Life Is a Video Game On A Loop

Vinod woke up to a familiar but strange face staring at him. The Female in front of him reminded him of someone back home. He shook his head to clear the fogginess. He looked around - it was definitely not his room or his home. He seemed to be on some kind of a moving object made of metal with wheels that needed oiling badly and, surprise, surprise - was running on electricity. Maybe he was in the museum where they kept such locomotives. But then, none of them was in working condition as electricity was non-existent not only on his planet but their entire galaxy.

That thought made him sit up. He was wide awake now and knew he was not home. The girl in front of him was talking to him in some strange language. And translator in his brain did not translate automatically. That was also weird - it looked like somebody did a hard reboot of his bionic systems. He restarted the systems and waited for the translator to kick in - it scanned all the languages for a match and found one from an old language used on planet earth - UK, English.

"Are you ok? Would you like some water?" the Female asked him. He nodded as his brain translator booted up. While she went to do just that - he scanned his surroundings. He was on planet Earth in what they called a train with no memory of how he got here. And to top it all, his systems had a hard reboot which is supposed to be fatal. Maybe this was the afterlife for stubborn-defiant people like him.

The Female came back with an old chipped mug. His hands automatically sanitized the water as he drank it. She sat next to him and said, 'My name is Arya. I found you lying on the floor as if somebody had just dropped you here. Are you ok? Did you fall? I have never seen you on before - and given how few of us are left, that is surprising. "

Vinod replied in English - his receptors having picked up the language. "My name is Vinod. I must have fainted or something and hit my head as everything is very foggy" Arya nodded sympathetically and said, 'I understand. It is happening a lot nowadays. And with the train control system malfunctioning, we will all die soon anyways.'

Vinod choked on water. He was a train that was going to kill him. He needed to get home, and for that, he will have to get to the engine room to see if he could gather enough kinetic energy to beam him back home. Arya stood up and said, 'Well, I am glad you are feeling better. I was going to pay Sachin, our remaining engine driver, a visit. He has been feeling depressed lately after his only sister jumped off the train - unable to handle this cooped up life.'

Vinod also stood up and said, 'Well, I will also come with you. Maybe I can look at the engine and see if I can help.' She looked at him and said, 'Well, it won't hurt as all our engine drivers have succumbed to mysterious diseases in the last six months, and Sachin is our sole hope.'

Then she stopped, looked at him, and said, 'How can you help? I thought we had made an inventory list of all skilled people.' Vinod came up with an answer as if lying was a natural habit, 'I learned it on my own after the list was made.' Arya nodded and started walking towards the engine. As they moved from one compartment to the other - Vinod started putting together what happened to humanity on Earth based on the images on the walls.

Earth's population got wiped off due to COVID, a string of mutant viruses and climate change disasters. And surviving humans had secluded themselves on trains which they had made into a livable habitat. And he was on a tube in the Circle line in London marked in yellow on the maps.

They reached the engine room - only to find the control panel was open with a timer for 30 minutes. And a note taped next to it. Arya read the note and collapsed right there. Vinod read the note aloud, - 'I am sorry. I do not think humanity is meant to survive; hence I have rigged the train to derail on a timer. And I will join my sister and end this abomination called life for all of us.'

Great - he reached the engine only to find out it was set to destroy itself in 25 minutes. He turned his bionic brain on to scan the systems - the code was archaic, but his brain had the download in archives. As his brain ran through the code, he realized that his kind back home used a similar logic, just a different programming language. The good news was he could fix it - the bad news was this is where he was always blocked.

He struck his head with his hand - it must be a human gesture on Earth. He recalled why Arya was so familiar - she eerily resembled his tutor back home, who was helping him overcome his emotional block through coding. He may be on a different planet, but he still could not run away from his inner demons.

The timer was now showing 20 minutes.

"You know, there is a time for daydreaming, and this is not it.", said Arya with hands on her waist and one eyebrow raised. She was his tutor, alright.

And he snapped back into his old behaviour pattern and retorted, 'Death is very similar to daydreaming - so I was practising.'

Arya bit her lip, took a deep breath and said evenly, 'I am not going to engage in a verbal sparring exercise with you a few minutes before we are all going to die.'

That sobered him a bit. He pointed to the screen and said, 'I can try, but unfortunately, I am not the genius like my dad was. I will never measure up to his standards.'

Arya scoffed and said, 'As per Byron Katie, the spiritual teacher says - there are three kinds of business - mine, yours and God's. Whose business is it that your dad was a genius?'

'My dad', replied Vinod.

Arya asked, 'And whose business is it to fix the code on the screen in front of you?'

'Mine', said Vinod. And with that admission came the realization that he had minded his dad's business all his life. When in reality, his dad being a genius, had nothing to do with him. He rolled up his sleeves and started coding to fix the virus that Sachin had introduced. The timer was now showing 10 minutes.

If Arya was nervous, she did not show it - she was meditating and sending him some good vibes that this emotional brain picked up. With 1 minute on the timer, he was ready to run the program. If he pressed the CTRL + R - the program would run, and hopefully, it would give humanity on Earth a chance to survive, and the train's revival will release enough energy to transport him back home.

He pressed CTRL + R.

'Will you stop playing the video game and eat your dinner?' Baby Universe heard his mother calling him for the nth time. He had tried to mix players from different planets in the new video game, and the new premise was very interesting. It showed promise. But he did not want to incur his mom's wrath - she was the UNIVERSE/GOD/CONSCIOUSNESS after all. So he closed his game and went to have dinner.