Watching Jane scream at the television was the greatest thing I had ever seen with my own two eyes. She had created a character that looked like her, that even held the same background and class as she had at that point in her life. She watched as things unfolded like a movie in front of her, shaking her head at the dialogue or looks of a character.
"It didn't look like that. It's all backwards." She pointed at a structure on Eden Prime, "The stairs were over there, and this thing wasn't even… Why in the hell would someone put that there like that?"
"I'm amazed you aren't complaining about the graphics." I was on the bed, lying on my stomach and facing the T.V. as she played the mission where she found Ashley on Eden Prime.
"It's 2013 and your technology isn't as advanced. I can accept that. This thing that I use to make the holo of myself move is worse than controlling a Mako." Jane cranes her neck to look at me while she motions towards the game controller in her hand.
"That thing is called a controller and as far as graphics go I have nothing to compare it to but Adam's old console. The graphics on that thing sucked." I brushed my fingers through my bangs as she turned back to the screen.
"I still can't believe this was considered entertainment." Jane rubs her eyes, "I just want to get to the part where I find Ash and see if it's as backwards as the rest of this looks to be."
"Yea, that's going to be fun." Suddenly the realization of just how many choices the game had hits me like a ton of bricks. Ashley being around was a choice after certain point, a choice. "Wait, where was Ashley the last time you saw her?"
"I left her when we made a run at the beam. She was with Garrus getting him back on the Normandy when I called for an emergency pick up." Jane murmured as a geth popped up from a hidden vantage point and took down her shields, "That doesn't happen like that!" She yelled at the screen as her character took another hit.
"In the game it does, you need to level up your character." I sigh. "It's not like what it really was when you were out there running and gunning with some optimal shield generator thingy."
"Thingy?" She asks as she pulls her character back from enemy fire, "It's not a thingy."
"Whatever. Look, we should get some sleep. There are other things we should talk about before you get to far involved in that game." I lay my head down on the bed, "Things that might bug you worse than the graphics and controller."
"Damn!" Jane shouts as she watches her shields drop again, "What other things?"
"Options, this game is all about decisions. Who lives and who dies, when you complete a mission, if you complete a mission… Options." I pick my head back up and look at her.
"Who lives and dies?" Jane goes to the menu for a moment pausing the game, "Meaning what exactly Amber?"
"Look, the decisions that you make at the beginning can effect who is around in the end." I stop before I go any further.
"Quit speaking to me in riddles and just tell me what you are saying?" Jane looks at me with a passion on her face that wasn't there a moment earlier.
"Ashley surviving on Virmire was a decision that you had to make. In the game you have the option to save Kaidan over Ashley." I look at her as she goes back to staring at the screen in silence. "Jane?"
"What else? What other things did someone think up to haunt me with?" She continues to face forward with her eyes glued to the image on the television.
"Maybe that's something we can talk about after we get some sleep." I slide my legs up underneath me to where I am sitting on my knees, "Let's rest and think about all of this craziness with a clear head in the morning."
"The big things were decisions?" Jane says in a hushed tone as she gains a blue glow. "They wanted to put me through hell for fun?"
"Jane, your biotics." I say quietly, trying not to continue pissing her off at this point, "Jane."
"Kaidan." She throws the controller at the television with inhuman force, cracking the screen and creating an incredible crashing noise that echoed throughout the apartment.
"Damn, I'm sure Adam heard that." A say in a whisper as I stick my feet back on the floor beside the bed, "Jane it's okay, you had to make a decision."
"I made that decision, I've lived with that damn decision and it's nothing more than a game." Jane runs her fingers from her right hand through her hair.
"Amber! What the hell are you doing up there?" Adam was screaming up the staircase. I looked at the busted television and the blue glowing Jane.
"Just working out a few things up here, nothing to worry about Adam," I yell back down the stairs, "Go to bed and I'll see you in a few hours!" I waited for a moment to see if I was going to hear him trudging up the stairs to investigate.
"Everything I did was fake? For fun and entertainment?" Jane looked at me, still having the same eerie biotic glow.
"No, there's no way." I speak with a strong reassurance in my voice, "Look, if you were just some character and everything was just pretend you wouldn't have biotics here in this world." Jane looks at her hands and the glow ebbs a bit.
"You don't have knowledge of element zero here?" Jane's normal demeanor pokes through the doubt for a moment.
"No, we are just barely getting the knowledge of dark space and dark energy. All that crap is still foreign to us, and here you are with biotics. Must have some truth to it then right?" I try to toss a ball of hope to Shepard.
"Evidently I was brought here for a reason, and you're going to help me find the meaning in it." She nods her head at me as she regains her normal composure, "First thing at 0800, we'll start to work on this together."
"Just remember that I'm not a marine, I'm a college kid that works a crappy job and has a crappy car." I plop backwards onto the bed, "I don't operate right without 6 hours and sleep… and coffee."
"You get four hours, and the sooner you start the better. I don't believe that anything happens without some kind of reasoning behind it, you're stuck with me kid." Jane lays on the bed and closes her eyes.
"I just wanted a day off." I say as I collapse beside her and close my eyes.
"Get up, it's 0800 and time to get moving." Jane bellows at me from her side of the bed as I pull the covers back over my face. The sun was up and I was not ready to even think about whose voice I had just heard.
"Four hours? You really only let me get four hours and I don't function right without at least six hours of sleep." I moan as I roll over and squeeze my eyes shut, "I thought this was all a flipping nightmare." Jane gives me only a moment longer before moving to the end of the bed and pulling a Houdini with the blanket, leaving me cold and awake.
"Amber, get up. We can eat something downstairs in the mess as we work on the plan of what comes next." Jane balls up the blanket and tosses it to the side.
"Sleep! That's all I wanted in the first place was sleep." I open my eyes and sit up to look around the room, "Damn it's really not a flipping nightmare." I rub my hands on my face as the memories of last night file through my head, "Alright, coffee and breakfast. Most importantly is the coffee." I put my feet on the floor and stand up, making my way towards the door and down the stairs. The moment that I enter the kitchen I was greeted with Adam looking up at me from his cup of coffee.
"So what the hell were you two doing last night?" Adam asks with a sly smile on his face, "Sounds like you found someone that has a worse mouth than I do." He takes a sip of his coffee, "So you want to tell me what got broken?"
"Don't worry about it." I yawn and look over my shoulder for Jane, "Jane! You coming down here or what?" Not seeing her I move to the coffee pot while Adam stares at me.
"What did you break?" He takes another drink of his coffee and places his back against the counter.
"I didn't break anything. Besides that television needed to be replaced anyway." I pour what I hope is my first cup of coffee into my favorite white mug and breathe in the vapors.
"You broke the T.V.?" Adam's eyes are wide and lock onto me as I try to sip the hot, black liquid.
"I broke it." Jane's voice pounded through the air as she made her way into the kitchen. I looked at her and then to Adam as I shuddered internally, things were going to get interesting. I knew that my brother wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, but he had been around me enough to know a few key things about my hobbies and love for Mass Effect.
"Who the hell are you?" Adam looked at Jane as she made her way over to the coffee pot with me. I handed her another mug from the cabinet and stepped out of the way.
"Play nice Adam. This is a friend of mine from work, Jane." I took another sip and smiled as Jane looked him up and down.
"She looks like that one chick." He watched as Jane gave him a once over, "Like that babe I was hitting on at that comic con thing that you took me to a few months ago."
"Yea well you know me Adam, I'm a nerd when it comes to that stuff. It shouldn't really surprise you to see that I have friends that are into the same stuff I am." I try to keep him from reaching some dramatic conclusion based on the six foot tall amazon woman with bright red hair standing in the kitchen.
"I've seen your friends Amber, they all look like sorority chicks." Adam starts to ogle Jane, "She looks like she's a damn athlete that could whoop your ass."
"Yours too if you aren't careful." Jane poured her cup of coffee and placed her back against the counter, letting a smug grin come across her face. "Having a smart mouth must run in the family." Adam looks at her for another moment before tossing his hands in the air and walking out of the kitchen muttering something under his breath.
"That was fun." I place the mug on the counter and look at her, "Any idea where we start this wild goose chase?"
"I broke the one thing I found so far that was useful. We need a device that has the extranet available on it for research."
"Extranet? Maybe we can find something on the internet. I do have that computer upstairs that I use to study and talk to Dylan on. Maybe we can find something on there." I grab the coffee off the counter and start back towards my room. After climbing up the stairs I position myself at my computer desk and press the on button.
"You said internet." Jane positions herself behind me as the p.c. begins to come up, "You are still light years behind where we are when it comes to technology."
"Something like that. It's the internet here in good ole' 2013. We can talk across the globe." Guilt pangs me in my stomach as I remember hanging up on Dylan last night, "Or across the country." I mutter something incoherent as the screen reveals my Mass Effect desk top.
"You are really into this aren't you?" Jane can't help but smile as she sees the picture of her old crew plastered across the monitor.
"You have no idea how deep it goes." I smile as I launch an internet browser, "Any idea where we should start?" She motions for me to get out of her way and I quickly oblige.
After a moment or two and playing with the computer she came to terms with our ancient technology, looking at a few news sites and catching herself up on the circumstances of what is going on in our world. I laid back on the bed and was playing with my tablet as I listened to her click away on the keyboard. Jane Shepard was sitting at my computer desk, and oddly enough for the moment, I was okay with that.
Just as things finally seemed to be calm and I started to drift back to sleep there was a pinging noise beside my head where I had laid the tablet. I grabbed it and recognized it right away, I was getting another video call from Dylan. I tried to slide the button to ignore the video chat but it was to late, Jane had responded on the computer.
"Amber where the... Who the hell are you?" Dylan, the boyfriend that I had been neglecting for the past few hours, looked at Jane with knowing eyes.
"Jane, Jane Shepard. Amber, this person knows you." By this point I was hovering over her shoulder trying to come up with an excuse of who this woman was before he had a chance to put two and two together.
"Hey babe." I smiled as big as I could as I tried to get Jane away from the webcam, "I told you I'd give you a call a little later." Jane smacked my arm as I kept nudging her to get out of the way.
"She looks like someone I should know." Dylan gets closer to his screen trying to gauge if he could place her face.
"Is he as big into the video game as you are." She drinks her coffee as she points her other hand at Dylan who is staring from the other side of the computer.
"Dylan? Yea, he's a huge fan just like me." I blush a little as I try to get her out from in front of the camera.
"You know who she looks like Amber? I mean damn, she could really be the real Jane Shepard." I wince as I hear the words come out of his mouth, knowing that Jane was about to confirm his suspicions, "I mean really looks like her."
"I am her." Jane looks at him, "Commander Jane Shepard of the Normandy. Amber picked me up last night on her way home." She looked at him with a grin on her face as she let her biotics come to a pool of power in her right hand. She wiggled each of her fingers as she waved, "Nice to meet you Dylan."