1 Boot Up

It was a normal day for Ren. He had been doing his usual, of going to work, dragging his tired ass home and booting up his desktop to surf the web for any new novels, videos, or games he felt would help make the sore pain in his aching back and the irritated headache he felt, melt away. He would often spend hours just lounging around and enjoying any entertainment he could find before eating a hearty meal of whatever he could order for delivery, which wasn't too bad, but didn't do much for his waistline. The poor bastard always hated his chunky body, but just never felt the energy to do anything about it. There was one thing he was fond of doing on his own however. And that was using his skills to boot up and program his own indie game.

"Alright, time to tackle that damn starter glitch. Maybe I can add a small get out of jail free card for the player early game? No, then too many would use it late game. Hmmm, as always this is difficult as hell. Whatever" Ren couldn't help but scratch his head in consternation before taking another sip of his coke, and thinking.

The game wasn't anything massive, but it was a decent strategy builder that he had spent several years programming and fleshing out the many features and systems for it. He always felt that most strategy games had a great thrilling start of getting your small nation going or fixing your large corrupted empire and then expanding from there, but they never had a good late game. and tended to let things snowball to quickly. So, his idea to get his game off the ground was to make a game that had the basic starting content that most strategy builders had, but the twist was that things got progressively more interesting and realistic as you got to the late game. Backstabbing allies, secret or open alliances of your enemies, political discourse to throw your possibly mismanaged nation into chaos, etc, etc.

This was what caused him the most headache in programming the Artificial intelligence to actually perform these actions without totally destroying the player unfairly. He had a few ideas like grudge systems or a few other ideas he'd seen in other games, but mimicking what he wanted from reality without making the game headache inducing was always his biggest challenge. Especially the difference between the start and end game. Often times the player wouldn't last more than a few moves before being totaled by a stronger enemy. Luckily, he already had plenty of the basic systems like building your own city plans, or directing your politics in a very rpg way up and running. Something he was super proud of, even if they were only basic functions. But having spent almost a decade on it already, he was getting impatient and felt it might never see daylight, and he'd always be stuck as a basic office programmer, making other peoples ideas reality, but never his own.

He continued to mull over the problem he was facing as he ran another simulation of the game and watched the much stronger surrounding powers eye the players land and quickly move to take it. Then, he had an idea.

"I've got it. I just need to have the player start on a fixed island location. That way, the surrounding nations can't immediately attack and the player has a bit of time before the others can get their navies up and running to take down the island they aren't connected to." He couldn't help but chuckle at how simple a solution it was. He immediately went into writing up the code of spawning a small island off the player's selected area of operation with enough resources to get started. Finally, after a long hellish night. He finished the code, and ran another simulation. This time, the player finally survived, and actually had a city up and running. The player still lost once the enemy sortied an invasion, but for now, there was significant progress, and Ren couldn't help but jump in joy and happily laugh his sleep deprived face into a tear filled joy as he got one step closer to actually making his dreams real.

Unfortunately for Ren, the good times didn't last. He unfortunately ended up slipping on one of his tossed bottles on the floor, and ended up with his head smashed against his desk before falling over his desktop bleeding heavily. Then, his blood ended up short circuiting his over heated computer, and frying what was left of him into oblivion in the following power surge.

...

He next woke up in some blindingly white space with almost nothing in it. He looked around and wondered if perhaps he was in a hospital or something because the last thing he remembered was feeling an odd pain and then things going dark. But, looking down, he saw no bed, no floor, nor any sign that he was in a room. It was an empty nothingness all around him.

He figured he might be dreaming given he couldn't see his own body and felt really float-y and warm for some reason. But things seemed to out of nowhere to be just a simple dream. It was almost as if he could feel everything but nothing at the same time and he couldn't quite place what this sense of dysphoria was.

Ren decided to wander around and look for anything in this dream space. He floated around and turned to look for anything that would stand out of this bland whiteness. Then he turned and saw an odd looking old man now appear out of nowhere. He looked like he was dressed in some long golden robe and appeared to be middle aged with heavily ridged brows and a hard jawline. Almost like a king or something.

Ren tried to talk to him but no words would come, and the man finally looked at him and smirked, saying "Don't worry, you will soon have your faculties back. I'm here to give you a chance young man. You see, you are dead."

Silence followed that statement for a few minutes as Ren tried to come to terms with that statement before freaking the hell out internally and cursing his way to next Sunday in his head. He tried to ask how but again couldn't speak, and could only hear his own thoughts lightly. The man smirked at the distressed Ren and said, "Yes, I spoke the truth little one. Now listen, because this is important. I want to bring a few changes to my world.." He would smirk and intertwine his rather bulky fingers in a small upward tent as he said this, "And you are one of my little tickets to that change. I really like what my colleague has done with your little ball and I'd like to get in on some of that action, so, you will be brought to my world, and given the chance to...hmmm....what was it you said, make your own story?" The old man rolled his eyes at this and almost sounded sarcastic as he spoke, making Ren feel he was somewhat of an arrogant ass.

"Your task will be to take the world by storm and help it develop, shaking up these old stagnant morons on my world. You should have no problem doing that, given how much of that game of yours gave me a headache. But don't worry, I'll still give you a bit of help, just to make sure things go well." He would then glance over his shoulder and stare off into the blank space for a second, as if checking something but then turn back quickly and said "Off you go."

Then, Ren felt a blast of air pass his form and then darkness again.

...

"You really think he has a chance?"

"Eh, I liked the idea, and besides. It's not like the little bastard has a choice. By the way, here's those things you wanted. Now, buzz off, I've got a show to watch. Hehehe..."