Yocantes Online [Hiatus/Discontinued?)

Chapter 1 - HD Mystery

Every thought fluttered when I was lurched forward by a strong force that pushed my back.I stumbled and almost crashed into the cracked tiled floor.

“That was funneh,” the person teased, accompanied with a sly smirk.

After putting myself together, I grabbed the thin guy’s collar and raised my hands, fist clenched. He was certainly caught in a surprise.

“Gotcha!” I let go of him, laughing because he was completely flabbergasted. “You were damn scared, bro.”

When he finally came back to his senses, he let out a nervous laugh then gave my shoulders a weak punch. “What the F were you thinking? I thought you were gonna kill me, man!”

Trevor Anderson was my ultimate nerd only best friend. There should be an emphasis to the word only since he was my sole friend since grade school.Our duo wassupreme─ we were brothers in arms, partners in crime, and warriors for life.

He scratched his nose, adjusted his ultra-thick glasses that were hoisted perfectly on his long face, functioning like a transparent barrier between his cerulean eyes and the world about.

“Why’re you still here?Said you’d go home early after class?” I asked.

“Had to visit the library and download─”

“Porn? Wow, congrats,bro! Welcome to puberty!”

“Hell no!I just needed to obtain some codes for programming later,” he replied. I presumed it was an honest answer though he sounded defensive. This guy was the most innocent person alive.

“No internet, eh?”

“Yeap, thanks to Mum.”

“I feel you, bro ─ literally.” I smiled; we both awarded each other a fist bump.

Trevor scuffled inside his bag and took out an external hard disk, its imprint and color was already fading. “See this?”

“I’m not blind. What’s that for?” My brows crossed.

He held out the disk to me. When I examined it, I almost puked right on the spot. The label on the back stated that this worn-out piece of metal and plastic actually contained seven Yottabytes of pure memory.Up and down my stomach went. I never knew such a huge storage material existed.It was too impossible to be true. All the electronic information transmitted throughout the whole world since the beginning of time until to the distant future would fit in it, and there would still be a lot of space left.

 I thought the rumors were plain fraud but I don’t know. I taught myself not to trust everything I see in the internet when my Getamped 2 account was hacked by a blog website.

“Holy circuits,” I could hardly hear my voice, no more than a whisper. “This is not fake?”

“I plugged it in last night. My pc couldn’t calculate the capacity. The screen was dotted with zeroes.” His tone was grave.

Moment by moment, the disk was getting heavier in my hand. Waves of cold chills crawled into my arms, straight to my chest, and finally drove into my thumping heart. “Where did you get it?”

“Won it in some auction on RF Private Server.Some Accretia dummy offered it for the price of seven billion gold.”

“That’s crazy cheap. Don’t you find it suspicious? It’s ridiculous, I swear.”

“I do. But what’s important it’s a rare find!” He squealed, his glasses almost jumped off.

I tried to hold the growing envy in me.The item was extremely precious and costs a ship-ful of money and he got his hands on it without even spending a single sheet.How lucky can Trevs get?No wonder he was a big shot in negotiations.

“By the way, I’ll let you borrow that tonight. It contains a lone game installer,” he interrupted my wandering attention.

The phrase immediately sparked my curiosity.“Game?”

“Something called Yocantes Online.”

“Never heard of it.”

Trevor sighed, his eyes caving deeper unto his sockets. “Me neither. Anyway, I’ve finished installing it a few days ago. The installation took twenty-six whole, sane hours to complete.”

“Must’ve felt like eternity.Why the drag?”

“I don’t know. I checked the directory; all the game files were a hundred gigabytes or more. Even the .dll files were a gigabyte big.”

“That’s insane,” I said. “Probably some high end, state-of-the-art release belonging to a huge franchise.”

“Maybe.I’m gonna try it tonight.”

“Great. Wish you luck though.” I hunched my bag to my back. “Well, it’s getting dark. Shouldn’t we go home?”

“Yeah.Come on, man.”

“Also, thanks for this.” I waved the disk.

“No problemo.”

Cautiously, I stuffed the disk into my bag, letting it get sandwiched by my notebook and extra-shirt. Small collisions might cause the old thing irreversible damage. Better be safe than sorry.

Just as we withdrew from the shelter of the roofs, into the open grounds, the darkened sky dropped its wrath on us.The rain poured down forcefully like it was raining peas. In no time, the place was filled with small muddy ponds.

The limped plants and dry grasses appeared to be delighted by the heavy shower. We ran, doing our best to avoid the mini-swamps that was practically everywhere. It was cold, but more than that, it was fun.

And that was the last I heard about Trevor, less than a week ago.I had no idea what happened but he had been absent n class since then.

****

My world teleported back to the chaos of my dim room as my fingers thoroughly traced the rugged imprints on the disk’s surface. Mom had already gone out as soon as she made sure I was not doing something suspicious on the computer.

I had not been able to touch or bother the disk ever since Trevor lent it to me. The loads of school work kept me from doing my gametronics-related routines.But tonight I made up my mind. Yocantes will be residing in my computer no matter what.

I shove the cord of the disk straight into the port. The device read immediately.

Wasting no time, I opened the drive and headed directly to the only folder, GAMEKILLA.There was no time for stats-reading; my whole soul was badly itching for a game to play.

I found the set-up and started the installation. To my dismay, the estimated time remaining displayed twenty-six hours as what Trevor has said.Flickering figures randomly switched every second like a static matrix.

Guess I have no choice but leave it until tomorrow.The game was a monster. Slow lazy steps carried me to my bed without much effort. I toppled into my pillow and snuggled my blanket. Bit by bit, my consciousness crunched off from reality as I drifted to sleep.

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