Only a Game (Olympus Drive Chronicles)

Chapter 1: Begin Game

Teddy

Credits roll. I slump back in my chair, letting the controller fall from my now stiff fingers. Wordlessly, I quit the live feed and tear off my headset. I should end with some jaunty words. That's it for today. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Something like that. I don't even care right now.

I tip my head back, closing my eyes. I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong. I know I'm not wrong, that's the thing. Now I just need to prove it.

Congratulations

The message flashes across my TV screen. I stand up, finishing my Mountain Dew.

By completing Naughty Bull's newest challenge in under forty-seven hours, you are cordially invited to the VR experience of a lifetime with an all expenses paid trip to Crete! Claim now!

"Oh count me in," I say, clicking to follow the link. Word was this game had an Easter-egg at the end of it for those who completed it in a certain time period after release. Of course I did. I'm one of the best there is.

The page displays a lot of legal jargon that I sign without reading it, and then submit my profile. Blah blah. Wild horses couldn't drag me away from the most immersive VR experience ever built. Naughty Bull's Labyrinth challenge is an unprecedent puzzle game that can only be played in the Minos Industries arena on Crete. Good thing I have my passport.

Only fourteen players will get to go and compete to become play testers for Naught Bull games. The losers? Sign away their rights to ever stream again. Stiff competition to say the least. But I like a challenge.

I toss my Mountain Dew at the overfull trashcan and miss. I sigh and go and pick it up, checking my phone. Excellent. The eighteen egg rolls I ordered while the final scene was loading have now arrived. Time to leave the basement for the first time in fifty two hours.

I pick up the bag of trash while I'm at it, and head upstairs. What time is it anyway? Oh, nine pm. Excellent. Maybe my mother will be up. I'd like to run my theory by her. Will she understand it? No. Will she even necessarily care? No. She probably will not. However I feel like talking about it, and my mother generally indulges me.

I walk up the stairs quietly, in case the rest of the house is in bed. Nope, there's a light on in the kitchen. I was going to take my trash through to the garden, but I pause. They're in there talking.

"He hasn't left that basement in two days."

"He got a new game," my mother says, weakly.

"Two days. Forty-eight hours of not bathing or seeing the sunlight," that's—well okay here's the thing. He staunchly denies being my father. Just because

A) he did not sleep with my mother

B) is infertile

C) and a little old DNA test says he isn't.

And my mother has mostly admitted to ah, having a relationship with a professional surfer about oh I don't know, nine months before I was born. Yeah. I'm here. I look suspiciously nothing like my father. But he stayed married to my mom. They like each other. And it would be more embarrassing (he thinks) to admit I'm not his kid. Aforementioned professional surfer staunchly refuses to undergo DNA test and/or show up and parent me in general. There's no love lost there. He occasionally writes my mother to ensure I'm well and like alive. That's about it. He expects, if I am his son, me to be all athletic like him. Ah. No. So as I said. No love lost there.

"I'm sure he's come up since then," my mother says, weakly, still. She knows me.

"Two days. I timed it. He has not even ventured past the basement stairs in two days," my father says. Wait. I haven't been up for longer than two days. The game took forty-seven hours and I hadn't left for a day and a half before that because I was sleeping on the sofa waiting for the game to be released. Why does he think I came up two days ago?