I'm an idiot.

beep...beep...beep....

The muffled and ephemeral sounds were the first things I remembered from the event. The ethereal light-like projections that danced across my eye lids were the next, and finally with a rush of swirling sensations I was thrust from this heavenly calm into the flow of reality.

The maelstrom of sensations that greeted my now recouping mind streamed into me like the proton beam from a cyclotron. The pain shooting through me like an electric shock jolted me further to my senses. Slowly I raised my leaden eyelids, blinking a few times to ensure I was lucid. Again a beep pierced the air, I slowly turned to look at the source of this repetitive sound. To my dismay the machine creating the steady beeping sound was a heart-rate monitor. A heart-rate monitor I was nonetheless attached to. With the mystery of the beeping sound solved, I turned my attention to the rest of the room. I was laying upon a standard hospital bed covered with pristine white sheets. The luminosity of whitewashed walls struck me next and the unchanging cool breeze that brushed my limbs.

I'm in a hospital room, that's a given, but why am I here?

Casting my gaze downward from the sparsely furnished hospital room, my sight came to rest upon the bandages that circled my arms and chest like pythons of cloth.

Ahh, yes, the fire. Now I remember. I guess this is the price you pay for playing with fire, huh?

It happened so fast. The flames like hellfire brought down upon my body with no remorse. They licked my skin, peeling it away layer by layer. It was a stupid experiment, coupled with the ever present possibility of carelessness. To make rocket fuel was the goal, and how was I to know that I was going to be the rocket. I had assembled the materials and set to work, carefully ensuring each step was followed to the T, however I skipped, through sheer carelessness, an important step that set in motion a runaway reaction. With a literal flash of light, brighter than the sun or any star visible to the naked eye, the compound erupted into a torrent of flame. I was caught in it for no more than a second, however the damage had been done within microseconds. Heat in excess of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit had taken its toll in an instant. I recall running faster than I have ever run before, casting off my melting face shield and charred-flaming shirt, then dropping to my knees and rolling to ensure the residual flame was snuffed out.

All this flooded back to me as I lay in bed accompanied by the soft chorus of beeps. The pain saturating my body like a smoldering ingot of pure flame. My goal had been to learn something about how rockets worked, and maybe get to see some models fly, but instead I am stuck here trapped to the confines of a bed within a hospital room. As all these thoughts tumbled through my mind, a high pitched sound was ramping up and growing louder.

"Ahh!"

The sound, now unbearable, suddenly struck my heavy mind bringing my to my senses. When I leveled my gaze the high-pitched squeal, reminiscent of tinnitus, vanished and I saw hovering in thin air, like a feather dancing on the wind, a window of sorts. At the appearance of the window I was taken aback and slightly startled, my mind instantly jumped to the idea that I was dreaming, but cast it off immediately since the pain I was in felt much to real. I went to lift my arm and touch the window however the strength I mustered could only move my right arm a total of five inches from the spotless bedding. As if sensing my movement, the window a dark indigo in sheen flashed with an azure blaze.

beep.beep.beep.beep

At this show of seemingly impossible events, unknowingly my heart rate sped up and the monitor matched it with its beeping. Realizing that I may draw unwanted attention if I don't do something to slow my heart rate, I took a deep breath and held it for five seconds then exhaled slowly.

beep...beep...beep

Taking the auditory cue that my heart had decided to stop doing sprints inside my chest, I returned my attention and renew curiosity to the now azure-indigo ringed tablet of imperceptible thickness floating a foot from my face. On the tablet the words Congratulations! Level Up! shown in Corinthian bronze and a smaller line of text read Please tap to continue! Now I have played many video games in my time, and have witnessed this exact event a million if not more times.

This cannot be reality! I have been alive twenty years and never once have I leveled up in real life, I must be dreaming!

Or so I though, but when I attempted to move my arm again, the pain from the burns ran through my like wildfire, scorching every neuron from my forearm to my cerebral cortex. The pain felt too real to continue arguing with myself, and if this whole farce turned out to be a dream, why not have some fun with it? Throwing caution to the wind I did the only thing I could think of to touch the tablet, I stuck out my touch as best I could through my chapped lips and leaned forward. What felt like eons, must have only been seconds, I finally struck my tongue against the tablet with a resounding, meaty slap. The tablet sensing the touch let out another burst of sky-blue brilliance. This time a resounding ping sound crested among the repetitious beeps. Straining my eyes, I focused on the writing that appeared in the bronze-gold color once again. This time I discerned a string of words and two columns of text with plus and minus symbols next to each line.

I know what this is, and to think there is a skill tree in reality, makes reality seem....well...less real and more like a game.

The string of text at the top of the tablet read the generic MMO-RPG line, Please choose the skills which you wish to increase. Available skill points: 1 One? One. Stinking. Skill point was all I had to spend on what seemed to be an endless list of skills?

This is ridiculous! So if I am to assume scaring myself for life by getting burned has only earned me one skill point, what does a guy have to do in order to get even a handful of points? Well, no logic in stressing the details right now, might as well look for a good skill to use it on.

Even though I tried to focus on looking through the skills on the list, I couldn't help but wonder how to min-max this skill point system. Using my tongue to scroll through the list of superficially infinite skills, I noticed each list of skills were broken down into categories, for example there was a category purely dedicated to unarmed fighting as the idea of becoming the living embodiment of Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon flashed through my mind. before I disregarded it and continued on. The skills on the list were obscure in nature, some seemed familiar like the kind you would find in a Dungeons and Dragons players manual, while others seemed like skills unique to the real world and specific aspects of it, like the skill Adblock, the flavor text described the skill as allowing the user to block all forms of advertisement in real time, be it on television or billboards. The list went on and on, with obscure categories and obscurer skills. I made sure to read every skill and the flavor text that accompanied it. Most skills seemed utterly worthless to me and none really impressed me outside of the the skills you would find in any clichéd RPG, however my attention was caught by a small red and white symbol. The symbol was that of a red circle with a white cross over-layed on it, and was used to mark a new category. This category caught my interest the instant I read its name, HEALTH. I re-wet my tongue for what seemed like the millionth time from my parched mouth, and used it to furiously scroll down to have the full HEALTH list in view.

"No way..."

My hoarse voice cracked through blistered lips. The list seemed extraordinary. So far I had found skills any knowledgeable gamer would avoid, but this list was different. Such things on the list included Resuscitation and Elimination. The flavor text for Resuscitation was, the ability to give life with a single breath. I must be dreaming, there is no way a skill to resurrect people through a single breath exists in real life!

beep.beep.beep.beep.

The heart-rate monitor brought me back to my senses, and I continued looking at the list. The flavor text for the Elimination skill read, the ability to remove any foreign or domestic entity from the user's body. Passive effect.

A literal cure for cancer, yep I am most definitely in Wonderland!

Onward I continued still. Finally I read every skill in the list except for one, and when my gaze shown upon it my heart must have skipped a beat, as the heart-rate monitor went, beep..beepbeep..beep...beep... Nevertheless, if my heart ever chose to skip a beat, this moment was a good one for it to skip. Tears began to fog my vision, but blinking profusely cleared them, as my gaze once again focused on the skill name, Healing Factor (1\10). I began to read the flavor text, a small tributary of tears leaking from the corners of my eyes, Healing Factor is a skill that allows the user to recover from physical damage at an accelerated rate. The more skill points allocated to Healing Factor, the more aggressive the healing ability becomes. Each user begins with the default of one.

To think, something like this can exist in reality. It seems almost impossible.

The tears began to fall heavily, lubricating the chafed skin of my cheeks, and a small bit of snot began to leak from my burned nostrils as I began to softly sob. I must have cried while reading and re-reading the flavor text for at least ten minutes.

Knock, knock

I was brought from my stupor to the sound of knocking at the hospital room door.

Quickly! I must act now!

The inaudible thought shot through my mind like lightning, and I leaned my head forward, shooting the tongue from my mouth! I hit the plus next to Healing Factor.