3. My Life Wasn't That Bad, Right?

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Looking around the room, Paul was stunned to see the somewhat disheveled appearance of his college apartment from a decade before; seeing the small wooden desk with his PC and his nightstand with his laptop charging brought back a sudden influx of memories from another time.

College was an extraordinary time in his life; calling it good or bad would be missing his main feelings associated with the experience.

If anything, college was tedious, nothing like what angry high school teachers would have you believe, and also not something you could excel in while drunk and partying every weekend. 

The best summary to Paul was simply that college was, it happened, and had no real lasting impact on his life; being a professional gamer did not require a degree. 

On the other side of his room was a strange-looking contraption that looked like an egg with the front removed, which caused a wave of nostalgia to flood into him.

The Wombat 64 is a middle-of-the-road VR gaming cabin, which he has spent most of his time in for many years. 

Calling it sleek would be overselling it, but it was all one really needed to play games these days.

Turning to the other corner of the small room, Paul saw a black robe that he quickly recognized as his graduation robe. The wide-armed ugly garment didn't elicit the same reaction as the other things in the room, earning only a quick glance before he turned away to see if there was anything else of note around.

After a few minutes, Paul took a deep breath before speaking somewhat to himself.

"This is a lucid dream, right? I haven't had one before."

Remembering what he had anecdotally heard alive, he tried to change the scene and then his clothes in the dream with a thought; when that didn't work, he walked over to the small closet with an exasperated sigh. 

"I guess I don't get how lucid dreaming works anyway."

He decided to change into shorts and a T-shirt before going out into the standard room of the apartment he shared with three other guys. As usual, nobody was out there, so after getting some water, he decided to scroll through his phone, a typical thing for kids born at the height of the information era.

'May 10th? This should be the Monday after I graduated college; what a random time to visit in a dream.'

While he was sitting there, his roommate's door opened, and a very tall man walked out with a goofy smile.

"Hey Paul, how does it feel to be an adult looking for a job now?"

Looking up, he saw his roommate Zach, one of his best friends at the time; they played completely different kinds of games, though, so they eventually lost contact.

"I'm fine. I need to find a job before our lease ends and move back in with my parents."

Zach didn't graduate at the same time as him and would only enter the workforce after the summer semester; he was not a model student, just like Paul was not a model friend. 

"Alright, you know what time it is, pushups; try to get ten this time."

Paul was pleased to hear that his roommate, Zach, went to the gym daily and always told him he needed to get bigger. With that in mind, a few months before graduation, he started telling him to drop and start doing pushups the first time they saw each other each day. 

Later in his life he had looked back on that and thanked Zach for getting in the habit of doing at least some exercise daily.

Dropping down on the hardwood floor, Paul started doing push-ups easily until he reached eight and began struggling. Finally, after all this effort, he finished, and Zach clapped.

"Nice, you almost got the 15th one. That was a big improvement for just a day. Keep it up, and you will be stronger than most people."

It felt childish, but for some reason, hearing that compliment made Paul very pleased. Zach had been someone he had known since high school, and he was definitely a truly good friend. It is unfortunate that they faded out of each other's lives.

In fact, after thinking about it, Paul decided to try to contact him once he woke up to see what he was up to.

While thinking about it, Zach suddenly turned. After he had finished getting some orange juice, he went back to his room.

"You still wanna go to the Chinese buffet tonight with CJ and Josh?"

"Of course, just knock on my door when it's time to go."

He and his roommates would sometimes go to a Chinese buffet for dinner and would never get their money's worth of food, but they had a good time. 

From what he remembered, this was probably the last time they went before he moved out, and they stopped hanging out regularly. 

Eventually returning to their rooms, Paul decided to play his Wombat 64 and see if there was anything fun he could do. 

Crouching slightly to get inside, he put on a helmet and vest before touching the touchscreen power button on the side to load up the system.

After a momentary feeling of falling, he found himself in a white room with a black couch, the default dashboard for the Wombat 64. 

I was feeling how real the virtual world he felt a slight concern.

"This really doesn't feel like a dream."

It wasn't that he never considered other possibilities, but they seemed so unlikely compared to a dream that he had been trying to ignore the feeling. 

To compound his worry, he soon saw a ribbon on the side of his field of view.

Harbinger's Call Release Time 21:24:34

Instantly, Paul felt a chill down his spine, the possibility of this being a lucid dream becoming slimmer and slimmer. 

As a gaming addict, the idea of regressing or returning to the past wasn't that crazy; well, it was crazy, but the concept was something he was very familiar with.

The concept of him being targeted and losing his job before getting sent to the day before the game launched seemed to fit a specific type of logic, but two things confused him.

Firstly, he never played Harbinger at the original launch; in fact, he played the beta and, like most people, thought it was pretty bad, then only returned to the game over a year later. 

In truth, the game was a disaster at launch. The mechanic for trading real-life currency in and out of the game had issues and was delayed until the first minor DLC release, and there was none of the promised large-scale PvP at launch. 

It was critically and commercially panned until the first significant release, DLC, came around, and many people returned. 

On the other hand, his life was pretty good in the future. He was kicked and lost a lot of prestige, but he was still a top-tier player who could start live-streaming, if nothing else. Not to mention, even if he just sold items from his inventory, he wouldn't have to work for quite a few years. 

After pre-ordering the game and beginning the pre-launch installation, Paul decided to put to the test whether he was in a very crazy dream or had been taken back to the past.

To do this, he did the most logical thing he could think of, going back to sleep to see if he was still there when he woke up.