In the morning, Parker felt woefully unprepared. It was just a general sense of dread that seemed to radiate from their bones. Benson's words echoed in the tense stillness; Parker was definitely not in their right mind.
Stretching seemed to still the dread in their bones. Deep breaths started to quiet the spiraling thoughts. Hydrating didn't feel necessary, but Parker had learned that it was. Everything seemed to rest on this next evaluation, but that was how each of the previous ones had felt.
What should have come across as reassuring that there was always another chance only came across as damning. As the sun rose and Parker got ready for the day, they felt like they would never escape this cycle of hope, despair, and evaluation.
It was a familiar cycle for Parker, but EA had instilled it into the daily events of the nexus. They had thought the Gamble would be their escape from the chaotic cycle that had plagued their life. The only difference now was that it was a major corporation evaluating their performance, not a disapproving family member. Parker could barely force deep breaths and ground themselves to the physical realm.
This was all an evaluation, a test for Parker to prove themselves. On the other side was the Gamble, the adventure, the grand quest that EA had issued to the world: a corporate blank check for whoever opened the Odyssey Vault.
As Parker approached the next evaluation, that thought steeled their mind. With everything they had been through, with every one of their hopes riding on this, Parker would not fail at an evaluation of their knowledge.
Perhaps this was what Benson meant: in their right mind. As Parker opened the door and stepped into a doctor's examination room, not even that shook them. Instead, Parker calmly walked into the room and sat on the edge of the awkwardly raised bed. They waited, not knowing what would come next, but knowing that it wouldn't be anything worse than their past.
In fact, it almost made Parker laugh at how ordinary it was. The examination room had no fancy technology or arcane machinery. There was just the usual raised bed, the uncomfortable chairs in one corner, the doctor's chair in the other, and various jars full of cotton or sticks.
That was when the impossible happened. Just as the room was feeling too ordinary, a familiar face walked in through the opposite door. Parker felt a stone sink in their heart.
He wasn't as old as he should have been, Dr. Rath was nearing sixty now, but he appeared before Parker without any of the reassuring laugh lines or the gray hairs Parker joked about during their last check-up.
The stone sinking in their heart grew larger as the too young doctor greeted Parker. His voice was normally the most reassuring, but now it haunted through the room. He said, "Sorry for making you wait, Parker. There was an issue with some of the tests."
Parker's voice caught in their throat. This was the doctor that they had gone to for as long as they could remember. Dr. Rath set down a too-blank medical chart on the counter. That was when the doctor spoke words that had cut Parker's soul so deep that the wounds hadn't healed even though a decade had passed. Words that had been aimed at reassurance but had ignited a lifelong struggle of anxiety and fear.
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With a nearly worried look, Dr. Rath looked down at Parker and said, "I made sure to re-run the tests that were inconclusive first, but it's all clean. There is nothing wrong with you."
"What?" Parker felt the word escape their slack jaw. In the past, they had asked it indignantly but now they asked it as if they failed to process what was happening. Parker now felt how they had in that moment. Alien, chaotic, and gross.
The bones inside their skin felt wrong. Each breath that Parker drew felt like it went into someone else’s lungs. Even their thoughts seemed to go from their brain to someone else’s body.
Now they knew better, but then it had been different. The calamity was still fresh, Parker had been convinced that something was wrong with them. Something had infected them. Something had changed them into something "other".
Parker was different than the rest of their family. It took years to accept, but it wasn't something that made them "other". A kind-eyed doctor had explained it that Parker was born with more possibilities than their family knew how to accept. Since it was in a way that society couldn't capitalize on, Parker would often feel left out in the hum of daily life.
They had mostly accepted it now, but then Dr. Rather had seemed so able to fix anything that worried Parker. A broken arm, an infected wound, and all the mild illnesses. An internal wrongness should've been just as easily righted. Instead, this was the first time Dr. Rath had been unable to help Parker. It had felt like losing an anchor alongside a rocky coast.
Parker was now buffeted by waves of emotion that threatened to crash them into the coast of their past. Dr. Rath looked at them with practitioner's pity. He said, "I know that Mr. Apis is usually busy, but if you're really concerned there is some more work we could do with his approval. Do you want me to set up an appointment with the three of us?"
That was all Parker could take. They felt a deep fear crack from the stone in their heart and seize up their chest. A phantom of their father loomed over from behind, a callous hand settled on their shoulder. Parker felt their heart giving out.
A flash of light halted everything. A system they weren't aware of shutdown. The scene disappeared immediately. Parker was left standing in an oblong glass room. Small black boxes dotted the glass: projectors. Vents on the floor and the ceiling hissed with a bitter gas. It had been some kind of induced hallucination. A simulation that left Parker feeling stupid and hollow.
A mechanical voice echoed off the glass. "Evaluation ended prematurely due to cardiac stress on the subject. Results inconclusive, evaluator insight needed."
Silence filled the glass. Parker couldn't move so they stood still except for the barely managed panic breathing. Every inch of their skin felt pricked by needles.
The mechanical voice came back eventually. "Evaluation null due to out-of-scope experiences. Parker Apis has been given a full pass in place of a re-evaluation. Meeting with the on-staff counseling doctor is recommended. All meetings with on-staff doctors are kept separate from evaluations. Would you like to schedule that now?"
A counselor? Parker didn’t want that. They just wanted to escape.
They said, "No."
A section of the glass room clicked, air hissed, and an escape formed behind Parker. They didn't wait for permission to leave. They left with the hurried, uneven steps of a wild animal cautiously leaving a cage.
Outside of that strange glass room, even the dull gray lobby felt reassuring. Somewhere in their mind, Parker realized that they weren't alone in that feeling. Nearly a dozen Gamblers were strung around the lobby that Parker exited into. Every single one either had their head hung in their hands as they recovered from mental trauma, or they were staring at the ceiling trying to blink away some kind of terror.
Parker paid them no attention though. They just hurried through the lobby, waved off a conversation from the orange-smocked attendant, and looked for somewhere to decompress.
If Crystal Gamble moved to a WEEKLY update instead of DAILY, what day would you like to read on?
