Tales of the Heart to Warm your Soul

A Dream of a Beautiful Life

I opened the door and saw her. The room was not what I expected. It was brighter than I imagined, the walls were painted white which reflected off from the linoleum floor, which made the room look and feel like a white room. I saw a man walk up to me. He outstretched his arm. I took it and gave his hand a little shake.

"Hi, you must me Nick. Pleased to meet you. I'm Charlie," he said, very pleasantly.

"Yea, I'm Nick."

He took the clipboard that was lying on Beth's bed, and began reading it. "Just for clarification," he said, in a professional tone, "could you tell me your date of birth?"

"Fifth of November," I said.

"What year?"

"2021."

Charlie ticked off something and then scribbled something at the bottom, I presumed his signature. He put the clipboard back on Beth's bed, at the end. I took in where I was. I heard ticking and I saw a monitor which calculated Beth's heart rate; I saw the lines that looked like lightning swim across it. Behind Charlie was a lot of computer equipment. It was something I have never seen before; it was all so complex, wires entered in and out from the computer. It had more switches and red buttons that were lit up then I could count. There was also a screen which displayed the DreamCast's logo, which was of a sasakia caronade butterfly; underneath was their slogan 'Making dreams a reality.'

I turned my head toward the bed. Beth was pale as snow, the bones in her hands barely visible. Her feet looked cold; in fact her whole body looked like it had been ducked in ice. Her head was hidden by what I could only guess was the black VR headset. It was the shape of a saucer, only her mouth was visible. It looked uncomfortable.

"Is she okay?" I asked, I noticed that Charlie was now on the computer, looking at a blob of words on the screen. He looked toward me, then at Beth, then at me again. "Yes, she's fine. The doctors checked her this morning, they say she's fine."

"You're not a doctor?"

"Nope, I'm a VR technician. I'm here to supervise that everything will be okay. Well it should be." He stepped away from the computer and came toward me. He gestured at a chair next to the bed, which I didn't notice before. I took it, feeling nervous. "Will there be any side effects?" I asked, as Charlie walked over to the computer. He took something next to it that I had missed. It was a small version of the VR headset that Beth had on. He looked at me and smiled. "There is the usual: feeling nauseous, light headed, you may, after a while of coming out of it, feel dread and also hear white noise." He smiled. "But that's common. However, for long term effects that can affect your mental state is that some volunteers have said that, after coming out of the VR, they felt a sense of unhappiness and depression for a long period of time. You may think that this life isn't for you. If you do feel like you have a sense of loss from reality, I want you to go to a doctor; they'll prescribe you with anti-depressants. Okay, then, I'll wake you out of the virtual reality in three hours. Have fun."

Charlie placed the VR headset over my head, just when it was about to cover my eyes, engulfing me in darkness, I saw a butterfly pass by over Charlie's head.

All I saw was darkness, and then, suddenly, then all at one once, I saw a landscape form in front of me; Mountains formed from nothing; the sky shot into existence, and all around me were long, thin golden grass that covered the landscape. Everything looked so real and yet otherworldly, that for a moment, I forgot that I was inside a VR. I was standing on a cliff; beyond me were snowy, white mountains as tall and as beautiful as Mount Everest and K2. From an invisible force, the grass, in perfect melody, flickered to one side, as though the wind was blowing it.