Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) Read Online Free PDF Page A

okay, Liz. It was one meeting." My temporary elation at seeing Beth quickly faded away. Liz must think that I was a child or somehow planning to harm myself again. Hadn't I earned a little bit of forgiveness for the past?
    "First it's one meeting. Then drinking again, you're not drinking are you?"
    "No." Though the brewery I delivered a letter to had tempted me. The familiar smell of hops sat inches away tantalizing me. "I'm very sober." Liberal usage of the [Blink] skill carried me out before weakness took over.
    "Are you sure, Grant?" Liz chewed on one lip and sniffed again. Her eyes were watery but it might have been from the cold.
    "I'm doing better than I ever have been." I tried to smile. James, the heavyset black Voice inside Continue Online who worked with me the most, had previously asked me a similar question.
    "Then why do you believe Xin is real in this game?" she said with another sniff. My sister blew her nose while it felt like the world spun about.
    Hearing it out loud from my sister hit hard. I fell against the wall and neither leg worked right. Both retained little in terms of strength in the face of Liz's questioning.
    "Xin is dead," I tried to keep calm and recited the answer mechanically. Despite my letters back and forth with her, I don't know, autopilot on steroids, Xin no longer existed outside the ARC.
    "I saw the letter, little brother," she said after the latest wall of noise to issue forth from her nose. "And the replay. You killed yourself after giving Beth that message from her. A woman who passed away. You just killed yourself because a game said to!" she yelled at me, then sniffled twice before coughing into the line. Liz's restraint had broken apart completely.
    I blinked rapidly and tried to straighten myself. My sister's abruptly violent explosion only served to panic me. I tried to keep calm. Adrenaline flooded through setting an arm to shaking. She essentially called me crazy.
    Weeks in-game where I lived with a weapon just a foot away turned a flight mentality into preparation for battle. This was reality. Liz wasn't stacking up to a monster from Continue. She only yelled, and I faced worse demons.
    My words were steady, "I didn't really kill myself." All that gameplay in Continue and conquering my fear to face giant creatures helped.
    "You didn't even hesitate!" Liz coughed again. "Why would you leave that for Beth? Why!?" my sister shouted at me. Her voice still scratched and coughing broke up her words.
    "Because I wanted to explain!" I broke and shouted back. My arms shook a little.
    "Explain what?" She stopped and picked up her coffee. A quick sip went down that made her face twist up in distaste. "That you've gone mad over a game? That you've lost touch with reality?"
    "No!" I hadn't lost touch at all. Reality occupied a huge portion of my life.
    "I used to be able to understand you, Grant, I used to know your thoughts like they were my own. Then one day, it stopped, and it was like you were a stranger." She sniffed again and blinked rapidly herself. "I just don't understand, Grant. I don't."
    "It's possible, technology..."
    "She's dead, Grant." Liz coughed during my name and kept hacking until both eyes watered. I pulled out a clean tissue and put it on the table in front of her. She nodded and tried to clear out more snot.
    "I know. It's not exactly her," I said.
    "It's not her, and I think-" she paused to avoid coughing, "-that I won't turn that, game, back on until Doctor Litt signs off. Until I'm sure we won't have an episode happen again."
    "You can't. I'm better now." I shook my head at her. My face felt slack with disbelief at the situation. Liz and I had always seen eye to eye and now we weren't. "And it's for me to decide if I believe it's Xin or not."
    "I need more than your say-so that everything's fine. I was a fool," she yelled, "and believed you last time. Never again, Grant. Until Doctor Litt signs off on your health out here, in reality, you're not getting access