God of the Game (Dreamstate) (2 page)

   “Tell mama what’s bothering you, baby.”

   
Sob…sob…you are my inspiration, girl.

    Rub the lamp…hmmm…Gee Ni is in shorts and baby-t.

   “What is your wish
?” she wanted to know coldly.

   “Marry me and have my babies.”

   “No way. I got another man. Gonna leave by the front door…but we can have sex one last time.”

   
Ahhhhrrrggghhhhh…

   “That was your last wish. And don’t call me anymore. By the way, I’m taking this back with me.” She grabs the lamp and disappears.

   “Well, Earth’s different, depending on when and where you are.” I told Sha-Rronne.

   “And when and where
were you?”

   “I lived in a country called Malaysia.” Simultaneously
I transferred all information on that nation through brainwaves, as well as some recorded video memories of my childhood. Funny ones, those I didn’t find too embarrassing.

    She chuckled. We shared pictures by parallel vision. Uncle Toni loomed
into view.

   “How is th
e food?” he asked with his thick Italian accent.

   “Very good.” We answered in unison.

    Uncle Toni is the purveyor of Uncle Toni’s Pasta & Wine. He’s a short, chubby fella, and if I’m not mistaken, the godfather of a mafia family too.

   “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he rubbed his tummy, “more wine?”

   “Yes, please.” We responded together again.

   “What do you mean you
woke up
in ZOOL.A.ND?” I poked after a few more glasses and a gallon of flirtatious chat.

   “Literally
, just woke up,” she said stupidly, her eyes wide like goldfishes’, her mouth agape. “I opened my eyes and I existed. I have no knowledge of growing up,” she said sadly.

   “No idea who or what made you? No sign of a father or mother?”

   “No,” she answered, and added shortly after, “I envy you. I envy your childhood.”

    I was silent. Then I said, “Ever tried looking for your maker?”

   “Occasionally. But it doesn’t really bother me.”

    She lied. It did bother her. I could sense it.  

   “What if I could help? I know the programmer of ZOOL.A.ND.”

   “Oh
, I don’t know,” Sha-Rronne shrugged. “I can’t leave this place. My being is attached…whatever
that
means.”

   “I’ll see what I can do.” I replied, and that was when I realized I was spooning her.

5

Jai-I

    I had to wait outside the door, backstage, as weird noises escaped the room. So
, with nothing to do, I rolled down my eyelids and switched to cyber mode. Muffled my ears, and except for a tiny icon to alert me when Jai-I and Trekz are done, my senses were cocooned from its physical surrounding.

    I surfed the Net and Vine;
chatted, while reading blogs alongside, and played an online game with loud heavy metal music. Saw an ad on a sparkling roadster, and vowed to drop by the site to test drive later. I was tired of interacting, and just wanted some time alone. Jumped to the movie menu and picked out a no-brainer slasher flick about yuppies massacred one by one while holidaying on Mars. The ending was fuck. The killer was a social reject they used to tease mercilessly in college, who then left for Ninja school in faraway Pluto. He was back. He stalked them, hacked into the mainframe of a lottery ticket website and, plotting for his victims to win the vacation, executed his grandiose murder plans.
One by one
. Those guys and gals should have guessed that something was fishy and amiss, and that it was not coincidental they all won. The acting was a terrible B-Grade attempt by bimbos and arseholes, more exaggerated than porn. I gave it a half-star for rating, and broadcasted my review in the Web.   

    The emoticon buzzed and I open
ed my eyes. DJ Trekz walked past without acknowledging my existence. Stared at his silhouetted back as he bobbed along the corridor like a hip-hopper. Dressed like one, too; baggy jeans, baseball jersey and a New York cap to match; the renowned DJ was soon accompanied by two goons as she worked her way towards the arena for the final set. Cheers swallowed him like a black hole sucking in the universe. Looked at my watch, only half an hour has passed; the movie was at least one and a half, and with my surfing, probably two plus. How could this be? It could, as I’d set my virtual time to be encapsulated within the frame by which either Trekz or Jai-I emerges. So regardless what my online activities were, it ended when I was bored, which was the exact moment Trekz came to view.

    The coast was now clear; I knocked on the door but did not wait for Jai-I to answer. I marched in. The son of Jahr had his back to me, pulling up his trousers over Calvin Klein briefs.

   “Yo, Jai-I,” I said

   “Shit!” He jumped.

   “You scared the shit out of me,” the man added as he turned around, buckling his belt.

    Jai-I is a handsome god;
hard rock abs, broad shoulders, great torso, tanned…motherfucking gorgeous.

   “Sorry
, man.”

   “It’s ok
ay.” Jai-I stopped before continuing, “Yah, what’s up?”

   “Nothing much, just wanted to ask you a few things about ZOOL.A.ND.”

   “Shoot!” he shot, simultaneously donning a worn sweater and flicking on his shades.

    Jai-I and I go back some time when I first came to Syurga. He was of Earth origin too, but from Eastern Europe. However he spent most of his life in Japan, and considers himself more Japanese than European. I guess his spirit of invention was cultured even then in the innovative land of the rising sun, where hybrid lifestyles of weird, wacky, urban behaviour meshed with Far-Eastern traditionalism. Jai-I worked for (and later owned) a global software company as a computer programmer; and he was a hacker by night; a suave, savvy technocrat pushing the boundaries of human existence.

    I didn’t know him on Earth;
I may have read about his great eccentric tech-king exploits, and we only chanced on meeting when I accidentally saved his life. Jai-I was one of the first sons of Jahr, or rather, one of the first adopted sons of Jahr. Jahr had a huge investment in mortal life. He was one of the original
Kreators
. You can read about him in the sacred texts of most religions (under various aliases), both mainstream and occult. He had his own bloodline, sons and daughters who now run empires across wide lands of creation. But Jahr considered his handiwork to be children as well, and loved them with equal tenacity.

    Throughout Jai-I’s Earth life, Jahr peppered him with his anointing, driving him insane with subliminal messages and flashes of revealed mysteries. In the box of the Earth and the lack of eternal vision beyond death, the deranged mind of Jai-I suffered and searched the truth for
liberty, sensing the seeds sowed in the soil of his soul. His faith was tested like a sapling of knowledge planted in a miniature flower pot choked by weeds of ignorance, like the tree of life grafted with the fruits from that
other
trunk on which the serpent coils; but in spite of the forbidding strangulation that persecuted him, the man was absolutely sold out to a cause and certain he had a prophecy for the world. Jahr established his mad and immoral living; Jai-I became both saviour and a shame, a sinner and a saint, a leader of cult following. His reputation was massacred in public, but his heart never fainted. Jai-I ploughed on in his foolish fervour, using his gift of technological manipulation to drive his point across, to open the sight of the nations to the infinite light.

    Jahr loved him fully. L
ike King David of old, who was a man after God’s own heart, a lover of women (and men) no doubt, Jai-I was an apple of Jahr’s all-seeing eye. He was a weapon in the hands of the great god. Jahr considered him firstborn, a declaration of highest honour. He saw in a time when men were blind; and he was faithful to the word, not bending towards the weaknesses of flesh to relinquish what seemed to be a hopeless cause. Jai-I was tortured by the dream inside, but knew he had to persevere towards his destiny regardless of the lack of success and the contradictory environment that plagued him.

    This adopted son of god was finally
made rich in his Earthly life due his engrossing pursuit and persistence, and this only motivated him further to spread the mandate through fame and influence. You can say that Jai-I was pivotal in the transcendence of the natural to its glorious state. He was a conduit of Jahr and the infinite gods to assimilate the world with the xenoverse and the realms beyond to become one seamless tapestry together with the imaginations of deities and man alike.

    That was how they worked, I guess. The gods appointed certain instrumental individuals in different countries and societies
, like pins, to prick the consciousness of the masses through various media, the dissemination of information towards a brooding cause. Sometimes personal, at other times communal, a tide was gathering that was stirring the spirits of many worlds. These individuals usually carried their own unique stigmata, and most fell in death and sicknesses, or were martyred, went crazy, became schizophrenic, committed suicide, etcetera. But there were a few that stuck on through, and these were in the end granted success in the calling bestowed, the warrior seers who brought in the revolution of a new existence.     

    This is their song and story. The poem of fighters, the epic of the prophets, blockbuster of the oracle. This is Jai-I.

6

   “Shoot!” he
shot, simultaneously donning a worn sweater and flicking on his shades.

    I considered the best way to put forward Sha-Rronne’s uncanny predicament, and took some time to form the phrase. Jai-I got impatient; he was never known for being longsuffering. In fact, most that know him have tales to tell of his cold icy behaviour and tempestuous tantrums. He’s a hard lover and a heartless fucker. But he could be nice. He somehow warmed up to my presence; but then again, I have a supernatural talent of eerily getting into the heart and mind of others. Though…I think I have no malice for anyone…except when I consciously hate a character in a game. And I have to say that I
do
play a lot of game
s

    I’ve seen Jai-I at his worst. I’ve seen the verbal onslaughts with Trekz; it ain’t a pretty sight. I’ve seen how he hammers his subordinates as CEO of Jai-I Incorporated when he is intolerant of their imbecility. I’ve seen how he twists and tortures his creation; more often he is unpleasant and reacting only to his own lack of creative security. With the high standards he punishes himself masochistically, and his morbid fascination with narcissistic qualities, coupled with the plain and brutal fact that the work of others, including his father’s, is more often than not sublime, Jai-I, in divine comparison, only a young god in the making,
frequently flushes in flagrant frustration. I am a demigod on the other hand…I’ll like to think; though I still refer to myself as human.

    In the eyes of the beings he creates, I suspect they view Jai-I more as an avenging evil rather than a caring paternal benevolence. Jai-I gets a hard-on seeing them suffer. Sometimes he makes love to Trekz
, and his harem simultaneously, to video clips of mortals tormented in the hell he made for them. The moans of orgasm mixed with the screams of agony, another hit for DJ Trekz’z career.

    Other times he skewers them, impaling them in perpetual
kavadi
, in the forlorn solitude of his own affliction. His pride and arrogance may not admit this, but for sure, Jai-I suffers an unresolved resentment towards Jahr his foster father, one that was conceived a long time ago when he was still a human boy. 

    As for his quarrels with Trekz, it can be quite comical and entertaining, likened to a retro sci-fi show. They fire each other with plastic lazer guns, the rays destroying everything except for the two divine characters. Other times they fling curses at each other, controlling the elements to discharge awful mayhem at the surrounding. But they always make up. I have to mention that Trekz is a hermaphrodite, a shape-shifter of sexes. You may be familiar with some of his religious and fabled effigies: blue-skinned, green-skinned, eight-armed; but he is much more to many others. Most importantly, Trekz is a god of love. Though he gets under everybody’s skin, it is impossible to hate him for long. He will charm you with Phileo, seduce you with Eros, and unconditionally accept you with Agape.

    Tre
kz has a cock, Trekz has a cunt; Trekz has both cock and cunt. He can give and receive concurrently. But just like the heavens, which stretch your mind's eye vividly, Trekz’z genitals go beyond male and female. I will leave you with this to get back to the story. But have no worries, no apprehensions, I will return to the topic of enlightenment that is so much Trekz’z androgynous glory.