Narrator: Denji
~~
I closed my eyes.
The whole world
Disappeared...
- Everclear
~~

Taylor let a long pause ensue, allowing what he had just said to sink in.  I could still hear it echo in my brain, tossed it over, looked at the possibilities.  I swallowed hard.  I didn't know what I was saying yes or no to, I didn't get it yet.  Was it just beyond me?  Was it something I couldn't believe?  Not yet, this sounded too big.  I needed time... time to think it over... I drew in a breath, trying to sound confidant, but it came in shaky and uncontrolled, hardly filling my lungs.  I looked up, feeling betrayed by my impulses, that one breath saying it all.  I had to speak... say what?

He interrupted me before I could start, his enthusiasm taking over. "It's what the world- what humanity- has been searching for ever since we were stuck in this miserable existance!  People do insane things, everyday, trying to reach something better.  They want to distort reality, make it theirs to control- create their own world!  Utopia! It could be Utopia!"

"Wait," I interrupted quickly, then unsure what to say.  Utopia?  Men, good men, had tried to create Utopia before, and it had failed.  Always failed.  We weren't meant for it, weren't ready.  "We could also make the opposite.  Isn't every man's Utopia another's hell?"

He smiled, slowing down a bit.  "Yeah," Taylor concented.  "It is a dangerous power.  We can create our own reality, at the least, make a model or an excape from this one.  Part of us can go into this game- learn from it, who knows.  But that's why I'm only picking some people. I like you; you're cautious, smart, slow to act.  Your skills are needed, we need a referee.  If we work together, we can make it.  Utopia is closer than you realize, within our grasps.  We'll work together- We have a tool no one before us has had.  Try it now, or go home and think about it, will you?  You've got to try it.  Turn me down after that if you want, this thing isn't without its risk.  But if we create a hell, well, than we won't go back.  If it's hell- we leave it a game.  Utopia- we build the real world to match, or find a way to stay in the Game itself."

He handed me a simple pair of glasses. They were built almost like a visor, like the start trek stuff, but plainer.  Dull grey.  Heavy, though.  This was the Game?  I'd  first heard of it, first seen it, and now would I first try it all in the same day?

"Put it on, you can come back very easily.  And, if you've been in there an hour, I'll bring you out so you won't even miss your date.  No one has had a problem so far."

It seemed safe, like it wouldn't even work after all.  I would prove to myself it didn't, and avoid Taylor for the rest of my life.  That's all there was to it.  And even if by some miracle it did do something, I would have enough information to make my decision.  Would I help Taylor towards his dream?  His Utopia?  I took a steady breath.  Dreams aren't that dangerous, after all.

I put them on carefully.  Nothing.  "How do I turn it on?" I asked.

He smiled, "Just close your eyes.  You don't even need a guide in this place, I created it that way on purpose.  Just let your desires guide the Game."

I paused, then closed my eyes tight, actually and willingly letting go of the reality I knew, letting a computer take over...

And then, I don’t remember.  Not really, not like every other memory of mine.  Not crisp, clear, sensible, or chronilogical for that matter.  Fragments, overwhelming because they were only fragments, stood stark and vivid attributes to a different universe.  Other than the confusing memories, I was tired from the adernaline rush- something about skateboarding.  I love to skate board, and I think that was in there somewhere.  It was like I woke up from a dream, a very, very, vivid dream which I couldn’t quite recollect.

Overwhelming, what I could remember.

Down, down, on a steep hill, a skateboard under my feet like a roller coaster.  Exillerating rush, exillerating speed. Simply walking through the park alone, the trees filtering in all too real sunlight.  The warmth of that, the mystery of feeling something that I knew wasn’t really there...

But I had a date.  A pretty girl named (? Scribe, your character maybe? hehhe) was going to be meeting me at her house, where I would drive her wherever she wanted to go. Later, I would have to think about this more... but not then, it was too much.

Later that night, very alone after my date, I couldn’t sleep.  I could only think, try to process what had happened.  Taylor had explained to me that the computer uses desires and emotions to create the game, and when there was more than one person it would blend their wants together, supposedly creating a world neither of them would ever dream of on their own.  A world that could be very unreal or disturbingly like our very hometown, since Taylor and I had both lived here all our lives.  We would have to try that and see, the next day.  You had control over the game when you knew what you wanted, and we could recreate the world there if we chose to.  But now I was thinking as if I would go there again.  Would I?  It was hard to decide.  Taylor had a certain amount of charm to push people the way he wanted, though he didn’t seem to push.  He was excited about the prospects; he had invented the game himself and wanted me to help him with ideas, help change it to be more like real life.  He had already posed some sample questions to me.  Should we be able to feel pain?  Should the computer have the ability to create it’s own people for us, imaginary people who would exist only in the game?

He wanted me to be a guinni pig at one level, and at another a referee.  Could I even be one without the other?  The referee’s job was to keep things in control.  To know all about the game, and help people understand it their first time there.

I decided I would try this with Taylor.  He couldn’t work on it alone, not without getting himself in trouble.  He was to excitable.  Besides, it held promise.  Maybe Utopia was really in our reach after all...  I would have to try out this game again, try to remember what happened.  I had been attacked by my senses earlier, and I was hoping that was because it was my first time.  Maybe I could get used to it, learn how to control it.  The game was supposed to be a tool after all, and the referee needed to know how to use it, and how not to overuse it.  And I needed to ask Taylor about any health risks...
 

Narrator: Taylor
~
Picture yourself on a boat in a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
-Beatles
~

I hardly got sleep that night, thinking and hoping.  The first person I had reached out to, the first person I had trusted to make the right decision!  I needed him to help me.  If I was going to have anyone help me, I needed him.  He could convince people when the time came about this game.  He would be my facts to back me up.   I knew he would say yes.

“Ok, I will.  But, there are a few questions I have.”

“Like what, Denji?” I asked, acting eager to answer.  He was too logical not to have doubts, but I would fix that.

“You made this, right?” he asked cautiously.  “Do you know what happens here in the real world while we’re in the game?”

I smiled.  He was already thinking as if the game was a real place.  “You mean to our bodies?  Yeah, I do.  The computer reacts with your mind, and your mind controls your body.  So if you think you’re doing something exciting, you get excited both in the real world and in the game.  Everything acts normally, it won’t stop you from being hungry or thirtsy.  I’ve stopped playing before because I was hungry.”

“Then, why is there a timelimit?  Does something happen after one hour?”

I shook my head, assuring him.  “No, nothing happens.  It’s just that being excited or whatever for too long can be tiring, and there’s no reason to tire yourself out.  It’s perfectly safe.”

He nodded, and looked me pointedly in the eyes with his calm, brown ones.  “Have you been using it often?”

“No, not very at all.  Maybe three hours total since I made it four weeks ago.  I haven’t had the time and I wanted to have someone else’s oppinion at the least.  So, you’ll help me?”

“But, you don’t know the long term affects, Taylor,” he said in a friendly, soft tone.  I didn’t know him that well, but he was kind and concerned for me anyway.  I shruged it off.  “I don’t see why there would be any, and we change it if there are.”

“Ok.  If there is something I think is dangerous about it, either you modify it or I won’t help you anymore, ok?  It should be safe, or it’s not going to work for anything.”

I smiled again, sure of myself.  “Of course.  We can discuss changes now... I want to make it more realistic.”

“Well... one thing we should do, then, is put a catch in it.  At least the first time a person is introduced to it the Game should create just one place.  It should still go by what the person wants, but for each visit there it should only creature one place.  It shouldn’t be so much like a dream, with the landscape changing around you.  If you go into one room and it creates that for you, then when you go back to the first one it should be as you left it.”

“I think I understand.  You want it to consistant.”

“Exactly.  It’s easier on the mind.”

“If we’re going to do that, then I’m going to need more memory for the thing.  Don’t worry, I’ll come up with that, but I want you to get me something.”

“Oh?”

“Well, actually, I need you to get me someone.  This change you’ve asked for can be done by tomorrow afternoon, and I think it’s time to start introducing other people to this project, to work on it with us.”

“You don’t mean to test it out for us, do you?”

I smiled reassuringly.  “No, that’s your job.  But we need at least one other person to help us.  Someone who can help us get parts, or someone extremely creative.  You’re a logical person, Denji, I don’t expect you to help me all that much with actually making the changes you suggest, I only expect you to analyze them after I’ve made them.”  I stoped myself there, not wanting to alarm him.  I expected that soon there would be a group of perhaps five people working on this, and I expected changes such as creating artifical intelligences inside the game.  Creating set scenery, and set personalities.  That would require someone very creative, and willing to help.

Denji nodded.  “I think I can come up with someone to ask.”

“Oh, but that’s the other thing.  I don’t want you to just ask, I want you to... snoop around a bit.  I mean, pick who you ask carefully...  Ask people you really trust, and you really think would agree.  Pick them, then take them here to meet me, and we’ll both ask them together."

Denji nodded, obviously having somebody in mind.  He sighed, and with a slight smile asked me, “Remind me what our whole goal is again...?”

I laughed, “Sure, no problem.  I’ll just condence what I’ve been saying....”

He nodded.  “That would be nice.  If I’m going to be recruiting, I need to be blunt about it.”

“Oh...that reminds me... try to pick someone more...charasmatic than yourself.  Someone who can do the recruiting for us.”

“You’re charasmatic,” he argued, not at all offended.

“Yes... but I’m fairly old, and that can be intimidating.  Young ideas are young people’s stuff.”  I paused. “Very basically, we are testing out the machine I’ve already created for it’s possibilities as a tool and as recreation.  Hopefully it will be more than recreation; hopefully it can be a model for the real world, a place to test real-world ideas without risking actual consequences.  We can go almost anywhere with this.”

Denji looked thoughtful.  “I have someone in mind.”

Narrator: (?)
~~
On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound
-America
~~