Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

Lewis moved his Touch controller and watched his digital hand press each of the four buttons on a keypad, inputting a code he’d found elsewhere on this deck of the ship. The door clicked open and Lewis whipped out his pistol again, aiming it into the pitch black of the next area.

Something between a hiss and a groan slithered out from the abyss. Lewis held the gun up, ready to strike.

An infected crewmember stumbled out, clearly in a more advanced stage of the virus than previous enemies. His head was still pale white, hairless, and covered with bioluminescent sapphire veins. But his face was elongating into a distorted, lizard-like snout. His black eyes were larger and more animalistic, with the once beady red pupils having grown to dilated slits.

Lewis didn’t think twice. He fired, the shot echoing in the tight corridor.

The bullet hit the abomination in the chest, red blood spurting forth from the wound. The creature reared back toward where it came from, critically damaged. Lewis swapped his weapon for a crowbar he’d gotten back near the start of the game and lunged after it. Swinging the metal instrument, he connected the hooked end with the injured monster’s face.

Blood splattered the wall as Lewis struck again and again. The thing collapsed to the floor. Lewis kept swinging his Touch controller, which vibrated with each impact as he smashed the thing’s head open and it finally stopped moving.

He took a deep breath and then bent down to search the corpse for supplies, yielding a med-kit and three spare bullets. Merely reaching his hand for them added them to the inventory. Standing up, he aimed the flashlight down the corridor. Nothing else lunged out at him, but there appeared to be only one way out about a hundred feet forward.

Lewis replaced the crowbar with the pistol and slowly edged forward through the doorway, keeping the flashlight aimed ahead. A hovering display popped up above the weapon when he looked at it, showing he only had eleven shots left even with the ammo he’d just collected. He swore under his breath, continuing on through the hallway. The beam lanced through the shadows, revealing blood splattered across the walls, ceiling, and floor. It had a shiny, surreal texture that he didn’t like. It made the hairs on his arms stand on end, goosebumps blanketing his skin.

Then there was a strange noise, a sort of ethereal moaning. It had surfaced now and then throughout the game, so he knew it had to be an effect. It intertwined with the soundtrack, a set of minimalist, drawn-out notes from a digital synthesizer that were surprisingly effective.

Stay focused , he told himself. It’s just a game. You can turn it off at any time.

Then why hadn’t he already? Christ knew how long he’d been sitting here in Jenna’s office, hogging her computer after dinner. She was the one who actually needed to play this thing, it was her job. But even though playing a violent horror game after the loss of a friend was probably the last thing he should be doing, she’d let him have at it anyway, gave him his space.

Why was he still playing? What did he honestly think he was going to find here?

His beam cast a glow onto something on the floor and he stopped. It was a dismembered corpse, the arms and limbs scattered among the viscera like a twisted art project. He swallowed and took another deep breath. The dead woman’s face was staring up at him, upside down from this angle. She was rendered in shockingly high-res detail, there was no question about it. It was like seeing a PS4 game character in a PS3 game environment. The eyes were locked on him, the mouth agape in an endless, silent scream. It looked so uncannily real…

“No,” he said, nudging the controls back. His character took several reverse steps. He realized his hands, gripped tightly around the wireless Touch controllers, were shaking. What the hell is wrong with me?

Then the entire ship shuddered. The metal groaned and it felt as if gravity was listing to the right.

The flashlight went out. Why had it gone out? Right, because the plot had demanded it – one of those big scripted moments, he realized as the overhead lights suddenly flickered back on brightly. He started to look left and right, but it was a delayed reaction again, his character moving in slow-mo.

Something big was about to happen and the game wanted him to see it. As if the damn body hadn’t fucked with him enough. He gazed ahead. The door at the end had the letters AIRLOCK emblazoned in red above its frame. They wanted him to go outside, probably a spacewalk sequence. Yeah, he could handle that. He realized he was gently nodding to himself, his in-game avatar repeating his actions in the digital realm.

He nudged the analog sticks on the Touch controllers forward.

Nothing happened.

Lewis spun the knobs in all directions. Nothing changed. He was stuck.

Then came the breathing.

It drifted into his headphones from some distance behind him; in and out, in and out through a respirator. It reminded him of Darth Vader. Slowly, he turned his head around and his character’s body did the same.

Way back through the door, past the dead body of the mutated crewman, at the other end of the corridor he had just come from, was an astronaut. It stood there in a sleek white outfit, the kind of thing NASA would have a few decades from now, maybe more. Normally, seeing an astronaut figure would’ve been a sign of relief, another non-player character ally to assist him in fighting off the unnatural. But Lewis sensed immediately that this was not a friendly face. In fact, it had no face, just a bright blue glow shining out from within its helmet.

Lewis tensed up. It’s the dream again. None of this is real, none of this can be–

The lights shut off. Blackness engulfed him and he couldn’t see anything, swinging the VR headset around in the darkness of Jenna’s office, trying to catch a glimpse of something, anything. Even the blue glow had vanished from view.

Then the brightness returned, flickering for only an instant. There it was, the astronaut, standing right in the door frame he had entered this stretch of corridor through. Even in this light, he couldn’t make out the origin of the blue glow behind the glass. He wasn’t even sure if the being had a face at all.

Instinctively, he pulled the analog sticks back. This time, his character responded, slowly backing away from the extraterrestrial menace. The thing just stood there, watching him. Then–

Blackout.

Lewis pulled the entire controllers back harder as if it would make a difference, his character reeling backward into the dark as he braced himself for what was about to come.

Flash on.

Lights everywhere.

The astronaut stood right before him, shining its horrifying blue glow into his eyes, its breathing now deafeningly loud in his headphones, its outstretched arm mere inches from his face–

Lewis screamed.

The thing walked forward now, continuing to reach for him as it did so. The palm of its white-gloved hand split open and a reddish black appendage – more like an insect’s leg than a tentacle – snaked its way out.

He realized he was still screaming but didn’t stop. This wasn’t like the games he played when he was younger. The TV screen had protected him then, an impenetrable barrier beyond which the animated world could never hurt him.

This thing appeared to be mere feet from him, the enemy rendered in a higher level of detail than its surroundings. The monster was so real he could have touched it.

The spider-tendril kept extending, getting closer. Blood poured through the gap in the creature’s palm it had torn open. He felt time slowing down, certainly a scripted effect, as his character stumbled back through the open airlock door. The tendril was getting closer, the breathing of the creature louder and louder.