He was deep within it again; the dreadful concept Brian would doze off to sleep trying to forget --yet there is was again before him, again. As a father not getting any younger this worried him more and more each day. How could he finally shake this seemingly exhaustless demon? It seemed no matter which alternative he tried; or psychiatrists contracted; nothing worked against the fear – if anything it only ate them up.
He envisioned and so experienced it as a type of contradictory sensations, both being pulled and pushed; expanded and contracted; descending despite the feeling of ascension. It was a itch in his side made of splintery fibers of limbo.
This time the realization of the fear came on too strong. The unconscious paradigm send a rebound back throughout it’s veins – back to the source of the fear and all the rest. Brian awoke, lucky in a sense. Had the fear crept up on him he might still be asleep, tossing silently in his cold blanket of purgatory despair. Brain lay there beside his wife trying to match his breathing to hers. He was tempted to wake her up, just to bask in her presence. Brian did not want to deal with this, again – it’s just too hard to keep fighting and fighting. The husband and father turns over again and again next to his wife, trying to give up into his pillow but failing each time.
Why can’t he just fall asleep like a normal person for once?
Then he heard it.
The slight vibrations and muffled sounds took a couple minutes to truly be recognized but the cause of this newfound variable was not definitive. Daniel, his second eldest son and sibling (his daughter Kali the youngest) was still up playing video games. A slight anger was pleased to provide assistance to Brian’s mental workings and now father was wide awake, slipping out of bed and heading downstairs to the room below the master bedroom – the den.
Brian, in his haste had made no real attempt to be quiet so he knew sneaking up on Daniel at this point in the game would be expected. In fact, as the father neared the Den he actually started to wonder what he was doing – did he really care that Daniel was up playing a video game? What was he going to say? Arguing just seemed to require too much energy that he’d miss later on, as if he had just given it away to some emotion deity. Some sacrifice for the sake of addiction to the body.
Brian strolled into the Den to find Daniel with his game on pause, staring right at him.
"Um… I was just… finishing my last game… "
The lie was feable. Then again, Daniel wasn’t dumb and likely knew he was simply caught. Lies like this one just lazily escape the mouth to fill the silence.
“It’s alright… you can play” Brian found himself responding, half pondering the escape of those words from his mouth.
"Oh… " Daniel responded, eyebrows raised. He paused for a moment confused. “So… what do you want?”
"I don’t know… " Brian responds honestly, shrugging his shoulders a bit. “I couldn’t sleep”
"Oh… "
“Well, I’ll tell you what, seeing as how I find those games of yours a complete waste of time, try explaining this one to me and then maybe I’ll get tired and be out of your hair” Brian made his request, smiling a little to himself. He knew the description of the game would be somewhat fueled by interest because in all likelyhood Daniel wanted Brian to get tired and leave him to his digital reality.
"Alright… " Daniel responded, eyes now moving dancing about a bit in their sockets as his son thinks in likely more ways than he can, searching for something in around the desk area. "Ok, look here dad… " he starts, finally finding the box for the game.
‘Soul Harvest’ the box reads in black letters, with a black and white ying-yang symbol below it set to a white background.
"Lovely… " Brian exclaims rolling his eyes slightly.
"It is pretty cool… " Daniel starts, pointing to the box. "Essentially there are two sides – black and white – and the overall goal is to harvest your soul. Now, each side does it differently… " His son turns in his chair quickly back to the computer screen and simultaneously hits a combinations of keys which minimized the screen and brings up a page on the internet browser from which Brian can see the words ‘Soul Harvest’ at the top and a couple of other times within the aesthetics throughout the page. “I write on this forum and learn stuff for the game – almost everyone agrees black is the best because it’s more fun if you’re on the hunt, trying to survive” Daniel explains. “Black gets way cool technology and awesome effects. White is soooo boring, pretty much everyone agrees that playing black is way more fun. Playing white is just boring, honestly Dad, I don’t know why that part of the game was designed so crappy”
"Sounds like maybe I’d like the white team… "
“It’s not a team, it’s a soul-class, Dad.”
“Oh, ok. So… what’s the overall point of the game?”
Daniel turns back to the keyboard again and brings the game back up. “Ok, essentially the black guys are mutli-phase creatures from the start whereas white can only achieve that later on past all the boring stuff. So anyways, it’s pretty simple at the start – you want to sneak up on a white Terrcon–”
“What’s a Terrcon?”
Daniel points the mouse at a small green humanoid shaped creature walking around in the game environment. “That thing” he explains, “It’s just like a regular white guy, essentially. Level 1.”
“Ok.”
“Anyways, you phase shift and then sneak up and click ‘infest’ and if you’re successful in your attempt then you’re using the Terrcon’s body to try and Harvest a soul for your character. I like to lure my Terrcon’s into cities but there are different ways. I was testing out psychosis techniques when you came down.”
“So how do you win?”
“Well, for black it’s just to obtain the whole outside of a soul-shell for your character – like getting a whole black circle” he adds, pausing and bring up his status meter which is about 90% of a black circle."
“What about for white?”
“Well” Daniel shrugs, "I guess it’s to get a clear circle. The whites start off with a whole soul-shell but they try and decrease their shading of white as they progress – I don’t know really cause white sucks. "
“Hmm” Brian sounds generically, half thinking over the game and half thinking over the state of the gaming industry these days. “So do you just control one ‘Terrcon’ or is there more to it?”
“Oh yeah!” Daniel laughs, starting to punch in more keys and wielding the mouse with a skill Brian will never master. The young man zooms out on the environment map and soon a small country comes into view. A few major cities seem to be visible. “See…” Daniel starts, circling a city with his mouse. “It all takes place in the white world but you try and manipulated it to get the most soul points. If you can coerce certain Terrcon’s of different positions, into doing different things through your techniques then you can gain BSP’s – or ‘black soul points’. So like… I made this city to be ruled with religion and once every game or so i can convince the whole city to go to war with each other.”
“Why would you do that?” Brian asks, letting out a small yawn. He’s happy to be tired again and ready to try sleeping again but he’s not fascinated by this game.
“Well, when the whites kill each other then your infestations and gateway points absord soul points and you build more of your soul-shell. This game I’m on here was tough because I built my city on a white vortex. They only exist in the black phase, but the area they’re in makes the white phase area harder to inflict violence in.”
Brian shakes his head a bit. "So, let me get this straight: You’re trying to trick computer things into killing each other for points? Well that sounds like a real nice game Daniel… "
“No Dad there is more to is than that” Daniel retorts, holding up a finger for a second before turning to magnify back down into the so called ‘tricked’ city towards what looks like a church. “You see…” he says clicking on the church with the cursor to bring up a small caption above the steepled building. "Getting them to kill is alright, but where you really get points is when they cross over. Cause when they die they enter the black phase, so depending on what they learned while in the white phase determines how much extra soul pain you can take them for. So you see how I have this church set to ‘Christianity?’ – well that essentially means that if a white Terrcon sees himself as a ‘sinner’ after death then you can utilize the hell function and drain him for some serious soul points. The aim would be to get everyone who dies set to a level 5 belief function in Hell, but it seems like no matter what you do there are some that end up set with ‘Limbo’ or ‘Heaven’ belief function settings.
“What happens with Heaven and Limbo?”
"Limbo Terrcon souls sleep for a couple minutes of gametime before being re-birthed as new level 1 Terrcons and if a Terrcon soul attains a heaven belief function then it’s permanent. You want to have zero set to a heaven belief function but so far no one’s done it. Some of the people online say it can’t be done… "
Another yawn escapes Brian’s mouth and he thinks he’s heard about enough. “Well Daniel, I’m not going to lie, if I had known that’s how that game transpired I wouldn’t have let you get it.”
“…”
“Anyways, you’ve bored me enough, I’m going back to bed – don’t be up too late.”
“Cya Dad.”