Now is the Time.
Hello, my name is Jason. Today I would like to tell you a story. A story that made me go insane two years ago. But first I would like to tell you about myself.
I am a programmer and an artist; I love video games and even modifying them. My favorite game of all time is Pokémon Fire Red and I really like hacking the game, inserting my own sprites and making new scripts. That’s mostly what I do now since I had a motorcycle accident two years ago and paralyzed my legs and suffered a minor injury to the head. I had created a lot of .ips files for Pokémon. I used to created new maps, new battles for Pokémon and I really enjoyed them. Now enough about me let’s get to the story.
It was around about three weeks after my accident, I noticed a .rar file in my D drive. I tried to open it but it was password protected. I couldn’t open it, couldn’t delete it. So I left it as it is since my anti-virus didn’t classify it as a virus so I left it that way and went to playing Pokémon Fire Red.
Few days later, the mail had come. Since I was the only one there I went and took it. One of the letters was the electricity bill. I noticed it was higher than before. That was odd; since I knew my family was very much cautious about electricity and would not really waste it. The only explanation could be that someone had left an electrical device running all night. I didn’t, since I’d always go to sleep right after turning all my devices off, maybe somebody else was using something. After reading this made my head hurt a little bit and I had no idea why, the pain went away and then I went to my room.
After a few days I felt a bit weaker and it seemed as if I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I went to the doctor and he told me that I hadn’t been sleeping enough which made absolutely no sense since I always go to bed at 10 pm and wake up at 5 am. I need at least 7 hours of sleep to function properly. I then went home with my parents and slept early so I wouldn’t feel tired anymore. A few days had passed and I felt normal again, but one day had woken up early. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t.
I went to my laptop and felt like modding again. The thing that felt odd was that my computer felt warm as if it was active few minutes earlier. I opened it and noticed a .rar file was on the desktop. It was probably the same .rar file. I thought maybe it was password protected but I checked, and it wasn’t. Inside there was a .ips file called Pokémon Fire Red. In the description the file was called now is the time. I wondered what it meant. The .ips file can be used in Advanced Map which I use to change the maps of the game and add new maps. I injected the .ips to Fire Red. Then I wanted to see what it would look like in the map because I would at least know what had been changed. But then I found out that Advanced Map and Advanced Text had been removed from my PC, I wanted to download it but the internet had been cut, most likely the internet bill hadn’t been played.
So I just decided to open the game using VBA emulator. The game opened normally, Oak said his lines, and I created my character, then named my rival. Then the screen went straight to the over world. It was weird.
The room with Red was empty. No PC, no SNES, not even the door. I didn’t know where to go. I moved around the space then noticed I could move through the black background. My head started to hurt again as if I was kind of expecting this. It hurt so much that I couldn’t concentrate at what I was doing so I saved the game using Shift + F1 and I went to bed. I felt really tired.
I then had a dream that I was in the game. I was locked in the room that Red was in and felt really uneasy. I went through the wall to the black background, everything was pitch black but then I saw someone. It looked just like my character then it whispered “Now is the Time.” Then it swiftly came toward to me. I was so shocked that I woke up. I was sweating heavily. My parents came into my room and asked me why I had screamed. I just told them that I had a bad dream. I didn’t want to tell them about the game. They might think that I was the one who was wasting the electricity.
I didn’t touch the game for a long time. I just sat in my room thinking about the .rar file and how it appeared on my laptop. I didn’t really want to play it and just wanted to remove it but something in my mind said; “No, open it, play it, now is the time.” It was calling me so I went and opened the game. From the black background I moved in certain directions as if I knew where to go. Then I exited to outside my house. The map was pretty much the same except instead of Gary’s House there was a small cave.
Before entering it I decided to see if anything else had changed. I went and talked to the girl that was reading the trainer tips.
She said, “You’re finally here.”
I then proceed to read the trainer tips. It said “Now is the time. Give up Jason.”
This freaked me out. How did the game know my name? I am the only one knows how to make hacks in my family and nobody outside my house ever uses my computer. So how did the game know my name? My head started to ache again.
I went near to the cave to see what it was. There was a sign board which I clearly remember wasn’t there before. I read the board in front of the cave, it said “Enter the cave and give up now.” I got really scared from what was going on. I said to myself "don’t enter the cave, it’s a trap." But something in my mind just said “Go, go!” I couldn’t control myself. I checked my Pokémon roster and saw a Lugia level 100 named you lose. I just didn’t understand what was going on. Who wanted to make me lose? Who wanted to make me give up? I was a nice guy, I got along with everybody, I didn’t make any enemies, so who? My headache grew stronger. At that point my right hand seemed to move automatically. I couldn’t control it. Also after this I wasn’t able to take any pictures because I couldn’t use both hands to capture the screenshot and save it. Red then went inside the cave. It was pitching dark again.
I tried to stop my right hand but couldn’t. It seemed to control Red, making him move in specific directions. Then it exited and then entered a temple kind of like in the Gold/Silver version. My right hand seemed to just move the character up. Then I felt as if almost all of my body had been paralyzed but it seemed to move on its own. Red then met a character I had never seen before but the pictured seemed to be a very low quality rendition of me, and his name was “Jason.”
I was scared shitless.
Then a dialog started saying “Hey Jason, it’s me Jason. You might not recognize me but I have been with you your whole life.”
I was like “What the fuck?”
A voice in my head started to talk, “It’s over Jason, now is the time. I win. You can’t stop me now.”
Then after that a battle had started between Red and Jason.
The Jason in the game had 6 Pokémon. They were Pikachu, Kabutops, Meowth, Magikarp, Celebi and Mew. They were all 100 level Pokémon. Then the attacks started. My Lugia had only one move which was hidden power. Only my one finger of my left hand able to make some movement, but all it could do was press the z key to commence and attack. Lugia used hidden power.
It was a critical hit, Pikachu fainted but then it made such a sharp noise that my head couldn’t stand it, and I felt a sense of an evil presence inside me, something I had never felt before. Then the next battle started, after this my body felt less paralyzed and I could move much better than before. Again I made Lugia use hidden power, on Magikarp, one hit K.O. then another sharp noise. Then I felt a greater sense of evil. My mind was like, “Yes, yes, lose it, give up.” I felt like I lost my sense of morality. I was losing my emotions. It continued like this till the final battle.
Before I was about the press the z key to finish Mew, my parents came into my room to see what the hell that noise was. I then felt no emotion but a dark presence had almost taken over my mind and I was doing what it was telling me to. I just grabbed my monitor and threw it at my parents. My mother was hit but my dad dodged. I went to attack my dad but my legs were paralyzed and I just fell down. My dad then grabbed me, trying to stop me, but I just wanted to attack. That was all that was in my mind.
I then felt unconscious and then I went into a coma for 2 years. I was inside a mental health care institution. The head injury that I felt was no longer there.
Then later a doctor came and talked with me.
“How are you feeling?” asked the doctor.
I said “Fine.”
“I need to tell you something important, but first I need to ask you something,” said the doctor.
I said “Sure.”
“When you were young did you ever feel alone, like you wanted a brother, have you ever created a friend that never existed?” asked the doctor.
Then I remembered “Yeah, I did create one. I had no real friends when I was young. he seemed so real. I had fun with him all the time, but later he started to go bad, like being an evil person. I didn’t know what was happening. So I really tried to remove him from my mind by doing something else and thinking about something else. He then stopped appearing, but I did always feel a presence as if he was near me, watching me.”
Then the doctor's prediction came true.
He then explained to me that I was suffering from personality disorder, that this imaginary friend was really another part of my brain that was trying to take control of my consciousness.
Apparently after taking tests, it seemed as if the two parts of my mind were battling to see who would win, from time to time I would wake up, make loud noises and just want to attack people.
Then a sudden shiver went down my spine and then I seemed to know everything my other was doing. The things that were going through my head. I was waking up almost every night and using the laptop. I started creating this map which I had encountered after I had injected the ROM, which explains the electricity bill. Visions were coming into my mind of me scripting for the game that was trying to remove my consciousness.
I lay there in the bed for an hour, shocked scared. I then had to stay in the mental hospital so that I probably couldn’t do any damage to other people, I mean due to this I had attacked my parents. I wondered what would have happened if I had heard the last sharp noise. The other would have taken over. Thank god I was able to be saved; I knew I would have to fight this monster in my head. I’ll keep fighting, wish me luck.
This is the last thing the original consciousness had to say. What? You thought I would just go. No, of course not, he is too weak. This pathetic boy should not be in control of body with such beautiful mind. Now he is gone, I am in control. It was fun that whole month traumatizing him. Still there’s something I need to do, I may be in control but there is a slight chance he may return, now all I have to do is go back home and play the game again. Goodbye...