When it rains, it pours. My wife, Lirra Smith, was missing, and the trail was cold. All our credit cards were maxed out, our savings were cleaned out, and I missed her.
Allow me to paraphrase the letter the credit card agencies have sent me. To John Smith, you owe an amount you can't pay. You should file for bankruptcy immediately. I hope you weren't planning on taking any loans or using credit for the next seven years.
Instead of opening my umbrella to shield myself from the summer shower, I let the rain fall. A part of me felt dead inside. How had this happened? Why hadn't I seen the signs?
No, I saw them, but I refused to recognize them.
I thought everything was going well.
The rain soaked me to the bone long before I turned the key in my old Ford F150. I don't know why I bothered filing a police report. The officers gave me pitying looks; no one thought I had anything to do with it. I laughed as I sobbed, a part of me wanted to break it off, but I was too much of a coward to leave. The other part wanted to love her until I died.
Someone pointed and laughed at me as an officer escorted them into the building.
Well, at least someone was having a good time.
It all started when she downloaded a new app: Neuroverse. I had never heard of it before, but there were a lot of apps on the market, so what did I know? She recommended it to me, and the shared link was still good.
For a month, she rapidly got into shape, and the sex was better than when we were teenagers.
Somehow, I made it home at the trailer park and climbed the old wooden steps. She repeatedly told me that she wanted me to replace them with a ramp, but there was always something more important to do.
The cool air and dusty floor greeted me as I stepped out of the crocks and took my soaked-through clothes off at the door. A shift in the HVAK turned the air on, and I changed clothes and boiled water for ramen. As the only source of income, I couldn't splurge on food. Ramen with an egg was about all I could afford.
I was fired recently, and I didn't know what to do. The trailer wasn't paid off, and we rented the lot. I had this month covered, but next month was in the air.
When I checked my phone, the app was downloading. It would take a while, and the file was surprisingly large. I fell into bed and passed out.
Bleary-eyed because I hadn't taken my contacts out, and the stove was still on, with the water mostly boiling into steam, I rushed to turn it off.
With the minor emergency out of the way, I checked my phone as my stomach gurgled in protest of doing anything but filling it. Maybe I should start taking Adderall when my wife was on it. She only needed one meal a day.
I caught sight of the letter and, like a vampire seeing a cross, I retreated from it. I could only force myself to read a few paragraphs. She had outgrown me, and there was no point staying with a loser like me.
My breakfast ramen tasted like heaven. I slurped the noodles and drank the salty soup at the bottom of my bowl. That staved off my depression until the thoughts swallowed me again around lunch, most likely. I tried to wall off my emotions and went to my office.
The room was tossed around for every loose cent Lirra could find. Even my decision quarter on my desk was gone. What was I going to do without a true, meaningful coinflip?
I sat at the desk and searched indeed for a few hours while news reports of people missing popped up on my screen. The app, now downloaded on my phone, was declared illegal, but for some reason, when someone wanted to find it, no amount of firewalls or clever hiding worked. When someone wanted the app, it would come to them. Surprisingly with all the missing people there were openings even in the shitty college town I lived in.
My wife made it through college and had an important job. I worked at Walmart until, in a fit of pique, I mouthed off to a customer. My hip wasn't significant. A combination of terrible, cheap shoes and a concrete floor caused inflammation in my hip, which made walking feel like a hot iron was jabbing me. Add blinding pain to my wife disappearing with all our savings, and I wasn't in the best state. That was no excuse because we happened to have a corporate walkthrough at the time.
There was no excuse I could make that could bring those people to care about me.
It wasn't the first job I was fired from. Before falling so low, I sold insurance, and that ended with the company getting sued.
With a heavy heart, I turned off my PC instead of turning on any games that might keep me from the app. I needed to face it.
Neuroverse booted up and requested my name, and then it gave me a quest to do 20 pushups, 20 squats, 20 crunches, and run 100 yards. The reward was a red pill, but not the woke kind. I checked my profile, and it had my address, but it was to where I was in my trailer.
It was just a three-bedroom trailer, and my wife and I were the only people who called the small room my office. Did it keep her information?
Should I go to the police? I shook my head. If they couldn't stop people from downloading it, how would they prevent it from using our personal information? People have tried to sue Eclipse, the company that made the game, but to no avail. The app almost seemed self-aware.
There wasn't a time limit, but the sooner I did the exercise, the sooner I would get the reward. Was the red pill hard drugs?
I saw a scan function in the app that used my phone's camera. When I pressed it, I saw a surprisingly truthful description of what I did in my office.
John's Porn Funnel: A state of the art gaming rig built a decade ago with no upgrades since. This computer has been slowed by numerous updates with minimal optimization to force John to upgrade his stone age tech. He unfortunately lacks the knowledge and will to learn, and it is only a matter of time before the system's obsolete equipment causes a critical error.
That seemed a bit harsh, but I couldn't deny it either. I was a bit of a connoisseur. I didn't have the money to upgrade my system, so what was the point of mooning for a better graphics card or processor?
When I started, a timer appeared. While I could do the quest at any time, it must be completed together in 20 minutes. Easy, right? Well, I was very out of shape.
Crunches didn't count unless my head reached six inches from my knees with my head straight. I couldn't bend my neck to cheat. Pushups required the full extension, like my old football coach was watching my progress. When I rose, I had to stay up for a few precious seconds for it to count. That included when I started. For three seconds, I had to sit in pushup position before going down. For the squats, I had to lower myself until my but was even with the back of my knees. I failed the first try because I had to experiment to get it right.
Four tries and 10 hours between them, I made it outside with 2 minutes to spare. I ran while my heart hammered in my chest and my vision blurred. Even running had hidden parameters I didn't see before. I had to raise my knees, but not too high, and move my shoulders before they counted.
Somehow, I was very aware of these parameters. Even though I knew they were on my phone, I could see the screen in my mind's eye.
I failed with only 10 yards to go. Another three-hour break later, I tried for the final time. This time, I got 8 minutes remaining when I ran for the 100 yards, making it easy.
Fireworks exploded over the screen, and something appeared in my pocket.
Rewarded
10pt
Red Pill X 1
My hand slowly dipped into my ball shorts, and I pulled a tiny red pill free.
Red Pill (Crimson Resolve Tablet): A gift for the clan, fewer dogs of the multiverse created by the mad shaman and perfected by alchemists and pharmacists through the ages. This pill will unshackle the potential forced upon the user from birth, so long as it's worked for. The greater the user's resolve, the faster the recovery rate and the increased gains from physical exertion. This pill has a permanent, stackable effect that does not clash with any other pill or known power. Note: Without physical exertion before taking this pill, it will not affect the body.
A shop menu opened up, but all I could think about was how the pill appeared in my pocket. Was it portal technology? Was there some guy opening portals for this company and placing things there? No, that was too ridiculous.
I looked the pill over. It was red and round and had a pulse, like it was alive and had its own heartbeat. How did anyone expect me to take it?
I put the pill back in my pocket and slowly walked back home. The old closed gas station protected me from the rain as I stood under it and let my heart calm. I knew I would feel like someone had beaten me with a hammer when I got up the next day. My knee hurt when I put weight on it, and I had a limp. Every step was like someone had stuffed my joints with broken glass.
When I stopped focusing, I felt the pill pulse in my pocket. It promised to unshackle me, whatever that meant. Did my wife, the woman who couldn't do a pushup to save her life, get one? She was becoming very fit before she left.
I remembered people going missing, but didn't hear about them returning.
The shop opened without touching my phone. I checked for red pills, and there was a massive list of them with points measuring in the trillions or more. The particular pill I had was worth 80 points. It was the cheapest pill possible and rated 9.8 out of 10.
There were green pills that started at 1000 points per pill, and blue pills that held around 250 points for the cheapest pill. Each color had a theme. Red pills meant strength, green pills meant regeneration of the self or a resource, and blue pills meant increased capacities. I couldn't get a helpful description without scanning the pill myself.
So, the question was, should I trust the app? I was dealing with powers I didn't understand. I could delete the app and throw the pill away, or better yet, go to the government with it. But that wouldn't get me anywhere. I couldn't be the first person to try to make a profit off the pills, and there weren't sudden multimillionaires from this running around.
I pulled the pill back out of my pocket, placed it on my tongue, and swallowed it.
I don't know what I was expecting. As it traveled down my throat, I waited under the pouring rain, sheltered by the old gas station, for something to happen. There was no sudden transformation or relief.
When the rain died, I trudged back inside and played Bloodborne.
At some point, I fell asleep on the couch and woke up to the birds chirping outside. Our cats weren't fed last night, and I was lucky they didn't eat me.
I struggled, stiff as a board and hungry as a fasting monk. The quest changed. 20 to 50 for body weight exercises popped up. Every five reps more than before was worth one more point, and every 50 yards more than the required distance would earn a point. I could complete the exercise for points up to three times a day, but only the first success would earn a red pill.
The shop had many options, including exchanging points for in-world currency and more mundane options. Lists of instruction books, texts, combat simulators, and more filled the shop, giving me a sense of option paralysis. So many different affordable texts stood out to me.
Overnight, my prospects changed, and Lirra kept this from me. From her note, it seemed like we were over.
I purchased a meal plan and left for the store in my pickup.
The roll of twenties in my hand never felt more conspicuous. People stared at the bulge before I took it out and paid for steaks, lamb chops, and fish I could find. One bag was filled with tuna, and I had a 65-pack of eggs.
Once I was back home, I fixed breakfast: a four-egg omelet with sautéed onions, tomatoes, diced steak, and cheddar cheese. I cut into it and watched the cheddar cheese gush out before taking a bite and realizing I didn't season a thing. Still, I finished the omelet and got to work.
I earned the red pill on my second try. When I focused too much on body weight exercises, I didn't have enough time to run with the correct technique. Too many squats gave me a cramp that destroyed all my progress.
I limped home and tried again, going for the minimal to get the pill and then going for maximum crunches to get the most points. I took the pill and had the rest of the day after my third successful attempt.
When I swallowed the tablet, I felt it pulse down my throat. It was disconcerting.
Another day went by, and I looked at my points.
10pt per successful daily quest completion
And on my last two attempts, I managed 40 crunches, 30 pushups, and 25 squats.
44pt were earned for the daily quests, giving me a total of 53pt.
A message appeared as a notification from the app.
Weakly Quest
Learn Hand-to-Hand Combat
Reward
500pt
Travel Guide to Ichor Prime
I pulled the old grill out of storage while pondering where Ichor Prime would be. Was it on another planet, some secret hole in the ground, or maybe a simulation? Was Lirra there?
A part of me wanted her to be there, but another part hoped we would never cross paths again. This app helped me take my mind off of her, but the damage she did to me remained.
This time, I seasoned the lamb chops I bought and grilled them nearly to blackened ruins when the flame caught the fat and burned it too much. Next time, I would foil the grill so the fat wouldn't flare up the heat.
I sat on the porch and looked at the swaying tree in my yard. Half of it was dead. Lirra always said I needed to cut it out of the tree. I was tired from work and only wanted to play a game and relax when I got home. I saw a chainsaw in the shed next to the grill. All I needed was some gas, but I left it up. It wasn't out of being lazy; it was my decision.
…
Two days saw minor changes in me. I might have lost a pound, but nothing much changed with me physically. The body needed more time than a few days to change, even with magic pills.
After saving points, I got enough to purchase a simulation helmet that was friendly with my diet plan. It also recommended buying a supplement injection called steroids. Apparently, for as little as 50pt, I can buy a relatively safe steroid to boost my gains with few side effects. They fortunately won't shrink my dick. I still need to purchase a 2000pt PMD(Personal Medic Drone) to get the right injections for my body.
I slipped on the helmet and found myself face to face with an 8-foot-tall man cut until his muscles looked like stones in the approximation of a human body. Even his jaw was packed with muscle. He had long black hair and smoked a cigar. He drew a deep puff and blew out a ring.
"So you're the little shit I have to whip into shape. Well, alright, come at me. Let's see what I'm working with." I looked at him and froze. He looked like some towering behemoth. If I charged him, I was going to die. I raised my fist. Maybe if I punched myself and showed my submission, he would let me off the hook. "Nuh uh, you don't get the easy way out. You purchased my simulation at a discount. Didn't you think there was a problem with it when it was 95% off?"
I opened my mouth, but I couldn't get the words out.
He shook his head. "Pathetic, a simulation of me could stop your heart, and I'm holding back as much as possible. My son was tougher than you in my balls." The man shook his head. "You might as well eject my cartridge and smash it. You'll never learn anything if you can't move in my presence."
"I want," The man chuckled and put a hand to his ear.
"What was that? I can't hear you."
"I want to get stronger."
"You can't die here, you understand that, right. The only way you can die here is if your mind gives up. There aren't any safeties on my cartridge like in boxing, judo, or any other martial arts simulation cartridge. I am a master of the craft. I won't teach you forms alone; instead, I'll break you down and mold you into something strong, or you can give up and die. Those are your choices."
This was the third day I had the app, and death was on the table. I didn't know how to handle it.
"Answer me," The man shouted.
"I will give it my all."