Do you believe in magic? Well even if you don't I do, because somehow my life has spiraled beyond the bounds of reality and logic. When I was in my old life, world, universe, or whatever you call it, I was your average nerd. At least, I'm pretty sure I was. My life mainly revolved around Video games. That makes you a nerd right?
I love video games.
Not only was it video games that I adored, I also loved to read fantasy and Sci-Fi novels. To some of my friends, my love for games was a little...Concerning. To my family it was...Well let's just say they would've hired a psychiatrist to poke me brain for a little bit to see if i have any screws loose in my head. I really love video games. However, in my twenty plus years of living I had became infatuated with one particular game, or series rather.
Mass Effect.
I adored it. Everything from the characters, the enemies, the lore, the species that inhabited the galaxy.
I was captivated.
I spent almost every night and day on my laptop playing Mass Effect when it first came out and had hundreds of hours logged on almost every character i had and did almost every do-able female crew member on that ship and made every paragon decision there was.
I was the good guy.
But I soon grew tired of it. And then…Mass Effect 2 came out and the first thing i did was have a three day straight Mass Effect binge, playing from dusk to dawn and vice-versa. Playing the good guy was boring though, as it seemed to me that Shepherd fit the renegade role better in the second installment. But for some inexplicable reason i was still not satisfied with a renegade Shepard. I wanted something different. Something...unexpected.
Yes...Unique. All my life i've seen nothing but the good guys winning, defeating the antagonist, saving the damsel, then living happily ever after. I'd always see these in the movies, the books, the shows, the games….
I HATED IT.
And then one night, after playing some ME:2 just dicking around with some mods i downloaded earlier, I had the strangest dream. It felt and looked real. Well, I guess all dreams look real, but this dream...Somehow I knew it was different from the other ones i've had. I was standing in a grass field with wild flowers growing in small patches around me. I could feel the wind, the grass, I could breathe the air around me and smell the pleasant smells of the wilderness. Fucking fantastic. Thats when I was completely positive that this wasn't any ordinary dream. No, It would prove to be something even more complicated than my little human mind can wrap figure out.
A proposition.
It was a personal invitation to live in the world I fell in love with. The world of Mass Effect. Now I'm pretty sure some other ordinary scrub would have said yes and happily gone along to do whatever they wanted to do and shit, but not me. I politely declined the request because of two reasons. Reason one; It was an Asari that invaded my dreams. Now, i have no beef with the Asari, but this one… She was weird. She looked like your average Asari with the purple skin and tentacle head and shit, but there was something about her that just...Well let's just say that if I could have ran I would have. Reason two; I had to help Shepherd defeat the reapers. Now I know what you're probably not thinking, 'Aw man, you could have met the Commander Shepherd and kicked ass and all that crap!' No. No, no and more nos'. I wasn't about to become some lackey of the hands of fate and go on a journey with the fellowship of the Shepherd. Hell no. I am a strong, independent black woman! Well, I'm not really a woman, i'm a guy...A 22 year old man! I am a grown adult and i should be able to do whatever i want however i want whenever I want!
Boy, imagine her face when I told her all of that.
The Asari left my dream and went about her own business as I went about mine. Wait, was it my dream? I mean, as soon as she left I woke up and well that gets me guessing…
As soon as I woke up I scrambled out of my bed and went straight to my laptop and opened up my trusty browser. I went on multiple chat sites, search engines, porn sites and watched many youtube videos asking people or seeing if any other people had any weird dreams about a Asari asking them to 'fight the good fight'. Apparently i was the only guy who did.
And then, something really creepy and weird happened.
A notification from one of my chat accounts popped up to show me someone sent me a message. Curiosity engaged. I opened the chat box on my browser to see that the message was sent by 'Unknown' at 'Unknown' time in 'Unknown' location. I wouldn't have been bothered if it were just an unknown name and location, but that wasn't so. How the hell do you make your time unknown? And that, really put me on edge, but apparently there were even more surprises, because when i actually read the message, well, it sounded like your average ten year old troll.
'How bad do you want it?'
I mean, freaky right. I quickly hit the reply button and asked them who they were, as any person would do when met with an unknown adversary. Not even a full second passes before he replied. With the same question. So this little shit wants to play games huh? Deciding to play along I typed the five magic words into the chatbox.
'Badly.'
Oh ho ho! Color me surprised when the little shit sent me a totally suspicious link to a website called 'ME' dot com. Me and my damn curiosity decided to put up every firewall i had on this shitty laptop and enable my two trusty anti-virus protectors. I then went back to the chat box and hovered my mouse pointer over the link.
"I swear if it's a damn screamer…" I said to myself aloud.
With a mighty push of my finger I clicked the link and….Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. I waited a couple of seconds, then minutes, then a whole hour passed before something happened. I would have been very happy that my patience had rewarded me with a spontaneous event but instead of life and reality performing the way it should be I found myself being sucked into my computer screen. Like, literally I was being forcibly sucked into my laptops screen, with my whole body being crushed by an invisible force.
And then, there was darkness. All I saw was goddamned darkness, and my body seemed to have wandered away from my consciousness for I could not feel nor move any of my limbs. I believe this is what they call 'Limbo'? I was in this void of nothing and boringness for lord knows how long. I was in there for maybe, days, weeks, months, years?
And then, just when i was about to commit imaginary suicide (I would imagine myself stabbing myself while myself died, does that make sense?) for the thousandth time, Hope came and saved me from this personal hell. I found my self being shifted and moved on this cosmic plane of nothingness to the familiar feeling of a...A...A body! Thank whatever Gods that may have rescued me for allowing to live again! Just when things were looking up I found myself unable to move, well i could move but it was really limited movement and I couldn't open my eyes no matter how hard i tried. And then 'it' happened. I guess you could say it was the 'Big Bang' equivelant of something...i don't know what i'm talking about, but I felt huge pressure around my body and this wet squelching and farting noises. And then there was light.
No literally, there was light, though I couldn't really see it, I could feel it. Like, have you ever closed your eyes and shined a light in them? Yeah, it was like that. Not too long after I was taken out the slip and slide of near death was I assaulted by large rough hands. Wait.
Large hands.
Wet cave.
Eyes won't open.
Barely moving body and it feels like i'm breathing for the first time.
Fuck.
That little shit trolled me.
I was fucking re-born in the Mass Effect universe.
