500 AD: A Game Show

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

A 62 year old widower with a death wish finds solace in racing his classic hotrod along mountain roads at night, telling himself he's cheating death rather than racing to meet it. One night, death reaches out for him.

He awakens in a hospital bed with a broken back and a poor prognosis from the doctors. He dips into despair.

Salvation comes in the form of a talent agent for The Grand Game, which turns out to be a reality show with an audience of trillions, broadcast over an interplanetary entertainment network.

"How would you like to have the body you had when you were nineteen?" the agent asks. "With the knowledge and experience of your current self?"

All he has to do is compete in the game. If he wins, he'll be rich. If he loses, he'll be dead. The game? Simple really. All he has to do is travel from the east coast of America to the west coast. Oh, one more thing. He'll be doing it in 500AD.

What he isn't told is that there's a lively betting operation on the game, and the beings running it aren't the types to be thwarted.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: TomBlack

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.7/ 5.0
Followers: 7
Views: 8,521

Chapters(25 total)

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

FeyCosmoRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
500 AD starts with a car accident and continues with the insanity of being recruited (but also sort of Shang-hai-ed) into the Grand Game. What is the Grand Game? Did you sign the Non Disclosure Agreement? If you didn’t, I can’t help you.
But I *CAN* say that it helps to be of a certain age, and a fan of “The Last Starfighter”. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it.
Our writer TomBlack has created a smart-ass mouthed character in Sam, who is an older everyman type character reborn into a younger version of himself. Being the pragmatic sort, he can’t believe some ‘alien’ in a very Earth-like outfit has signed him up to a really cool game. Thing is, the game really IS being run by aliens and the stakes are quite high because we’re playing things to the alien overlords, and our pain is their entertainment.
The dialogue between characters is one of the strongest aspects of 500AD: A Game Show. You need a lot of exposition up front to understand the nature of the game, but when you do, you’ll see why there have been so many attempts at winning that have resulted in death. Our alien overlords must LOVE it when our squishy, human forms succumb to the conditions of the game.
But underneath the layers of technology and snark there's a sweet man called Sam, who misses his wife Meg. Every now and then there's a moment of pure *feels*, when Sam remembers days gone by, usually when he’s in pain. These snippets of humanity make the unusual story all the more relatable.
If you’re a bit of a tech-head, a prepper, a survivalist or a soldier, you will love this series. If you enjoy the idea of aliens- read this. It’s made me consider the idea that if aliens DO turn out to be real, we could just be a game to them. It would certainly explain a lot.