BEFORE

                I looked in the mirror.  My shirt and glasses were still covered in blood and I was going to have some trouble explaining to my wife about the mess in the living room.

The phone rang and jerked me out of my pensive moment.  I wiped my hands on the back of my black trousers and walked towards the phone, gingerly stepping over the body so I didn’t get my socks dirty as well.  They were new.  

“Hello?”  There was a faint buzzing noise in the background, like some sort of a ceiling fan.  Five or six blades, I couldn’t tell.  Maybe the television was turned on, but real low.  There was also a rustling of blankets.  Hard to notice, but not impossible.

“Hey sweetie.  Sorry I can’t make it today.  Work.”  That was her excuse.  Work, work, work.

“Another all-nighter?” I asked.

“Looks like.  Did you make yourself some dinner already?”

“Yep,” I lied.  There was a crimson crescent of blood under my left index finger nail.  I grabbed a pencil from the counter and started digging it out.

“Well, make sure you get some sleep.  Tomorrow’s a big day for you,” she said.

“Yep.”  I heard a faint noise in the background followed by someone whispering to her.  She was probably with her boss right now, at his house.  She thinks she has me fooled, but I actually knew about this for a while.  She’ll be punished later.  All bad people get punished in the end.

“Well, don’t stay up waiting for me,” she said, trying to sound as miserable as possible that she was doing overtime.

“Yeah, okay.  Love you.”

“Love you.”  There was an abrupt click and the line went dead.  I put the receiver down and turned around.  The body was still there.  I remembered someone saying that bleach works best on blood, so I went to the garage looking for a bucket and a scrub.



My white van was not parked parallel to the grid I drew on the floor for the very purpose of parking, which really annoyed me because the front right tire was touching a line it shouldn’t have been.  I looked over towards the left and saw bits of shiny white objects scattered everywhere.  I bent down to pick some up, but got back up as soon as I realized what it was.  Milburn’s skull.  How can I forget?  I guess I didn’t realize driving over someone’s head would scatter his skull everywhere.  It’s going to be a real pain trying to drag him out from under my car.

I had put some cleaning stuff at the back of the van a week ago.  I opened the sliding side door and moved Sebastian’s body out of the way to get to the very back seat.  He slumped over to the other side, onto Sullivan’s lap, making a squishing noise.  That made me laugh.

I semi-crawled to the back of the van to look for some trash bags.  My cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Yo, sup?”  It was Ivan.  “You doin’ anything right now?”

“Not much,” I lied.  I kept on with my search.  They must’ve moved around while I was driving.  I moved Miranda’s legs out of the way to look under the seat.  Ah-ha!  And there they were.  

                “Wanna meet me at the bar?  I got something important to tell you.”

                “At Serenity?”  Serenity was the name of the bar.  It was a very girly name for a bar, but we liked going there because something was always happening there.  Bar fights, bomb threats, police raids, binging parties, you name it, I’ve seen it.  There’s always chaos in Serenity.  

                 “As usual,” he replied.  It was too curt for Ivan.  That was enough to get me suspicious.

                 “What do you want to talk about?”  I reached to get the two boxes and accidentally brushed my left hand against Miranda’s thigh.  More blood.  Agh.  I wiped my hand on the seat and pulled the boxes out.  The seat cushions were ruined anyway.

                 “Stuff.”  Again, too curt.  “Look, just meet me at the bar, yeah?”

                 “Sure.  Give me a couple of hours though.  I gotta clean up and change.  Just came back from work.”  I threw the boxes down onto the floor and ripped one of them open.

                  It didn’t rip correctly.  The box had one of those perforated oval-shaped stuff at the top that lets you pull trash bags like a Kleenex, but it only ripped halfway, which really bothered me.  

                 “Okay.  See ya.”  Ivan hung up.  I looked at the defunct box of trash bags I was holding and chucked it across the garage and picked up a second one.  That one ripped perfectly.

                 I put the cell phone in my pocket and opened the passenger side door because I remembered I kept a box of rubber gloves in the glove compartment.  I moved another body out of the way and opened the little storage.  Ah-ha!
With the two items under each arm, I walked back into the living room, where Emara’s body lay, soaking blood into the carpet.  There was so much blood in the human body that sometimes it annoyed me.  This was one of those times.

II

This was all Milburn’s fault.  Milburn “No-I-am-not-British” Parliament.  If he wasn’t so crazy, I wouldn’t be here looking at this mess.  But he was crazy and that is why I am here, looking at this mess.

My name is Blake.  Blake Norton.  I am an FBI agent and I work undercover in a hospital somewhere in California as a Central Inventory staff.  Nothing too difficult.  I just take calls and deliver the stuff the other hospital departments need.  To be honest, the job is boring.  I go, sit down, and wait.  Someone calls, I pick up, hello this is Central Inventory.  Hi, I need you to bring this to here.  Ok, I run the errand, come back, sit down, and wait for the next call.  If this were my real job, I would have quit a long time ago.

Just like any other workdays, I got to the hospital at 6:45 a.m. in my ugly pale blue scrubs.  I went straight to the cafeteria and grabbed one jelly doughnut and a 16-ounce cup of grapefruit juice.  I paid for my stuff in exact change and walked out of the cafeteria, only stopping to get a bottle of water from the second vending machine by the entrance.  I clocked in at exactly 6:58 a.m and then went down a flight of stairs to get to the basement, where Central Inventory is located.  I don’t trust elevators.  Sure, it’s comfortable, but you can say that about almost anything until something breaks.

I continued on my way, chewing on a piece of the jelly doughnut, only it annoyed me that the first bite didn’t bring up any jelly.  I took out my keys and found the right one without even looking.  I opened the unnecessarily heavy, fire-proof, bulletproof, waterproof, shatter-proof, stain-proof, whatever the hell you can think of-proof door and walked in.

“Hi, Leon,” I said as I closed the door behind me.  Something yellow caught my eye so I turned to face the door.  Someone had put a piece of masking tape on the door and hadn’t taken it off.  I gritted my teeth and started scraping it off with my key.

“Mornin’ Blake,” said Leon.  I looked over at him.  He was playing one of those dumb card games on the computer.  
Leon, Miranda, Sebastian, and I make up the morning crew.  Leon is always early, which I didn’t really mind.  Miranda and Sebastian were always late in five to ten minute intervals, which bothered me a lot, but they were good for the job, so I can deal with the indolence.  Maybe.

Leon is twenty, living in his own apartment, single, and fun-loving.  When he goes home, he makes weird little contraptions for video games and stuff.  You know, controllers, joysticks, virtual reality helmets and things like that.  He brought his collection once and I was impressed, especially with a system that can run any game as long as it was on a circular disk.  He was something of a mechanical genius and the only reason he was working at a hospital was that he got so bored one day that he randomly applied for a job here.

“Anything new?” I asked as I kept attacking the piece of adhesive on the door.

“Oh yeah, I just finished my latest game.”

“Another virtual reality one?”

“Yeah.  Top-notch technology.  This one took me seven and a half years.”

“I thought you were never gonna finish that.  Tell me about it,” I said, throwing the piece of tape away in the nearby trash bin.  It got stuck to the side and I fumbled for a bit, trying to get it off.  Then it stuck to my fingers, so I just crumpled it up into a yellow ball and threw it back into the bin.  I looked up.  Leon was grinnin, clutching a small black backpack against his chest.

“Come here,” he said, walking to the large rectangular plastic table that we use mainly for eating lunch and playing crossword puzzles.  He carefully placed his backpack on the table and took out a small plastic bag that was obviously covering something bulky and awkward.  He slowly unsheathed the plastic, and out came a strange object that looked like a white motorcycle helmet that was missing its visor.  “Take a look inside it.”

I carefully took the shiny headgear into my hands, slowly rotating it as if I half-expected the thing to explode.  It didn’t.  I looked into the helmet.

“Whoa,” I said.  “It looks like a computer circuit board in here.”

“That will be the processor.  And wanna know something else?”  He took my hand and brushed it gently against the inside of the helmet.  It was prickly.

“What is that?”

“Microscopic electrodes,” he said, beaming.  “Each one of those prickly thing is connected to the main processor.”

“What for?”

“Well, when you put this helmet on, these electrodes burrow into your head.  When the game starts –”

“–Wait.  What?  They go into your head?”

“Yeah.  Creative, eh?”

3

“More like insane,” I said, repulsed and interested at the same time.  I paused.  “Go on.”

“So, what happens is, when you start the game, the electrodes start zapping your brain in the appropriate places to make you feel like you are actually in it.  So, say you were in a boxing game.  If your opponent punches you in the jaw, the prickly little guys will run some electricity to a part in your brain and the muscles in your jaw will contract as if you really did get hit.”

“What does it –”

“–And, if he punched you hard enough, your brain will be tricked into making your nose bleed.  Same with the other senses.  If there’s a wind, you’ll feel it.  If there’s a flower, you’ll be able to smell it.  Kind of like an electricity-run hallucinogen.”

“What does it run on?  There’s no outlet, no cord, or anything here,” I peered into the helmet again, looking for a logical place I would put batteries in.  None found.

“It runs on water,” he said.  “But you don’t need to refill it.  It converts the atmospheric humidity – mostly the oxygen component – into water, so it’s self-fueled.”  I stopped, a little surprised.

“You were right about top-notch technology,” I said, brushing some dust off the surface of the helmet.

“Yep.”

“So, how are you supposed to see what you’re playing if there’s no visor on this thing?”  I stuck my hand in and out of the front of the helmet to emphasize the question.

“Like I said, it plays with all of your senses.  Whatever game you play will be basically a form of visual hallucination.”

“Damn, man.  This has got to be some sort of a milestone in the world of gaming.”

“Yep.”  The next minute was in full silence, as he watched me studying the contraption.  There was a tone of respect in my last statement, and I think he deserved that, for all the work he’s done.

                “Have you ever tested it?” I asked.

                “No, actually.  Well, I could have, but it’s kind of scary, you know what I mean?  Because I wouldn’t know when I’m in the game and when I’m not.  We’re talking about serious reality-altering device here.  I figured I needed someone else to test it out while I oversee the process so in case something goes wrong, I can quickly help so no one gets hurt.”

“That’s pretty smart,” I said.  I thought about it for a while.  Oh, what the hell – why not?  “I can do that.”

“Awesome!  I have a few more finishing touches to this, though.  We’ll meet … how about Wednesday?”

“Sounds great,” I said.  Now I was really looking forward to it.  Reality-altering device?  Even I couldn’t believe it.