Noobs

Noobs

Simon Carr

Chapter one

Times Up

Chris Baxter lives at home with his parents, he's twenty-five and has never had a job. Witch exasperated tensions all around, the situation is far from ideal. He just sits in his room all day and all night playing online video games with his friends and the person he plays online with the most is his best friend, Steve Clark. The pair are teaming up right now and are only six kills away from winning a Battle Royale. Chris pulls on the mic attached to his headset.

“Bro, seriously, just wait up here. Let them fight it out then sniper whoever is left,” he says.

Steve replies, “Where is your honor soldier!?”

“Screw honor bro, I want our sixth Victory Royale.”

“Go low bro, I will go high. If they fire a rocket launcher it will take us both out,” Steve shouts into his microphone.

There’s a knock upon Chris’s bedroom door, it’s his mother, “Chris, your dad and I are going to the Clog and Billycock. I have left you a tongue sandwich in the fridge.”

Chris looks horrified at the door, “Thanks, mum.”

Steve talks over the mic, “I isn’t your mum bro.”

“No, my mum's made me a tongue sandwich.”

“Eww, whose tongue?”

“Dunno bro, you know what old people are like. They eat some weird crap.”

“You isn’t gonna eat something’s tongue are you bro?”

“Nah, I’ll give it a proper funeral in the bin. They’re going out though bro, you coming over we can get some Ori-je-booms?”

“Nice! I isn’t eating no talking sandwiches though bro. Meet me at Maliks Spice, we can get a munchie box bro.”

Chris then shouts, “Rocket launcher!”

“I’m down bro, revive me!”

Steve shouts, “There’s one coming for me, crap!”

Both shout out in anguish as their campaign ends in defeat. Chris slams his pad down, “On my way now bro.”

Chris grabs his jacket off the bed and gallops down the stairs, his dad is just getting his coat on to go and meet the taxi that's just arrived. Chris’s dad looks surprised to see him and shouts, “He lives! So that’s where all that electricity was going. We thought you had died from mattress exposure, I was just about to rent out your room to someone with a job!” Chris waltzes past his dad avoiding eye contact.

Chris’s mum shouts after him, “Are you going out love?”

His dad snorts, “You are joking! Human interaction with something not pixelated can kill a millennial. The forcefield being projected from the job center will just propel him back here.”

Chris shouts back, “Just going to meet Steve, mum. Have fun listening to dad and his mates moan about how they played out until the street lights came on for one day in 1985, so they think they did that every day instead of playing on a Super Nintendo.”

Chris’s dad bellows back, “We did! And we played with sticks that resembled a gun, it was glorious!”There’s a queue in Maliks Spice, the local majorettes dance troupe won the regional finals so the dance master is taking them all for a takeaway as a treat. Steve and Chris stand, arms folded behind twelve seven-year-old girls who all want donna meat and chips. Chris leans against the large glass shop front window, “So, when are you getting the new graphics card?”

Steve shrugs his shoulders, “Depends how much I get for that old motherboard on eBay. There are six bids on it so faaaaarrrrrr... WHAT THE BALLS IS THAT!?"

Chris turns around. The night sky is glowing orange, in the center of the glow is a fiery ball that’s getting bigger. Chris and Steve tilt their heads as they look through the shop window and watch the fireball getting nearer with every passing moment. . Just as they start clinging to each other in panic, all the shops around them and everyone inside explode as they're hit by a meteor. Chris and Steve find themselves standing in the exact same stance as they were when the meteor hit. . They are surrounded by total darkness, the only visible thing is the thick fog on the ground covering their legs up to their knees. Realization suddenly begins to dawn upon them that they're still holding each other in a tight embrace. In unison, they give a small yelp and quickly let go.

The Grim Reaper puts his arms around Chris and Steve as he springs up from behind them. “What were the odds of that eh!?”

Both Chris and Steve jump in fright and yelp again as they turn their heads to face the black hooded figure. Steve stammers, “Th..th..the odds of what?”

The Grim Reaper responds, “The odds of being hit by a meteor while in a kebab shop. You just can’t legislate for such a situation, can you? I mean, you can take an umbrella in case of rain or a rape alarm in case smelly people try to touch you, but there’s nothing for a meteor smashing into a kebab shop is there?”

Chris looks at Steve, “Bro, did we just die?”

The Grim Reaper answers in Steve’s place, “You totally just died, bro! I don’t show up when people have just fainted. So, what shall we do now? Wanna have a go at Ghosts and Goblins?”

Steve pulls his head back, “Can I have a minute! The hell is going on!?”

The Grim Reaper drops his head while still holding onto Chris and Steve’s shoulders, “Why does nobody get this the first time !? You were alive, then you were not. The Grim Reaper, that's me in case you hadn't figured it out, showed up and told you that you just died. I know it's a shock to the system so take as much time as you need. You can call me Grim by the way, no need for us to be so formal.”

Chris scrunches up his nose, “So, we're dead? Where is this place? Is this Hell!?”

The Grim Reaper stands upright letting go of Chris and Steve. He holds his arms up and the darkness around him peels back to reveal a large red cavern with lava rivers. Hideous screams echoing all around filled their ears. The Grim Reaper exclaims, “It can be, why? You fancy a go on Doom?”

Chris looks terrified and squeals, “Why am I in Hell!? What did I do wrong? I went to church three times!”

The Grim Reaper lowers his arms and the surroundings go pitch black again, “You aren't. I thought you wanted to be, don’t soil yourself bro.”

Steve looks confused, “What is actually going on right now? What is this place and who are you?”

Suddenly they're in a classroom. The Grim Reaper pushes on both of their chests and they fall back into chairs as he points to a blackboard that just says ‘You are dead’ on it. “You died, that’s three times I have had to tell you that! It’s a simple concept. People who are not alive, generally speaking, have passed on unless you are part of a mad science experiment or a Voodoo zombie. When you die you cease being large matter and become very small information signals. I am also small information signals, this whole place is information, one big mass of information. We are the programs that linger in it, there’s no time or space and nothing works in the same way it did before you lost those big meat sacks that made you. This place is everything. Everything that has ever happened, anywhere, ever. It’s all in here for us to experience at our leisure so, what shall we do first?”

Chris looks at the ground, “I can’t be dead, I'm only twenty-five.”

“Means nothing to me that, there’s no time here. Look, I am the games master down here. I accompany every last living thing and guide them; there’s no way I could do that if I was subjected to the confines of time. It’s awesome, the only thing that’s not awesome here is standing around doing nothing, looking confused, and continually asking ‘what’s going on! Let’s do something!”

Chris grumbles, “Can we not?”

“Can we not, what?”

He responds sheepishly, “Can we not die?”

“It is a bit late for that, you shouldn't have died earlier. What about a race on space lamas?”

Steve spins around flapping his arms, “Is there any way to retract from the light? You hear about that all the time on the news or in the papers. Chris, if you see a light don’t go into it!”

The Grim Reaper answers him, “The hell are you talking about, retract from the light? There’s no light that I am aware of. Well, there is, there are lots of lights actually, but none that fit that description. If you want to retract from death, I can offer you the trials?”

Chris finally speaks up, he's decided it's time to stop being meek and sheepish. “What trials? Can we go back in one piece? We won't be all mushed up and on fire will we?”

“Enough with all the questions! I get asked this A LOT and as much as I would like to oblige, I can’t just keep sending everyone back now can I? You need to understand that we don’t have time here, but you do there so it gets a bit messy when the two meet. You would all be really old and weird-looking, a bit like hairless sloths. If I were to send you back you would actually get there just before you died, thus giving you the option to not die in the first place by a meteor in a kebab shop. It didn't work that well for the black death but would anyone believe me? So instead I devised a game, a series of games really. You see that door?" Grim points towards a big oak door amid all the darkness that's standing independent of any walls. Fog swirls around its base and attached to it at various points are ten ornate padlocks holding multiple bolts closed.

Steve and Chris nod so Grim continues, “I have hidden all ten keys in my trials, all you have to do is find them to unlock the door. You don’t have to necessarily win the games per se, you just need to find the keys without dying.”

Steve puts his hand up eagerly, Grim looks pleased and points to him, “Yes Steven?”

“Are we not already dead?”

“Well spotted. When you die in here you just respawn, like in your video games. You die, respawn and then shut up moaning and nagging me to send you back. I can’t anyway, the first time you reboot in here you can’t interact with matter or time again. Also, that's not a real door, it's metaphorical.”

Chris grumbles, “Can you not just send us back anyway? We wouldn't tell anyone, there’s only us here.”

Grim slams the butt of his scythe on the ground lighting up the dark around them and illuminating millions of people sitting inside a giant coliseum. “They like to watch the new guys coming in.” He slams his scythe again making the onlookers disappear and returning them to the darkness.

Chris looks at Steve, “Well it’s not like we have anything to lose, is it?”

“Yeah, we should do this bro, you and me. We have lived long and full lives but those kids in the kebab shop are just babies, we need to save them, bro.”

Grim can't believe what he just heard, “Sorry, what long and full lives? What exactly have you filled your days with up to the grand age of twenty-five?”

Chris turns to him, “We've been to Alton towers like nine times bro.”

The Grim Reaper holds up his hands in mock surrender, “Oh, I’m sorry, my bad. You've left quite the legacy.”

Steve nods at Chris, “Ok, you're on! Is this us versus you? Can we use our own controllers?”

Grim claps his hands, “You are the controllers!” then he vanishes.