“Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest way yet discovered to conquer fear” -Dale Carnegie-

  Once again we return to the past, three years before my “accident”

  “Dang Miss Lena, you didn’t have to crush my pride so thoroughly. I’ve always thought that any room I walked into, there was a good possibility I was the smartest in it, but I feel like a caveman compared to you. Who knew losing in Scrabble could be so crushing?” I said, as I was stepping through her front door onto her porch, ready to make my back home.

  “Oh, dear, you flatter me too much. I think that if you had as much time on my hands as I do, you would be just as good, if not better. But I’ll tell you what’ she said looking at me with what I thought was a hopeful look, ‘since you lost so completely at my favorite game, maybe next time I get a delivery from your father you can bring a game you think you’re the best at, and I’ll give you a chance to regain your honor.”

  I started trying to think of a game that didn’t involve luck, like most board games.

  “Hmm, video games are definitely after her time, so I doubt she even knows how to play, let alone be super good at it. However, if that was my choice, I don’t even know if she has a T.V capable of connecting to the console, or any actual interest. Old people tend to find video games boring or confusing. You know what, I’ll just ask her,”

  “Hey, Miss Lena, I’ve got an idea. Stop me if you have no idea what I’m talking about, but there is this game, not a board game, that I think you’d like, and I should whoop you in. It’s kind of like watching a movie, except you’re controlling the character. You can fight dragons, hunt animals, even cast magic spells, all from the comfort of your own living room.” She didn’t stop me so I assumed she at least could infer what kind of game I was talking about from context clues.

  “Well, what would we need to play this "movie " game of yours? I assume we would at least need my television, but I can’t gather anything else from your brief explanation,” she replied.

  “People actually call them video games, but yeah, we would need to use your T.V. But we also need a couple other things, which I have obviously, or I wouldn’t have even brought it up. We need something called a console, which can read all the code on the disk. It decides anything and everything we can do, like fighting, looting, crafting, even where we can and can’t go,” I explained as simply as I could.

  “Well, that sounds simple enough, and I’m a quick learner, so I suppose anything I can’t infer right away, you can teach me. I should be able to pick it up fairly quickly. Even if this body of mine is on its way out, my mind is still sharp as an arrow, as you could probably tell from earlier,” she replied, smiling.

  “Please don’t remind me. Alright, sounds like a plan. And even if your T.V won’t connect to the console, we can play something else of yours that you’ll no doubt crush me in. Just make the humiliation worth it with those scrumptious chocolate chip cookies of yours, and you’ll have a gaming buddy for life. Seriously, what’s your secret ingredient? Crack?” I said, grinning widely.

  “Cause if it is, maybe them crackheads were right all along.’

  Miss Lena blew air through her pursed lips in kind of ironic laugh. “As if. Now, I would send you home with some of my cookies, but we ate them all between us,’ she paused to stare at me with a look that I knew said ‘mostly you, fatass, ’See you in a couple of days most likely, my brother set it up so I would get deliveries three times a week.”

  “He really does sound like a good man, Miss Lena.”

  She chuckled sadly at that. “A good man, I’m not sure that many would describe him that way. But of brothers, he was the best.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just said, “I did have a good evening with you Miss Lena, but I really do have to get going. If I don’t make it home before dark, my dad will definitely be worried sick.” starting to step off of the porch.

  “Well then I guess you had better hurry than, shouldn’t you. And please Cade, we aren’t strangers anymore. You can call me Lena.”

  I smiled slightly at that, “Okay Lena, see you in a couple days probably.

  2 Days Later

  I was in Miss Lena's living room, sitting down criss-cross in front of her T.V that had to be from the Paleolithic Era. “Yeah, Miss Lena, I’m not seeing anywhere to plug in the HDMI cable, Man, I was so looking forward to some schadenfreude (A.N to take pleasure in witnessing another's pain) of my own.”

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  “Ah, you’ve been doing a little reading since I creamed you in Scrabble, and it’s Lena, remember?” she replied wittily

  “Lena,’ I corrected myself, ‘I’ll have you know that was the final word in the eighth grade spelling bee, which I absolutely dominated by the way. What are we gonna do though? Please tell me you have something else to play besides Scrabble, or I might just eat your cookies and run, before I need therapy.”

  “Wait just a moment. You jogged my memory that night a couple of days ago, and I went searching in my attic, just in case the technology you brought wasn’t compatible with my old-fashioned style of living. One of my brothers, many years ago, left me something that sounded quite similar to this console that you mentioned.” Lena replied, looking lost in past memories of her brother.

  “Well, if it was a bunch of years ago, it was probably one of the original consoles, like a Sega Genesis or an Atari. Nowhere near as fun as modern video games, but still a blast. I haven’t played any retro games that much, so we should be on an even playing field,” I said, trying to jog her back to the present.

  Her eyes focused back onto mine. “Hmm, I don’t think so. He said it was one of a kind, his own invention. He called it the Autonomous Total Immersion Integrated Virtual Reality System. Now, I know what each of those words mean separately, but I hadn’t the slightest inkling what they might mean together, until you described that console and those "video" games. He said it would be a way to escape from my worries to a world only limited by my imagination.”

  “That sounds like the Virtual Reality technology that just came out a few years ago. If total immersion means what I think it is, your brother’s technology could be light years ahead of his time. But why wouldn’t he release it to the public? He could have made billions off of it at least, knowing people today,”

  “My brother never created something that had only one purpose. Said it was lazy, inefficient, and the hallmark of an amateur. Everything my brother ever created had the potential for great good in the right hands, but in the wrong…” I saw where she was going with that.

  “And you trust me enough already to share something like that with me?” I asked, touched.

  “I’ve always had a knack for judging someone’s character quickly. After all, I have lots of expensive, easily-concealable valuables unprotected around this house. Of course I know where everything is at, and not a thing was touched. Many grown men wouldn’t have been able to resist that temptation. Also, you were so very kind to an old woman in desperate need of company. So, let's see if I can channel my youth again and whoop your butt once more. I have the device right here next to me.

  I looked next to where she was sitting, where on the end-table next to her recliner, sat a…

  “Is that a Roomba?”

  She reached over to the circular silver metal thing (that apparently wasn’t a Roomba), grabbed it carefully with both hand, and placed it down onto the carpet in front of her. I stood up from where I was examining the T.V, walked over, and sat down again to get a closer look at the device.

  I could see silver words etched around the rim of the hopefully not hyped-up VR system.

  I could read “Autonomous Total Immersion Integrated Virtual Reality System H”

  I could also see what looked to be a finger-print scanner shaped like a thumb-print directly in the center on top of the device. There didn’t look to be any ports to charge it or even any to connect cables, so I hoped it really was “Autonomous” like it said.

  “If I’m correct in my thinking, you place your thumb right here, and then I guess the device does something to create an audio/visual, maybe even tactile, hallucination effect in your mind, seeing as there is no other obvious equipment to connect to this VR world."

  I looked up from the device towards Lena. “This thing is probably going to mess with our minds. Crazy I even just said that sentence. How sure are you this isn’t going to turn our grey matter into bacon?”

  “I have absolute faith in my brother's inventions. They always worked exactly as he intended them to. Much to the chagrin of my father, I might add.”

  “Well, alright then,’ I said, making up my mind to risk it. ‘If we die, you’re making me soooo many cookies in the afterlife.”

  “Deal,” she said, smiling widely. She then reached down and placed her thumb on what I suspected to be a fingerprint scanner. Right away I could see a golden light that pulsed from the top to the bottom of the sensor, and she pulled her thumb away. Next I saw her eyes go vacant, like she was looking somewhere a million miles away.

  I waited about a minute. I was no dummy. If it hadn’t fried this old lady’s brain by now, it was most likely working safely. I reached down to put my thumb on the sensor, exactly the same way she had, but this time, instead of a golden pulse, there was a red one.

  “Does that mean it didn’t work? Can only one person be bound to the device?”

  I was snapped out of my thoughts a second later by my vision going completely black, and then the sensation of free-falling through the air completely took my thoughts over.

  “Oooh fuck, I hope the first thing I get to do isn’t vomit”

  What I saw when I came to was Lena’s smiling face, except instead of having wispy, white hair, she had a thick mane of auburn locks. My eyes continued downwards, then I think I blacked out for a few seconds.

  When I had enough air in my lungs, I called out in a shaky voice. “Lena, wh- why, are you naked?”

  “Take a look at yourself, sport.”

  There was a sinking feeling in my gut.

  I slowly let my gaze travel towards my own body, not even aware that I had been staring at her like a pervert.

  “Oh, fuck me!”