Long Island

Chapter 38: Confusion

Please Note: Statements between % something in italics % are game system messages.

Authors Note: Apologies for delay. It has not been a good month. Hope you still enjoy the chapter. It hasn't been edited yet so will be doing that later.

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"Aaaaaaah!"

A blood curdling scream rang out in a small room of a nondescript apartment at a fairly populous neighborhood. Yet, the scream did not escape the walls. The populace remained blissfully unaware and went on with their puny lives.

"I still can't see anything..." A guy said out loud as he banged his hand on his desk.

He sighed. "One more time..." And he pulled the video to the last scene, just before his death. "Time to go frame by frame..." as he rewound his death just one more time.

This was Swamy and he was watching this game video with hawkish eyes, trying to put together the last moments. Like a crash site investigator, he was looking at the wreckage to determine how the incident happened.

The game video was the black box.

The problem was that he couldn't see anything relevant. 'Still nothing. After the confusion status, I don't even see my Life bar. Is that a clue? But what does it mean?'

This death, like the status message, was utterly confusing. Swamy couldn't be sure whether he was attacked or poisoned or had faced a gravitational anomaly. Heck, if he were targeted by aliens, he couldn't know as everything after the confusion status message was totally confusing, out of whack so as to say.

There was the sky turning upside down and then there was death. 'Still nothing. No signs of any animals, in fact looking at the trees, there is not even wind. Looks like everything after the confusion status message cannot be trusted.' Swamy sighed.

The game video, or rather the recording of the game play was taken in first person perspective. So it recorded what Raka saw. Whatever he saw! If he was confused, it did not record the actual image which should have been in front of him, instead it recorded the same things he saw. Sky and earth upside down!

How could he even look for clues!

Swamy sighed. "This is useless!"

"TV, Off!" He said. He unhooked his laptop from his TV. The bigger screen hadn't helped things at all. And then he went to bed.

For the next 24 hours, he was on vacation so as to say.

The next morning began as usual. He got dressed and got to college. Everyone had kinda got used to the classes by now so there was far more chattering.

"Hey, did you see...."

"Oh...do you know..."

"Oh...that was so ridiculous..."

"................"

Swamy sighed. It was high school all over again except perhaps in a university setting. Something on the lines of those gaudy American shows which presented a glamorous scandalous college life.