The Game

  Chapter 14

  There are an incredibly large number of attributes, power ups, scenarios, and skills that can be purchased for a Gamer’s play. The sheer volume of combinations ensures that each avatar will be extremely different once they enter the Game. It’s this diversity which enables individuals to learn, and also provides viewers with a wealth of choices for watching. Some of the common attribute selections are Longevity, Health, Intelligence, Strength, Love, Relationships, Focus, Spirituality, Intuition, and Aptitude. Strategies abound for advancing in the Game, but the Mainframe makes it impossible to develop a clear path to the top rankings. What might work for one player will not for another. Repeating a strategy doesn’t produce identical results for the same player on their next play. Intuition and Spirituality are not often invested in heavily, but when they are, it can lead to the avatar searching for meaning from its life on Earth and the existence of some higher intelligent lifeform that guides them. Major religions being formed are often the result of players who have spent extreme amounts of credits on these attributes. Attributes alone are not enough to provide religious breakthrough, however. A player must skillfully and correctly invest in scenarios, skills, and power ups at exactly the right moments in their avatar’s lives to increase their odds of successful revelation.

  Excerpt from ‘Gamers Manual 7 - Human level guide book’

  Earth - years before December 21, 2012

  I’ve been sitting at this crowded cafe for over an hour and a half. The computer is open, the blank screen looking back at me. That annoying little cursor flashing, blink, blink, blink. Are you laughing at me, little cursor? Are you trying to make me get scared and give up again?

  This book has been in my head for too long. Something always seemed to come up, to distract me from writing it. Well, nothing’s distracting me anymore. My kids are gone. No grandchildren survived the crash either. My wife. No, don’t think about Tricia right now, George!

  Damn it, why did I not get on that plane with the rest of them? How can one 74-year-old man have a business meeting on the day he’s taking his whole family to Hawaii for a big vacation? All of them, gone...

  Okay, I have to calm down. This isn’t what I’m going to write about. People can find that story all over the Internet. I swear, if one more person sends me a message saying how sad they are for me, but the bright side is that I’m lucky I wasn’t on that plane… I’m going to run them over.

  All right. I’m writing this. People have laughed at me all my life for my crazy theory. If I was born 200 years ago I would have been labelled a Heretic, but that’s a sign I might be on the right track, right? So many discoverers and geniuses were mocked and ignored at first. They laughed at Darwin, Copernicus, Mendel, even Columbus! But the world is round, isn’t it!

  I know I’m on to something. The evidence is all around us.

  Perhaps the time isn’t right for this idea, but maybe in 10 or 15 years someone will read this book and it will make perfect sense.

  Okay, George… here we go. I begin to type, and I’m not stopping until it’s all down.

  We live in a game. Somewhere ‘out there,’ our real bodies are plugged into a very real virtual reality simulation. Earth isn’t real, but it’s important to those running the game. What we call God, or Allah, or the Universe, or whatever spiritual name religion gives it… is simply the supercomputer that runs our universe.

  How can I be so sure of this?

  Because I’ve spoken to it. And it has spoken to me…