This story is by Fiona Evans and was part of our 2016 Winter Writing Contest. You can find all the Winter Writing Contest stories here.
Error 1313.
Please contact customer support.
I dropped my takeaway pizza, sat down, grabbed my headset and attempted to slow my breathing. Opening the ‘Eden’ homepage, I tried to get back into the game, but the cursor on the homepage had frozen. So I hit every button on the Xbox remote, switched the console off and on again, whacked it with a shoe, and I guess one or all of those actions did the trick.
“Are you ok?” Jake asked. His dark chocolate eyes gazed at me through the screen. I wondered if he could see me, and blushed crimson at the thought.
Confession time. Picture the obese, greasy guy on the couch demolishing a deluxe pepperoni pizza with extra helpings of cheese – that’s me, the female version. I am a huge gamer, and not ashamed to admit that sometimes I don’t shower for a whole weekend while sitting in my underwear playing games. It’s the only time I can feel better about myself; when I’m not really being myself.
I bought ‘Eden’ at the Brixton markets from a Japanese street seller. He convinced me it was the best game I would ever buy. For the money I paid it had to be, and it was actually pretty good. I was leading an army to prevent the apocalypse, and the idea was to unlock the Garden of Eden at the centre of a maze in order to reset time. The Japanese guy told me that no player has ever managed to get to the end, which is what persuaded me to buy it. I met Jake through the game, a tall, tanned and handsome soldier with a killer smile. I knew he wasn’t real, but the way he interacted with my avatar somehow just felt different.
“I’m ok,” I whispered through my headset, watching my avatar flicking back her blonde ringlets and smiling coyly. Jake smiled and slipped his arms around my minuscule waist, kissing me like we had done so many times before. I let out a raspy breath, wishing so badly that he was here, kissing me for real on my sofa. Although, my avatar was a beautiful blonde in a skimpy leather outfit with a giant machine gun and hand grenades attached to her, in contrast to the real me; a thirty-something fat girl with greasy hair eating pepperoni pizza in her off-white pants on the couch.
“We need to get back to base,” Jake informed me.
I guided my avatar to follow Jake down a corridor in the disused, old hangar. I had my gun cocked and ready should there be any surprises around the next corner. The screen froze again just as Jake walked out of sight. I began cursing. Was this a glitch in the game? The error message came up on the screen again, and this time the shoe whacking and restart trick didn’t work. I picked up my phone and dialled the support number. I was not going to let this ruin my Friday night with Jake.
“Sorry we had to put you on hold Ms. Jones,” the customer support woman from Eden Games told me in monotone. “Error 1313 is fatal. We know you paid a lot of money, so we want to help. Our records show when you signed up for the online community that you live in Brixton?”
“I do,” I answered, trying to convey an extremely pissed off tone in my voice. “You said there is something you can do?”
“Maybe. Our headquarters are near you, but we’re closing in thirty minutes. Do you think you could make it over and we can make the necessary tweaks? I can send our location to your smartphone.”
I wasn’t keen on leaving the house on a cold and rainy Friday evening, but the alternative was not playing ‘Eden’. As I walked, I tried to blend into shadows cast by the terraced houses lining the streets, but even with my head down and scarf up around my neck and face, I could still feel the stares. I’m sure I heard ‘fattie’ and ‘heifer’, but I turned my music up loud to block out the rest.
A while later, I arrived at the map location of Eden Games, which I unnervingly discovered was the same location as HM Brixton Prison. I shivered at the gates and looked around. I was on a dead end street.
“Alison Jones?” I jumped and looked to my right, where a slender Japanese woman had appeared in a grey trouser suit standing under an umbrella. She was holding a clipboard to her chest while looking me up and down. I shuffled from side to side. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Oh … hi,” I mumbled, and stuffed my hands into my pockets. She approached me and shoved the clipboard and pen into my face, holding her umbrella over us.
“Sign and we’ll get your game fixed.”
A thick document written in Japanese was attached to the clipboard, folded over to the last page where there was a signature section.
“What am I signing?” I asked, looking up. The woman frowned, and every line dented into her forehead like a wrinkled prune.
“User agreement,” she snapped, and added quickly; “you want to see Jake again?”
She pushed the clipboard at me once more. I didn’t think to ask how she knew about Jake, as I dripped water onto the last page of the contract with my soggy hand and signed.
“This way,” she snatched the clipboard and walked past me. I followed, despite my stomach twisting. We reached a side door along the prison walls and the woman pushed her hand onto a pad. The door opened and I watched her disappear into the bright light. Hesitantly, I followed.
I was standing in a hangar similar to the one in ‘Eden’, except this one was full of white tarpaulin with sectioned off areas.
“Welcome to Eden Games,” the woman said without looking back or smiling.
She led me through another door and into a small, stone-walled side room. I stopped in front of a stretcher which was hooked up to a heart monitor. Beside it was a flat screen TV which glowed with the ‘Eden’ homepage. Next to the TV, I recognised the Japanese street seller immediately.
“Congratulations Alison,” he said, glancing up from a table of medical instruments. The woman handed him the clipboard and he gave it a cursory glance.
“Congratulations?” That gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach had returned.
“I am Fujishima-san and this is Eden Games,” the street seller answered, taking a slight bow. “Congratulations because you are the highest scoring player of ‘Eden’, and you are here to finish the game.”
“What?”
“It is a wonderful opportunity!” Fujushima-san said, stretching out his arms and smiling. “You can actually become the player in your game! It is ground breaking technology! If you agree, we just need to wire you up to this machine.” He said. “How does that sound?” It sounded like I could easily just run and be out of the door we’d come through a few seconds ago. I began to back away.
“Don’t you want to become your avatar, so that you can be with Jake?” The woman asked, looking me up and down. I blushed and pulled my ketchup stained tracksuit top down over my stomach.
Fujishima-san turned to the TV screen, and it flicked to Jake. He was sitting under an apple tree, his expressionless eyes staring at the ground.
“He looks so … sad.” After a moment I turned to Fujishima-san. “And I would look like my avatar?”
“Yes,” Fujishima-san replied. “Your consciousness will simply transfer from your body to your avatar, and then back again when you’ve finished the game!”
I’m still not sure why I agreed. I think the thought of becoming my avatar and actually being beautiful for once, along with getting to feel what it was like to be with Jake was just too tempting.
It’s interesting looking back on how I got to the Garden of Eden, a garden about the size of a football pitch surrounded by black prison walls. There is nothing in the garden apart from an apple tree with a digital clock floating above it, and a growing number of avatars agitatedly pacing. Most are inmates from the HM Brixton Prison, some are recluses like me. Every few days, Fujishima-san sends us as characters into his games. Our mission is to get more people to come here. If I refuse, my avatar will be switched off and my body will die.
I realise there is no end to this ‘game’. Even if anyone were to look for us, we all signed our lives away in the Japanese contract. As for Jake, he admits to being a fat balding fifty-something guy, doing time for burglary and arson, far from the gorgeous avatar I was falling in love with. The one thing we have in common is that we are afraid, and we aren’t sure what purpose they have for us. All we know is that tomorrow, the timer above the apple tree is up, and things are going to change.
Love this concept, Fiona.
Thank you Sue, really kind!
Wow! What an interesting premise! This is very creative and interesting. Leaves you with a kind of haunting feeling… Well done! 🙂
Abbie what lovely feedback! Thank you 🙂
very interesting. Good writing
Thanks so much 🙂
Quick response: Well Done!
The dig-dug deep version:
I’m not a gamer (not this kind, anyway), and in past experience of writing classes and workshops, reviewing game-world stories knotted my stomach! Not for the agony of the generally child-like dream-of-concsiousness writing, or the vomit-worthy reading experience of such dribble which reminded me of “Show-and-Tell” time at pre-school, only these are young adult writers sharing their pretend game-land with you; no, my stomach hurt far worse from simply flexing my abs so tightly to keep from laughing out loud at classmates.
This story isn’t about a video game. It’s a social commentary (my favorite fiction or any kind of art, for that matter).
It’s a total story! with a great ending, and a message with an allusion to the (biblical concept of the) penultimate human flaw/condition! The language is readable, simple, but not bland. The video game setting, for me, makes it contemporary; and the detail of the game does not upstage the character or plot development.
“The one thing we have in common is that we are afraid, and we aren’t sure what purpose they have for us. All we know is that tomorrow, the timer above the apple tree is up, and things are going to change.” — capturing the universal reality and (in my opinion, via the author’s tone) a particular trend of many in our present-day society: a bunch of mindless wanderers who have either not yet found their purpose, or simply don’t care enough to figure that riddle out for themselves. The only purpose then being to be attractive so others will “like us,” and then, we still don’t know, we just know things will change. People without purpose should be glad for this change (so in a way, the ending is almost optimistic)! But they are mostly indifferent because they’ve been so disappointed by life which was at first so exciting that it’s really just a wait-and-see approach to what’s next in life (or thereafter). Can’t look forward to Heaven, don’t fear Hell, not sure what’s to come and don’t care til we get there… but that is a secondary, if even intended, point. The main message here is about self-worth, especially in regards to social acceptance, and a sense of purpose in the world.
The story doesn’t leave me a “haunting feeling,” so much as concern, pity, and sadness for women and self-image issues (actually, all people regardless of gender, and the simple need for acceptance) as well as our society and the misplaced values regarding social status and self-concept.
The sci-fi concept of humans living (defining complete social identities, etc) through avatars and digitally or technologically created personas is definitely creepy! I don’t read enough sci-fi to know if that idea is cliche’ today but in my opinion, this message must be hammered repeatedly, loudly, and incessantly to our society in the effort and hope that we (nor our descendants!) never see such a day (though, it seems that ball is already rolling, eek!).
I’ve read about 10 entries so far, and, among those, “Eden” is easily the most well-crafted. Looking at the author’s pic here, I wonder if that’s a photo of her “perfect” face, or just her choice of avatar to hide behind? Either way, a person who writes good stories is beautiful. I’m grateful to read.
I love it my names Anton and I’m also writing a short story can you give me a clue for what kind of short story I should write nexthe the short story I’m writing were now about a break up
Hi crs, firstly thank you so much for the detailed reply, it really means a lot that someone would take the time to go into such detail on a piece that I have written. Secondly I apologise for the delay in replying, Christmas celebrations have taken up a lot of my time!
This is indeed a social commentary about self worth and acceptance, I’m really pleased you picked up on that. Following the competition, if the judges allow, I am hoping to expand the story and themes as there is a lot more I’m keen to write on this.
Thank you again for your time and much appreciated comments on my short story!
How do I write a short story like yours I don’t mean to copy but I need ideas Cuz right now I’m just writing a superhero story
To Fiona, you are welcome. But what about your avatar?! Inquiring minds want to know! 😉
I’d be happy to keep reading on any expansions of this piece!
To Anton: I recently heard in a lecture from Brandon Sanderson on youtube.com that what makes a good “story,” is not the idea but the writing.
Anton, whatever the idea, good writing makes a piece better. Good writers use skill. Ideas are a dime a dozen. One can write about anything. There is, after all, a story in every moment.
Practice Observation! Study the craft. While I have yet to submit any prose anywhere in my life, I am enjoying reading the entries into this contest and commenting on what seems to work well in the stories, and also what is missing (for me). In this way, I am studying the craft and learning from dialogue with other writers and critics!
Most of these entries are not nearly as good as published work. Read these entries, and read stories by a better-known author you like: notice what makes one story such a better read than the other.
Also, you can google “free writing prompts” and get thousands of free “ideas.”
Best regards from NC
The problem is I Like writing about romance
Thanks you
I’m writing my stories in a journal
Hi Anton, heres a few ideas which really helped me:
1. Read as many books as you can in every genre to get an idea of how other people write
2. Go to writing classes in your town or city, or sign up online to learn more and read other people’s work (kind of like what’s happening here)
3. Original ideas are the best- think of examples from your dreams!
Good Luck!
Thanks but I’m also trying to impress a girl named Ariel with my stories I’m writing
Can you recommend some great books I should read that you read so I can get some ideas
Nice piece of writing, Fiona. Very Charlie Brooker-ish, Black Mirror Season 3 – see episode 2.
Keep writing and expanding. Not sure what you meant in your comment, “if the judges allow” though.
Thanks Rosemary! I’ll take a look at that. I’m just not sure if I can re use the writing published here to continue into a novel, which is what I would like to do 🙂
I checked with Joe Bunting before I opted in to have my piece published as I did not want to give up my rights. His response was that the rights revert back to the individual writer once the piece has been published so I say “write on!”
Actually, while it’s nice to be able to say “I’ve been published”, I am more interested in getting the judges’ feedback even though I have no idea who might be on the judges’ panel.
Hi Fiona guess what it actually worked I’m writing a romantic shirt story also bout music
I wrote 2 short stories already called The Date and Paparazzi Crazy