The door slammed against the frame with a clang that made everyone turn around. Kiah entered, panting.
"Can I talk to you?" he said, looking first at Nico and then at Leo.
The two got up and went out into the hallway, outside the dormitory.
"Hey, why are you allowed to come here while we're not allowed in the west wing of the tower, where the girls are?"
Kiah raised an eyebrow at Leo, then narrowed her eyes to slits.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing to her friend's eyebrow.
"War wound," Leo replied with a crooked smile, mimicking a punch in the air. "But you should see what the other guy looks like."
Kiah raised an eyebrow again, visibly unimpressed, then looked away toward Nico.
"We'll be disconnected shortly."
Nico met her gaze for a moment. He thought he detected a hint of impatience in her voice, or perhaps it was just his imagination. Time seemed to pass more quickly in the game, and the idea of returning to the real world left him with a sense of emptiness that was difficult to explain.
Nico nodded: "What shall we do?"
"I suggest we find a place to settle down so that when we reconnect, we'll be together."
"Why?"
"Well, since time passes regardless of whether we're online or not, albeit slowly, of course," said Kiah in her know-it-all tone, "I'd still like to avoid finding myself in unpleasant situations."
"What do you mean?"
Nico saw Kiah look around, as if checking to see if anyone was lurking in the corner of the hallway. They were alone. "I don't know if you've noticed, but it seems like we're the only players here."
Nico nodded.
"Yes, we tried to do some research too," said Leo, joining the conversation. "We met Remus, a nice guy, a bit dumb but..."
Kiah waved his hand in the air to stop Leo's rant.
"I think we're testers, the first ones to try this game. That's why it was sent to our homes. Of course, it's strange that it only came to us: beta tests usually involve as many people as possible, not a huge number, but at least a good representative sample of users to test..."
"Kiah," Nico said, laughing, "you're rambling."
Kiah laughed. "Well, we need to find a quiet place to stop before we log out."
"How about the stables?" Leo suggested.
Nico shook his head. "Too busy."
That wasn't true. In reality, he hated horses. They filled him with a visceral fear, the kind that starts in your stomach and climbs up to your throat. He knew they were intelligent animals, and that was precisely what frightened him: those big, shiny eyes that seemed to read your mind.
As a child, during a beach vacation with his grandmother, who had lung problems and found relief in the salty air, he had climbed onto a pony for a sightseeing ride. He still remembered the warmth of its back beneath his legs, the pungent smell of sweat and hay, and then that moment: the pony rearing up suddenly, neighing like crazy. He felt the saddle slip and his hands search for a hold that wasn't there. Since then, every time he even thought about horses, he felt the same knot tighten in his stomach.
"What about the equipment room?" asked Kiah.
Leo shook his head. "So, as soon as we step outside, we make a crazy noise? No, thanks. Besides, I'd like a place outside the tower."
"Why?" asked Kiah, his eyes narrowing to slits.
"Because I want to go out and see Dan's performance."
The sun was still high, but the game would soon kick them out. Leo insisted on going out to see Dan, while Kiah preferred to stay in to avoid expulsion. In the end, they reached a compromise: the gardeners' shed. From there, Kiah could return to the tower, while Leo and Nico would try to sneak out of the building.
"How do you know about this place?" Kiah asked, looking around to make sure no one was coming.
They were outside the dormitory area; to get there, they had crossed the kitchen corridor. Nico could smell smoke and onions everywhere they went, as if it were following them.
"Jack told us about it," said Leo, pointing enthusiastically to a side door. "Look: it's wide open because of the smoke, just like he said."
They crossed the inner courtyard. There was a bustle of activity: some people were grooming horses, others were washing buckets or pots, and still others were peeling vegetables outdoors to escape the heat of the kitchens.
"There's little surveillance here at night," Leo said matter-of-factly. "Jack says you can come and go as you please."
A large woman with strong arms and calloused hands, sitting on a stool peeling potatoes, looked up at them. Her eyes flashed like steel blades. Nico felt his stomach tighten and quickened his pace, followed by the others.
They passed through a stone archway.
"So," said Kiah, her voice as stiff as her gaze, "are you going to tell me how this Jack guy knows the building so well?"
Nico laughed. "He's the son of the head gardener."
Kiah stared at him, visibly irritated.
"He says he brings girls here," Leo added with a silly smile. "First, a walk through the inner gardens, where he shows off his knowledge of aromatic and medicinal herbs... then, walking along the gravel path, he showers them with sweet words until he leads them to the edge of the royal garden... where," he made a sweeping gesture with his hands, "in the gardener's shed, they melt languidly into his arms."
"How disgusting," hissed Kiah, wrinkling her nose, but Nico noticed something in her eyes: a flash of curiosity, or perhaps jealousy. It seemed to him that her disgust was only superficial.
The shed stood at the edge of the royal gardens, almost hidden by a hedge. From the outside, it looked like little more than a pile of dark planks with a sloping roof. They went inside. A sliver of yellowish light filtered through a tiny window. The smell was of damp earth and rusty iron: a pungent mixture.
The space was cramped, but everything had its place: shovels, rakes, hoes, ropes, seeds, pots, buckets.
As soon as they closed the door behind them, the countdown appeared in Nico's field of vision.
"I think I made a mistake coming here," Kiah murmured, moving nervously among the shadows of the shed. "Come to think of it," she continued, moving quickly, "I could have told my roommates that I wasn't feeling well, stayed in bed... And then, when I reconnected, it would be midnight, right? They would all be asleep. Who would notice that I was gone, and then that I was back? They might think I went to the bathroom... I mean, it's not as simple here as it is at home, right?"
Nico watched her, trying to ignore the frantic pace of her words and the way she bit her lower lip. Every sentence was a mental race that drew him in, even though he couldn't stop her.
"All you had to do was count quickly, right? Oh God, how am I going to get back now? What if someone sees me? And that door near the kitchens, is it locked at night? Oh God, I'm going to spend the night in a shed all alone. Are there spiders? I hate spiders."
Nico watched her, trying not to smile. He had learned to recognize that tone: when Kiah was agitated, she spoke without breathing, as if words were a way to keep fear at bay.
"Kiah, calm down," he said, trying to keep his voice low. The countdown flashed in the corner of his vision, but he only looked at her. "If you want, we can help you get back."
"Absolutely not," Leo cut in, crossing his arms in protest. "I'm going to see Dan. You do what you want."
Nico sighed. "And give me a hand, won't you?" he whispered, tilting his head toward Leo. He tried to do it quietly enough that Kiah wouldn't hear, though in that cramped space he wasn't at all sure he'd succeeded.
The flutey voice murmured:
-
Exit game
-
Returning to reality
The darkness.
He took off his helmet: the game had thrown him out.
He felt his heart beating too fast, as if trying to remind him where he really was. The air he breathed was warm and humid, a strange and sudden sensation after the earthy humidity of the tool shed. He tried to move his fingers and for a moment he wasn't sure he could: it seemed as if his brain didn't know if his body was still his.
He took a deep breath, trying to shake off the feeling of dizziness that was still swirling in his stomach. Everything seemed slightly shifted, the contours of the room, the light, even the weight of his own body. It took a few seconds to start feeling himself again, body and mind in sync, but he already wanted to go back. In exactly twelve hours, he would go to the Stuffed Bear with Leo to see Dan's show.
He looked around but didn't get up in a hurry: he lay on the bed, waiting for the shadows imprinted on his retina to fade.
He got out of bed; his left leg gave him the usual twinge, but he was used to it by now. He was drenched in sweat, as if he had spent the night running. He smiled: he had really worked hard during training in the game.
His smile faded halfway through. His muscles really hurt; it wasn't just imagined fatigue. He looked at his hands, almost expecting to see scratches or calluses. There weren't any, but the feeling of fatigue was real, deep.
Maybe the game was going too far. Maybe the physical feedback shouldn't have lasted so long. He wondered for a moment if it was normal, if others felt the same way, then dismissed the thought, as one does with a bad dream in the morning.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
When he stood up, leaning on his cane, a sharp pain shot through his right arm. It was the same arm he had used to shoot his bow and wield his sword.
His muscles throbbed, tense as if after a real workout. Perhaps his body was somehow reacting to the stimuli of the game, even if only partially.
After his shower, he went to the kitchen. His grandmother, as usual, was leaning out of the balcony chatting with this or that gossipy colleague. He poured himself a generous helping of cereal into his bowl; the training had made him hungry.
The spoon sank into the soft cereal as soon as it touched the white liquid, and the milk had taken on that beige color that Nico never liked. As he chewed distractedly, his grandmother's voice filled the kitchen.
"Just look at this, it's crazy!" she exclaimed, returning to the vegetables for the soup. "The cleaning lady, the one who goes to Mrs. Esposito's, you remember her, don't you?"
Nico nodded, more out of politeness than genuine interest.
"She packed her bags overnight and left. She says she's going back to her country because there's a war going on there now," continued her grandmother, her tone somewhere between incredulous and offended. "I understand, poor woman, she has children down there, but to leave Mrs. Esposito like that, without even finishing the week... no, that's not right. People have no respect anymore!"
Nico's spoon clinked against the edge of the bowl. He tried not to smile: his grandmother always managed to turn any tragedy into a personal grievance.
"Grandma, listen, I'm going to the library today."
"What are you going to do there?" asked his grandmother, crossing her arms. "School's over, isn't it?"
Nico nodded. "I want to prepare for the new year."
Nico walked through the door of the library, gloomy and silent. The smell of dust, paper, and glue hit him before his eyes adjusted to the new light. The frenetic noises of the city, in that place forgotten by everyone and known to few, had left his ears in peace. He smiled to himself, thinking that this time he would take a different path than usual. He headed for the "Sports" shelf and, scrolling through the labels, found a micro section dedicated to fencing. He calmly pulled out a few volumes, enjoying the dust they left on his hands, turning his fingers velvety: an illustrated manual, a practical guide with photographs and drawings, a historical and technical text on the use of the saber, and a modern compendium of training and theory. There were also paperbacks for beginners and collections of terminology published by federations. Nico, with the books on one side and his cane on the other, looked for a table.
The library was almost empty; in that heat, people preferred to go to the beach. He saw a girl in the corner, half-hidden by enormous piles of books stacked on the table where she was reading. She was perhaps twenty-five years old, perhaps a university student, thin and pale, with enormous glasses on her face and another pair of thinner ones resting on her head. Not far away, sitting at another table, two boys with a very old book open in front of them were taking photos of the pages. A fat man with a beard and snow-white hair stood near a bookshelf, scrutinizing a list he held in his hands, attentive and troubled.
Nico sat down at a table in the corner, near the window, with his back to the wall and his face toward the room. He placed all the books on the table and ran his fingers over their covers, bewildered by his research.
He opened the illustrated manual: diagrams, sequences of steps, and black-and-white photographs of hands gripping handles. The first pages explained the basic position, the so-called guard, "en garde." The photo showed the feet shoulder-width apart, the attacking foot, for him the right, slightly forward, the knees bent, the weight distributed so that he could advance or retreat. The armed hand was ready to extend the tip: a line that started at the wrist and went beyond.
He turned the page: parries, lunges, lunges. "First," "second," "fourth"... names that sounded like formulas to him. He tried to visualize them, trying to imagine the sword in his hand, the balance, the tension that arose in his calf and ended at the tip.
The technical description made sense of the exercises he had done with Gareth: warm-up, body alignment, small balancing movements. He turned the page and found the section on steps and attacks. The lunge was broken down into clear steps: push with the back heel, simultaneous extension of the toe, the hip leading, the front knee opening almost completely. She also read about the "flèche" and variations of advancing and retreating: "avance," "recul," combinations of steps. The photographs showed the torso tilted, the arm stretched out like a taut string.
He moved on to another volume, a more technical text from the federation. Here, the parries were described using functional terminology: lots of precise words, but for Nico, in the real world, they remained just words.
Sitting at the table, he tried to imagine every position in the game, with his rough tunic and wooden sword in his hand. He imagined where to place his wrist, where that imaginary line of the tip ended, how the force of the step was transferred to the tip during the lunge. He read about the difference between the stiffer part near the hilt and the more flexible tip, and thought that perhaps with a real sword those nuances could not be applied. He did not yet have the experience to say for sure; he only knew that each name opened up a handful of exercises and that each exercise explained why: balance, timing, control of space.
In the end, he understood something that had not been clear to him at first: many of the positions could not be applied to a heavier sword, but he liked the order that those readings had brought to his mind after a day of training with Gareth. From what little he knew, that rigor seemed exactly what he needed to begin to make his movements less uncertain.
When he closed the books, the light outside the window had become clearer.
With the smaller volume under his arm and his cane marking the rhythm of his steps like a metronome, he arrived at the circulation desk; there was no line.
The librarian recognized him and nodded with a discreet smile. She was a woman in her fifties, with red hair streaked with gray and small eyes framed by thin glasses. Nico handed her the book and his card. She scanned it, then scanned the book's barcode.
"A different kind of read than usual, dear, how come?" asked the librarian, looking up at him and lingering on his cane.
"It's for a friend," muttered Nico.
Nico knew that this woman believed she knew all her customers based solely on what they read.
The return date appeared on the screen. The woman looked at him over her glasses and nodded.
"Two weeks, due on the 6th," she said, printing the receipt.
"Thanks," he muttered.
The librarian slipped the receipt between the first pages. "You can renew it online if you need more time."
Nico nodded. He took the book and went outside.
Outside, the air smelled of dampness and concrete. The sun was beating down and the streets of the city center were teeming with groups of young people, tourists, and office workers. Almost everyone was wearing CyberGlasses, and the colorful reflections from the displays moved across their lenses like tiny fires.
Every now and then, however, something flickered: a holographic image that cut out halfway through, a voice guide that cut out and then resumed with a slight delay. A group of tourists stopped suddenly, confused: their virtual guide's directions had split for a moment, creating two overlapping routes on the same street.
Nico didn't have those devices, yet he sensed a widespread unease in the air, a kind of disconnect between people and what they were seeing.
A man bumped into him while using his HoloCom, that new augmented reality device with holograms for calls.
"What the... Hey, watch it, kid!" roared the man in his forties.
"What's up, Peppe?" asked the half-length hologram of a pot-bellied man in his sixties.
"But... a kid, what... So we were saying..." continued the man as he walked away.
When the hologram stabilized, for a moment the potbellied man's face seemed to break into two blurred lines, as if the signal had lost its sense of form.
The hologram cursed under his breath and continued with his interlocutor in a distant echo.
Nico sighed: in that world of technology, he felt invisible and disconnected, but in the game it was different. He pulled his old black-and-white cell phone out of his pocket; it was still noon. Eight more hours to wait and he would see Leo and Kiah again, eight more hours and he would watch Dan's performance at the Stuffed Bear, eight more hours and he would be free of the shell that was his body.
The room was cramped, too cramped to really move around, but Nico had convinced himself that a space of one meter was enough to start with. Besides, it was better that way: with his left leg in bad shape, if he couldn't stand, he could quickly lean on a piece of furniture or the wall. He had placed the book on the desk, the manual open on the page with the parries drawn in sequences. His cane had become a blade.
He stood up, his left leg already protesting the change in balance.
He inhaled slowly.
The page said: guard position, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, torso slightly forward.
He tried it: his right foot slid forward, his left remained behind, stiff and useless. He felt it like a rigid bar pulling him back. He tried to flex, a millimeter at a time, and the muscle reacted with a sudden, sharp cramp, like a warning.
He shook his head, irritated.
He rested the stick on the ground for a moment, then lifted it again: en garde.
His right forearm was tense, his wrist relaxed, and the tip of the cane slightly tilted toward the door.
He took a small step forward, l'avance: his left leg gave way. He didn't fall completely, but he had to grab the chair with his free hand to regain his balance.
The cane hit the floor, breaking the silence in the room.
He felt a wave of anger, the same anger that occasionally rose up in his stomach.
He tried again.
The stick trembled slightly, and his leg gave him a twinge, this time more painful than before.
He sat down on the bed and decided to try only the wrist movements: there was no chance of learning the leg movements.
He moved on to parries.
He raised the stick, tried the "quarte" and turned his wrist, but lost his grip. The stick slipped sideways and bounced off the wall.
The sharp sound made him smile with a hint of tiredness.
Leafing through the pages, he looked at the drawing of the lunge: it looked so simple in the drawing: front leg extending, toe stretching forward, arm accompanying. He didn't try it: he was sure that his left leg, stiff as cement, would betray him.
He felt like throwing everything away: the book, the stick. But instead, he slowly got up, put down the stick, looked at it with hatred, and returned to his position. Perhaps he would never make a real lunge, at least not outside of the game, but he could learn the line, the direction. He could understand the movement, even if his body resisted.
He repeated only the arm movement, the toe advancing.
The late afternoon light fell on the floor, golden and merciless, when his grandmother called him for dinner. He closed the book and pushed it to the bottom of a drawer.
Nico ate slowly, more out of distraction than hunger, sitting at the kitchen table while the television filled the room with the voice of the national news. The light from the monitor cast a single, cold spot on the table. From where he sat, Nico couldn't see anything on the screen except flashes of captions and a few grainy images, but he listened despite himself: the voice was too loud. The reporter gave the news in the same voice one uses to count sheep: monotonous, almost mechanical. "The first news comes from the United States: AmberGrid, the centralized system that coordinates traffic lights on major urban arteries, went out of service this morning. There have been numerous collisions in major cities; injuries have been reported. Authorities recommend extreme caution..." He stirred the soup in his bowl with a spoon, spotted some grains of rice, and remembered what he had eaten in the game: rice and chickpea soup. He heard the reporter's voice as one hears rain when walking down the street without an umbrella: relentless and inevitable. Every now and then, his gaze drifted to his grandmother, who commented under her breath, "These computers only cause us problems, I've always said so."
The news switched to the stock market. "International financial markets have experienced sharp fluctuations today," explained the reporter. "There have been alterations in automated trading systems and high-frequency algorithms; major stocks have fallen by up to seven percentage points in some markets."
Nico heard "seven percentage points" as if it were just any number, but he sensed that it was serious.
"Ah, do you remember Rosalba?" asked his grandmother, raising her voice to be heard above the reporter. Nico didn't know who she was talking about, but he nodded, not wanting his grandmother to go into lengthy explanations.
"Of course," said his grandmother, who had clearly sensed his uncertainty. "Rosalba, Geppino's daughter, the delicatessen owner."
Nico nodded again.
"Well, she got pregnant. And she's not even married. Carmela, the greengrocer, told me she's going to live with him... Well, what times we live in." His grandmother's voice was sharp and precise, and she said it with genuine satisfaction, convinced that she was a great woman of experience and moral correctness.
Nico nodded again. Not because he cared, but because he wanted time to pass more quickly, for 8 p.m. to arrive soon: the moment when he could finally reconnect to the game.
"In Berlin and other major German cities," the reporter continued, "the hospital management program has malfunctioned, with errors and system overloads.
Emergency rooms are collapsing: there are kilometer-long lines in front of hospitals and staff are at their limit."
"Look at them, poor people..." murmured his grandmother, immediately launching into another piece of gossip about the family of her friend's granddaughter. For her, their lives were intertwined in a tapestry of moral observations, and the news was just one more thread. Nico continued to nod, sometimes with more conviction, sometimes barely. A quiet annoyance and an agitation that was not only physical but also a desire to escape mingled in his chest.
When the news moved on to another report, Nico put down his spoon and got up. He would wait for time to pass slowly, the viewer in place, the countdown running.
In the closet, hidden in a cardboard box among books and odds and ends, the viewer awaited him like a promise. He pulled it out of its velvet box. It was warm to the touch, as if someone had just taken it out. The matte gray surface barely reflected the light from the bulb, a subdued glow running along the smooth curve of the device. Nico picked it up cautiously, running his fingers over it as if touching something precious or fragile.
He brought it close to his face: the part of the world that truly belonged to him depended on that object, the part that didn't make him feel twisted or limited.
The viewer was the threshold. And he was ready to cross it.
Hey! Thanks for reading this fragment of the system too.
Log updated: disconnection complete. Subject N_01 shows residual sensory input from the virtual environment, tactile memory, muscle fatigue, mild cognitive disorientation. Physical and digital parameters still undergoing realignment. External interference detected in the Real World: global network instability, widespread anomalies.
Log closed: subject N_01 ready for reconnection.