Claire pulled into her driveway. Claire’s house was in a nice suburban neighborhood. It was a tan brick house that was two stories tall. Her parents slept downstairs, while her and her sister, Mel, slept upstairs. Claire opened the garage and drove the car in. Noticing her mom’s car, Claire realized that she wouldn’t be the only one home. That was strange, her mom should be picking up Mel from middle school. Claire parked her car in the crowded garage. Her dad was interested in multiple hobbies, which ended up taking over half the space in the garage. It wasn’t junk though, and some of the stuff was quite expensive. Claire’s favorite thing were the two pinball machines her dad kept well maintained and running in the corner. Gorgar was one of them. Supposedly it was the first talking pinball machine- whatever that meant. Claire stumbled over some poorly placed boxes filled with who knows what electrical equipment and reached the door to the house.

Walking into the kitchen via the garage, Claire was surprised with an enthusiastic hug from her younger sister Mel. Mel practically jumped on Claire, almost knocking her over. Eventually Mel let let go and began to talk.

“Guess who didn’t go to school today because they were sick?” Mel asked in a very jovial manner.

“Hmm that’s a hard one… let me think… was it you?” Claire replied with a half smile.

“Haha nope, I only pretended to be sick!” Mel said as she stuck out her tongue.

“Why would you do that? You know school is important.”

“Bullspit it is. I learn more browsing Wikipedia at home in an hour than I do going to school for a week! Have you noticed they teach us the same things again every year?”

“When was the constitution written?” Mel said in a deep voice trying to differentiate it from her own.

“1787, thanks you told me that last year, and the year before that, and the year before that and so on. It’s so much useless information that we will almost certainly never need. School should be catered to the individual students and their passions. Right now all it is is a glorified daycare. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Our education system is a joke.” Mel finished with her diatribe.

“Mmmhmm” Claire responded with a laugh. “Well you better not drop out, you can’t really function in this society without a high school degree. Heck, from what I understand, you can’t really function in this society without a college degree!”

“Great, I’ve got a lot of school left in front of me” Mel sighed. Mel was like a miniature version of Claire. The biggest physical difference was that Mel straightened her black hair while Claire did not.

Right then Claire’s mom, Susan entered the kitchen with some folded towels. She must have just finished the laundry. Susan had black curly hair. She had recently gotten a little overweight. There was a definite resemblance between her and her kids, especially the caramel colored eyes. “Mel what are you doing up! You should be in bed resting. You need to get better. You have a soccer game tomorrow! ” Susan said while putting the laundry away.

Mel started to pretend cough “Oh yes mother, I am so sorry, *cough* *cough*, I was just up getting some water for my sore throat.” Mel deserved an Oscar for that performance.

“Well get to bed! I just hope it’s nothing serious.” Susan said concerned.

“Yes mother *cough* *cough*” Mel finished coughing, headed for the hallway, turned around and while her mother looked the other way, gave a wink to Claire, dabbed, and moon-walked away to her room. Mel was the funny one in the family.

“And how was your day my lovely Claire?” Susan spoke tenderly.

“It was fine. I’m just tired.” Claire yawned.

“Are you still making all A’s?” Susan spoke as she still busied herself with chores in the kitchen

“Yes mommy dearest” Claire said sarcastically.

“Well, if you are tired, you should probably get some rest too!”

“Sounds good to me, I might take a nap. What’s for dinner?” Claire asked hungrily. She had only eaten a light lunch at school.

“Your favorite, salmon” Susan paused her chores for a bit to look at Claire and smile.

“Yaaaaas, thank you mama.”

“I thought you might like that.”

“Well I’m gonna go to my room. See you at dinner!” Claire said as she headed for the hallway and to her room.

“See you then sweetie!” Susan called after her.

Claire really didn’t know what her stay at home mom did all day. Did chores really take up that much time? The house was always clean, and Claire never really had to do any chores, so she wasn’t complaining. Maybe one day if she became a stay at home mom she would find out herself. As if. That was the last thing Claire wanted.

Claire finally entered the solace of her room and closed the door behind her. She was finally ready to relax after a long day at school. She put down her things, took off her jacket and sat down at her desk. She booted up her gaming laptop with the intention of finding a new game to play. Once the computer was done loading she clicked on her game hub and started to look for new games. While she was browsing random RPGs she received a message from the system.

Congratulations! You have been chosen to beta test the new game The Crimson Castle.

Come visit the one and only city of Dal! Where each day brings a new adventure! Explore the various stunning sections of the city! Converse, trade, and befriend the citizens of this bustling metropolis! Enter the wilderness where trouble and treasure awaits brave adventurers! Each player will receive a unique gaming experience personalized just for them!

Claire thought it read more like a brochure for a city than a game. What exactly was the storyline of the game? What was the titular Crimson Castle? Why had the message been to sent to her? Was it targeted advertising because she was browsing the RPG section? Was this game even multiplayer? Regardless, it was a free game and Claire was not short on time. The least she could do was try it out. Claire clicked the download link and the game began to be installed. It took less time than expected and an icon of a castle appeared on her desktop. She clicked on the icon with her mouse.

As the title screen began to fade in Claire couldn’t believe how realistic the graphics looked. The title screen showed, from a drone’s point a view, an elegant medieval looking castle. It was crimson colored and parts of it was covered in luscious green ivy. The drone was flying around the castle to reveal all of its sides. It was at least four stories tall. It was probably the prettiest castle Claire had ever seen. It looked like something that would be on the cover of a crappy romance novel or a “Top 10 places to see before you die” BuzzFeed article.

Suddenly, the Terms and Conditions popped up. Claire quickly scrolled through them and clicked accept. Who had time to read all of that? A new pop up appeared. At the left edge of the screen were two buttons. Start and Exit. No setting button? “That is kind of weird,” Claire thought. Claire pressed the start button and some customization for her game experience appeared. The first setting was difficulty. There were only four options. Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard. Under each option it gave a different year. Under the option Easy it displayed Year 50. Under the Year Normal it displayed Year 550. Under the year Hard it Displayed the year 450. Under Very hard it displayed the year 0. The game did not give any other information. Claire thought about the choice for a little bit and decided to go with year 550. She didn’t want to play an easy mode because, at that point, she would be better off just watching a movie. On the other hand, she didn’t want something hard either. She just wanted a casual experience where she could escape from the world and not feel too stressed. Once she clicked the normal difficulty she had another choice to make.

The game listed four classes she could choose to be: Tank, Ranger, Warrior, Cleric. This was going to be a harder choice. If you scrolled over the choices the game gave you a brief description of each class. “Tanks have a lot of hit points and therefore soak up the most damage from attacking monsters for their adventuring party. Rangers attack from a distance and have high agility. Warriors deal the most damage and fight on the frontlines. Clerics are a utility class that heal players and tend to be the most knowledgeable about the world.”

“Wow, this game is not giving me a lot to go on.” Claire thought suspiciously. Claire never really played Rangers, but for some reason she felt like it would be a good choice. Plus firing arrows had always appealed to Claire. Her last name, Woodward, did contain the word “wood” in it. She didn’t have much real life experience with archery, she had only held a bow one time in gym class back in elementary school, she remembered it being really fun at least. Based on this limited experience, Claire decided to pick the Ranger class.

As soon as Claire clicked on the Ranger class she knew something weird was happening. Her computer screen started to glitch out and make random noises and soon visible smoke was coming from the bottom of her laptop. “Holy shit” Claire said aloud as she backed away from the computer. “Did I download a virus or something?” Claire didn’t know what to do, she panicked and decided to try to turn her laptop off using the power button. As she pressed the power button her computer informed her that 2 programs were still running,

“Are you sure you want to shut down your computer?” “YES!” Claire slammed the enter key repeatedly until her laptop seemed to turn off. Claire heaved a sigh of relief and sat back down in her chair, and then her world faded to black.