating up the family cat. The moment that defined him that day, was when he learned an important lesson about what a ball-bearing can do to a possum skull, and what kind of a weight his conscience could bear. Apparently it wasn't even the weight of a possum.

The second day was when Jessica Grace was generous enough to kiss him underneath the creek bridge near their highschool. She promised to meet him after school the next day too. What he learned from that glorious exchange of spit and promises was that if you have a good thing going, you keep your damn mouth shut about it. His dumb arse was so excited that he announced it to everybody that would listen. He even wrote it down for the deaf kid. When Jessica found out, she told the whole school that it was made up, and that he'd been sending her unrequited love letters all term. The part about the letters was true, but it still hurt.

The next defining day of his life didn't come until he was 32 years old and playing video games.

He swore from this moment onwards, he will always be as vigilant as humanly possible of the existence of throwing knives. Taking one of those bad boys to the shoulder when you're still not even sure how to use the confusing as hell menu will teach you a lesson about yourself faster than anything. The lesson he learned came with a fantastic motivation to figure out pain numbing, as well as the athletic prowess of a gazelle that grew up on the streets.

I should explain how he got here, since there is about a minute of spare time until the guard Henry pissed off, finds his way through his chest.

8 months earlier he attended a convention he never knew existed. Convention might not be the right word, since it was a singular company showing off its tech ventures. The layout was very convention-like after all. ChronoSoft seemed to be the start-up to end all start-ups. Imagine an open source google, but with even more lasers. The tech they were showing off seemed like something from a sci-fi. Things like working ion drive prototypes, mass manipulation in exotic materials, a pen that writes in zero gravity, all the good stuff. What pulled him from the street and into the neon pulsating 5 year old boy's cyberpunk dream thinly veiled as a demonstration of upcoming product releases however, was the literal freaking giant hologram of a hero swinging a sword.

The flicker of his highly detailed and crimson red Cape caught his attention, and its juxtaposition against his shining gold and battle worn armour caught his heart.

After a surprisingly short 20 minute wait in line, he found himself at the mouth of the hero's booth. It was a demo for the company's state of the art VR technology, and the game of ultimate fantasy indulgence they promised to release along with it.

The long and short of it is that he was all too eager to sign up to be a product tester for their upcoming launch. He only gets into the game a week early, but doesn't have to pay for the privilege, or to wait in line for months to get his own Temple. It's only a small device, about as big as an adult thumbnail, and it fixes itself to your own temple with a little sticky pad. He couldn't understand how the thing operated as a headset, but he didn’t really care. Who was he to complain about flawless VR?

The game is everything it promised to be. Logging in was unlike any game he'd ever played. From his perspective, he just opened his eyes and he was outside. If he didn't know he was playing a game, he'd think he was lost in the woods. It was uncanny. He tried to walk forward and get a sense for the movement, but was assaulted immediately by a pop-up saying he needed to create a character. Even in the future you can't avoid the damn pop-ups.

Having a user interface overwrite your vision is a disorienting experience. It's not like when it happens with a normal headset, in that case you still know you’re looking at a screen. This is dizzying, and honestly a little obnoxious. As fast as he could mentally grumble about the pop-up, it shrunk and faded. It didn't disappear entirely, but it was a lot less irritating. The game seemed to quickly adjust to his preferences. He focused on the window to see if there was a way to select it. Again, the interface reacted. A new window appeared in its place. This one was a bit larger, but still not obnoxious.

“I like a game that listens,” He muttered to himself proudly. He had a few options to sort through.

First was the name bar. When he focused on it, it got a lot more intense than the standard “your name here”. The options for a title prefix and suffix lingered on the outside of his vision, as well as the options for special character selections, and a dictionary of lore friendly names to choose from along with their meanings. He had a look around at the options, but already knew what he was going to call his character. There is no keypad, but when he looked at the name box and thought about it, “The Henry” appeared instantly.

It's the same name he always used, the same one he's been using since he was a kid. He and an old buddy used to play games every afternoon without fail, and when his friend moved away when they were 12, they kept playing online. He was ‘The Henry’ and his buddy was ‘The Joseph’. Together, they were ‘The Worst’ at everything they played. Joseph stopped coming online as often after a while. Then one day when they were in their 20s, he stopped coming online at all. Henry checked every day for a while to see if he would come back for a game, but figured he just wasn't feeling it anymore.

The next option was a race selection.

There were 4 choices. Human was the first, followed by Elf, then something called ‘Demai’. The final option was randomise, and it had an asterix afterwards. He focused on the Demai option to see if there was any more information. He knew what a Human is, and there's only so many ways an Elf can be portrayed, but he'd never seen an option for a Demai. After a quick read of the race breakdown, he learned what he needed to know. The Demai were a warrior race, sculpted by the gods of this world. The lore went on for a little, so he only skimmed. It seemed as if they were basically demigods, made to look like regular people, only super attractive and super tall. This must be the developers way of compensating for something. The Demai came with a boost to the magic stat, the perception stat, the endurance stat, and a reduction to creativity. He wasn't sure how creativity could be a stat, but there it was.

The Humans came with a large boost to creativity, a moderate boost to dexterity, and a heavy reduction to the magic stat. It seemed as though humans weren't a very magical race in this game.

The Elves came with a significant boost to their magic stat, and no other modifiers. He also read over their description briefly. What he read was about what he expected. They were a reclusive race that kept mostly to themselves. Their reputation was poor because of their secrecy. It went on longer than the Demai description, but he was too excited to play the game to sit and read right now. Deciding he would get his head around the lore later, he continued onwards.

The randomise option was what made him the most curious. The description stated that the random selection had a chance to assign a race that you couldn't choose from the menu. It also meant that the game would randomise his character's looks. The chance to get a rare race in a fantasy game, as well as the ability to skip another menu, was too tempting. He made the selection, and the rest of the menu options were veiled in grey. The only option left on the menu was for gender. He made his selection and pressed proceed.

He'd never been accused of being a patient man.

The menus faded away to make way for large floating letters. It read “Welcome to The Hollows”, and it hovered for a few seconds before his vision faded to black.

He felt a strange sensation pulse throughout his body. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t comfortable either. Imagine a bunch of warm ants crawling under your skin while taking focused care not to hurt you. When his vision came back the feeling ended, and he was standing in an alleyway. He could immediately hear the bustle of the busy streets, and smell the manure that caked the cobble in front of him. There was no gentle fade, or welcoming transition, just BOOM, and he's standing in the streets. He anxiously looked around to see if there would be a menu prompt, or any other indication of what was going on, but there was nothing. Just two buildings either side of him, and a fence behind. The alley was also scattered with boxes and barrels, typical of a game like this. Why would there just be a bunch of boxes out here? Are people really storing their goods in the alley?

He decided to see what this game's random boxe’s contents could be, and was impressed again. He could feel the grain in the wood, and the subtle cold rise of the nails on its surface. The damn box gave him a splinter, and when he pulled his hand away, he could see the fleck of timber in his broken skin. He could even see where the splinter had broken away from the wood. The detail was perfect in every way. This game is a simulation on the atomic level, and he couldn't believe he was playing it.

Getting the lid off the box was a challenge. There were no menus to open it, or to check what's inside, but there was a piece of broken slate tile nearby.

When he picked up the tile, the game finally communicated something. He didn't see anything, but got a strong feeling that he could get more information from the slate. Looking at it again, he saw some writing. It was a basic list of stats, but he got the impression he could push for more if he wanted to.

Slate tile dagger:

Enchanted: no

Damage: 1 - 5

Durability: 33%

It wasn't much, but it was nice to know the game was paying attention. He used the slate dagger to pry the box open. He was expecting to find the usual assortment of feathers, cups and paperweights, but was pleasantly surprised when he found it filled to the brim with rolls of canvas. The next box was full of little iron brackets, and the one after that had several sealed buckets of something. By the looks of it, the boxes were full of useful stock. He peeked over the fence to see what the business could be doing. Sure enough, the frame of a boat was being carefully assembled by a few people. The yard behind the fence was lower than the street, so he had a good vantage point to watch from for some time. Over the course of what had to have been five minutes, he watched the workers slowly make a very obvious progress. He felt like he could watch them build the entire ship and send it on its way into the world. It was clear to him at that moment that this game is more elaborate than anything he'd played before.

As if to bring him deeper into his current reality, a stern voice cut through his introspection.

“What's going on here then?” Came the voice of the guard.

Bringing us up to the aforementioned ‘third defining moment’.

He had to admit to himself that he may have bought his current predicament upon himself. When the guard confronted him about the open boxes, he decided to test the AI out by making a less than appropriate joke about opening his mother's box. It turns out that being rude to a 7 foot barrel of a man can earn you an important life lesson. The guy can run too. Henry saw a +1 to dexterity, endurance and perception thanks to the shit he was pulling off, and the guard was still right on him.

He found his way to a walkway that overlooked a few roof tops, and decided to take a chance. He could feel himself slowing thanks to the growing river of blood coming from his shoulder, and could nearly feel the big guy's meaty fingers at the back of his shirt. So he steered his stride towards the railing.

“Don't be an idiot!” The guard shouted, as if he could read what Henry was thinking.

Henry barked a laugh at the comment. He'd rather not be an idiot, but didn't think he had many options at that moment. He could feel every sensation. He hadn't tried to open the settings yet, so pain was going to be a big part of his life for the near future. If the guard caught him though, he got the impression he'd be feeling a lot more pain than he's good with. If he didn't make the jump, at least he'll be at respawn fast.

With no time left to think, he leaped for the railing and planted his foot. In the next second he was soaring. He realised then that he had to be at least 3 storeys high. The roof was getting closer, so he managed to clear the alley at least. This was going to hurt, but he might survive it.

He stretched out his legs to try and catch himself on the slate tiles. When he made contact, he only felt a moment of resistance. The last thing he saw before he felt something go through his lung, was a +1 to his perception.