gothicshark

So if anyone was following my other stories, all the ones I linked to this story will eventually be added to this as small side chapters and background behind people and events. So that means some of the party members are going to be characters I made prior but couldn't get to a good meaty adventure, oddly the plan I have here makes it much easier to have a meaty adventure, eventually, there will be 5 party members. Rebecca is the Paladin Tank, Lil'Dude the Rogue, Annie Ranged DPS, (?)Healer, (?)DPS.

In the year 1992, a nerdy being who looked somewhat like a famous Nerd character from a famous Nerd movie was sitting in a room with hundreds of flat-screen computer monitors attached to Server racks, he was sitting at a small fold up desk with a small fold-up chair, he sat with one of the monitors pulled out and was using a wireless keyboard and mouse, none of the computer hardware was things that would exist for another 40 years. He was typing in a computer code, although the coding language and written base language he typed in were nothing ever seen by anything that could be considered human, the structure of what he was typing was clearly a computer programming language.

Once he was finished typing, he tested the lines of code, it took him thirty minutes to write the code, and almost three days to fix all the bugs that popped up with his code, he was a bit upset that one of the bugs his lines of code created was a billionaire running for president, fortunately, he dropped out of the presidential running once the bug was fixed. He sure hoped this bug was fixed, that nation was too important for the simulation for a billionaire to become the president. That could easily upset the data in ways too unpredictable. It reminded him of a similar update bug around sixty years prior, which caused a similar issue, fortunately, that billionaire was good for the simulation, but this other guy would have caused issues.

Sadly, this wasn’t the last time this bug would show itself, but that is irrelevant to the story.

Once he was sure all the bugs had been fixed, and all the bugs created by fixes were also fixed, he sat back sighed a sigh of relief. “Well, that should alert me if anyone tries to use Admin Code on the internet.” He was worried because the base code of all realities was too similar to this world’s computer code, he had to be sure no one would use the equivalent of an SQL injection. Being a system admin was sometimes difficult to work, and he had to ensure that the simulations ran without any issues.

They say the greatest discoveries are usually accidents.

I was sitting at my desk. I was bored. It had been almost a year of the Covid pandemic, and even though the vaccine had been made, it was too little too late for the majority of Americans, sure the new President was actually doing his Job, but everything was still broken, and people still had to remain isolated and indoors.

I had decided to get into a metaphorical debate on the Gaming forums. The forums were a fansite created for fans of that once most popular MMO made in Irvine California, you know the one with Humans, Orcs, and such.

Because the game, well gaming in general really just started to become boring for me. I had been playing video games since I was a preteen in the 70s, I had been playing RPGs, MuDs, Platformers, action RPGs, D&D, Table-Top RPGS, and strategy games for all of my adult life. My favorite game setting though was the wild west, my favorite tabletop-game was Deadlands, my favorite CCG is the long lost and forgotten Doomtown, my favorite video game series is the Red Dead series by Rock Star Games, I do love a good Spaghetti Western as well, sadly Western-themed games come out once every 7 years, so I’m stuck playing other types of games, in D&D and Fantasy RPGs I like playing Ranger Type characters with Firearms. So, trolling had become an art for me, and a way to keep playing games in my forced retirement.

Sadly, due to injury, I was no longer able to work in my profession, so I took both the disability and early retirement since I qualified with thirty years of non-stop work for the same company. I technically had a nice life and a decent income, but I was now fully trapped indoors unable to distract myself with work. I had hoped being able to truly dedicate time to gaming would be enough, but sadly it didn’t work.

Trolling the web forums for the game I had played for the last sixteen years became my way to cope with my depression and my other internal issues, which I never had to face until I had nothing physical, I could do.

My latest trolling endeavor was going to be a real head screw. A head screw being something which would mess with people, basically, the smarter you are the more troubling it would be, head screws are something I like coming up with, but they are never easy.  Because you have to ensure it traps smart people after all dumb people can be mind-screwed with simple riddles, but smart people have to be forced into a paradox.

I realized a simple proof of “Simulation Theory”. Simulation theory is the idea that reality is an advanced digital construct.  My proof for it, was simple, and something I realized the night before. As this is my journal, and long after the fact, I cannot inform you of the specifics. Sadly, someone decided that knowledge was too dangerous. 

I figured using this simple proof was a great way to troll the MMO Forums. As I sat reviewing what I was going to post, I was glad that it was such a great mind screw. I was kind of hoping for at least eight to ten hours of irresponsible trolling, with it. It was a Sunday after all.

It didn’t dawn on me that I had accidentally proved Simulation theory, with something simple that anyone could do. I reached to hit the “submit” button and passed out.

The Server Stack afterlife.

I found myself standing in an off-white room facing a nerdy dude. He looked like Anthony Edwards's character Gilbert from the Revenge of the Nerds to include glasses and a pocket-protector. The room was filled with computer monitors and server racks.

“Um, huh?!?” I stammered.

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that, I had to delete your life to save the simulation.” ‘Gilbert’ said.

I stared at him a bit confused, and said “What? Who? Where? How?”

He chuckled, “What, well you are dead. Who? Well, I like your idea of Gilbert so that works, I’m a System Admin monitoring a large number of simulated realities including yours. Where, well this is a simulation of my primary function, made in such a way that you can easily understand it. How? Well, that is simple, I ended your life, destroyed your computer, shut down the internet, and took that website offline for a week. And for your forgotten ‘Why?’ because your post would have ruined that simulation, and it would have caused us to take it offline. So, in order to save it and allow it to continue, we removed you and your post from that server. We also removed the knowledge of how to test for a simulated reality the way you came up with it. We can’t allow that data to remain in any reality. At the same time, I don’t want to punish your creativity, and well you’re a person someone like me can respect.”

“Ah, so are you god? Or an angel? What religion was right?” I asked, I mean if this wasn’t a dream and this was happening, well why not ask, I mean I’m actually an Atheist Agnostic, so I was a bit curious but somewhat doubtful.

“haha, no, none of the above, I’m just a System Admin, although this body is an Avatar, as my existence is nothing like what you could understand, my kind exist in a state beyond the understanding of four-dimensional beings like humans. Also, your religions from your birth reality are constructs by humans of your reality. However, Buddhism would possibly be closest to the truth. After all, we recycle all soul data, including humans, animals, plants, and gods.” The System Admin said.

I looked at him my forehead creased, “Gods are real, and you recycle their souls?”

“Haha, yah, Gods are people like you, who surpass normal existence and gain a little bit of a user upgrade. However, in your place, your soul had done this a few times in the last few thousand years. I’m really glad you wanted to troll the internet instead of gain control of your system authority, your soul did that the last time.” He smirked.

“WAAAT? Who was I?” I gasped, this was a bit overwhelming, and yet I needed more info dumped.

“Oh, yah, opps, sorry, well I guess it can’t hurt now. Let’s see, in the last twenty thousand years, you were several gods before we removed you and placed you back in the reincarnation cycle, but no one was forward-thinking to pull you here, and delete your user access. But as for names, well they were deleted from your record.” He replied.

“Oh, too bad, so what now?” I asked.

“Well since I removed the troubling knowledge that allowed your soul to bypass normal system controls, and because I don’t want to punish you, I thought I should send you to a fun reality. Well, it’s actually one of the RPG like realities that my kind made so we could have fun playing in the 4D life. And I recently had to transfer a bunch of new souls from another Earth Simulation to it, Well, oh, yeah, don’t worry when my kind go there, we forget what we are so as to enjoy a mundane life.” He spoke.

“RPG Reality, like D&D, Video games, and Web Novels?” I asked.

“Sort of, I guess you could say it’s like a homebrew game of D&D.” He replied.

“Oh. I see. So, will I be born as a child, as myself, or as a game avatar?” I asked.

“Ah, yah, well as I said, it’s not punishment, and I do feel bad I had to kill you to delete the troubling data you had saved in your soul. So, I figure I would make the new life one you would enjoy.” He walked over to one of the server racks, and pulled out a Monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and a folding desk and chair, and started to click and type. “So, let’s see, ah, yes perfect, you’ll love this, although starting at level one will be a bit of a task, so I’ll unlock a few things to make it so you can pull this off...”

“Umm?” I asked.

He kept clanking away at the computer I was trying to look and watch what he was doing but I couldn’t move my body to see the monitor.   “Ok, enjoy”

Gilberts Point of View

Sitting and relaxing, doing the things multidimensional beings do, Gilbert was taking a break. As he sat down, he popped a can of soda, well it looked like a soda from a human perspective, but for his type of existence, it was a refreshing collection of data which made him refreshed and happy. So basically, a soda. His smartphone started to vibrate, he grabbed it out of his pants pocket and hit the notification popup.

 “Well [Bleep Bleep Bleep] Earth 146531219 θ, good thing I set this up in the 90s. Let’s see who I caught in the buffer.

He walked into his Server room, and sealed the entryway from view, he then used his smartphone to review the person's data, before talking to them.

After walking up to where the human would spawn in his server room, he opened his smartphone and read.

(Note Translated from   to English)

Humm, that’s bad. Not much I can do, but I can set up safeguards. Let’s see, set him to immobile, and set him to intangible. Ok, Let’s see this person.

He hit a button and a circle of light appeared in the room and a slightly overweight average looking human male with a bald head appeared.

They looked at me and stammered “Um, huh?!?”

I had a nervous laugh and say hello, didn’t want the original memories to come back, and if they did, I didn’t want them to have a bad impression of me “Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” ahh dammed why am I being so nervous, “I had to delete your life to save the simulation.” Hopefully, that will appease their soul if their memory ever comes back.

Haha, wow, they think I look like Anthony Edwards character Gilbert. And now he’s asking the 5Y’s well four of them anyway.

I proceeded to explain what I was allowed to, and no way was I going to admit to them I Know they were Lucifer, that is a good way to trigger their memories, try and hint they were no one special as a deity.

I walked over to our new gaming world server, this one has recently been used to save a different simulation, that other System Admin really had a ton of work transferring souls to it. I pulled out my folding desk, chair, keyboard, and mouse, then pulled that world's monitor over the table so I could add them to this server.   The memory loss sadly can come back if they are reborn, hell under all the right circumstances they could remember their first life fully, that is something that must be avoided.

“So,” I said while linking the keyboard and mouse.

Once I added them to the server while I was talking to them, I started to change things. First not a rebirth, that was too random, and their memory locks can be opened. So, let’s see, something immortal, enjoyable, but not a god, also something not as free to move, don’t need them wandering around and getting lost again.

“Let’s see” what I can use.  As I scrolled the list of races refined by my parameters. ”ah” Sadly, the list wasn’t long, but Dungeon soul was there “yes perfect” I think this will work, and if they regain their memories they won’t feel like it’s a punishment “you’ll love this”, however, I have to reset their skills a bit, and their level, “although starting at level one will be a bit of a task” let’s see if I can make it so they will be happy anyway, set their spawn location as far as I can from any actual dangers, but still with a maximum of resources, this way they won’t have lingering resentment to me.

Rebirth

I thought it was just a strange dream until I woke up.

When I woke, I found my vision to be strange, my field of vision was top-down like in an RPG or Strategy game, what I saw was a tiny cavern with a giant red crystal on a pedestal. “Ah, fuck” I said out loud. It seems I was reincarnated as a dungeon; I wonder what the tropes will be in my new life.

Well ok then, status.

‘Cool’ I thought, although seeing that all dungeons were female kind of made me feel happy for some reason.

I started learning how to make a dungeon floor and quickly found that I could make a 10 square mile area, it had to start with a temperate grassland area, as that was apparently what was found just outside my dungeon door. Eventually, I realized I could make the ultimate western shooter, I wanted to make Deadlands the game into a dungeon, but first I would make a wild west style prairie with buffalo, and villains from the wild west, I wonder can I use humans as dungeon monsters. After reviewing the rules, it seems that mortal races are restricted from being dungeon monsters until after level 6 where I can have any mortal race as dungeon defenders, but it seems to use these creatures because they have souls and free will, and I have to provide them with everything they need for their civilization. I added a western prairie style town filled with cowboy-like level 1 bandits. Of course, the effect was ruined because they had to be a humanoid without free will, so I used undead for the first level. Once I filled out the dungeon monsters in the rest of the area, mostly Buffalo and blink dogs. I then got a series of popups.

Well, fun, so No Kill sounds cool, I’m not evil so no need for the bodies to hit the floor ‘set rules.’ I then made the choice of no Kill. Which caused a new prompt.  

Well, people who die will not die but will end up losing everything they gained in the dungeon. That seems fair.

So, death rules set…

Then I go two more pop-ups, one was to pick my dungeon Raid Boss, I picked an ancient red dragon. It was the other pop up which caused me to spend almost a day working on it.