Carl woke up.

He yawned.

He stretched.

He sniffed the air, squinting as he reached down to consume the cup of cold coffee on the table next to him.

He awoke.

Whew, another great sleep. Can't wait to see how this carries over to the rest of my day. Feels like I could crush any meeting now. Hopefully I can, since I'm gonna have to. He sat up, then stood up and made his way to the bathroom for his morning routine. At least now that I recognized how it works I managed to cut it down to just mornings. Never started getting actually hungry, either.

Carl emerged and stretched again, luxuriating in how great his game-body felt. Can easily see how people might get addicted to this. Not me though. Might have stayed on for way longer than I expected, but that was because I had to do dad stuff. He nodded to himself. Yup. Not even gonna play tomorrow. Just gonna log out now, and…

He eyed the stairs. Alright, I'll at least give her a goodbye hug, even if she's asleep. Got a lot of good hugs in yesterday after all the craziness, but one more's always good. He started forward, making for the second floor of the workshop. Still can't believe how insane that got. First Mina winning the race, then Vol PvPing that guy right when I was about to charge over, then freaking Rex shows up in a giant mech… He shook his head. Also can't believe I freaking jobbed again. Had some good fishing this time finally, but next time—if there's a next time—definitely gonna win at least one fight. Can't be this much of a noo…

When he reached the second floor, he frowned.

Mina's chair was empty.

He rubbed his beard. Where'd she go? Is she… He opened the hatch and checked the roof, but besides being a disaster area of weird metal and stone spikes everywhere that he didn't remember existing the last time he'd been up there, whenever that had even been, there was nothing. Starting to get a little worried. Oh, maybe she just—

"Carl?" Vol called from somewhere below. "You here?"

"Hey, Vol," he called back, shutting the hatch on his way back downstairs. "You seen Mina today?"

"Uh, yeah, I suppose that was today," she said after a moment. "Gave me this to pass on to you." She pulled a piece of paper out of her inventory and handed it to him as he reached the ground floor.

"What's this…" Carl unfolded the paper and looked at it, but it was filled with a collection of blurry characters he'd never seen before. He blinked, and the paper was filled with normal words in a precisely-written script that he recognized after seeing it on so many drawings and plans the night before. Weird, must be a bug. Or maybe just morning vision. Wouldn't put it past Roger's team to reproduce that accurately.

He started to read.

Carl,

I've left this note with Vol to ease your worries upon waking. I've not run off or anything of the sort. Rather, I've spoken to Annie, just as you'd suggested.

She's an amazing woman.

It was a difficult decision, but I've decided to 'log out', as you'd termed it, and begin anew as she's advocated.

I realize I've not explicitly discussed this with you, but Annie's assured me you'll be pleased with my choice. I hope she's correct.

I look forward to meeting you once more when our paths cross.

With love,

Mina.

Carl read it over again, feeling a burst of pride well up both for his amazing wife and for Mina. He smiled. That's really great. I knew Annie would be able to help. And I guess Mina's quitting the game to focus on getting her life in order. Good for her. Can't just run away from your problems, even when they're really messed up ones. "Inventory." He folded the paper up and placed it into the Mina's Presents page, deciding to leave the jumble of items as it was—a reminder of the time he'd really put his dad powers to use for the best. "Dismiss."

"Good news?" Vol asked.

He nodded and took in a slow, deep breath. "The best."

She grinned. "Well, that's fucking great. You wanna celebrate?"

Carl rolled his eyes. "We just celebrated for like half a freaking day yesterday!"

Vol's expression turned thoughtful, and she tapped her chin. "Oh. We did, didn't we."

He chuckled. "I'll miss hanging out with you. It's been a blast."

"Huh?"

"Gotta log out and get back to work," Carl said. "Big meeting coming up."

Vol grimaced. "What's with all this log out talk?"

"Why, what do you call it?"

"Don't need to have special words for everything, Carl. Just fucking call it going to another world like it is."

He scratched his beard. "That really what people call it now?"

"It's what everyone's called it for as long as I've been doing it," Vol said in a confident tone.

Carl sighed. Can't believe so much has changed since I played. Even basic terms are gone now. What does Bobby… Yeah, she doesn't talk about it as 'logging in', does she. Even the voice command is probably just some legacy compatibility for people too old to ever really play games anymore. Like me. He shook his head a little. "Guess I really am a big noob."

Vol waved her hand. "Nah, you're not that much of a noob. Remember how you tossed that big machine around yesterday? No noob could've done that."

"Maybe you're right," he said after a moment's thought. Yeah, I can't be a total noob. I fought a giant robot and kept it busy for a while. Even put a little bit of a hurting on it. No complete noob's gonna be able to do that.

"You know, if you're just gonna leave right now, you should at least get shit ready for the next time you come ba—You're gonna come back eventually to hang out, right?"

"Well…" Carl considered it. "Probably at some point? Just to do some quick fishing though, not for this long."

"Fishing again, huh," Vol said. "I know a place that might have some good fish. Not sure I'm gonna wanna be sitting around all day with you if you're gonna do something boring like that, but I could…maybe find some other things to do nearby?"

"What's it called? The place you're thinking of."

"Ocexius Tower. Right on the edge of the sea. Sort of."

"You've been there before?"

"Yeah, you could say that. Been thinking about going back soon. See how things have changed."

"I'll keep it in mind," he said, taking one last look around the floor of the workshop. "Actually…" If I'm gonna be off for a while, I better clean up a bit so nobody steals anything. He took the stairs back up to the second level and deposited Mina's recliner into his inventory, finding her goggles and neatly-folded scarf nearby and adding them too, then returned to the ground floor to put his chair in.

"Was gonna ask you about that," Vol said, staring off to the side while he bent down to put his boots on.

Got pretty used to walking around barefoot, but these boots are unreal. Wish I could have a pair of these and one of the chairs in real life. How awesome would that be?

"What're you gonna do about it?" Vol asked. She gestured at the wall behind him.

Carl looked over and started when he realized the doll was still sitting against the wall in the same place she'd been whenever the last time he'd noticed her was. "Uh…" He grimaced. "Guess I don't really wanna leave her sitting around like that…" He walked over and opened his inventory again, reaching down to—

"Please do not touch me," the doll said in an eerie, echoing voice, continuing to stare off into nothing.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Carl blinked and halted his hand's progress. "What?"

The doll continued to stare blankly.

He moved his hand cl—

"Please, human, I request that you not touch me," said the doll.

He pulled his hand back, feeling distinctly uneasy at this new change. "Uh…"

"That's weird," said Vol. "Not a great sex doll if it doesn't wanna be touched."

"I was just gonna put her back in my inventory," Carl muttered, starting to get even more uncomfortable than he'd already been at the prospect of putting something with his wife's face and most of her body into an in-game storage system as though she was a thing or an item—which she absolutely wasn't, and he respected and loved the fierce independence that she always showed. Now that it was directly asking him not to touch it though…

"Carl, you can't put living creatures in your inventory," Vol said as though it should've been obvious to him.

"Er…" I guess that's a good point, but she's a doll, and not… Ugh, not something I wanna have to try explaining, even to Vol, considering the game's not supposed to have NPCs. "Well, shoot," he said, standing back up. He rubbed his beard as he looked down at the sort of creepy blond-and-purple-haired doll. "What do I…"

"Put her in the back of the car?" Vol suggested. "Mina said I could have it, and I was thinking I'd try driving all the way to the tower. Never driven anything this fast. Seemed like it might be fun."

"Yeah," Carl said slowly. "That kinda works, I guess?" Super uncomfortable even having something like this in the first place. Giving it to Vol means I don't have to think about it anymore, which is all around a great—

"Okay, uh, sex doll, you, uh, wanna get in the car?" Vol said.

The doll's head moved slowly until it was facing her. "What is a car?" she asked in the same strange, echoing voice.

Vol pointed. "That's a car. I'm gonna drive it really fucking fast and far away from everyone who's gonna get in the way of having fun with it, and you're coming with me."

The doll's head slowly turned to the car. "I will," she said, slowly rising to her feet with an odd sort of smooth grace that it hadn't ever shown before. She walked with halting steps towards the car.

Vol opened the latch for the backseat door and pulled it open.

The doll looked inside for a long moment before leaning down to get into the car, her very normal overalls and turtleneck amplifying the creepy feeling being given off. She lay across the seat, facing the rear of the car, and then stopped moving once more.

"Weird," Vol remarked as she closed and re-latched the door.

"Yup," Carl agreed. "Super weird."

"I'm gonna start driving," Vol announced. "At least come see how fast Mina's car can go before you leave."

"Well…" He thought about it briefly. "Guess there's no harm in just a couple minutes."

"Yeah!" Vol exclaimed, her mouth curved in a wide grin. "Let's fucking go then!"

Their surroundings changed, and they were standing out in the empty, bright, rocky, desert-y place that looked vaguely like something Carl had driven through on his way to the city. He squinted. "Inventory," he murmured, fumbling through the pages until he got to the one that held his sunglasses. Once he was no longer being blinded by the way-too-freaking-bright suns, he dismissed the window.

"This is gonna be so much fun," Vol said as she opened the driver's side door. "It has to be."

He headed around to the other side of the car and pulled the door open. "Oh."

Mina's racing helmet lay on the seat along with the skeleton mask.

He frowned a little. Shame she's only gonna get to wear this thing once. Well, at least she put it to good use. His frown changed to a grin. Yeah, she really did. That's… What a great kid. He opened his inventory once more and switched back to his Mina's Presents page to deposit the items before again dismissing the window and taking a seat.

"Weird knowing she's not coming back," Vol said while he buckled his seatbelt. "But then again, there's a sort of funny thing about that too."

"Alright, I'm ready," Carl announced.

The car started forward with a too-sudden burst of speed.

"Huh, faster than I thought," Vol remarked.

"Have you ever driven before?" Carl realized he probably should've asked that a while a—

"Nah, not more than once or twice, but how hard can it be," she said, steering sharply around a boulder in a way that made Carl cling to his door. "Anyway, funny thing about Mina going to another world is she's supposed to get this statue made of her over the main gates of Onyxfell. That was the prize of the Hero's Cup, and Aq—the Empress always honors her word. So I was talking to her—Aquila, I mean—this morning about it before I came to see you, and she was mad that this might mean she'd break her word. And that was when I had a smart idea. Really fucking smart."

"Yeah? What'd—whoa—you think of?"

"Well, Mina's got that sister of hers in the city who looks just like her."

"Okay…"

"It's like they're twins. Except her sister has smaller breasts. So I told Aquila to just model the statue off the sister, and then she can make the breasts bigger at the end and it'll look exactly like Mina. How fucking smart is that?"

"That's… I don't know, I guess it's pretty smart? Is it really that big a deal?"

"What, the breast size? Obviously, otherwise you couldn't tell them apart."

"Er, no, I meant—WHOA—the statue."

"Carl, it's a really big deal. Once Aquila gives her word on something, she always keeps it. Always."

"Huh. Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Carl pressed his feet against the floor of the car in a feeble attempt to will a brake pedal into existence that only a parent knows.

The car rocketed across the barren land, nearly colliding with yet another boulder.

"Relax, this is easy," Vol said dismissively. "Worst that happens is I have to get out and push the car out of the way again before it hits something."

"Uh-huh."

"Like right there, when we almost hit that big rock and I turned the car so we wouldn't."

"Uh…"

"Or just then when I couldn't really turn the car so I had to jump us into the air to go over that really big rock."

"Vol, cars aren't supposed to fly."

"Oh. Well… Huh. Makes sense though. We're falling really fast."

"Uh… UH… VOL?"

"Relax. Just calm down already and have fun. See?"

"This is like the best and worst roller coaster I've ever been on all at once."

"Told you it'd be fun."

"Whew. Well, you haven't been wrong about anything yet, so I guess I should probably have a bit more confidence when you say it."

"Obviously."

"Alright, but now I've seen how fast it goes, so I'm gonna get going. We'll hang out more next time I'm on."

"I'll miss you, Carl. You're a great friend."

"You too, Vol." Carl grinned over at his grinning friend, not even bothering to worry about the next giant boulder that was coming up ahead of them. Then he had an idea. May as well. Might give me the spark I need. "Actually, before I go, I wanna get your opinion on something. Just in case."

"Okay." She steered sharply, and the car drifted hard, narrowly avoiding running into the boulder before the boulder disappeared and they were somehow somewhere else entirely and not about to crash into anything. "Fucking rocks," she grumbled.

"Suppose you've got a problem where someone wants you to do something one way, but you've already been doing it another way for a while. The person who wants you to do it differently is important, so you have to at least give them a reply, but their way has some problems, so—"

"How important? Like Aquila? An empress?"

"Sure, close enough analogy."

"Why do they wanna do it that way if there's problems?"

"Well, they're just making decisions. That's what important people do."

"Huh. Well, maybe I just tell them I'm gonna keep doing it my way because their way has problems."

"Okay, and suppose they just say to do it their way anyway?"

"Then either you do it or you don't."

"Er, you don't think it matters?"

"Does it? An empress has a lot of shit to decide about. If she's gonna—that was a close one—tell you to do something, it's either because she trusts you to do it or she wants to see if she can trust you to do it. As long as you're honest about it, if she's a good empress, she'll respect that."

"Huh." Carl rubbed his beard as he watched them careen towards a very obvious cliff. Something was tickling a memory somewhere, but he couldn't quite grab hold of it. "Alright, I guess that kinda makes sense…" He continued to rub his beard as the car continued off the edge of the cliff and then continued to plummet towards the distant ground before their surroundings changed again and they were once more driving along the flat, sandy dirt. "Well, either way, I guess that's gonna have to do. Thanks, Vol. Logout."

A status window appeared.

Logging out in: 5

Yeah, that's the most I can really get out of it, I think. Probably shouldn't even have logged in to think about this in the first place. Stupid idea.

Logging out in: 4

"Yeah, just being a good friend," Vol said as she steered towards another big rock.

Gonna be weird feeling this rested all day. That was like…a solid ten hours last night? Didn't even know I could still manage something like that.

Logging out in: 3

Yup, just gonna get out, grab a quick cup of coffee and walk around a bit to get back to being in the real world, then it's meeting time.

Logging out in: 2

Purple lightning crackled off in the distance, though it was getting closer fast at the speed they drove.

Stuff like this always happens right when I'm about to log out. Or "go to another world". Gotta start getting my terminology right if I'm ever gonna stop being a noob. Feels more accurate, that's for sure. So immersive.

Logging out in: 1

The purple lightning changed into a portal, and Ir'alith bounded out, landing on the hood of the speeding car with her axe held behind her by her tail.

"Hey," Vol started to shout.

"Logout," Carl said again as he reached the darkened character selection area. He felt a slight tugging, and then he was sitting back at his desk.

He blinked a couple times as he reached for his glasses, exchanging the brain link headband he was currently wearing for them. He got to his feet and stretched, his ankle cracking like it always did after he'd been sitting for a few minutes. Yeah, feels good to be back. Maybe feeling a little older and achier, but you can't beat real life. Time to switch back to work mode. Gonna power through this meeting, then get to checking out this Thursday afternoon thing. Maybe I'll leave a little early today. Been pulling some long hours lately…