Have the entirety of the old My Own Reality draft that I ended up scrapping and rewriting from the very beginning.

This thing dates back to July 28, 2018 as the last time it was ever edited. It would sit around collecting dust until June of this year, when I'd ultimately toss out everything I'd written and start over from scratch.

The story below is how it appears directly copied from the Microsoft Word document. Though, for some reason, doing that also seems to place some scattered links to making a new blog post for some reason. Either way, I'm just gonna post this thing verbatim.

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My Own Reality

Everything seemed so real. The people, the places, the experiences, all nothing more than a simulation. With the abrupt severing of a single connection, it all comes crumbling down. Now, it's up to Lisa Garnet to find her way back, and along the way remember who she is... and who she was.

Edited by EverfreePony, RQK, Undyne Devotion, and DeejayShuffle.

1 — Wake up. (Draft 2.3)

Bright rays of sunlight flooded through the window as a cheerful voice pierced through Rebecca Waterman’s shell of blankets.

“C’mon, sis!” Caleb yelled as he pounced on his older sister, “Wake up! Mom left your breakfast on the table, like, aaaaaaaan…. hour ago!”

Rebecca groaned, waving a groggy hand in the air. “Go away, Caleb.” She turned in her bed, drawing the blankets even closer. “Just lemme sleep a bit longer, will you?”

A faint buzz rattled on the girl’s desk. Propping herself up by an arm, Rebecca reached for her phone, yawning all the while.

“Seriously?” Caleb exclaimed as he grabbed his sister’s hand, “I tell you to wake up and you just tell me to go, but when your phone gets your attention, you just go full-throttle!” He folded his arms and made a face. “Stupid girls and their girly friends…” He murmured, leaning against the cluttered desk.

Rebecca idly tapped on her phone, squinting in sunlight reflecting off the glossy screen. “Hm?” She hummed, glancing to Caleb, “You were saying something?”

Caleb shook his head. “Uuuuuuuuuuuuu— u…”

“Caleb?” Rebecca frowned, staring at her brother. “You alright?”

“...uuuuuuh, no?” Caleb finished, shooting a glare in return. “I wasn’t saying anything...”

“I was asking if you were alright.”

Caleb snorted. “Of course I am,” he snapped, “why wouldn’t I?”

“N...nevermind.” the girl stuttered. She turned away from her brother, returning her attention to her phone.

Another pause. Rebecca glanced up from her phone, the device flickering in and out of existence in her hand. Shaking her head, she returned to idly tapping on the screen. “Oh,” she sat upright in her bed, now fully awake. “looks like Julie wants to go to the movies again after she’s done babysitting for the neighbors.” The girl glanced toward her younger brother. “Hey,” she continued, “would you mind if you watched the house while I’m gone? Mom and Dad probably won’t be home until after your bedtime.”

“All by myself?” the boy complained, tugging at the blanket burrito around his sister. “But what about you?”

Rebecca grinned. “You know how hyper Julie can get if you give her too much sugar. I’m betting that it’s gonna be awhile before I come back when we’re done with the movie.”

Caleb nodded, a chill running down his spine as he remembered Julie ransacking his room the last time she’d come over. “So…” he began, an enthusiastic smile forming across his face, “I get the whole house to myself today?”

“Yup,” Rebecca grinned. She ruffled her brother’s hair, forcing a surprised yelp from him. “Free reign for the whole day. Just try not to empty out the fridge while I’m gone, alright?”[1]

“Yay!” Caleb cheered as he rushed for the door. “I can eat all the chocolate I waaaa—”

Rebecca flung off her blankets, glaring at her little brother in the doorway. Strangely, Caleb appeared to almost be… frozen in place, his voice still trailing on, unable to finish his sentence. “Caleb?” She frowned, reaching a hand towards her sibling. “Again, are… are you okay?”

“…aaaaaaaaa…n…n.nn…” the boy continued, his face stuck in a continual blur of motion.

“Caleb,” Rebecca repeated, “this isn’t funny. Stop it.”

An ear-piercing screech tore through the room, the girl cringing as she clenched her hands over her ears. Just as suddenly as it began, the noise halted, replaced instead by strange, floating text that seemed to follow Rebecca’s vision. The static in her ears began to subside, replaced instead by a metallic voice echoing the text in her vision.

“Connection lost. Please try again later.”

Rebecca furrowed her brows, waving aimlessly at the words with a scowl. All at once, she felt herself lock up, frozen in place like her brother. Her eyes sat cemented in a gaze towards her brother.

What… Rebecca thought, her mind racing at the impossibility of the predicament, What’s going on?!

Bit by bit, the world around her vanished into scraps of blurred texture. Pieces of furniture flashed in and out of existence, wavering on the line between physical and illusion. The blinding morning sunlight flickered rapidly, before abruptly dying out.

One final flash of light illuminated Rebecca’s last glance at her room, and just like that, the world went dark.

Lisa Garnet jerked awake with a heavy gasp, her vision obscured by an unwieldy object strapped to her face. Frantically swatting at it with numb arms, the girl yelled one word over and over.

“Help!”

She blindly clawed at the object again, her fingers catching onto a strap of some sort. With a resounding grunt of pain, Lisa tore the object from her face, snapping the strap around her head in her process. She sat silent on the cot, cradling the strange device that had formerly been strapped around her face.

“Hello?” the girl murmured, her gaze flitting about the barren room. “Is anybody there?”

Lisa turned her focus back to the device: a headset of some sort. She blinked, realizing the existence of an irritating low hum that echoed all throughout the room. Turning around on the medical cot, her eyes met with an unsettlingly large machine, its loose wires feeding into the headset. The girl narrowed her eyes, turning the headset slowly in her lap before noticing the heavily worn, but still-readable text imprinted along one side.

Reality₂^TM virtual reality device. Pat. Pending. Manufactured 12/10. Prototype model 9M-24. Property of TechSIG.

With a frown, Lisa placed the headset back over her face. Immediately, she was plunged back into the darkness, her limbs instantly going numb again. Taking the device off again, her vision was flooded with the view of the dingy room once more. On again. Darkness. Off, light. On, black. Off, white.

She turned to face the machine yet again, the headset still in her hands as she slowly rose to inspect the monolithic contraption. A painful yank pulled at her side as she did so, prompting her to yelp as she collapsed back onto the cot with another cry of pain. Gazing down with a worried frown, she soon saw the mess of tubes and cables running out from her side, over the cot, and back into the machine beside the cot. Lisa soon caught sight of a small, faded wristband still clinging to her.

“…Lisa Garnet?” she whispered to herself, repeating the lone name imprinted on the plastic tag. “But… I… I’m Rebecca…”

She let out a weak grunt as she crawled over the side of the cot, inching closer to the machine as she clutched the tubes and wiring emerging from her torso.

Up close, the machine appeared downright alien compared to anything she’d seen before. In place of where she’d expect to see a dashboard of dials, buttons, and meters reminiscent of old sci-fi movies she’d seen with machines similar to this, she instead found the contraption to have only a single panel, dimly lit as lines of text scrolled at a near-unreadable pace. Though she was unable to catch most of the text, the header that appeared to repeat every so often caught her eyes.

User_Name: “Lisa Garnet”

User_ID: “0_ Rebecca_Waterman”

Simulation_ID: “Reality₂_Release_build4”

Fatal error: No network connection.

Lisa Garnet—Rebecca Waterman took a shaky step back, her eyes quivering as she made sense of the text.

“W…w-what?” Lisa stammered, glancing down at her hands. “It was all… what… but it…“ She turned to the heavy wooden door opposite to the cot, then to the dusty window beside the machine, the only two recognizable features of the room.

“Caleb?” Lisa stuttered, slowly lowering herself back onto the cot as her nervous gaze focused back onto the headset. “Julie? …Anybody?”

2 — Take a look around. (Draft 2.3)

Lisa Garnet, the girl who’d once been Rebecca Waterman, sat defeated upon her cot, staring as her eyes traced the snakelike tubes as they emerged from her side. They twisted up and over the side-rails of the cot disappearing into the monolith of a machine that continued to quietly hum behind her. A sickly pale-beige paste ran through the largest of the tubes, likely the reason she felt no hunger nor thirst, she’d assumed.

Many times already the girl had attempted to once more plunge herself back into the life she knew. Simulation or not, time after time Lisa was met only with the same dull silence, and the numbing darkness of the headset. As for the device, the headset now lay forgotten at the corner of the cot, a metallic sliver embedded within its broken strap glittering in the sunlight.

With a heavy sigh, the girl collapsed back onto the cot’s thin sheets. She felt another wave of pain as the tubes were caught underneath her, eliciting another yelp. She shifted on the cot with a grunt, slowly clearing the tubes from underneath herself.

Her mind turned to her home, and, by extension, her entire life as she knew it. Were any of her experiences ever real? And if so, how could she possibly have known that it was so in the first place? She flung out an arm, grasping a rail as she flipped herself over to stare at the machine, wincing all the while.

A final question fluttered into her mind as she felt the tubes in her side with her other hand.

How long have I been like this?

Lisa’s gaze fell back upon the wristband still fastened about her arm. Nothing but her name. No date of admission, not even the name of the place she now lay in. Nothing.

The girl flipped back over in defeat, her hand slipping off the railing as it brushed past a small nub. She froze for a moment, inching her hand back in the direction of the nub. Cold metal once again gave way to warm plastic as her fingers touched the button. Rolling slowly for a better look, Lisa’s eyes caught a small label pasted beside the button.

Press button for assistance, the label read, Only use in case of emergency.

Lisa lifted her fingers from the button, wavering for a moment as a buzz of static colors flashed across her vision, followed by a piercing migraine.

“Ack!” the girl yelled, turning her attention away from the button as she clutched her head. All at once, her senses seemed to be overloaded. Opening her eyes again only gave way to oversaturated bursts of light and color, all reasonable structure seemingly dissolved into the now mind-numbing roar of the machine. Amidst her flailing, Lisa’s elbow struck the button, sending another rolling wave of pain shooting up her arm as a burst of anesthetic hurtled through the tubes and into her body.

Just as suddenly as her sensory overload came, however, everything abruptly shifted back to normal, almost as if the occurrence never happened in the first place. Slowly, the girl sank back into the thin sheets of the cot, her vision growing blurrier by the second as she slipped into unconsciousness.

--{}--

Bright rays of sunlight flooded through her window. The wandering breeze from her ceiling fan rustled through her hair.

W…what? Rebecca stared wide-eyed at the familiar view of her room. Everything— from the unmade bed with its sheets tumbling over a corner, to the dusty laptop covered with paper sitting on her desk. She wandered closer to the papers, reading the title of the first one that came into view.

On the Topic of Holographic Experiences

Rebecca frowned, sliding the short essay aside as she rummaged through the loose papers littering the desk.

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Advanced Networking

The Magic of Radios

Shaking her head, the girl shoved aside the remaining papers, her attention set upon the laptop— her laptop, sitting open upon the desk.

A faint buzz emanated from her pocket. Pulling her phone from her pocket revealed a single message.

Wake up.

Rebecca looked up just in time to see her room, her life, once again dissolve around her as a dull tapping sensation began to overtake her body.

--{}--

“Wake up,” a gravelly voice called.

Lisa groaned, burying her face in her palms as she came to.

“C’mon, girlie,” ,he voice continued, audibly irritated now, “I haven’t got all day, y’know. You’re not the only one I was called out for.”

“Not… not the only one?” Lisa mumbled in response, dragging her hands over her still-aching head. “You mean… there’s more than just me?” She opened an eye, peering towards the heavy-coated man speaking to her, before suddenly shrieking as she shrunk back in the sheets. “Wait… how’d you get in here?!”

The heavy-coated man pointed in the direction of the emergency call button on the cot’s railing. “I’m the guy that’s called by those things when you press them,” he began, “I’ve got keys to every building and room in this city.”

“So… you’re here to untether me from this…” Lisa paused as she glanced towards the humming machine. “This thing?”

The heavy-coated man only nodded in response, letting out a grunt as he set his briefcase on the floor. “Alright,” he began, unclasping the briefcase, “I’m assuming you wish to be discharged from life-support?”

“What-No!” Lisa exclaimed, backing away from the man again. “L-life support?!”

“Eh, just kiddin’ with ya.” The heavy-coated man chuckled, “I already know what to do. Been busy the whole afternoon treatin’ people like you, especially after…”

He leaned in closer to his briefcase, his words all but faded from his mind as his motions became increasingly fluid. He rummaged mindlessly through the briefcase as his speech became increasingly hard to understand.

“After the thing… So many people… all at once…” he continued, searching the briefcase’s interior.

“…Uh, yeah. The whole disconnection fiasco,” the man finished, lifting a small bag of surgical instruments onto an empty space on the cot. He turned and smacked the machine lightly with a palm. “Anyhow, I’ll get you detached from this machine here, and then you’ll be free to roam the city for a bit while we try to figure out what the heck happened. ‘lrighty?”

Lisa nodded slowly, fearful eyes set on the toolbag sitting inches from her body.

The heavy-coated man glanced into Lisa’s eyes, then to the instruments. “Ai!” he exclaimed, “I’ve got more anesthetic if you’d like. It shouldn’t quite hurt much anyways, given how much of the stuff is probably still swirling ‘round in you.”

Glancing down to the tubes running from her side, the girl remained silent. Once more, the noise of both conversation and movement in the room ran still, the hum of the machine once again dominating the air.

“Well?” the heavy-coated man pressed, frustration leaking back into his voice. “Do you wanna watch me take those tubes out, or would you prefer being away in your happy little dreamland while I work?”

A light plink on her knee brought Lisa back to her senses as her leg jerked underneath the sheets. “Whuh?” the girl blurted, staring up from the tubes. Her eyes fell upon the syringes sitting atop the bag of tools. “Oh, um… are there any other options?”

The heavy-coated man gave a light nod in response, brushing aside the syringes as he dug deeper into the bag. “Ah,” he grunted, pulling out a small white bottle. “How’s some sedatives sound?”

Lisa shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

Two pills landed in her hand.

“These should take effect in about half an hour,” the man began, packing the syringes back into the bag. “I’m gonna head off to some other calls in the meantime.”

He left without another word, the door clicking shut behind him. All that remained was the pristine silence of the room, and two pills on Lisa’s palm.

For a moment, it seemed almost as if time itself had frozen. All around, there was nothing but silence. There was no movement, nothing to break the complete stillness of the room.

Lisa sighed, glancing towards the window before downing the pills.

--{}--

A knock came at the door.

“Come in!” Lisa shouted, sitting on her cot. “I’m still waiting for those pills to do whatever.”

The heavy-coated man stumbled into the room, his briefcase clanking at his legs. He glanced towards Lisa for a moment, mumbling something under his breath as he once again pulled his bag of tools from the case. “’Kay,” he began, “so I’m guessing you’re still waiting?”

Lisa shrugged. “I guess so.” She turned her gaze to the tools that lay at the end of the cot. “So… are you just gonna come back later again, or—“

“No, no.” The heavy-coated man shook his head, glancing for a moment at his watch. “I’ve got time to wait at the moment. Should just be a few more minutes before you pass out, so I’d recommend that you lay down.”

The girl nodded as she turned on the cot, laying herself down. A new sensation took hold shortly after, a sort of disconnectedness from the world around her, almost as if she was about to wake from her own life again.

Almost.

3 — There’s so much to see, (Draft 1.3)

Lisa awoke to the grumble of her stomach, a growing pain creeping back into her mind as the last of the sedatives wore off. Her hand slowly inched to her side. No tubes, she thought, brushing her hand over her clothes. No more telltale lumps of the tubes and wires snaking from her body.

To her delight, one final, wide-eyed check under her sheets confirmed that she was, in fact, finally untethered from the now powered-off machine. The room now sat in complete silence, save for the background noise outside the girl’s window.

She turned her attention back to the pain in her stomach. Though it was still hardly an annoyance, Lisa could feel the pangs of hunger calling out to her. As she crawled from her cot, her foot brushed past a paper bag. Picking up the bag revealed a hastily-scrawled label across its surface.

“Food”

Lisa opened the bag, scrunching her nose from the smell that wafted from its interior. A quick glance inside revealed a small, clear bottle filled with a pasty-beige liquid, complete with small flecks of solids drifting within.

A quick whiff, surprisingly, didn’t result in the girl gagging. Rather, it instead smelled… sweet. Slowly, she raised the bottle to her lips and drank.

--{}--

Empty bottle in hand, Lisa returned to simply staring out the window from her cot. The blazing rays of sunlight had since dimmed into the oranges and yellows of sunset, but nevertheless continued to glare in the girl’s eyes. She let out a sigh, once again running a hand over the former location of the tubes and cables on her body before rising from the cot. A quiet rustling emanated from the paper bag as it tipped.

Huh? The girl reached for the bag, her eyes focused on a small corner of a paper peeking from its interior. She grasped the slip, pulling it from the bag and unfolding it.

A map?

She turned to the window again, squinting in the bright sunlight. Though she couldn’t see very far, Lisa could barely make out the outline of another building.

Her eyes turned to the header scrawled across the top of the map. Snowbush. She read, scanning over the paper.

Lisa’s attention turned to the only other prominent feature of the room besides the window and the hulking machine: A single, solitary door.

Slowly, she made her way towards the fixture, her hand outstretched as she reached for the doorknob. The map slipped from her fingers, floating down underneath the cot as she neared the door.[2] Lisa paused, staring at the map that now lay on the linoleum floor.

“Snowbush.” She read again, picking up the paper. “A subsidiary of TechSIG.”

Lisa glanced up from the map, first to the window, then to the door before her.[3] [4] [5] Escape, her mind screamed out. Escape this place, and return…

Lisa threw the door open.

…Home?

There was another door in front of her, identical to the one she’d just opened. The girl glanced to the side, revealing a short hallway leading to a flight of stairs. A quick look in the other direction revealed the same. She took another look at the map in her hands. She stepped into the hallway, one hand still on the door as she clasped the map in the other. The sound of conversation faintly echoed through the corridor.

She broke into a sprint, descending the stairs in a mad dash. The clatter of her bare feet against the cool metal stairs filled her ears, footsteps growing as rapid as her own racing heartbeat as she finally reached the bottom.

The brilliant light of the sunset flooded her vision as she turned, leaving the bottommost hallway and facing the outside world. Lisa blinked, her eyes widening as she stepped onto the concrete sidewalk in front of her. A low breeze billowed past her, whistling down the hallway behind her.

Conversation filled the air around her. Cries of confusion and anger swirled all about in the autumn breeze, rolling in waves with every gust.

Others like me. Lisa remembered, peering into the cobblestone street before her. Men and women, the young and the old. All around her were others who had, just a day prior, been enjoying their peaceful lives in a simulated existence.

“Hey!” the girl cried out, running towards a gathering crowd, “What’s going on?”

No answer. Lisa turned her head, spotting a lone boy at the curb. He peered back at the girl, a small cobblestone in his hand.

Clack. He placed the stone atop a tower of other similar rocks. The boy shook his head, refocusing on prying another cobblestone from the road.

Clack. Another stone landed atop the tower as he glanced back up.

Lisa squeaked as a stray gust hit her from behind, blowing long strands of brown across her vision. Brushing her hair aside, she turned her attention yet again to the strange boy and his stack of rocks.

Or at least, what remained of the stack. Stones littered the ground beside him as he rubbed his hand, wincing. Lisa rushed to his side, nearly tripping herself over the rocks. “Are you okay?” She gasped, staring at his bruised hand. “We should probably find… uh, somebody to take a look at this. It might be-“

“I’m fine,” the boy blurted, continuing to rub his hand. “It doesn’t hurt that much anyways.”

Lisa raised a brow. “You sure?”

The boy nodded.

Lisa watched as he leaned over, shoveling the stones back to his side with his bruised hand.

“You… you probably shouldn’t put too much pressure on that hand right now.”

The boy glared at the girl, continuing to scrape the stones together. “And what makes you think you can order me around?” he sneered. “You act a lot like my sister.” He returned to restacking the stones.

Lisa watched for a few more seconds as he rebuilt his tower. “What’s your sister’s name?” she began, “You’d might as well tell me so I could tell you if[6] [7] [8] [VB9] I see her around.”

Another gust of wind ripped through the streets as the boy held the tower against the blast.

“You kinda act like my own brother, y’know.”

The boy snorted, reaching for another cobblestone. “Yeah, and let’s see if I happen to know him, ‘kay?”

Lisa raised a brow. “You still haven’t answered my own question, y’know.”

“Fine, fine. She’s some girl who goes by Rebecca Waterman, ‘kay? Now leave me alone.”

A strange silence fell over the two as the boy glared into Lisa’s trembling eyes. “That’s… that’s my name,” Lisa whispered. She placed a shaky hand over the boy’s own. “Are you Caleb?”[10]

The boy shrugged, motioning towards his wristband. “Says here that I’m some Timothy Carter kid, but yeah, I guess you are my sister, then.”[11]

Comments

[Thunderous]

Wow. So, I noticed that Lisa isn't stranded in the middle of nowhere there.

[TheMajorTechie]

5157640
Yup