I woke up with a
start. I looked around not recognizing
where I was, or, for that matter, who I was.
I didn’t have my memory erased or anything, I knew who I was on the
inside, but the ‘me’ on the outside was totally different. I was a lot taller than I usually am, my hair
was past my knees and black. Not quite
the 5’3” I’m used to, or the blonde pixie cut.
My clothes were strange as well.
I had a long white dress, a pair of grey leggings, a pair of boots, and
a rucksack. It was actually pretty comfortable
and easy to move in.
I
soon realized that having long hair was not all what it’s cracked up to
be. It took me forever trying to keep it
out of the way while I explored the meadow I had woken up in. Hours passed while I looked at all that was
around me. There was a crazy assortment
of flowers, some were spiky, others fluffy looking. There were birds cawing, cooing, and
sometimes crying. Rabbits hopping around
super slowly while turtles were racing past.
I found a pond with fish I’d never seen before, purple fish, blue fish,
and black fish, so many of them that it looked like just one big bruise. And just as I was thinking that this was all pretty
weird I tried to do my hair. As I pushed
my hair behind my ears it felt strange.
My ears were pointed. Somehow I
calmly finished braiding my hair before I started crying. Who could blame me? I woke up in a place I didn’t know and my body
was completely different, plus it wasn’t just the height and hair, I was an elf
for goodness sake.
But
that was only how it started. One minute
I was sitting crying in the meadow, the next I was standing in a crowded square
in some old town. I saw people, trolls,
witches, wizards (or warlocks I don’t really know the difference), and elves
like me. I wanted to move around but I
couldn’t seem to, then I heard a voice in my head saying “Wait what happened to
my regular avatar, why do I have a girl?”
It sounded like a young guy speaking.
If I could I would have looked around, but I still couldn’t move.
“Man,
I’m gonna have to send a report… how do I send a report.” Said the Voice.
I
didn’t think it would work, but I decided to try speaking, “Who… who are
you?” I was pretty sure it must have
been one of the wizards speaking in my head, but why was he talking about
avatars and sending reports.
“Who said that?”
Said the Voice
“That’s what I want to know, ugh, never mind, I’m the elf
in the white dress with the black hair.
There was silence for a little while then I started moving. But I wasn’t moving myself. “Wait!
What’s going on?”
“Is this some kind of joke, how does this work?” The Voice sounded confused.
“Joke? Please,
what’s going on?” I was leaning towards
the side of panic at this point. I had
left the square and was now running through the streets of the city. A few times while running I thought I was
going to run into someone, instead I ran right through them. I didn’t feel anything when I did
though. There were fights going on all
through the town, and that is when I figured it out. All these people when they started fighting
had health bars above their head. It was
some video game. I didn’t know if I
should feel better or worse now that I knew this.
“What game is this?” I asked.
At first he didn’t speak, but then the voice said, “‘Age
of Kings’, it’s an online game. Am I
really talking to my avatar right now?”
“Well, all I know is I woke up in this strange world, got
transported to this city, and am talking to a voice inside my head. As far as I can tell I could just be
crazy.” Now I was getting
irritated. I’ve had a not so great day,
and the only person I could talk to is an online video game nerd who probably
thought this was the coolest thing ever.
“So you just woke up like this? You mean that until now you were just a
regular person?”
At first I thought, ‘Well
duh’, then I realized it was probably just as strange for him, if not more
so. He just found out that his regular
character was switched with somebody who used to be a regular high school
student the day before.
He had stopped making me run some time ago while we
talked, but this ended up being a bad idea.
Some ogre had suddenly decided it would be fun to clobber me with a
club. And that was probably the worst
news of the day, it really hurt. I could
feel his club. Although I could walk
through people just fine, I apparently couldn’t get beat to death without some
stings.
At the first hit I yelled, partly in pain partly from
surprise. I suddenly flew into
action. I was equipped with a double
handed sword and I starting swinging and jabbing like nobody’s business. I’d like to say that this was all based on my
amazing reflexes and intuition, but really it was all The Voice, I still didn’t
know his name. After killing the ogre I
looked up to see my health bar. It was
still mostly full, which was kind of annoying since the shoulder that got hit
still hurt a lot.
“Here I’m going to have you eat some food and drink
stuff. I don’t know if you’ll have to
think about swallowing or not so I thought I’d warn you.”
I ate some bread and cheese, then drank some ale,
apparently it was all he had. All this
had come from my pack. I thought I was
pretty lucky though, because I could not taste a thing. However I could feel it going into my mouth
and chewing it. My shoulder was feeling
better by the time I ate my last bit of cheese.
“I think we should keep on the move,” I said, trying not
to sound as scared as I was. “I don’t
want to have to get out of another fight.”
I had started running again when he asked, “Did it hurt
bad when you got hit?”
“Yeah…” I didn’t
want to make him feel worse by going into detail, “But it’s fine now.”
“Good. So, you
said you woke up here?”
I ended up telling him all about the first half of my day
wandering through the meadow. Apparently
he hadn’t seen it before whenever he played.
He asked some questions, and I answered what I could. Then we ended up talking about normal
things. We didn’t get too personal, but
it was kind of nice to forget about the game.
Eventually it got late. Even
though I had continually ate so that I would have enough energy to run I still
felt tired.
“I think this meadow that you woke up in when I was
offline is probably the safest place to be.
I feel really bad leaving you like this, but I also think it would be a
bad idea if I accidentally fall asleep and you get attacked. I don’t even want to know if you can actually
die in this game.” He said all this
calmly, almost confidently, like he had been thinking about it for a
while.
“Yeah, I’ll probably be fine.” I said, trying not to show how scared I was.
“Well good night.”
“Um, good night.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“By the way my name is Finn. *Beeep*”
I was back in the meadow.
I wanted to think about all that had happened but I was so tired that I
fell asleep right away. When I woke up I
was in my room. My sister was looking at
me worriedly.
“Oh good! Your
fever broke about an hour ago, but I wasn’t sure when you would wake up.” She said laughing in relief.
I found out that the whole day before I had had a bad
fever and had slept like the dead. I
have an Uncle who is a doctor and he had told my parents to just let me sleep
and keep me at home.
By
the next week I was well enough to go to school. I was putting things into my locker when I
heard a familiar voice behind me saying.
“I’m serious, it really happened.”
“That’s
impossible. You can’t talk to your
avatar on an online game Finn.” Someone
else said.
All
I could think was… no way.
-AMD
