Trident Trials: The Glimmer

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

The trip to the simulation differed greatly from I expected. It felt more like falling while you're lying in your bed than going on a magical journey to another world. This made sense, knowing that this was a world that would not be magical. This was a place to train us for intense situations and sharpen our reactive skills, so it was more like playing an intense video game except in this video game you feel the pain of dying. All my nerves kept building up while waiting for the world to take shape in front of me.

In an instant, a world that looked very unfamiliar surrounded me. It absolutely wasn't Eden. The trees and everything were almost duller, but shared a simple but different vibrance. There were towering mountains that loomed over us, as well as a beach about a mile away on the coastline. Even though I was fairly far away from the beach, I could hear the waves crashing on the shore and could feel the wind from the mountains on my back. The temperature, the individual blades of grass, the trees dancing in the wind, the snowflakes falling on the mountain tops. Every detail in the world was so crisp and clear that it almost didn't seem real. Of course, it wasn't real, but it was so close that the differences were almost indistinguishable.

The simple difference that I could tell was that the sun had a strange glimmer coming from the outside. It wasn't very obvious, but it clearly defined itself as a light that wasn't totally real. Otherwise, the rest of the world, if you weren't paying extremely close attention, didn't seem to have enough changes that just walking around and behaving as you would in normal life, then you probably wouldn't even be able to tell. It was oddly beautiful as well. The glimmer that it gave off almost resembled a gem stone or something like that. It was subtle, but gorgeous all at the same time.

Upon first glance, you couldn't even tell where you were in Eden. I knew it was a place in the world but one that I had never visited myself. Trying to Orient myself to a different location in the country was hard enough on top of the fact that I was having to do it while being completely aware that I was in a simulation of the world that I was actually sitting in the unconscious. I kept looking around, hoping that it would feel more normal and eventually my body would adjust, but it never did. Rex told me he would be in the area nearby, so I started walking towards the mountains to find him. I figured that if he had been on the beach waiting for me, I would have been able to see him at least a little in the distance.

I oriented myself like this was the real world. I picked up sand off the beach. I went over to the water and let it hit my ankles. I closed my eyes and let the sun beat down on my face. I took a quick jog in the water and on the sand. Before I knew it, I felt like I was really in this world. The back of my mind always reminding me I wasn't. I knew that if I want to take this seriously, I would need to feel like I was really here. I continued to run until I felt a sweat form on my forehead. Even that felt real. I wasn't sure if I was really sweating sitting in the simulation chair back in the facility, but that would be cool.

The weather was the most interesting part of jumping into this simulation near the beach I could feel the breeze on my shoulders and the sun beating down on my neck. As I made my way closer towards the mountains, the air got a little crisper and a little cooler. I also notice for the first time that I was wearing completely different clothes. The suit that they had put me in with all the sensors on it had disappeared and instead I found myself in a full tactical gear setup. I didn't realize that wardrobe would make such a difference to my perception of the world, but it felt like I was walking in somebody else's body.

I found a path that led to the base of the mountain, and I followed it. Standing at the end of the path and at the very base of the mountain, I saw Rex. I quickened my pace to approach him so that way we could begin our tasks within the simulation. As I approached, I notice he was wearing the same tactical gear that I was. However, he had a weapon placed in a holster on his hip and a dagger strapped to his leg. I looked down at my hip and leg and discovered that there were no weapons there. This gave me a little of drawback for no other reason than I knew that if Rex needed help, I wouldn't be able to assist him.