THE BABYLONIAN

School wasn’t fun anymore, infant, I couldn’t even remember a time when it had been fun. There was nothing more to learn except theories, and equations, and chemical formulas that were of no practical use. I guess everything becomes a disappointment as you grow older; it made me wonder how adults learn to cope with their mundane life. The thing I was afraid of was getting stuck in the same place for the rest of my life, but what scared me even more was getting used to it. I used to play games in my smart phone at school, with my hands under the desk, but the up grading of the school security system to detect RF transmission signals made it difficult for me to do that. At first, for a couple of times, I was able to hack into their system and deactivate the alarm for the RF signal detection; but each time they kept upgrading their system and strengthening their firewall. Eventually they were able to trace the problem back to me – and it got me into a lot of trouble. I couldn’t risk getting in trouble again, so I had to while away my time at school waiting for the bell to ring. ‘Mr. Shenlong since you are obviously not playing attention to the class, why don’t you come and finish this problem.’ Shouted the mathematics teacher, whose name I obviously didn’t know, in an attempt to startle me from my delirium. But seeing that I wasn’t fazed, there was a clear embarrassment on her face. I, without any repercussions, got up and walked towards her, took the stylus she offered me without looking at her face, and finished the problem; skipping almost half the steps. She seemed embarrassed and didn’t reproach me for skipping the steps like I thought she would. I spend the rest of the day starring out the window, as the sun started to move towards the horizon. I always heard a faint twitch through the intercom, five seconds before the bell would ring. As soon as I heard that sound, I would get ready to leave, and would always get up and start walking a second before the bell actually rang. I’m sure everyone wondered how I knew exactly when the bell would ring, and may have even suspected that I was a freak; while I only wondered why none of them had figured it out yet. I had no friends, for I always considered friends as an un necessary luxury and they were a waste of time. I always took the path through the park while going home because I liked to see the swans swimming in the lake near the park. From the lake bank I could also see the bright vanilla color of the evening sky reflected in the water; it gave an elusive appearance to the swans and I looked looking at it. I lived in the house my parents had build and lived in before I was borne, but they had both gone abroad and worked in the same company that manufactured motherboards for gaming devices. At first they had made me live with my uncle, who was only a few blocks away, for they wanted me to grow up in that town; but I convinced them that I was responsible and could take care of myself, and moved back to the house and started living there alone. They used to visit every year on Christmas and would leave after New Year’s Eve, and when they couldn’t come, they would send presents. When I got home: I would first clean my room, put my clothes in the washing machine, make some macaronies for dinner, and finally activate my computer. I had six screens and could play two or three games at a time; sometimes I even played multiplayer by my self. I had to train my legs to work the controls but it was worth it – there’s nothing like playing with a teammates that thinks exactly like you. I started playing games when I was five years old; it was my uncle who first thought me how to play chess. I soon became good at it and was able to beat him. I learned many board and mind games from him, and I have to say it really helped me in constructing different scenarios in my mind in order to workout how to beat an opponent or overcome a perplexing situation. On my sixth birthday my parents send me a PSP as a gift, and I started my debut in electronic and online gaming. I quickly became good at it too. As a kid, I used to visit a lot of gaming places to play arcade games, but they soon became boring for me. Throughout the years I worked my way across different types and genres of games, but none of them seemed to satisfy me because I would soon figure out how it worked and lose interest in it. Nonetheless, I loved playing them more than anything else. Then one day it happened – I came across a game I couldn’t win. ********** A couple of years before, a game had been released that was very different from any other game I had seen. It was called The Babylonian. At first the game wasn’t released on any online platform or in hard drives, but rather the company that owned The Babylonian – it was called Berserk but no one had heard of it before – released the game by setting up gaming cafés all over the country. The company claimed that the game required a higher resolution and processing speed that was not compactable with any present day computer system. No one knew exactly how a company that sprang to life only the previous day could have enough capital to finance this. The obvious conclusion was that it was a part of some other successful company or companies, and they were hiding it – but why? The game offered a special prize to the first person who was able to win the game, and suddenly became a global success, despite all the mysteries surrounding it. ‘Perhaps it was the mystery that lead to its success’, I had thought then, for there is nothing people like more than a good mystery. Part of the game's success was due to the fact that it was unwinnable, because if something is said to be unwinnable: you cannot resist the temptation for trying. And neither could I, for I had to know what was so special about that game. It was only a few weeks after the games release that I decided to buy a ticket. There was a daily limit of three hours for gamming per person, that had to be followed by every gamming café in accordance with the government regulations. One fine afternoon, after skipping school, I reached the gamming café near my town. There was a big poster of The Babylonian on the front, depicting the image of a man in armor with his back turned, facing a dystopian landscape. The place was no bigger than a normal café, with about eight compartments. I went out to the lady sitting at the counter and showed her the ticket I booked on my phone. She was a woman of about thirty, possibly more, had dark hair that barely touched her shoulder, and I had difficulty telling whether her eyes were green or blue – ‘a hue of both', I thought. I would’ve kept staring at her eyes longer, had she not handed me a card. ‘Your system is number eight, the one at the far end', she said with a pleasant yet trained smile, and added glancing at the man in black who was standing by the door, ‘Rick, would you show the system to…’ ‘No I’m fine, I got it.’, I interrupted. I walked towards system number eight, holding the card on my hand. The card seemed like an ATM card: I haven’t seen one in a long time since the transfer of money was completely changed into electronic, many years before. The floor and walls of the whole place was white. I could see the white bars of light shining above me through the reflection on the floor; in fact, the floor was so reflective that I could see my on reflection very clearly. I wasn’t sure whether anyone else was in any of the rooms. All the eight doors to the gamming rooms were of different colors. ‘violet, green, red, cyan,… blue’, I kept saying in my head. The door was a deep blue color – ‘not my favorite’, I thought. There was a big, white '8’ on the door, and a blinking red light by the side. l showed the card in front of the light and the door opened outward. The whole room was white like outside but there was no computer screen like I had thought there would be. Rather, there was only a virtual reality stimulator googles – the smallest one I had seen – which almost looked like large sunglasses. In order be surprised by what this game had to offer I had made a conscious effort not to know much about the game. And I was really surprised to see that there was nothing in the room except the glasses, a chair and the sensors on the wall. I put on the googles and sank into the chair. I was shown an array of characters to choose from; or to design my own. I designed a character and named it ‘Zero' like I always used to. I was surprised by how life like the character was. There was also a list of customized worlds to choose from, in which you were allowed to do limited modifications. However, the real purpose of the game seemed elusive to me. I later learned that the googles worked by suppressing the alpha waves emitted my the brain to increase your focus in the game; it also used electrical signals directed at the neural network to stimulate the brain into having physical experiences – it was what made the game feel so real. I was led into a gadgets lobby after which I was shown an exit that lead into the game. Most of the controls of the game were adapted by monitoring the brain waves; therefore, it took a while getting used to it. There was a horizontal red band of light on the middle which was blinking. As soon as I stepped forward, the light stopped blinking and the door opened. I was suddenly blinded by the bright rays of sunlight that fell on my face.