GOD GAME

Clever isn't wise

After school I re-entered the game, having had more trouble than usual with the test. I had to guess two times, and that was not good. All these sympathetic thoughts were distracting me, and I did not want those thoughts to become empathetic. I stuffed my head in a my pillow, laying on my stomach as I thought of what to do. I turned my head in the direction of the door, it was too dark to see it but I knew it was there. I let my hand fall towards the floor, swinging them side-to-side. I want to play the game but... it will only distract me... I slowly closed my eyes and attempted to sleep. wait. I groped the bottom of my bed, finding the compartment under the bed I opened it. I grabbed it and turned over, examining the disk. The time... I opened my eyes. If I stop it I could study forever! A grin grew on my lips and spread to the rest of my face. I quickly got my headset and console out, slipping the game in the console and the headset on my head. I then turned on my study device, flipping through a few pages of what was going to be the next lesson. I didn't read them, just looked at all the words. I turned off the device and turned on the headset.

I imagined the processing power going up to a year in the game being a day in the world I left.

"What are you doing Alex?" the lady from before as in a curious tone.

"I'm going to..." pulling all the information from my subconscious that I could, "try something."

I opened my eyes, a plethora of fluttering papers falling towards the ground in front of me.

"Yes!" I exclaimed as I examined the papers.

They had the same information the pdf sheets on my phone had, the pdfs that I quickly scrolled through and stored in my subconscious.

"What are these?" The woman asked, picking up one of the papers from the ground. "Time extension and its pros and cons?"

"It's the stuff I need to learn, for school" I said, elated that my hypothesis was correct.

"What's school?"

"It's," I paused, thinking. "It's a place where you learn certain... certain things like time extension."

"You don't already know what it is?"

"I, no. That's why I brought it here. So I can study it without having to worry about the time constraints of my world."

"Clever, but I still... so you don't know everything?"

"Yeah, why would I?"

"It seems my world is truly gone," she sighed.

I looked at the woman with confused eyes, shaking my head I gathered the papers into neat piles and began to study them. It was slightly damp from the muddy earth, but was still legible enough to read.

"To travel back you need to find at least a single quantum string, to travel farther you need several more.This is because the strings only travel so far back or forward in time before ending. Finding these strings is the most difficult part of time travel, especially since they tend to move throughout time and all look exactly the same. However recent technological advances has allowed us to get what unimaginative scientists call quantum paint which puts colorful residue on the strings. However this is fairly unhelpful being that if you weren't back in time the string wouldn't have such paint on it and people would be lost once again."

"Alex," the woman said with offputting volume, "do you know what a Blemmyes is?"

"Um, wha- no?" I said in shock "What is a Blem-"

The woman shoved a picture of a brown-lanky creature, perfectly humanoid except for its lacking face and a gaping jaw growing out of its chest.

"They live in the flatlands, common on worlds like this." Her tone was, different. "And they LOVE human flesh"

All of the sudden I felt hot and heavy breath on my neck. I slowly turned finding the creature she was describing, a Blemmyes.

"Hahaha! Oh dear! Guess we are both very clever today, aren't we?"

The monster snapped at my arm, piercing it.

"AAAAAAH!" I screamed.

"Hehe, why don't you try to run from them instead of screaming? After all, they are attracted to noise!" the woman laughed.
More of the monsters appeared and my arm started bleeding.

[GAME QUIT???]
Changing from the bright, nonsense sky to my poorly lit room hurt my eyes. They longed for that world's color, but my head was too afraid to seek it. I stared at my feet breathing heavily, hoping that this silence would never give way to torturous morning. I stayed that way for awhile, letting my prior adrenaline die out with my hope for the new world I had found. I then fell onto my bed and rolled on my side, forcing my eyes closed.
Clora was floating on a cloud, turned away from me.

"Clora!" I yelled angrily, "What was that?!"

"Well, it was a Blemmyes. what else could it be?" She sounded apologetic.

"S...sorry. It wasn't your fault.. I-"

"Did you read the cover of the game?"

"What?"

"The cover... I thought I gave it to you with the chip."

"Oh, I think I threw it away so my mom didn't get angry if she found it..."

"Honestly Alex... it had the game instructions on it."

"R-really?"

"Yes..." she sounded distant and sad. "Promise me you'll come back Alex, please."

"But-"

"Please! It's... it's lonely there, with just her..."

"Clora?"