Information Sharing

The concept of negative levels was a new one to the Gamer. He wanted to spend some time pondering about it, but now that he was awake again, he needed to tell and show the women as much as he possibly could from his vision while it was still fresh in his memory. A good memory was important for the types of games he enjoyed; it was one of the things he prided himself on. Still, there is a difference between memorizing environments in a game and memorizing events he experienced himself, especially so many things happening in such a short time frame.

When he tried to move, phantom pain surged all over his body, mimicking all the injuries he’d received in the vision. He was wincing with his left eye due to the searing pain that assaulted it. It was odd since he had stared at the notifications before him for at least a minute, but he felt normal. Yet now that he started trying to move, most of his body ached. He knew the feelings weren’t real, since he would be dead. Fighting through the phantom pain, he **** himself upright.

His movements alerted the technomancer of his awakening. “John, you’re awake!” yelled Reimi as she rushed over to tightly hug his head. “I was so worried when you started wailing in pain.”

The Gamer’s left eye was staring at the tear-stained face of the woman trapping him in her bosom. Besides his family and Meadow, he had never seen anyone else genuinely concerned for him. It was a welcome experience, especially after what he had just gone through. A world devoid of almost everything he could think of except sound was replaced with the reality he was adapting to, a beautiful woman with a lingering smell of sex and floating messages. ‘I am glad that I'm still alive.’ A warm feeling began to spread in his chest as a smile formed on his face.

“John, are you alright? Can you explain what exactly happened, especially those strange notifications? You have been **** for two hours, we were worried. Especially Reimi, as I’m sure you can tell. You must have given her a good dicking last night because she seems practically obsessed with you,” teased Jasmine, but her tone sounded genuinely concerned.

He would have looked around for her, but the technomancer still had his head firmly pressed against her chest. “Uh, Reimi, can you release my head? As much as I love being smothered by your breasts, it’s a bit hard to speak face-deep in them.”

The girl released her grip on him and he was able to move away from the pillowy prison that enveloped his head. “Oh, sorry about that, John. I didn’t mean to be so clingy.” She had a nervous smile and her face was a deep crimson. She backed away a bit to give him some more space.

The pain in his eye was the most bothering, so he was gently rubbing it in an attempt to alleviate the throbbing sensation. This did confirm that the pain was indeed in his head, as the rubbing caused no reaction. It didn’t hurt more or less and he could still feel it with his fingers, so he knew it was still there. The Gamer opened his sore eye with trepidation, worried about what things he might see because of the skill that was applied to it. He didn’t notice anything unusual, but given the warning he received, he was sure there was more to it. “Before I begin, is there anything different about my eye? The skill I acquired was to my left eye.”

“Nothing looks different about it, John, just a bit red, probably from your rubbing. I’ll ask again, are you alright?” Jasmine repeated her question; she sounded more compassionate as she did.

“I’m alright now, I think.” He paused, shaking his head, his voice quivering a bit as he continued. “That vision was way more detailed, but it was also bordering on a nightmare. I saw everything through the kidnappers' eyes. No, not saw,” he paused again to think of a better term, “I experienced everything through his eyes. Everything he felt, I felt as if I were him, his feelings, sadistic desires, the **** at Jasmine’s hands, all ending with my own blade essentially killing me.” Thinking about the endless darkness and the following conversation made his head start to feel hazy again, so he shook it off. “After that, I’ll get into it later. For now, I need to go into detail and show what I saw while it’s still fresh in my mind. I have a very strong lead on where Meadow is.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, John,” responded Reimi, giving his hand a caring squeeze. “I know how important all this has been, so start showing us when you’re ready, I’ll record everything.”

At her prompt, he activated the projection skill, in a hurry to share what he saw. The skill didn’t work as he imagined. Instead of coming out like a seamless movie, the scenes from his vision played out like a slideshow on the wall. As the images went by, he did his best to explain everything he’d heard. He continued sifting through image after image of everything he saw starting from the warehouse, and while doing that he also relayed everything he heard. More than ten minutes had gone by and so did sixty of his MP. He was showing the images from the fight in the alleyway. It finally reached when his dagger ended the life of the kidnapper, and he stopped there, unsure how the eye worked and not eager to see that empty void again.

When he was done, the two women asked him a bunch of follow-up questions. Reimi had a few images on the television that were the best at narrowing the potential location of the lab from his vision.

While the technomancer worked on that task, John opened his menu hoping to find some information on negative level skills. The information he found compared them to a curse. Saying skills with a negative level were ones he had no control over, but the effects of them can be controlled when the skill level becomes positive. The problem was that there was no information on how to level up a skill he had zero control over.

“Are you going to explain that to us already?” asked Jasmine looking at the Gamer’s menu.

To her question, the Gamer rubbed his eye that still felt sore. “It’s not really something I want to remember, but I’ll explain anyway,” he said with a sigh. “When I killed him in the vision,” John gestured to the man on the table, “I experienced **** from his perspective. To me, it felt... I don’t know how to explain it, other than calling it ****. I had barely any concept of anything, I only focused on what I’d learned from the vision hoping that the skill would eventually run its course and I could relay the information to you all. As time passed it felt like, I was losing my sense of self, I thought I was already dead.”

The technomancer interrupted with a look of sadness. “Gaia, I’m sorry for suggesting you to attempt this at all. We should have done some more research. No matter how rare the skill is, there should be some more information on this sort of thing. If nothing else, we could have paid a hefty fee to ask another psychometer about why they don’t like using their ability on corpses.” Reimi hugged him after apologizing. “The achievement said you had a conversation with ****. The reward was your life. What was that about?”

“Yea, I was getting to that,” he said, scratching his head awkwardly. A habit of his whenever he felt uncomfortable. ”So, **** kind of showed up. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel its presence. Apparently, Gaia sent it, to help me out. I was given a choice of rewinding time and losing the ability to use Psychometry on corpses or gain the Eye of **** which would somehow prevent my soul from wandering away from my body. I don’t really understand it, but I saw too much according to ****. If it didn’t intervene, my body could have become an empty vessel as my soul moves onto the afterlife.”

“And you being the one track minded person you are, decided to keep the unknown consequences when offered a do over. I doubt you even fully understand the gravity of that offer. Gaia frowns on time travel. It’s not banned by her, but there isn’t a single record of any being successfully traveling back in time. There have been plenty who claimed to have developed the ability to do so. Only to never be heard from again after their supposed departure. Yet you gave that up for puppy love. It’s kind of sweet, actually. Meadow is a lucky girl to have someone so head over heels in love with her.”

Jasmine’s words caused the Gamer to blush. He didn’t know how big of a deal rewinding time was, but he was aware that what was offered wasn’t something common. For Meadow, he was willing to give up the reward of erasing his mistake, plus if he did choose the first option, he wouldn’t even have known about what Gaia did for him. For the first time ever, he said the words he felt for the girl he cherished with confidence.

[Author's note: I will be taking a few weeks off, while I move and start a new job.]