Life is a Game

 by Beatriz Viegas

Life is a game Life is not real. I used to be just a normal teenager until I found out that my life was a complete lie. 

One random night I woke up really scared thanks to my traumatising alarm clock, then I just took a shower, brushed my teeth and ate something because I couldn't sleep again. I was having a really weird sensation of deja vu, like I already had lived that moment before and like I was following a script I hadn't written. Right after, I decided to get ready and go to school. Everything was normal. I was simply talking with my friends when one of them out of the blue started glitching like he was a character in a poorly programmed video game and with a blink of my eyes, suddenly everything was normal again like this never happened. Was I losing my mind? Was I the only one who saw that happening? 

When I got home, I spent hours trying to nd answers to this. I went for a walk to notice more glitches and weird things along the day. Conversations were looped everytime I passed through some couples at the park and time seemed to be paused, slowed, even faster sometimes. At the end of the day, I was already convinced that I was going crazy over this but I did not give up because as a programmer, I already had some theories about humans being controlled by numbers and so nature. In maths class my teacher would always say: -“Numbers are everywhere. You can not escape them”. That’s completely true. We are identied by numbers, we buy numbers, we get numbers. They will always be surrounding our lives. When he said it for the rst time it was seriously really scary but then everyone just took it normally like he was an old crazy man. 

While doing my technology class work, I found myself poring over lines of code, searching for an explanation for what could be happening. When unexpectedly something appeared on my screen showing every aspect of my life written in every single detail. It was like I was nothing but numbers and colours controlled by somebody else. I seriously couldn’t believe that I was just a character in somebody’s little game. I felt powerless, weak, like I had no control over anything I was doing in these past years since I was born. 

As the initial shock began to fade, I realised that if I already had this power of knowing that my life was controlled, I had to start thinking carefully. I set out to write my own destiny. It wasn’t easy. Every step needed to be perfectly coded and every glitched piece xed. As days turned into weeks, I got deeper into this programming. I felt like I gained more control about my destiny. I felt that somewhere, beyond the walls of my digital cage, there was someone watching, someone pulling the strings “behind the scenes”. 

Then, I suddenly found it. A hidden software system buried deep inside the code, a le made to keep me following my life without questioning my existence but for some reason, it didn’t work. While looking at that, I got so furious that a huge adrenaline ran into my veins as I set to work, taking apart the software system, tearing it apart line by line. I needed to get to the end, I couldn't take this anymore. What if it was all just another trick? With a deep breath, I nally made my decision. I would rather live confused about each memory I have than knowing that there's a master puppet taking control of each step of my life. After all, I deleted the last line of code, leading to the nal link to my digital prision. 

As the world around me was glitching and fading, I hugged myself for whatever reason. I was motionless, freezed. I was nally free. Free from all these numbers, codes, glitches, fake situations that surrounded my whole life all this time. I know it took a long time, I know you can think that I'm crazy but, now, I'm the master of my own reality.