Parting Gifts

God I'm glad He's dead! I thought to myself.

Darren and I had Had problems since we got married, but I had been determined to stick it out.

Then a stroke of luck happened- for me anyway- Darren had a fatal stroke two weeks after our 6 year wedding anniversary.

He had always said that if he passed away before me, unlikely though we both thought it might be, he wanted me to cremate him and fill his favorite Nintendo game controller with his ashes and place it by the Lincoln memorial.

So Here I am on my way to Washington D.C. to drop his game controller urn off, and then I'm on to visit Peru.

I wanted to go so many times while we were married and Darren always said no, for one reason or another- he lost all ambition once we got married and I've never known why, and now I don't have to care, but no more excuses.....by this time tomorrow I will be in the mountains of Peru.

As the bus trundled along towards my destination, I pulled the controller from my bag and turned it over in my hands....Darren had really loved this thing and he had loved one game in particular, Lost World.

Darren had said that he almost felt like he was on the alien planet that Lost World was set on when he played the game, I remember him saying it was set on a lush jungle world and featured a few different races of aliens within that world who had evolved in tandem with each other, Darren talked about this game almost non stop in the last few months before he passed away.

The aliens in the game had been space faring but a plague had spread through their world 3000 years ago and had forced the rest of the galactic alien community at large to quarantine their planet.

According to the game, most of their scientists and medical doctors were some of the first to pass away from the plague due to their close exposure to it.

I had always thought that it was a bit too convenient of a plotline, but if it made Darren happy, then I didn't really care.

Until he started to say that one of the alien races had begun communicating with him through the game....then I started to really worry about him.

Darren said that they were trying to tell him how to get to their world, how to modify the game to do so....When I suggested therapy, he didn't speak about it again and tried to laugh it off.

I turned the game controller over in my hands on the bus with my dead husband heavy in my thoughts, while I missed Darren...I was an incredibly ecstatic widow, and then I saw a loose part in the back where the battery should be. I pressed it back into place and it dropped away to let a small paper note flutter into my hand. I was surprised, but I opened the note- it was in Darren's handwriting and it said press the Red circle button for the adventure of a lifetime.

Laughing , I turned the controller back over to the front and went ahead and pressed the red button expecting to hear a last message from him...Darren could be such a kook sometimes.

Instead, there was a blinding flash of purple and blue light and then I was sitting on grass.....bright blue grass!

After my eyes adjusted a little bit, I scanned around me and saw that I was either having a vivid hallucination or I was sitting in a blue & purple jungle with glowing greenish trees.....this looked a lot like the world in Darren's game...and the anthropomorphic sloth like being that was coming towards me wearing white robes and what looked like a lot of wooden and crystal jewelry looked exactly like Darren's favorite alien race in his game.

It chattered at me and held its arms out to me in a non threatening gesture, but my hands were numb from shock and I could feel my mouth hanging open. I dropped the game controller and a beam of light shot from it....the beam resolved itself into a hologram of Darren.

"Hi Liv. Welcome to Reoa. I know you thought I was crazy, but the Treisian's really did teach me how to get to their world. I've been coming here for the last few weeks and it is wonderful, they are amazing people. They are pretty cut off from everyone though. I wanted to bring you here so much, but if you're seeing this hologram then I'm dead-I kind of expected it. It's alright, I love you and you are going to love it here, I know you always wanted to be an anthropologist but couldn't go to college because of the money, well what better place for you to start? I love you Liv.....I always have and I'm so glad I got to live my life with you. I will be waiting for you on the other side sweetheart. Oh and before I go, this is Antran '' to which Darren's hologram gestured over his shoulder at the sloth "He will show you around and get you settled in, he has been my main contact and I've told him all about you! Bye Love." and with that, Darren's image was gone and I was alone with the sloth like alien- Antran- again.