Chris Barnett

The Key to Hell

I can’t tell you how long I’ve been in this place, I can barely remember last year let alone what must’ve been decades ago. Upload and all your dreams will come true, they said. Upload and you can control your own reality, they said. However, they didn’t say I would be trapped in my own hell by uploading myself into their mainframe. They didn’t say I wouldn’t be able to get out of this place. They didn’t say I was going to be the only “real” one here. I had to figure this out myself, but for the longest time I didn’t even realize it. In fact, I remember them specifically saying everyone who chose to upload would get to interact with each other whenever they pleased. I tried co-op mode with a few people who I knew before the upload, but something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly, but they weren’t the people I knew on the outside. Something about them changed. My brother wasn’t a murderer before this, my sister wasn’t obsessed with being idolized before this. If only he didn’t see the others here as just pawns to dispose of whenever he pleased, maybe if she didn’t want the others here to worship her at every moment, they would realize we are trapped here.