100

You've found a new game to play, and its really good. But it looks like you've run out of lives - whatever will you do? The narrator has a solution.

* * *

The twin screens of your VR headset faded, as the music receded, changing from the energetic beat, to a soft, low, thrumming. A pulsing that pushed at your mind. “Oh dear, player.” The narrator was talking to you. “You seem to be out of lives. Do you want to keep playing?”

You clicked yes, at the prompt that came up. You did want to keep playing. To keep feeling the energy that came with playing the game. “Well, player, we’ll need something other than lives for you to lose then.” There was a pause, permeated only by the pulsing thrumming.

“How about this? Each time you lose, you’ll lose a bit of your mind. A bit of your intelligence. Does that sound good?” Again, you clicked yes. The game wasn’t going to take your mind. Was it? A number appeared at the top of the screen, where your lives had been. 100.

And then you were back, playing. The music sounded different. Were there whispers, or – had the vocals changed? You couldn’t tell, you couldn’t focus on that. All you could do was play, focus on what was in front of your eyes. Until you died. And the number had changed. 99.

At 80, you noticed that you were reacting slower, but that might have been because you were playing badly. Stress and all that. But you didn’t feel stressed. You felt relaxed. Calm. It was hard to think why. You didn’t care. You wanted to keep playing.

At 60, you were making more and more mistakes, but it was harder to think of why that was a bad thing. The more mistakes you made, the more the number went down. And that was what you wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? You couldn’t tell. It was okay. Just keep playing.

At 30, you were barely making it past more than a few seconds of the stage. It was quicker to lose like this. And sometimes you stayed on the respawn screen. Just listening to the music. The pulse, the whispered voices. So soft, so gentle. So mindless and relaxed.

And then you reached zero. The narrator came back. “Oh dear, player. You’ve run out of mind to give! That’s okay. You can listen to me now. I’m going to tell you all about a new game we can play, and when we’re done, you can give this gift to a friend, doesn’t that sound fun?”