Her heart pounded. Somewhere, in the back of her head, she remembered ego shooters and one of the reasons why they were banned was because the psychological impact of seeing realistic violence in CR was equivalent to being in an actual warzone.
That’s when Winter decided it was a dream.
It was random and stupid in the same way dreams tended to be. Zeph Newman, really? He was the least likely out of her class to be a terrorist or something. There were a few other people she’d pick before Zeph. And the whole… if-you-die-in-the-game-you-die-for-real thing. Plus, like, how did they get footage of Franklin’s house, especially from that angle? See? It was improbable the more you thought about it, like a dream.
Winter laughed a bit, tears rolling down her face as the blood dripped down the walls.
She continued to laugh as she fell unconscious.
Winter still considered the possibility of it being a dream when she woke up.
She pinched herself. She clasped her nose. She looked at her hands to see if they changed. She tried to put her finger through her palm.
All of these were reality checks. Someone once explained to her that if you want to figure out if you were dreaming, you do all these things and more. Some people in her Discord servers talked about how sometimes people forget they’re logged into CR, particularly in extremely realistic servers, and it causes mental health stuff. So, some of these tactics worked sometimes if you feel you are at risk of that happening, since some servers don’t account for certain outcomes.
She tried one more thing.
Winter sat down in the middle of the empty classroom, staring at the door.
If this was a dream, she could be able to control it.
Winter tried to will a giant cybernetic rabbit with guns on its back into existence. She would be able to ride it and then mow down her classmates. If it happened even slightly, it’d mean she was having a weird lucid dream and no one was fucking dead.
She stared in front of herself, willing that rabbit to come in and prove everything as fake. It’d come through the classroom door, bounding along.
Five minutes passed.
Ten minutes passed.
Fifteen minutes passed.
And no rabbit.
Winter laughed again. It came out bitter.
“Fucking Zeph…”
You’d think that getting a Pac-Man costume would prove that this was a dream. But no. This was some bullshit.
Winter stood up. She took the gun out of her denim bag with the geometric Memphis prints. She slung the bag over her shoulder.
Oh, and she made sure to wipe her face a bit and put on the sunglasses that she had in her pocket. She didn’t want anyone to see her eyes right now.
TIP: This build is still in development, so you may see some bugs. Please be mindful and report any you see!