Survival of the Fittest

Chapter Twenty - The Gamer/Geek

Good God, it's hot.

I laugh wryly to myself as I realize that's the understatement of the year. I'm trudging through the middle of a damn rainforest, that's all. Why would I expect it to be any less than a thousand, humid, hellish degrees? My clothes are sticking to every inch of my skin, and all I can think about is diving into the nice cool pool that is waiting for me at my hotel in Rio.

Rio. Heh. Well, I think I'm going to be late for my reservation.

I don't suppose they'll hold it for me, seeing as how I have no clue when this nightmare will end. Maybe they'll let me re-book it? I mean, an airplane crash in the middle of the Amazon should count as an extenuating circumstance, right? Knowing my luck, probably not. The reservation for Carrie Lewis will, unfortunately, remain unfilled today.

Maybe there was an important person or two on the plane whose disappearance would get search and rescue out here sooner rather than later? At least I can hope, anyway. I'm certainly not that person, that's for sure. Only a couple of people know I'm on a different continent, let alone bumbling my way through a jungle.

First, there's Sasha, my beautiful and fun-loving college roommate. With both of my parents gone in a car accident a couple of years ago just after I graduated and being an only child of only children, I have no one else to call family except her. She's my sister in all the ways that matter, though, constantly watching my back as well as calling me out on my mountains of bullshit. She's always telling me to get out more and really experience life, not just glimpse it through the windows of my computer screens.

Ever since my parent's accident, though, I get so anxious when I leave the house that I prefer staying in more often than not. All of my classes are online anyway, so I don't see much point in going out if I don't have to. However, she's the one that finally convinced me to take this chance and go on a real adventure instead of the virtual ones I play online. To get out and experience some firsts-you know, first date, first boyfriend, first kiss...

With all the time she's spent on me, I kinda owed her this one. Plus, the real reason I'm headed to Rio is a very convincing argument as well: Marco.

Tall, dark, and extremely handsome. Marco is waiting for me in Rio. We "met" about eighteen months ago on our favorite online role-playing game, QuestForever, teaming up together in what was probably the worst pick-up-group either of us had ever been in. None of us had ever played together before, but we knew what our roles were: Warrior, Healer, Wizard, Ranger, and Magician.

However, even knowing what we were expected to do for the group, we were never able to make the group work well together. Everyone in the group died multiple times, requiring corpse recoveries all night long. Supposedly experienced players were doing the dumbest stuff that made me believe they just bought their account with no clue how to play the characters on it.

It becomes readily apparent who the quality players are in a shitty group like this, and yea, I'm going to toot my own horn to say that I was one and Marco was the other. We finally got fed up with the other three assholes, so Marco with his Warrior and I with my Healer decided to ditch them and play some lighter content that the two of us could handle.

We kept playing for several more hours, just the two of us, constantly typing messages back and forth. Telling each other jokes, teasing, and getting to know each other. It was so easy talking to him, it was almost like we'd known each other for years instead of hours. After that night, we ran into each other in-game a lot more and we quickly started making "dates" to be online at certain times to play together, even if it was just to hang out and chat.

Sasha was dubious about Marco when I first told her about him. Since I'd only ever talked to Marco online up to that point, she didn't believe that he was even a guy, let alone a nice one. She loved to mangle the quote from one of my favorite movies, "Ready Player One", and would tell me that he could actually be a three hundred pound chick who lives in her mama's basement in suburban Detroit and her name is Ethel or some other equally un-sexy name she could think of at the moment.