Virtual Reality ✔

Do You Remember?

"They said there wasn't another competition tonight!" Amberline exclaimed. She picked up the note only to affirm it was from the people in charge before tossing it back on the countertop.

"I think they said now, not tonight," corrected Parker.

"Either way, we're screwed," said Duncan as he sat on the couch. We were all too tired to do much of anything. "How long were we in that simulation?"

"I don't know," I replied honestly. I hadn't known about them, by my sense of time was messed up.

Victoria reached for the letter more seriously this time. She had actually intended to read it whilst Amberline just looked at the sender. She opened it and started reading. "Dear gamers, we hope you all remember what you did and have been able to rest enough to complete this competition."

"I don't remember much..." I said as I gave my team a cautious look.

"Me either," said Amberline. "And all I really want to do is sleep." We all agreed before Victoria continued to read again.

"There will be two portions of the test, one for memory and one for strength. You will only be able to move on to the strength portion if you pass the other with a minimum of seventy percent accuracy or better. We wish you all good luck, gamers. Some of you may need it."

"They don't wish us luck, they sabotaged us," said Victoria after she finished reading, the envelope ended up just as it were before she started reading, not getting an ounce of love from any of us.

"Well, I'm actually feeling okay," said Dean. Parker agreed with him and we came to the conclusion that the more you did, the worse off you were. For example, I could remember some things like them sitting out and the walk there, but Victoria said she remembered nothing. Dean and Parker seemed to have a vivid memory of everything. Well, that is, compared to the rest of us.

"We should head down to the lobby now," Dean suggested. They hadn't told us the time we were to be there so we rather reluctantly got back around to leave. It hadn't taken us long to leave the flat because we hadn't the time to decompress from our night out.

As we walked I was finally able to note how empty the road felt. We used to come down here in a crowd, and now people were scarce. We got to the lobby after what seemed like forever and stood in our boxes. We stood for a good ten minutes before the steady flow of people coming in stopped and the people in charge locked the door. Two more teams were eliminated because they were late to the game. We stood some more as the guards went to their flats to find them all asleep, they must've thought the game would take place in the morning. The people in charge weren't that generous.

The ritual began as if everything were normal. There wasn't a weapon or suit option so I took that as a good sign, as I always had in these games. However, when we were sent into the simulation we were put in separate boxes and had a board and marker. In front of us was some kind of hologram that looked like the lady who spoke to us during the eliminations.

"Question one, what side of the building did Parker sit at?" on the top of the board was a map that labeled the sides of the buildings. I wrote down my answer, fairly sure he sat on the side with a gym mat. My answer appeared above me as I wrote it, though I knew that with the walls separating us that we couldn't see each other's answers.

After about a minute a check appeared in the corner of my booth, I thought it was safe to assume that I'd gotten that question right. "Question two," the lady started. I noted she sounded nothing like she did earlier today and concluded the voice probably wasn't hers. "Who did Grace spend most of her time with?" I honestly couldn't remember.