My Script
779 Words
"What happens when all seven lives are spent?" Meridian asked, in the cadence of someone who already knew the answer.
"The player is permanently removed from the game world," I said, before they could. "No appeals, no restoration, no second chances. True Death."
Meridian tilted their head, the faintest variation from the script. "You are familiar with the mechanics."
"I wrote the mechanics."
"Then you understand the weight of what remains." They gestured again, and the HUD shifted. "Each death also carries additional consequences. Memory fragmentation may occur, causing the loss of certain experiences from your previous existence. Resurrection sickness will temporarily reduce all statistics. Repeated deaths may result in permanent attribute reduction."
Memory fragmentation. I had designed that one specifically to make death feel psychologically meaningful. Players would forget pieces of their real lives with each death, growing more absorbed in the game world, more desperate to protect what little of themselves remained. I had pitched it to the team as immersion mechanics.
Now I was standing in the game, and I could not stop thinking about whether there were people out there, real people, who had already lost pieces of themselves in here. Who had gone home after a session and found blank spaces where memories used to be. Who had forgotten, gradually and without knowing why, the sound of someone's laugh or the way their mother's kitchen smelled on Sunday mornings.
"Now I remember why my team called me a s******c bastard," I muttered.
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that command," Meridian replied pleasantly. "Would you like me to repeat the death mechanics?"
"No." I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose. "What I want is to know how to get out of here. There has to be an exit condition. A logout function. Something."
I watched Meridian carefully as I said it, looking for any deviation from the programmed response tree. A flicker. A hesitation. Anything that suggested there was more processing happening behind those violet eyes than I had written.
Meridian's expression shifted, almost imperceptibly, to something that could have been sympathy if I was being generous. "That brings us to your primary objective."
The air shimmered. Quest text appeared in my peripheral vision, crisp and bright.
QUEST LOG UPDATED
Main Quest: Escape Respawn [ACTIVE] Find a way to return to your original existence. Warning: Method unknown. Previous attempts have resulted in player termination.
Tutorial Quest: Learn Basic Combat [ACTIVE] Master the fundamental combat system. Survival depends on your ability to fight.
I read the main quest text twice. Then a third time.
Previous attempts have resulted in player termination.
That line was not in the original code. I had written every word of this quest log. That warning had not been there. Which meant something had added it after the fact, and the only reason to add it was because it was true.
Other players had been here. Other real people, trapped the same way I was trapped, staring at the same quest log.
And they had not made it out.
"How many?" I asked, and my voice came out quieter than I intended.
"How many what, Player One?"
"How many players have tried to escape. How many have terminated."
Meridian's face settled back into that default smile, serene and immovable. "Tutorial information is limited to essential gameplay mechanics. Historical data regarding previous players is not available at this clearance level."
Clearance level. I had programmed that gate to create progression incentives. To make players feel like there was always more to discover if they pushed far enough. I had been very pleased with it at the time.
I shoved the memory down before it could make me feel worse.
"Right," I said, and took a slow breath. "So I am trapped in my own game. I have seven lives to figure out how to escape. If I fail, I cease to exist. And I cannot know how many people already died trying."
"That is a remarkably accurate summary of your situation," Meridian replied. "Shall we proceed with combat training?"
I looked at the quest log floating in my vision. I looked at the meadow around me, the safest place I would probably ever stand in this world, the one zone I had deliberately designed to be free of threats so new players could breathe for five minutes before everything tried to kill them.
I had not been kind about what came after it.
"Yeah," I said, and felt something cold and hard settle in my chest like a stone dropping into still water. "Let's learn how to fight."
After all, I had a feeling I was going to need it.
- Writer
