Hell's Glitch (initial draft)

10 Undead

"Sam?"

A voice, but whose was it?

"Sam!"

There it was again, but who was calling out to him like that?

"Oh my god, Sam! Are you okay?"

It was a woman, but who? Was it Alex?

"Come on now, Sam! Wake up, you still have some glitches to find."

It was Alex and she was right, he did have a lot of glitches to find. He just knew that he was behind. But right now he couldn't see anything and he had a horrible headache and overwhelming nausea. Was this an aftereffect of faulty Full Dive technology?

"Ow, I'm up Alex, but games shouldn't make you feel like this. I feel like I'm coming down with some sort of illness while I'm playing this. Is it intentional?"

"Not intentional Sam, but it is an aftereffect of dying in the game. We did want a penalty for it and the penalty is supposed be an aversive stimulus to the brain, like a dull mental discomfort. Our algorithms should have adjusted to your mental state, but it seems to have given you more pain than was necessary. I'll work on a fix for this and we'll call it your first glitch for now. I'm just glad you're okay."

"Yeah, well I don't feel okay. I can't actually die in here, can I?"

"No, not at all Sam. Nothing in the game will affect you to that extreme of a degree. As a matter of fact, all the pain you feel in here is completely simulated. If you were to log out, you'd see that your physical self was still feeling as good as you did when you first started playing. Well, maybe a little more hungry than before, but you get what I'm saying." she explained.

That gave him some comfort, but the pain he was currently feeling didn't fully convince him that she was telling the truth. He was at least satisfied that he had been awarded one glitch pretty effortlessly. Though he wondered if the pain was worth it.

His vision was starting to clear and he could feel the game's cold forest atmosphere.

"Okay Alex, I got it. As long as you assure me that I'll be okay then you don't have to worry about me."

"That's great Sam! Hang in there. You're doing really well. I've been checking the data of the other testers and it looks like they've been dying at much more frequent rates than you. As a matter of fact, only you and four other testers have died less than three times so far. Only two other testers haven't died in the game at all so far. All things considered, that's a good start. Now, until I fix the pain threshold, try not to die again."

"Hell, Alex, I can't promise anything as long as this madman is roaming through the woods."

"Haha, good luck Sam. Sorry about all this. I know you'll continue to do well, just keep pressing forward and playing smart. I'll be in touch. Ciao!"

And that was it for the cheer. Sam's eyesight had now completely returned and he found himself in a horrible predicament. He was upside down, hanging from some really tall tree. He looked around and saw other corpses hanging around him. The corpses were hanging from long thick gray branches on a score of tall trees. There had to be at least a few hundred of them. Most were dry mummies, but a few were actually still moving around and moaning with low forlorn voices. You couldn't call any of them alive as it seemed every one of them had been robbed of their very quintessence, that which made them human. They were all revenants. Some were just closer to becoming mindless husks than others. Sam remembered the term from his days of playing The Death Planes. He saw at least close to a hundred of these revenants wearing the same equipment as the starting classes. There were more than a few Twilight garbed Cutthroats hanging right near Sam. Unfortunately the game devs (developers) had even included a sense of smell into the game. The forest now reeked of dead and decaying things.