2 Chapter 2

As I step off the bus and approach my house I start to smell something delicious, my mom's cupcakes. They're literally the best thing ever. I walk into the house and am welcomed with hugs from both my mom and dad. "Happy birthday, champ!" My dad says happily. "Yea happy birthday" Says my mom holding out a box wrapped with pretty wrapping paper and a bow. I say thank you and sit with them as we eat cup cakes. I rally want to know what in the box, it's almost like it's calling me. I eat 2 more cupcakes and head up to my room with the box. It's a VR headset with a game cartridge.

I place the cartridge into the headset and turn it on. I can tell the cartridge was one of those games that you buy and it comes with multiple games on it. I look around at the virtual games. There's so much to do. There is cooking games, racing games, fighting games, anything you can think of. I think I should take the headset off and do some homework before I get too into the game. Before I take the headset off, I see a game that catches my eye. "The Shadow Game." It wasn't here when I first looked at all the games. At least I think it wasn't. It feels as if the game is literally calling out my name, maybe I'm hearing things. There's no way this game can be talking to me, right? Maybe this headset is messing with my head. I'll take this off and come back later.

I try to do some homework to shake my head off the game. But I keep thinking about it. I need to focus. I look at some of the brainstorm ideas that Mya and I and thought up earlier. I start to do a sketch of the moon model. It's starting to look pretty good. Just then, I get a notification from my phone that says "Shadow Game: Install Complete." Huh? That cant be right. I hadn't installed anything. I turn my phone on and go looking for the app to delete it, but I cant find it. Maybe I'm seeing things too. Maybe I had the headset on for too long and it messed with my eyes. Or mayb- "You cant ignore me" my phone lit up with a text message. I opened it instantly so this time I knew I wasn't seeing things. "Who is this?" I replied. I waited, and waited. No response. "That's weird" I said to myself as I went back to drawing my moon sketch.

As I finished up the last bit of my homework, something about the headset was enticing me. I moved across the room to put it on. I put it on and start to look around, taking a mental note of ALL of the games. No Shadow Game. I was definitely seeing things. I played a cooking game, a racing game, and a shooting game. Pretty cool honestly. As I was about to take it off again, I hear my name being called. I turn around and see it again.

"The Shadow Game". I had to see what this was about. I walked over to the game and read the description. "the shadow game! this game allows the player to bring something amazing to life: their shadow. you can play virtually with your shadow and as you advance in levels, your shadow can have the opportunity can come to the real world, with you. press play to start." I thought it was weird how the entire game description was written in lowercase letters, as all the other games had grammatically correct descriptions. But oh well, right? What could go wrong. It seems fun that I might have the chance to finally have a friend, even though the game could be a load of garbage. I pressed play and was greeted by something that looked just like me, but had a kind of grey coloring to it.

I looked at it, and it looked back at me, as if it were mirroring my movements. I leaned a little bit to the side, and it did the same. I waved my hand, it did the same. It was almost like a reflection, but it was grey. I reached out to touch it and it reached out to touch me. My hand went right through it, it's hand went right through me. What is this thing? I was startled as I looked up and saw that it had no face. I get it now. It's my shadow. I pressed the button for level one and the game was pretty simple, I must get to level 5 to bring my shadow to the real world. The tasks were easy. I had to move around for a couple minutes so my shadow can get the hang of moving. I had to eat virtual food so my shadow can know how to eat. I wonder how my shadow learns to use the bathroom... I am NOT potty training that thing.

"Johnathan? Are you okay? you've been up here for hours." I heard my mom say outside my door. Has it really been that long? I thought for sure I was only up here for 1 hour at the most. But I check my watch. 3 hours have gone by. How is that possible? "Thanks mom I'm fine I was just playing with the headset" I responded back to her. How had so much time gone by without me noticing? That's so weird. Oh well. "Alright, honey. Be careful with that. You know playing on it too long can damage your eyes." She said and I heard her footsteps walk away.

Okay. I'm only going to play for a couple more minutes. I go back into the game to see that my shadow looked a little less grey, it was starting to gain color. Level 2 only had one task. I had to speak. Okay lets try it. "Hello?" I called out. I then heard my shadow echo me. "Hello" my shadow said in a slightly deeper voice. "I'm Johnathan, what's your name?" I asked, what am I supposed to say to it? "I'm Johnathan, what's your name?" It copied. I guess that's how it learns conversation skills. I spent the next, what felt like 5 minutes saying various phrases. I took the headset off to find that another hours had passed. That is so odd. I felt really tired so I changed into my night clothes and got ready to go to sleep.