My Own Reality status update (6-29-18) · 6:42am Jun 29th, 2018
While it's still not entirely finished yet, I'm currently on the second draft of both currently-existing chapters.
Here's what I've got so far in its entirety. Keep in mind that Fimfiction tends to screw with the formatting when I copy something over from Microsoft Word.
As usual, any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated. 
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.
1 – Wake up. (Draft 2)
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, an 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, making a face. “Stupid girls and their girly friends…” Caleb murmured, leaning against the cluttered desk.
Rebecca idly tapped on her phone, squinting in the reflected sunlight beaming from the glossy screen. “Hm?” She paused for a moment before tapping the screen again, turning onto her back. “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 a while before I come back when we’re done with the movie.”
Caleb nodded, a chill running down his spine as he remembered his room being ransacked by Julie 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.” The girl confirmed. 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?”
“Yay!” Caleb cheered as he rushed for the door. “I can eat all the chocolate I waaaa-“
Abruptly, Rebecca threw 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?” The girl frowned, reaching a hand towards her sibling. “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.
“Connection lost. Please try again later.”
The girl 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 locked in a gaze towards Caleb.
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 bits 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 final 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 were 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.
Reality2TM 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, the girl’s 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 closer inspect the monolithic contraption. A painful yank pulled at her side as she did so, prompting a yelp from the girl 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 from her side, over the cot, and back into the machine beside the cot. 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 paused for a moment as she finally caught sight of the faded wristband clinging to her. “…Lisa Garnet?” The girl whispered to herself, repeating the lone name imprinted on the plastic tag.
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)
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, twisted up and over the side-rails of the cot, and disappeared 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 bright daylight streaming through the window.
With a heavy sigh, the girl collapsed back onto the thin sheets of the cot. 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.” The 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, continuing to search 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, spinning back to the man. Her eyes fell upon the syringes sitting atop the bag of tools. “Oh, um… I’d prefer the extra anesthetic, please.”
The heavy-coated man gave a light nod in response, turning to reach for a syringe as he set down the rubber hammer. “’Kay then.” He grumbled, “Certainly took a while for you to answer.” Turning back, the man motioned for her to roll up a sleeve.
Lisa followed the order, placing a hand on the soft, yet strangely elastic sleeve of the medical gown she’d been wearing since she woke. The heavy-coated man leaned down, scrutinizing the girl’s arm before pausing as he found a suitable vein.
“Okay.” He began, his thumb pressing over the vein as he glanced into Lisa’s eyes, “This’ll only hurt for a moment. Think of it as a-“
“-A pinprick.” Lisa mumbled, “I know that. I’ve had shots before.”
The heavy-coated man continued to stare for another couple seconds before returning to work, wiping an alcohol pad over the area before readying the syringe. He paused again, the syringe held over Lisa’s arm.
“This is just general anesthesia.” He began slowly, lowering the syringe. “Given this dosage, you should be awake again in a couple hours.”
Lisa winced as she felt the needle prick her skin, her vision growing blurry as she once again passed out.
I like how it's looking.
4891729
Any feedback to give? This is the first time in years that I've begun writing original fiction again, and I'd like to know if there's anything to work on.
4891732
Grammar wise there was only one thing I saw, the word ‘Alrighty’ was missing the A. Past that things look good. I might also say for a little more detail on the characteristics of the characters unless they’ve been mentioned before or are suppose to be kept an enigma.
4891747
That was intentional, spelled instead as 'lright rather than the full word to portray a mild accent.
4891752
Ah, well then there's nothing wrong grammar wise.
4891755
Alrighty then.
4891774
Once again looking good. See you on the next update
4891779
Yup.
4891792
glad you're getting more writing in than I am