Behind the scenes

This is the second time I am seeing him. He was wearing the same blue shirt with white stripes. He was young and in a hurry. He had this sort of weapon in his hand which scared me.

I inherited this piece of land from my father who inherited from my grand father. This is our family property. My family lives a mile away in a little house I built myself. It took me a year to build it. I built it brick by brick with my elder son who helps me with the cattle. My wife sells the milk in a nearby village.

I usually rise very early in the morning. There are few houses nearby and almost all of us are engaged in farming. All of us go to bed soon after dinner. Much before the sun rises I am normally in my field watering the plants, tilling the soil and have my breakfast around eight in the morning. I continue the hard labour all through day with a break for lunch and by evening I go to rear the cattle. Evening, we relax under the neem tree near my house on a cot made of bamboo and ropes. I normally tell stories what has been passed to me by my Grand Father.

I just love this life. There is nothing more I want. I have enough money saved over time to take care of adversities. It is just that the first time I saw this blue shirt guy with that strange weapon, fear crept in me. He did not speak a word. He walked into my field and started to pluck the vegetables and gathered it into his basket. He was very quick and almost ended up taking all of my weeks produce. When I stepped forward to stop him, he looked at me with a cold stare and that made me step back. I could not say anything fearing he may attack me. I decided to know who he was.

“Hey! who are you ?” I asked

He turned and looked at me briefly stopping to collect the veggies. A moment later he was busy as before.

He seemed to have confidence that I won’t be able to do anything to him. After a while he left. He was almost running with all the fruits and vegetables he collected.

I could not understand from where he came and where he was heading.

Evening while we were sitting and chatting at home I narrated the incident. My son told me that he had seen him before doing the same thing in my neighbours field. After dinner, I walked around to my neighbour’s house.

“Howdy, all well?”

“Yeah, everything fine. You look tired”

We talked for a while. My neighbour had an experience not so different from mine. We both decided to find out more. He told me to call him the next time I saw him.

Today he is back the second time. This time he seem to carry a different weapon. It was not the same as the one I saw before. Looked like it was made of some kind of metal and it was shining. He was literally in a hurry and frantically shoving the veggies in his basket. I could not see his face much.

I ran to the edge of my field and whistled to get my neighbour.

Now both of us moved towards him. He was busy unaware of us. We went near him and he immediately started to attack with the weapon. I got some blows. It was very painful. But fortunately my neighbour caught hold of his hand and stopped him further. We dragged him to the nearby shed. He was trying to escape. As we tied him to a pole and asked him

“Tell us who you are and where you come from?”

He was silent. But fearing our aggression, he started with a grunt probably to answer us.

As he opened his mouth, the strange thing happened.

He completely disappeared into thin air. We could not believe our eyes.

“What..what’s happening here?” My friend was perplexed and looked at me.

I was speechless.

***

Outside it was dark. She walked upstairs and found her son. He was deeply immersed in the large LED monitor in front of him.

“My God, it is four hours and you are still playing this stupid game. Enough” she said

“Hold on ma, today I found myself in a strange position. The farm labourers who normally cannot do anything have tied me to a pole”

“Stop this Rohit. You are getting obsessed. Enough of this. I am going to uninstall this stupid Minecraft if you do not stop now”

Rohit saw his avatar tied to the pole, the beauty of the farm and the angry farmers surrounding him.

He quit the game, turned off the monitor and walked with his mother into the real world ??

***

She removed the gear from her head and looked around. She was sitting on the couch in the living room. The LED TV was still there.

She saw the clock. ‘Rohit will come back from school anytime’ a thought ran through her head. She tried to get up. For a moment she thought Rohit is still playing the game upstairs.

It was all so real. She was so upset with Rohit getting obsessed with the game.

“It will pick up the strongest signal in your brain and build around it” her husband’s words echoed as he gifted his first VR prototype he had been working on for her birthday.

She walked out of the house to get her son from school feeling a bit sad.