Elemental Soul (Book 1 of 'A Fantasy in Time')

Chapter 5: A Special Power

Chapter 5: A Special Power

Slipping out of the capsule, I felt a tremendous relief at reaching this point in the game.  Doors of opportunity were opening up and finally I could dedicate myself to one singular goal.

Too much time had passed since I had spent any real amount of time outside of the capsule.  Despite it being close to 10 pm I really didn’t feel any urge to sleep.  Maybe I was just too excited.  “You know, maybe I should celebrate by cooking something nice.”  I said to myself.

In the kitchen I pulled out all the necessities for a really good chicken stir-fry.  Grilling the 2 precut chicken breasts on the skillet, I lightly seasoned it and waited till it caramelized into a beautiful golden brown on the outside.  Then setting it aside I used the olive oil that was left in the pan to fry the frozen and pre-cut vegetables, being very free with the teriyaki, soy sauces, and several seasonings.  Setting up a pot to boil, I threw in some egg noodles and some chicken bouillon.  Soon enough the whole conglomeration was complete and I had my first healthy tasty meal in a long while.

I knew the dangers of exercising so soon after eating but I figured I could handle it this once.  After cleaning up the dishes I headed off to the Gym to go for a swim.   This time I pushed myself to swim for 3 straight hours.  

I . . . should not have done that.  As I dragged my body out of the pool, I felt as if my blood was infused with acid and I had to sit there and shudder at the pools edge using all my will power to keep from throwing up my meal.  That was hard earned food and I was not going to give it up!

After rushing back home for a comforting shower to calm myself down, my muscles and my intestinal tract finally began to stop screaming at the abuse that I had heaped upon them.  Next stop was my paper mail and e-mail.  At least once a day that I came out from the capsule I would always check for any paper mail, but those came far and few between.  Now with more time to focus on worldly things I checked to see what the latest in the news was.

There had been a massive explosion of information regarding the new Virtual Reality.  Apparently they had now sent out a little over 40 million winning invitations to individuals throughout the world.  Once they had reached 200,000 accepted invitations for free gear and lifetime memberships, all the future invitations began to increase in cost and become restricted to monthly installation payments.

Strangely, with all the hype, there was very little information of actual game play.  No uploaded videos, quite a few rants of disgruntled players, and a few positive accounts of players impressed by the realism of it all.  They said it was more like being transported to a whole new world rather than being immersed in a virtual reality. I totally had to agree with them on that part.

Finally the thing I had dreaded the most.  Checking up on my e-mail.  Going to the oldest ones first in case I had missed some important message from my old friends and co-workers I skimmed through message after message.  After a while they all seemed to say the same thing.  Then I came across the first message that I had seen the last time I check my messages.  It was from a user name EX Reich.  Opening up the mail it had a simple message.

To Scott Anderson,

We have been notified that you have been chosen to participate in the use of the new Virtual Reality world from Millennial Enterprises.  It is our desire to recruit you into one of our elite gamming groups.  To look further into the benefits of becoming a member of our group please click on the following link.
Thank you and kind regards from,
EX Reich  
A hyper link to some other website glowed on the message I received.  I decided to ignore it for now, opting to look at future messages from them.