The Rise Of The Consortium

"I'm sure it's her." a dark silky voiced man spoke, whose eyes were mildly oscillating between the night tide and the glowing scribbles on the window pane.

"Specify 'her', " a mechanical feminine voice asked lifelessly.

"The player in the sim." he said feeling a bit irritated. The system was nowhere to be seen, but it can be said that it moved between the letters of the glowing text, showing the presence of life.

"Specify the player, " asked his system, making him look closer to the running light pulse in between the text on the glass window. Maybe the system is a bit hung.

"The one I met a decade ago." he said, now looking at the ocean in the dark with his brows furrowed.

"35 entries found in the directory."

"Ugh. Can't you just guess?" Dane snapped at it.

"Specific information is required ." this was the rudest answer he ever got from his system. Something is wrong.

"OK." he said, putting his thoughts on rest. "Rio Tarnilier." as soon as he spoke the name, the system searched the query. "By the way, you're behaving weirdly today. Are you all right?" asked Dane to the system, who was done searching and showed the result on the glass wall, alongside the character of the game. There were a list of features alongside the player, who was living the life as Dane wished it. But it didn't quite matched with the characters he thought of the girl he met ten years ago.

"The system is sleep deprived." the system responded flatly, pulling him out of his train of thought.

"Come on. You had a 4 hour nap in the noon." he replied hotly. He didn't like it when someone tries to distract him from his thoughts. But he knew he couldn't do anything to his system. After all, it is no living being.

"16 hour sleep is recommended for a smooth gameplay." he ignored the message as the system spoke it like an advertis.e.m.e.nt. He took his seat in front of the monitor, to resume the game. He was going to put on his headphones as he felt something was wrong. He looked up at the screen and the message replayed in his mind.

"WHAT? Not again." he felt disappointed as he looked at the empty glass wall where the information faded into the darkness. "I thought I would finish another episode before the night walk." he said gloomily as his spirit was dampened with the familiar warning message. He felt as if his system was becoming lazy these days. But he took a nap, didn't he?

"System cannot be updated until all the information is sorted." another message was heard, just like an ad.

"Well, you need to cooperate with me." he said feeling dismayed. He couldn't believe that he would have to end the night without the last episode of level five. Leira has to wake up now. He got up from his seat to get his ebony earpiece near his bedside table. As he got back to his seat, putting on the little earpiece, extremely thin and shaped like the outline of an ear, another warning message played.

"Night vision dropped to 35%."

"That's fine." said Dane, as he just wanted to clear the final episode. This device should work tonight. Thinking of this, he turned on the monitor, which glowed with ugly patches of different colours, which made him turn away his face from it.

"Distant audio capture dropped to 27%."

"I can manage." he lied as he dared not to look at the horrible coloured patches on the screen. One more look and he might throw up. But he can't let the system cause another silly scene at this moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face to the monitor. Without looking at the screen, he located the power up sensor in the monitor. He wished this trick to work.

"Danger. Stamina running low. The host is advised to rest on the count of ten…nine…"

"LEIRA, DON'T DO THIS TO ME!" he raged at his lazy system.

"L. E. I. R. A. is unavailable until the system is updated."

Unfortunately the trick didn't work. He couldn't gather enough energy to power up his monitor when his system didn't want to. He got up from his seat feeling defeated from his stubborn system.

His mind was reeling as he walked away from his gaming station.

"Argh. Why? Just why?" he said as he sat down on his bed, feeling defeated. He suddenly felt like he wanted to lie down a bit.

"Charging mode activated." a message spoke in a soothing voice as soon as Dane rolled back to the bed feeling disgusted.