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Edwin P. Ust
There was an early release. Edie was dedicated to being the very first person to get the implant; by god he was going to be the first person to enter AntruA. From that point on he would rule, he would not look back. He was going to run things; he was going to be the man. But first he needed to plan. Edie was going to have to take not one or even two, but three different trains to get to the Cell World that was hosting the early release. The internet said the trip should take seven hours, but Edie assumed that it would be more like nine. He was planning to arrive at the store three days in advance. If he made the train trip at night not only would he be there first thing, he would also save on the food that he would need to bring.
In preparation Edie had created a list of things that he need for the trip. A tent was key. It would to be his home for three days; it would hold his food, clothes and whatever. The tent would also be a place for him to sleep and escape the eyes of the public. But most importantly it would hold his place at the front of the line if he ever had to step away, like to use the bathroom in the store. He thought that he had an old tent in his closet. Amazingly it was right where he thought it was. So that was one thing he could check off his list.
Clothes were the next items on the list. This was easy, he needed travel clothes he could pick those out the night that he left. He picked three pairs of sweatpants and some long sleeve shirts. The outfit for the day of purchase was a little different. His favorite video game T-shirt and a pair of jeans would do. The shirt had been one of his favorites for many years; it was comfortable and obscure enough to show his elite gamer status. He saw this shirt was also a way to embrace this transition, his illumination if you will, from his old favorite game to the new way of gaming.
Clothes taken care of he turned his focus on the most important line of his list, food. Edie had visions of TV dinners and microwave meals. But while heading out the door to go shopping, he passed his tent. It dawned on Edie suddenly that he would have no way to cook anything. How had he overlooked this simple fact. Maybe he could build his own fire. Though he had to assume that the store would not allow that. So he needed a new plan. He had nothing. Edie thought he might find something at the store so off he went with no real idea what he was going to buy.
The store was swarming with parents struggling to purchases all their food for the week and control their children. Every aisle had at least one altercation complete with crying and screaming; every so often it had escalated to stomping and throwing of food from shelves. In a crowd on the street Edie felt he could lose himself, in this store he felt trapped in the narrow tall aisles. There was this noise, a high pitched keening. The whole store emanated a vibe that made him want to run very far away.
Edie walked around the store trying to see what could be eaten that required no cooking. He couldn’t even think of a way to boiling water. He went to grab a bunch of high-energy protein bars. These were a staple of his diet already, as he used them as a way to avoid brakes while binging on video games. Initially he picked out about twenty, of varying flavors and brands. Then he picked out about ten more just to be safe, these things never went bad anyways. Then to balance out that he grabbed three bags of baby carrots, two big jars of pickles. Looking at his cart Edie felt a wave of discontent. Sure he could get some stuff for sandwiches, but it all seemed pretty lame.
Then he saw something new. VitaZeds. Small squeeze tubes with a colorful label advertising all the necessary nutrition and protein of a single meal. Seeing that they were produced by DocZed Inc. This was just the sign that he was looking for. Discarding his entire basket Edie went to the front of the store to get a fresh one. Returning to the display Edie proceeded to fill the basket with the sausage sized containers. Edie figured that he was going to be gone three days, so figuring the basic three meals a day made for nine total meals. Edie also figured he would want a snack, so add three more, that’s twelve. There are five flavors might as well grab three of each, so fifteen. Each VitaZed was three ninety-nine so about sixty total, not bad. Time to check out.
This turned into its own process. First he waited in the express lane. There were like six families in front of him, and there seemed to be some sort of hold up, as the line had not moved in some time. A mother and two children got into line behind him. One child, a girl, sitting in the seat of the cart was just getting over a temper tantrum and was still hiccupping and sniffing. The other was a boy, and he ran up to Edie’s basket and looked inside.
“Hey, mister, what are these things,” he held up a tube.
“Bobby-Jack you leave that man alone,” the mother shouted sort of half-heartedly, trying to console the crying child sitting in the cart.
The boy, apparently Bobby-Jack, was unperturbed. “This one is Raspberry pie, this one is meatloaf, and you also have eggs and bacon. Hey, mister you have fifteen items in your basket. This is the line for twelve or less. Hey Mama, this man has fifteen items in his basket.”
“Sir, are you really trying to cheat the express line.” The mom gave Edie a withering look, “I only have twelve items, at the least switch with me, let me go ahead of you.”
“Sure I guess,” Edie felt steamrolled, and despite himself somewhat guilty. But the line had started to move and what the hell he really wasn’t in any rush. And he didn’t have any kids, thank god for that. The girl in front of him started to cry again. Edie tried to find something to look at other than the still glaring mother. Out of the corner of his eye Eddie caught a movement. Apparently there was a third to the brood ahead of him. This third child darted in to his mother and thrust and armful of food into her cart. The mother, maybe feeling Eddie’s eye, turned and glared right back, almost daring him to open his mouth. Eddie feeling that the whole issue was more trouble than it was worth, and really he was in no rush, looked the other way.
Once out of the store he took a deep breath, man was that place oppressive. Shouldering his bags he headed home to pack. Checking his watch he saw that he still had a good four hours before he needed to leave for the train. Plenty of time. Having already staged his other items all he needed to do was pack them into his backpack with the food. That done he checked the time again, he still had three hour before needed to leave. Great that gave him plenty of time for playing a quick game.
The next time Eddie checked the time three hours and three minutes had passed. He jumped up threw his bag over his shoulders, he then ran to the door. How did he always manage to do this? Halfway out the door he realized that he had forgotten to turn off his game, he turned and taking the steps two at a time he ran into his room. He grabbed his controller to start the saving process, it was just going to take too much time; he was going to be late. But he didn’t want to lose what he had just accomplished. Justifying that he was going to never play this game after AntruA, he just turned the system off, and sprinted to the door.
Once aboard the train Eddie settled into his seat, stowing his backpack into the seat next to him. Then he waited for the train to fill. Other riders trickled on, but the train was still half empty when they pulled away from the station. The train was a sleek aerodynamic tube with one passenger compartment. It ran between tracks that ran somewhat parallel with the Skyline. The Skyline, vast networks of lesser highways all feeding into the one massive freeway; this free form structure twisted around buildings. While in comparison the train tracks ran in straight lines between stations. These straight tracks even went through buildings, the effect was that from the window of the train you caught glimpses of the Skyway; sometimes it was above, other times it ran next to the train, sometimes below. The dark road itself was impossible to see, but the lights of its cars were the trains passengers contestant companions. Snakes of red and white, twisting in opposite directions. sometimes moving faster combining into rivers of lights, other places they stopped then they looked like two strips of polka dots.
The transfer point came and went, in an almost half dream haze at some time around one in the morning. Eddie woke up in one train, moved to the next and immediately went back to sleep. His dreams were broken and felt disjointed. He keep waking up and looking at the flowing lights, so they snaked their way into his mind. At one point he thought that he saw a crash. The lights were all bunched, the bottleneck culminating in flashing blue and white lights. But that couldn’t be. Cars were automated to slow down or swerve to avoid accidents, the computers were unhackable. It must have been a dream.
The second transfer woke Eddie up for good. It was a regional train, much smaller than the one he had just gotten off. The smaller size meant, there were people in every row, Edie would have to sit next to another rider. He chose a seat about halfway down the train. The other rider was a short stout man holding tech magazine in his lap. Eddie settled into his new seat and tried one of the food packs. It was early morning, six-twenty according to his watch, so he tried the bacon and eggs flavor. The top of the container had a pull-tab; pulling on that opened up the container then it was just a matter of squeezing from the bottom. It was not bad, tasted just like it was labeled one bite would taste like eggs the next like bacon. The texture took some getting used to, creamy and smooth.
The last leg of the journey went quickly enough. The passenger next to him woke an hour after they left the transfer point with a snort. The man sat up and looked around guiltily, Eddie looked the other way. The man then pulled the magazine up to his face. It was then that Eddie saw the cover. It was generic video game periodical called “Console Weekly.” Eddie had read it on and off; it did a good job of covering news from all over the industry, and for the most part was unbiased. On this cover the stranger from the commercial smiled over his shoulder, facing him were a cast of the predominate video game characters of the last twenty years. Colorful robots and cute animals glared at the smiling wanderer. The caption read, “Will AntruA Change the Games We Play? No more Players only Characters: A Revolution of the Way We Experience Gaming.”
When Eddie got off the train he headed straight to the newsstand in the station. He searched the newsstand but couldn’t find the magazine that the man had been reading. Desperately he turned to the clerk working the counter. “Please tell me you have ‘Console Weekly’ in stock?”
“Yes’ir we have it right here,” the clerk pulled down a magazine from next to the counter, right in front. This was a ‘Console Weekly’ but its cover was displayed a new futuristic game with some space warrior fighting a hive mind for the survival of the human race.
“Is this the latest issue? I want the issue with about AntruA, you know the one with the wanderer on the cover?”
“I remember that article, good stuff. That AntruA looks dead, I can’t wait for it to release. But I’m sorry sir that issue came out like two weeks ago. We sold out of it out by now. We only get, like, four copies. Sorry sir.”
“Damn, what am I going to read now? Fine whatever, thanks.”
Eddie ran out of the station. The street was busy with people and cars flying around. No matter where you went it was always the same, people running to and fro, always late. For Eddie it was the same, he seemed to always just a little late, his schedule was just a little off. But not today. Today he was in no rush, but in no time he was walking up to the store. It looked identical to the branch that Edie worked at. He pulled out his tent, all the pieces were there, and however, he had not considered that he needed to stake the tent down. If he had brought some string he could have tied it to something, but he hadn’t. The wind whipped through the parking lot and if he didn’t keep at least a foot in the tent it would blow away. Of course this lesson came the hard way.
The tent deployed, Eddie had turned to pick up his bag to put in the tent. When he had turned the tent was rolling across the parking lot. He had to run to catch it. Finally he caught it and brought it back to the space he had picked out by the door. He put his bag in the tent hoping that the weight of the bag would hold the tent in place. But it didn’t. Once again Eddie went off chasing his wayward tent, this time with the added need to recover all his food and possessions. So he would have to stay in the tent the whole time, three days. Well at least he had brought his pee bottle. 
