Quest 50 | ONC 2024

One:

The world was heavy. It was ending, the aliens arrived and made a video game out of us, but before they got here and forced every human to play their fantasy world mind quest, I already felt suffocated. Imagine seeing a doctor for over a year who assured you that you were a healthy young woman, only to find out your brain worked against you, and all your body pains weren't just in your head. For me, the aliens and their quests were a blessing in disguise. I could escape from disease within their control. The world is terrified. 'But not I,' said the cat.

As I stared out of my bedroom window, I peered at the shadowed city streets surrounding my parents' house. It was all I had left of them, of my childhood. I played the aliens' games from here; from the base they had installed in my bedroom when they barged in through the front door on the third night after their invasion. According to them, I was house #757, but I was numbered player #50. I hadn't asked if the other houses had players, were there over seven hundred others, or had they been forced to play at all. I sat on the floor that night and assumed the worst, which only made sense as the population shrank, and the streets grew quiet. But hey, I was sick, and they still let me live. I took advantage of it.

A knock came at my bedroom door just as a group of teenagers hollered from the streets below. They were pumped, excited, holding a bottle of alcohol in their hands. Without a functioning government or proper authority, underage alcoholism was at an all-time high. What else was there to do during alien control? They escaped the only way they could. While they drank, as did others in the world, I stuck to water. Hydration was very important.

The knock came again, and I glanced behind me. My bedroom lights were off because I'd fallen in love with the moonlight beaming in through my window. Who needed the power of a yellow bulb when the bright grey-blue glow from the planet's natural satellite was perfect? It showed my college degrees on the wall; all the education I would never use. My small trophies—spelling bees, honors, soccer captain—caught the glint just right. I smiled at the melancholy hue of my former life, and when the knock came for a third time, I sighed. Walking over to my bed covered in a thick white quilt I flopped onto my pillows. I glanced at the door and nodded. "Yes, Damon?"

Damon. My neighbor. House #756, player #48. He turned the doorknob. The curly-haired man, my high school sweetheart, slowly peered inside. He smiled with his extra toothy smile and a sparkle shined in his dark eyes. When I lazily waved at him, he fully came inside and flopped on my bed beside me. "You ready, Nina?"

I stared at my ceiling. As a child, I had stuck over fifty glow-in-the-dark stars and moons. It always surprised me that they hadn't died out and kept their green hue. It made me smile sometimes. "Well, hello to you, too, Damon," I muttered.

"Hey, hey," Damon balanced himself on his elbow as he looked at my face, "tonight's the night."

I covered my face. "Of what, Damon?" I grumbled into my palm.

"Bro—"

"Bro," I repeated and sighed.

"—it's level forty-seven! Forty-seven nights of bosses. Quests. Tonight's it, the big one, our purpose in this game! How could you forget?!"

I didn't forget. The base the aliens had installed in our homes was for their virtual reality game. 'Quest,' was what they called it. It was a lazy and unimaginative title but none of us said anything. We complied and played for our lives. Every night, as instructed, I put on my headset and goggles; I played for survival.

But the last three days had been tough for me. My legs were heavy, weakened by my condition. My feet felt like rocks sinking into the ocean. The pins and needles that numbed my arms made me feel like a shell of myself. I spent the morning barreling into non-existence and tried my hardest to convince my brain that I needed to move. After hours of failing nerves, I was tired and riddled with fatigue. The game would start in thirty minutes; every night would be the same time, 7:00 P.M. sharp. I should've been ready, prepared with my gear, and loaded up my in-game player, but my energy was lacking. I wasn't present.