Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24490614-20141027025622

I've seen many creepy pasta over games, haunted gaming, and so forth, but in all those few mention sci-fi games or anything Sci-fi. So I had an idea come to me and decided to try writing a pasta. I'm still working on a novel so maybe this is a test of my writing ability. Anyway. This is "Shift"

Shift

It's been several years since the event occurred. I'm still not sure of my future, if I have one, or if I will ever see home. The enemy attacks are growing more fierce and our supplies are dwindling. Let me take a moment to take you back to the beginning. I was once a normal 28 year old and an avid gamer. Even though it's all long gone now, I still remember it well. It was a happy time, my family and I weren't well off, but we were content for the most part. I was married to a lovely woman who also enjoyed gaming, but I had two awesome little girls who were becoming gamers for the most part; of course they still had the princess and fashion thing going on. I was in between games having lost faith in the future of console gaming thanks to the xbox one. I had returned to my most favorite game type, I had always wished to live in the worlds of Star Wars, Galaxy on Fire 2, Dangerous, Freelancer, Darkstar One or even Freespace. Having been injured and unable to live my daily life without pain the immersion that these games afforded was a much needed luxury I couldn't live without, so with the help of my gaming headset I set about yet another space game raid.

On the week that things began to get odd, I would play a "management" type of space game sim in the day, since the immersion just wasn't there during the day with the sun beating in the window. As the sun set and my kids would go to bed, I would power up whatever space game it was that I felt "called" to. My wife asleep I powered up my headset and let my mind forget the world around me, my pain dwindling. I was Trent, Freelancer and soon to be savior of the galaxy. I had just landed on New Tokyo and went immediately to the dealers to sell junk gear and look for better gear and hopefully a better ship. I then entered the bar and began the conversation with Juni and Ozu. At the end of the conversation when Ozu says "Excellent! We leave at once!" I almost thought I heard Juni ask if I was coming. I froze, that wasn't part of the script was it? I hadn't played through the story in a while. I shrugged it off as something I had forgotten and left for space to meet with Juni and Ozu.

After we met in space, Ozu began talking and said that we needed to take the Trade Lane to Honshu gate. As I was docking I heard Juni say to be careful, which wasn't part of the script at least as well as I could remember, but before I could shrug it off, she said that name. It wasn't Trent she was talking to, she said MY name. Juni, a character in one of my favorite games just spoke to me and told me to be careful by name. I had to be imagining it, or maybe my wife had spoken, I pulled one ear off of my headset and jostled her. "Hun, did you say something?" "zzz No love, I didn't" she had said before rolling over. I felt that my meds were getting the best of me completely forgetting to save I powered my laptop off, put it away and went to sleep. The next night I powered my game back up and reloaded my save from New Tokyo's landing pad.

This time though the comment from Juni at the end of the bar sequence didn't occur and neither did the comment as we entered the tradelane everything seemed to happen per the norm again. I docked with the tradelane and my ship powered up its engines. Instead of the typical fom, fom, fom, fom, of the tradelane, I heard the shortned version of my name. Desh, Desh, Desh, Desh. Something just felt odd hearing my name, but it really could have been my mind hearing what I wanted to hear instead of the typical sound. I saw the Honshu gate getting closer and came out of the tradelane near the jumpgate. The sound stopped. Me, Juni, and Ozu met up with our Blood Dragon escorts and docked with the jumpgate to the Honshu system. I watched as my craft entered the jumpgate and accelerated into warp, the warp cinematics played normal until the whiteout.

It lingered for a moment too long and didn't seem right. I came out of the warp into a familiar system, well sortof. It didn't belong in this game. Before I could react I heard several shots hit the side of my ship. I reverse accelerated and banked, as I tracked my prey I had to double take as I aligned my firing solution on a void ship. It made sense that the void would be here if their mothership was here since that was what initially caught my eye, the question was what where they doing out of their game? How did they get into this game? As soon as I blasted the last void ship down I caught sight of another familiar ship. Before I could respond I heard the beep beep beep of the comm system alerting me to a hail. "Sir, I do not know who you are, but you are in a very dangerous sector. I'm Keith T. Maxwell if you want to make it out of void space, I highly suggest you follow me, before they launch more." I couldn't argue that logic, although I could argue my sanity at this point. Keith's voice came back over the comm again. "Stay close pilot", "Would be nice if you told me your name since I'm going through all this trouble to save you." I didn't know what to say. Why wasn't Trent saying anything? Does he really mean me? I lowered my mic even though I knew it wouldn't work.

"Deshra, I go by Deshra" I said. Keith sort of chuckled, "Deshra, huh? do you have a last name?" he said as his on screen image began to smile. "Deshra D. Dine" I responded. Keith suddenly became serious. "Here they come again!" he shouted, his face contorted in anger as another wave of void ships charged toward us glinting in the light. Laser blasts and missiles flew as our battle raged on. We quickly dispatched all ten of them and continued our push towards the wormhole. As soon as we hit the wormhole and blasted out I felt my ship being pushed away. Wait, how did I feel that? I started to notice other things that didn't seem right, I had shoes on, was sitting and I wasn't in my bed. My body that seemed so far away came screaming back into my minds forethought as I came to the realization that my greatest dream and worst nightmare had joined in some bastardized version of whatever this was.

Before I could take stock I heard the voice of Juni on the comm system. "Trent! Are you okay Trent?" I didn't know what to respond, so I held what appeared to be the comm switch and said, "Yeah, I'm fine". Juni's ship spun around in front of me so fast that I almost ran into her. My body ached as I reverse accelerated my ship and the 198 kmph went to a -3kmph. "Who are you!" Juni's voice practically screamed across the void of space through the comms. I noticed Ozu's ship had lined me up in its sights as well. "I'm not Trent, I don't know what happened to him, but if either of you will help me land this thing and sort out what exactly is going on I would appreciate it."

Juni's face appeared on the comm link, "Follow me to New Tokyo, I'm placing you under LSF arrest until we can sort out what is going on and what you've done with Trent. I advise you to power down your weapons, any attempt to fire upon me or Ozu and we will have no choice but to destroy your craft. Am I Clear?" Oh, crap I'm so going to die, or spend whatever life I have left in prison. I though. "Yes Ms. Kozane I'm powering my weapons down n---" How do you know my last name!" she abruptly cut me off. "I'll explain it all on the ground I promise." I formation docked with Juni and she led us back to the tradelane. The tradelane powered up as she docked with it and we blasted towards New Tokyo.

Suddenly the lights of the tradelane grew dark and several fighters I recognized as Rheinland valkyries. Juni's voice quietly came over the comms, "Power up your weapons, you help us through this fight and we will really talk". Great, I thought, I knew she was just going to arrest me. I powered up my weapons and readied for the fight of my life. I never realized how hard reverse acceleration was on a human body until I got to experience it multiple times in rapid succession. By the end of the fight I was tired and my ship was a little worse for wear, but thanks to my supply of nanos and shield batteries it wasn't too damaged, because let's be honest, I may have onced "played" these same fights, this was my first time to ctually "live" it. We re-docked with the tradelane and continued our flight to New Tokyo in silence.

The rest of the flight was fortunately uneventful as we neared New Tokyo Juni shut down her cruise drive and ours shut down as well since we were formation docked. She quickly instructed me in how to dock with the landing platform and how to actually safely land my ship. Most of it was automated and relied on a few button presses and which I managed fairly easy. It was the actual landing on the platform part that I struggled with, I found I had a tendency to over throttle and ended up slamming into the landing platform pretty hard. Yeah, that's not going to buff out, I thought to myself as I unfastened my seatbelt and powered down the ship as Juni had instructed me. As I stepped out of my ship I met Juni and Ozu face to face, of course Juni also had her gun drawn on me so it seemed she wasn't ecstatic to see me. "Where is my friend? Where is Trent?"

She asked with a hint of fear in her voice. I looked at her and Ozu "I don't know, I was playing a game and woke up in this ship. The last thing I remember was docking with the Honshu jumpgate and ending up in void space, and thinking that something wasn't right. I fought off a bunch of Voids, and met with a Keith T. Maxwell who helped me reach the wormhole out of voidspace. When I came out of voidspace I realized that I could feel my craft being tossed around, and realized that I was actually IN the ship." Ozu spoke first, "The only problem with your story is that there is no Keith T. Maxwell in the known systems."

The sound of rushing water began soft and quickly became so loud that conversation would have been pointless, both Juni and Ozu were looking up. I myself couldn't see the ship because I was still on the landing platform of my ship. Juni raised her gun and Ozu put a hand on his sidearm. The ship landed and the pilot headed towards us. "Who are you?" came Juni's voice with a hint of worry. The stranger spoke in a very familiar (well familiar to me) voice. "The name's Keith T. Maxwell, I believe we need to talk." Ozu and Juni looked astounded. Ozu suggested we head to the bar and sit down to talk.

After about an hour regaling my tale and having the section with Keith confirmed by Keith himself, we had a good idea as to what happened, well the best idea we could come up with. The final piece of the puzzle came through a communication to Juni and a special news bulletin on the holoscreen in the bar. Something in the galaxy was going screwey and apparently LSF forces and Rheinland fighters were all battling some unknown foe, confirmed by Keith and I as void fighters. We all came to the conclusion that something had caused a galactic shift and had brought me into this universe, while shifting Trent elsewhere as well as merging several sections of space. It seemed that several pieces of galaxies I knew from sci-fi games were being shifted together.

Juni and Ozu both agreed that I had proved myself a capable fighter during the Rheinland tradelane disruption and spent the next couple days working with me on piloting my ship as well as they could. I was a fast study and everything seemed so natural. Life wasn't the same anymore, not even for those in this universe. The galactic shift had brought the best parts together but had also brought the worst parts together. That meant that void fighters and Shivans were causing some serious damage to fleets that weren't prepared to handle their new opponents, there was even talk of massive mechanical beings that would take over the minds of those that got to close that were wiping out populated system after system. Juni had put me and Keith in a special detail that was soon filling out with other names that I knew too well. Not a day goes by that I don't think about my family, and wonder if I'm here, what or who is with them? 