Irl Console - Volume 1 Chapter 4 Rebirth

Everything changed.

At least, for Dave it did… His breath filled his lungs, his heart beat in his chest, the familiar feeling of inexorable fatigue that he had had just before taking his nap – all of it was there. All of it was REAL. Dave was sure of this. More sure about this than anything he’d ever felt. The reason he was so certain it was real is that this time, HE was in control. Not the damn pig of a pilot. Right now Dave wasn’t just an observer screaming at a cut scene. Instead he was the main actor. The thrill was thousands of times more intense that his last fleeting moment of control. This time, Dave knew that the pilot was sealed away – it wouldn’t just return. Dave had reconquered his body!

Dave thought vaguely about how interesting and different the concept of an internal to external exorcism was. Usually it was the other way around. Like, was he the demon that just successfully possessed the body of anonymous pilot Dave? If he was, then were all demons just misunderstood and merely reclaiming the body that they believed was rightfully their own. Was Dave’s current body rightfully his own or did he steal it from Pilot? Well, be he demon or not, Dave wasn’t handing over his body to that pig ever again. In fact, considering the Pilot’s habitually slovenly behaviour, it was far more likely that if there was a demonic possession at all, Dave was the victim at birth. Maybe his pilot was Belphegor himself?? After all, the pilot seemed to follow the pattern of seeking great gains from minimal effort.

With his eyes opened once more, Dave winced as the light r.a.p.ed his recently peacefully dilated pupils. He noticed that the floating tilde artifact had vanished. Out of curiosity he mentally pressed the key again. Was it really just a dream?

*~*

Dave froze. The world froze. Silence reigned. Only Dave’s mind observed the still world around him.

“This…”

*~*

Sound returned to Dave’s ears as the wall clock resumed its rhythm.

*~*

“Muhahaha! It’s a f.u.c.k.i.n.g superpower! I may not be able to move while time is paused but I can still think! Well, swallowing a keyboard key in a fit of vengeful insanity is hardly comparable to a radioactive spider bite but I’ll take it.” Dave had to struggle quite hard to refrain from doing mental backflips in excitement. Even without understanding how the console commands worked outside of Skyrim, Dave knew that this ability would give him an edge. Maybe he could right a few wrongs with enough effort? The first step, however, was to properly set a goal. Winning can only occur when there is a clear goal and rules set in place. Otherwise, if there was no goal then how would one know that they’ve achieved it? If there were no clearly defined rules then what would provide the thrilling challenge of rising above the restrictions to complete the task?

Probably the greatest boon of being in the console overlay was that Dave constantly felt refreshed. All the tiredness from before was washed away and he was in his best state to think. Of course, outside of the console his body still needed to sleep and Dave was pretty sure that the afternoon session of work was going to be awful.

Whilst one would not guess it from Dave’s private lifestyle, he was actually a chiropractor and worked in a successful and very busy private practice. Dave managed to cram the necessary information into his mind during the course of his degree despite the pilot’s abysmal work ethic. As a result, Dave had a pretty poor reputation at his College as a party animal who squandered his obviously high aptitude. Yes, Dave’s grades weren’t bad because he was truly earnest in learning the chiropractic craft. His pilot, on the other hand, had made things as difficult as possible for him and Dave barely passed without having to repeat a year.

Luckily, once the jumping through hoops of further education was over with, Dave was actually able to prove himself in a practical setting and was very popular with his patients. Real world results speak louder than grades. Dave had glowing reviews from many patients whom he had successfully helped out of pain.

He still had 40 minutes of time to catch a nap before his 2pm client and there was no way he’d make it through the afternoon if he didn’t seize the opportunity. Dave set his phone alarm and closed his eyes. In what seemed to Dave like a long blink, he awoke to his alarm.

Dave’s 2pm patient was a bit of a ‘special’ case. Roberta was a 52 year old woman with what Dave could only describe as “Undiagnosed learning difficulties”. She suffered greatly from lower back pain and had horrendous psoriasis covering large parts of her body. She was overweight and smelled bad. Like, really bad… Thinks ‘cats and old socks doused in alcohol’. To be honest Dave really dreaded seeing Roberta but she paid good money and was genuinely harmless. If he could help her out of pain then he would.

This time, Roberta had presented with pain over her right Sacro-Iliac joint and a band like pain over her lumbo-sacral junction. When Dave inquired as to the back story around the pain’s onset he instantly regretted it. Roberta had hurt her back ‘wrestling’ with a trucker in the woods behind a local truck stop. Yes, unfathomably, Roberta was quite promiscuous. Dave shuddered as he wondered how much a trucker had to drink to want to smash Roberta.

Struggling through the final hour of his afternoon session. Dave decided he would be wise to sleep for an hour before driving home. He had a lot to do once he was there after all. The place was like a pigsty and Dave decided that his first step to world domination should be to clean his damn room. Once he was refreshed enough to drive, he set off on his 20 minute journey home. Rather than singing at his steering wheel, this time Dave’s mind was thinking over the many possibilities that the console presented to him. He had already used it a couple of times this afternoon to speed up the process of diagnosis with his patients. He had asked them to stand with their backs to him whilst he would observe their spinal curves. Once in position he would mentally hit the tilde key to pause time and give himself an unlimited window to observe the situation of the patient. He also did the same with X-rays. Whilst it seemed to the patients that Dave was on the top of his game today and able to spot problems in the blink of an eye, Dave was actually being more thorough than ever before.

Dave could already tell that, once word of his lightning speed diagnostic capabilities got around, he would be even more highly in demand! It felt good to let his skills market themselves.

A three part plan for his first evening in sole control of himself had gradually taken form as he reached home. First, he would clean. Second, he needed to find out more about the console. The best way for him to do that was to check the Elder Scrolls wiki. Dave’s version of Skyrim was heavily modded and used SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender) so it was likely that there were more commands than there would be in the vanilla version of the console. For example: Dave had already seen a command that referenced the “PipBoy Radio” from the Fallout series.

Lastly, Dave needed to increase his knowledge base even further. He already had an amazing cheat which allowed him unlimited time to observe patients, X-rays, etc… but it would be useless if he didn’t know what he was looking at. So, time to hit the books! At least the console would speed up his learning speed as he could look at a page, enter the console to read and digest it, then exit, flip the page and repeat. This way he could read a book in a fraction of the time and at his best mental state. The joys of being OP!

Now that the plan was in place, Dave quickly put his thoughts into action. This felt so damn good! Previously all of his thoughts were left to rot in his mind unless they coincided with the whims of the pilot. Now, Dave was the master of his own fate!

Once the cleaning was done, Dave surveyed his newly sparkling lair with pride. A glimmer of excitement flashed through his eyes as he headed upstairs to his PC. Finally, it was time to discover some of his new abilities!