Brave slumps over and slides to the floor. He struggles to catch his breath, and his body, still pumping epinephrine, feels the intense burn of the workout.
If only this effort could translate to the real world...
He shakes his head and instinctually opens his inventory.
Nothing. What was I expecting to be there?
The pursuing assailants had arrived, as Brave could derive by the sudden shouting and banging on the doors of the neighboring rooms. After a moment of silence, he is thrown forward by the force applied to the door he had been leaning on. A loud thud sounds as he hits the floor.
“The little shit is in here guys,” a mercenary calls, signaling for the rest of the team to assist him in breaching the barrier separating the chased player from his sure PK.
They’re wasting their time. Can’t intrude on a private room without permission.
Brave elevates himself and walks over to collapse onto the rock-hard mattress. He flinches and jolts upwards from the shock as the mercenary group begins endlessly pounding away at the door. Drawing up the room interface, Brave applies a mute to the outside.
A request for permission to enter appears almost immediately. Brave swipes it away quickly, almost cracking up from the absurdity of this action. Another appears, and then another. Brave’s field of vision is suddenly filled with such requests.
“You guys are getting really annoying,” Brave remarks as he denies enough requests to free access to the room interface so that he can apply the ‘Do Not Disturb’ privacy setting.
Brave deeply sighs as he finishes dispelling the spam. Pacing around for a moment, he thinks, then walks over to check the peephole on the door. He is immediately greeted by an eye, which blinks at him intensely.
Disappointed by the situation he had been forced into, Brave sits back down on the bed, reviewing his choices. After a moment, he gives up.
“I have a few hours left to play but I may as well log out here. What’s the point in staying in this pitiable state?” Brave mutters to himself quietly.
He traces over the user interface and scrolls to the bottom of the icon list, and upon pressuring the appropriate button, he dissociates from this version of himself.
The design evaporates quickly, leaving the light refracting off his eyelids to stain his vision a reddish hue.
Aleksandr reluctantly opens his eyes, this time in the real world, and lifts his head upright to position his sight perpendicular to the desk on the
Intro to AI
textbook he had dozed off upon. He stretches and yawns, then stuffs the open book into his briefcase.
“Oh, Sasha. Heading out so soon?” an older female’s voice sounds.
“I’ll be back a bit later tonight Grandma. I’ll be working with the guys on the research project,” Aleksandr announces, slipping on his shoes.
On the way out, he watches as his reflection wanes in the etched glass of the door.