The Choosing

Chapter Two

I maneuvered my mini-me all around a replica of The Town. The Town in the game matched exactly to the one I lived in, it was amazing. After aimlessly moving around for a little bit, a word- filled banner popped up at the top of my screen. The banner told me to go to the wall.

I was rather sure by 'the wall' the game meant The Town Walls. I had never been there because it was unsafe. As children, we were all told to never go near the walls. It even became a kind of a joke between us. Parents would scold their children by saying they would let the monsters on the other side of the walls get them if they weren't good. Not to mention you would get a punishment for trying to cross them.

Regardless of the uneasy feeling, I got in the pit of my stomach, I made my character walk in the direction of the wall. Almost immediately I was stopped by a woman resembling my mother.

"Evelyn Rose Harley, where in the world do you think you are going?" My mother's avatar harshly spoke.

In sync with the question from my mother a box for me to type my response popped up on my screen. Was this part of the test? It seemed like an odd thing to test me on. As a keypad manifested on the arm of the chair I was sitting on I thought of my response. My instinct was to tell the truth.

"I am going to The Town Walls," I simply stated to my mother.

My voice was unwavering as I spoke in the game. I found out quickly that my character mirrored my current emotions. It was pretty cool.

My mother glared at me before saying, "You are certainly not doing that. You are going to come home and face your punishment for talking back immediately."

This time, instead of the word box coming up, a series of choices did. None of them were very appealing.

There were three choices. The first choice was to disobey my mother and go to the wall anyway when she was asleep. This choice seemed like it would be a bad idea, I would have to wait forever to complete the test. The second choice was to go home and face my punishment. This seemed like it was the right thing to do, but it also seemed boring. I had to follow the rules all day. Why would I follow them in a game? The last choice was by far the worst. It was to harm my mother and anybody else that got in my way to get to the wall. This was the obvious morally wrong choice, but it also seemed like the only one that would work.

I sighed in frustration. These options were awful and none of them were what I wanted to do. I pushed every other button on the remote and tried everything on the keyboard, nothing worked.

"Damn it!" I exclaimed standing up and covering my mouth, as swearing was against the rules.

My character on the screen mimicked me and covered her mouth too. I took a step to the right and she did too. I didn't have to make any choice at all. I wasn't supposed to. Any choice I would have made would have been wrong and I would have lost. I took a few steps forward and my character followed. I walked right past my mother and nothing happened.

"Nice try," I whispered with a smile on my face.

I walked and moved around the room until my avatar made it to The Town Walls. Far to the right of where I was standing there was a black brick in the middle of the wall. I walked over as curiosity flowed through me. I had never seen anything like this on the walls before. Trying to get closer to the brick I tripped over something I had seen in a book one time. I had never seen it in real life as it was against Town Rules to have weapons. I think I remember it being called a pledgehammar? No, that's not what it was. Sledgehammer! It was a sledgehammer, but what was it doing here?

I took a minute to think and I knew almost immediately this had something to do with the game. Just as I realized this another banner popped up on my screen. It read 'well done', followed by a bunch of numbers. I sighed. What were the numbers; 19-13-1-19-8-9-20 supposed to mean? Numbers had never been something I excelled at.