Gauss flew the the hauler out of the station without incident. The pirates indeed had left the system and were nowhere to be found. Mark let the wing keep the two remaining frigates since they had helped discover the thieves that were working with the pirates. He had a few choice things to say about the pirates, and was actually upset that Will had let them go. But Mark was glad they caught the thieves and were able to purge them from his station. Lant docked his escape pod with Gauss’s hauler and rode from there. They didn’t want to take the time to unpack his fighter, and while the lifepod could warp, it was slow compared to most anything else. Mark would have to report the incident to Aluvius, and who knew if they would come by or not. The wing wanted to be out of here before that happened.

They had lost two other pilots--a player named Vincent Elmac and the NPC Efftwelve. The losses put them down to twenty-two pilots. Fewer than Will wanted for the operation, but then again he had hoped most of the original wing made it through. Will said they would make do, but Cam knew it was tougher with each pilot lost.

Mohler led them through the next couple systems. Here they were backtracking a ways. Their path to Mark’s station had been planned to keep off the beaten path, so it had taken many more jumps than if they had been able to go through a few of the highly populated systems in the area. Now they were looking for a system that would be not only off the beaten path, but off of most any path at all.

The one they ended in was named B4-KR5T, and had no known settlements. Most systems this far into player held territory had a random letter-number designation instead of an actual name. If anyone was here, they also didn’t want to be found, and what the wing needed now was a hidden base to strike from. As an added bonus the system was eight jumps from the Eilonden sector, which meant they could go find Will’s new found pirate friends, but also that random patrols from there to here were not going to happen that often.

The wing spent an hour scouting out possible locations near the edge of the star system, looking for the best place to set up shop. In the end, they settled on a medium sized asteroid that had good mineral composition on the outer edges of the system. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, a bit more than a kilometer long and a couple hundred meters wide. The Engra could have hidden in its shadow, but barely, and only from certain angles. The asteroid was big enough for a modest base, but small enough to be looked over unless someone was doing a full sweep of the system. There were hundreds of such asteroids flying around the outer edges of the system.

“Alright boys and girls, now the fun begins,” Will said to the wing after they chose the spot. They were still in their ships above the asteroid. Will wanted to give a small talk before they landed. “We’re going to set up the clone bay asap. If anyone needs to log out after, that will be the time to do it. I appreciate you all sticking around for such a long stretch. We’ve had a lot of action in the last tri-day and you’ve all been troopers about it. Mohler found a nice nook to tuck the clone bay into, so it will be hidden from above. That way we can get it set up immediately and not worry about it.

“But we also have to set up base. We brought a few fabbers with us to help us get started, but it’s going to take some time and hard work. Those who can stick around will be doing some material gathering and base setup.”

“Oh, grinding and time sinks, gotta love it,” said Zelou.

“It’s no one’s favorite, I know,” Will said, “but it’s part of the job.”

“Oh yeah, so what is this job?” Lant asked. “I’ve been dying to know. We’ve been too busy sneaking around to ask, but I know I’d like answers.”

“The short answer is we’re going to orchestrate the infiltration and the destruction of some key Aluvius facilities, which we hope will turn the tide of the war,” Will said over the comms “We have a few raiding targets to keep us busy for the next few weeks, and then some end game targets. The goal is to slow down their main front while we get everything ready here and then coordinate one last big strike on several large targets to land a crippling blow to Aluvius.”

“Sneak and smash, eh?” Lant said. “I can see a few things going wrong with that.”

“Which is why the ‘sneak’ is of the utmost importance,” Will said dryly. “Nothing we talk about here gets discussed out of game. Not even to other guild members. Not even to wing members who aren’t here. They’re as trusted as you are, but we need to keep on top of op sec. I’ll share more details as we keep going.”

“One question, Quint,” Tophet interrupted. “We have sixteen poddies and six NPCs. How are we going to coordinate a strike across several facilities at once? Five targets would mean four or five of us at each. With the full wing we could have maybe done it, but we’re less than half our numbers.”

“I’m working on that,” said Will. “I had expected more to work with, but we have options. There are plenty of people like Mark who live here, but don’t like Aluvius. Some were here when they expanded, others moved in and grew disillusioned with Aluvius as time went on.”

“We could always recruit your new pirate girlfriend,” Zelou said with a laugh. That got a few chuckles out of the wing, but most players were tired enough to want to get this over with and get the clone bay set up.

“I have considered working with some pirates,” Will admitted. “They like action and destruction as much as anyone else, but we’d have to be careful. They are not exactly known for their loyalty to anyone but themselves.”

“Looks like we got a lot of boring work ahead of us,” said Jawntwo.

“Hard work pays off,” Gauss replied.

“We have our work cut out for us,” Mector said. Her tone silenced any more grumbling. “So let’s stop complaining and let’s get going. The faster we start the faster we get to the blowing things up part.”

With that the wing landed on the asteroid. Environmental suits were automatically put on in their fighters, and they were able to get out safely on the asteroid.

The suits were fitted, so they were easy to work in. Gauss maneuvered the hauler next to the nook that Mohler had located and a few pilots got to work setting up the clone bay. The nook was actually more like a hole, going below the asteroid’s surface about a dozen meters deep. It had a slight bend to it, so near the bottom on one side was hidden from any ships that came nearby--not that that was likely. The clone bay was set up in that area, along with as much other equipment that could fit.

Each of the pilots had filled all their spare room in their fighters with items Will had assigned them. The fighters’ cargo bays were small, but it added up over twenty something fighters. Mark had also given them a few extra items he had been able to fabricate at the station and loaded them in the hauler.

It took about a half hour to set everything up. Everything that could fit was placed inside the nook so as to be out of sight, not that they expected many ships to do flybys of remote asteroids to do a visual confirmation to see if they were occupied, but any bit of shielding for the equipment made them harder to detect. Most modules set themselves up automatically, but took time and player supervision. A player could only set up a single piece of equipment at a time, even though they would barely have to touch anything. It seemed to be a game mechanic to prevent a single player from setting up a huge base quickly. If someone tried to activate a second piece of equipment at the same time, a message would appear that their actions would stop the process of the first piece of equipment setting itself up. Still, with sixteen players and six NPCs the task went quickly.

Mohler and Effour had the only slightly less boring job of scouting the surrounding systems for fleets or settlements. They found one settlement only one system over, which was unfortunate, but it seemed small--smaller than even Mark’s station. No other player settlements were found for two jumps in any direction and the way the gates were laid out, this system was unlikely to be used. Shorter paths existed to get from any known major area to any other one.

Once the clone bay was online, everyone set it as their primary respawn location. Cam could feel the nervousness seep out of himself, and could sense the same in most of the other pilots. They were still vulnerable in many ways, but now any ship losses would not send them home unless this place was destroyed first. About half the pilots logged out or went to bed after that. It had been close to twenty hours in-game since they logged in after the battle, and that meant most had stayed up half the night in the real world. Some had work in the morning. Playing the pods wasn’t nearly as physically demanding than even playing on the computer all night, but many needed sleep.

Cam chose to stay logged in. He wasn’t quite tired yet, even though his fatigue was up to almost forty percent. He would sleep in game when he did get tired or his fatigue got too high to work. He had nowhere to be tomorrow, nowhere to be for weeks, he was going to make the most of it.

Already they had a few shelters set up with air in them for temporary living quarters. It would be tight with many bodies in a small area, but fortunately the life support systems in the game scrubbed out body odors pretty well, and self-washing in game was fast. A player just had to walk through a small cleaning field and they would come out fresh. Apparently as realistic as the human body behaved in Celesistal Void, Numean also wanted to distance the nerdy smelly stereotype from the game as best as possible. No one had an excuse not to clean themselves.

Will’s plan was to expand into the asteroid, through mining and use both the space and resources the mining gave them to expand their production capabilities. It solved their problem of hiding, as well as getting the equipment they needed. If they dug down into the asteroid, they would have plenty of hidden space to set up a small base, and buying items out here would be troublesome. They could get away with it for occasional, tough-to-make items, but suddenly trying to buy several destroyer hulls would raise a lot of flags. Until they established more allies in the area that were not being watched over by Aluvius they had to provide for themselves.

Most of the players who stayed logged in either went down to the bottom of the nook to start mining. The small base so far was set up on the walls of the hole. Down didn’t really apply with such low gravity and the shelters had artificial gravity systems and hooks to lock them in place. Most of the other equipment was either power generators or what Will had described to Cam as fab units--devices that could take the raw material and make almost anything from it. They were the start of any industrial factory. The tiny base ringed around the hole, making an odd view. Not all of it was hidden from a passing ship, but it was still better than setting it up on the surface. The whole base would get moved farther in the asteroid soon enough anyways.

The last two meters above the deepest crevice were devoid of any equipment so as to give a bit of room to work. Two meters wasn’t much though. It made the crevice feel claustrophobic, especially since the floor was about five meters in diameter. The pilots who couldn’t fit at the bottom, or didn’t want to, equipped mining lasers to their fighters and gathered from far away asteroids in the system. The idea was to not to mar the surface of this asteroid if they could help it. It was best to leave as few clues as possible that it was inhabited. Not that it mattered at the moment: the two dozen fighters on the surface, along with the frigates and the cargo ship was more than enough of a giveaway. But the smaller ships would get moved inside when they had the room The cargo ship they would have to hide somewhere else. Eventually there would be enough room, but the tough part would be disguising an entrance large enough for it, so as to not make it obvious the asteroid was being inhabited.

The mining would take some time. Days, maybe weeks. Cam wasn’t sure exactly how drilling worked in Celestial Void, but he knew he would soon get a good lesson in it.

It ended up being Cam, Emma, Will, Amaranth Gauss, Xander Varchant, and Malk Zelou in the nook, along with five NPCs. They could probably fit a one or two more in it, but it was already cramped, and with more they might start getting in each others’ way.

Each pilot took an area and started excavating using a mining laser. The almost non-existent Gravity meant they were able to latch themselves and the drilling equipment to the surfaces and not worry about floating off. Each drill was a hexagon shape about the size of half a square meter in area. The shape let them be tileable, and most of the drills were stacked near each other. and allowed them to tile on a surface. The pilots stood on parts of the drills themselves or the little space on the floor that wasn’t actively being mined at the moment.

“Oh the joys of being a member of the elite wing of Codium Caelestis,” said Amaranth Gauss. “This is everything I’ve dreamed and more.”

“Amaranth, you did all this kind of stuff before you joined,” said Emma. “Isn’t this just getting back to you roots?”

Amaranth Gauss had been the girl Emma had sat with in the briefing room on the Engra, which felt so long ago now. They were apparently good friends in game. When Amanth said she was going to stay on the asteroid to mine, Emma decided to stick around as well, even though she could have gone mining with her fighter elsewhere. Most pilots had jumped at relaxing in I-flight while mining a rock in space. It was more comfortable than sitting in a tight space drilling into the ground below you.

Amaranth was currently operating six mining lasers by herself. Cam figured she must have better skills for the task. Most everyone else was only using one or two, with Xander and Malk using three each. Those three were doing more work than the rest of the group together. The drills self latched to the surface and could continue to drill straight in a direction without having to be reattached. They would move down the hole as it was dug. There was a minigame of sorts involved that sped up the drilling process, although if you could do the minigame half as well on two drills it was marginally better than fully focusing on one. Amanth seemed to be working at nearly full capacity with all six drills.

“My roots yes,” she said, barely looking up from her work. “But I joined to get away from those. Will, I know you said we would use those skills still sometimes, but I would have been perfectly content not having to go back to digging in the actual dirt.”

“You haven’t done something like this with the wing before?” Cam asked, surprised. “Isn’t this kind of operation what the wing was built around?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Not exactly,” said Will. “I mean yes and no. Our wing was designed to be flexible for any kind of mission, but this is the most intensive covert operation we’ve done. We’ve been mostly acting as a specialty wing for different fleet operations. When we’ve been on our own it’s mostly been one off runs that lasted a couple days. Amaranth’s hauler skills have been handy with that, but we haven’t used much manufacturing on our missions.”

“And I was happy with that,” Amaranth said, shaking her head. “Why’d you have to ruin such a good run?”

“We’ll keep manufacturing more drills until we have enough that they’ll mine plenty without someone babysitting them,” said Will. He only had his one drill, but seemed to be using it more effectively than any other single drill.

“They’re too slow, and even if we mine out enough area for them to be effective they’ll still need oversight, and guess who will be put in charge of that?” Amaranth asked. Despite her words, her tone was still good-natured. She might prefer the shooting and fighting now, but she still sounded amicable towards this side of the game.

“Cam can help,” Will said. “Put him on all the boring stuff.”

Cam sighed and rolled his eyes at being volunteered as tribute. Still, there was a reason Will had said that. He liked the manufacturing side of most games. On the battlefield he enjoyed the role of the tactician, but even tactics were all about economics for him. The economics of time, space, and in game items, among other things. If he had to be honest, he was a numbers guy, not a people person. Not that he would call himself antisocial, but numbers were just easy for him to work with, just like people were easy for Will to work with. And so Cam almost always got into the manufacturing part of a game, because he knew how to ride the trends, or to use patch notes to see how much an item will go up or down in value.

He and Will had decided he should take some skills in manufacturing and production, while they had talked back on the Engra. This part of the endeavour was his chance to get his feet wet with the manufacturing side of the game. With that knowledge he hoped to be able to learn the markets of the game and the economy. New Space had a flourishing economy that had all been player based. Celestial Void was supposed to far surpass it with options and complexity.

“So drone boy is my backup?” Amaranth asked. “Fitting, I suppose. Can you use more than one miner at a time?”

“I haven’t tried,’ Cam answered. “This is my first time mining.”

“They’re like drones, kinda,” she said. “If you can use two drones you should be able to use two miners. I saw you playing around with those drones back at the station. Their yield will be terrible until you get used to it, but you can skill up even faster.”

“Oh joy, skilling up in collecting rocks,” he said. Still, the thought of his drone skills being useful sounded good to him. The drills did eat some Psi Energy to use, but the drain was small. He would have to use nine or ten at once before his natural regeneration would be countered. “Do we have another drill?”

“We need to get the fab units going,” Will said. “Then we can make more.”

“Well, who wants to be on cart duty?” Amaranth asked. Silence reigned for a moment.

“Fine,” Will said. “And here I thought being the wing leader meant I got out of this kind of work.”

“The first shall be last and the last first, and all that kind of stuff,” Amaranth said with a grin.

Will brought his drill over to Cam and went to go get a small cart to start hauling the asteroid rock to the fabbers. Cam took the drill and set it up next to his other one. They locked together on one edge and the second one kicked on when he activated it. The minigame was pretty much an analysis of the rock below the mining laser so that the lasers will chop it up most effectively. It was broadcasted to his hud, and he could control them there even if he stepped away from the miner a bit. Having two to focus on divided his attention, but he soon got the feel for swapping back and forth. It helped that the analysis for the two miners were fairly similar since they were right next to each other, aiming the lasers so that they will chop it up most effectively. Also his lasers were close enough together that the composition was very similar, and what worked for one mostly worked for the other.

A few minutes later two notifications popped up in his feed at the same time.

Skill Up! Mining Laser Control I Max Mining Speed increased by 3%

Level Up! ou are now Level 128 You have skill points to distribute

“Well that answers that question,” he said. “I leveled up and got a skill up for mining.”

“Congratulations, we’ll make an industrialist out of you yet,” Amaranth said. As much as she claimed she didn’t enjoy digging in the dirt, she seemed happy to have someone else to join her.

“We’ll be buying ships from you in no time,” Emma said.

“Don’t give him any ideas,” Will said, walking back with the cart. He had already made one trip, taking the mined out dirt and moving it to the fab units. There wasn’t quite enough drills going to make it a full time job, so he hung out when there wasn’t any dirt he needed to haul. “He’ll corner the market in days if you let him.”

“Market? What market?” Emma said. “We are the market around here.”

“Hey, no need to fight,” Cam said jokingly. “I’ll give a ten percent guild discount to everyone, don’t worry.”

“Kinda like the time in New Space with the Zeus class ship you sold to Agregor?” Will asked.

“Oh, don’t bring that up,” said Cam, trying not to lose his focus on the drills’ minigame. He did one quick analysis on one of the drills to keep it going at full speed for a few more seconds. “He was leaving the guild. At the time my offer was a good one.”

“Right, but you had bought it from him at half price two days earlier.”

Cam sent a look over to Will. His drills started slowing down, but he hardly noticed. “It was seventy percent, thank you. And as I said, he was leaving the guild.”

“What’s the story?” Emma asked. Cam shook his head, but Will started the story before Cam could object out loud.

“So, we had this guy named Agregor in our guild, back in New Space,” Will said, leaning up against one of the walls. “We were living in deep space, kinda like how most of space is in Celestial Void. Guilds could come and claim it, fight over it. Same as what we’re doing out here. As Cam said, the guy was leaving the guild.” Will glanced over at Cam and grinned. “So Cam offered to buy one of the biggest ships in the game from him, a Zeus class mothership, because while we would have been gracious and let him move it out of our space without incident, we had plenty of enemies around that might not be so kind. Now, what you gotta realize that it was Agregor’s pride and joy. It was one of those ships that if you lost it you’d spend months or years gathering the resources to replace it. A guild might replace it quick, but only if they were smart enough to have stored up materials from guildmates’ contributions. At the time our guild didn’t have much use for a ship that large, so it mostly gathered dust in a station, but he wouldn’t shut up about how he owned such a magnificent ship.”

Cam smirked at the memory. Agregor’s attitude had been tough to deal with, as good of a guy he could be otherwise.

“He kept going on about how he had saved up enough to build one and now he got to fly it,” Will continued, shaking his head. “But he didn’t actually fly it that much and the few times he got to he was impossible to be around afterwards. Then he decided he wanted to move guilds, but it was halfway across New Space’s map. Moving such a big ship without help was out of the question, and hiring help would be risky and expensive. Cam offered seventy percent of the ship’s market value to take it off Agregor’s hands. Agregor eventually realized it was a better deal than trying to move it.”

There was a pause for a few moments as Will went about gathering some of the dirt from a few of the drills. Cam knew the pause was also for dramatic effect. It worked.

“Well?” asked Amaranth, after Will had empted a second drill. “What happened next? Don’t leave us hanging.”

“The guild he was joining had a policy that every member needed a mothership in order to join,” Will continued. “I doubt every member really had one, but it was one of those posh guilds that tried to play up its importance. The problem was he had just sold his, and now they wouldn’t accept his application until he could prove he had another one. He looked for a new mothership in the guild’s area, but most of the offers he found were well beyond market price. He had already told our guild he was leaving so if he wanted to join the other guild soon he was forced to pay a high price for another ship. Eventually he asked Cam for his ship back. Cam said he would sell it to the guy at a ten percent discount off of the current market price.”

Amaranth shot Cam a look and smirked. He shrugged.

“Of course, he was livid,” Will said after another short pause to empty another drill, “but eventually he bought it back. Cam made a profit by just holding onto a ship for two days.”

“Didn’t even have to move it or touch it,” Cam added with a grin.

“That’s rough for the guy,” Emma said.

“Eh, he was leaving the guild,” said Will. “I don’t blame Cam for it. Cam even paid some of our guild to scout and escort his ship through our space and a bit farther. After that he was on his own.”

“Did he make it?” Emma asked.

“I actually don’t remember,” Will said, thinking. “Do you, Cam?”

“He made it,” Cam answered. He had felt bad enough about the sell that he had organized the scouting party for Agregor. Not enough to give him back the money he made, Cam called it a fee for leaving the guild. But he would have felt worse if he didn’t even get his mothership out. “Although that guild wasn’t kind to him. They wanted ships like that to look good, but they were terrible at keeping them. They had a ship replacement program, but it wasn’t always for the full price of the ship. You’d get eighty to ninety percent of your ship cost back, but on motherships that was still a huge cut from your pocket. I think he lost his mothership three times before he left them.”

“That’s a sad ending,” Emma said, frowning. “What did he do after that?”

“Not sure,” Cam answered. “We found out he left more through guild politics than keeping in contact with him.”

“That’s why we don’t get too attached to our stuff,” Will said. “We have fun and enjoy the explosions--sometimes on both sides.”

Cam gave a grunt and nod at that. Enjoy the explosions and enjoy the company. He had long ago learned that. Not that he was perfect at it. He loved making stuff, earning in game currency, and having that stash to fall back on, but he did his best to put it at a tier below his friends.

“Have fun,” Amaranth said a moment later, shaking her head. “Have fun and don’t get attached to stuff--says the man forcing us to grind out resources to make more stuff.”

* * *

They mined for just a bit longer, hanging out and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere. It was the first time Cam had a chance just to enjoy some company. Xander and Malk chimed in a bit too. Everyone’s fatigue slowly climbed higher and soon their effectiveness reached its cut off point. Most were over fifty percent fatigue, which was where the effects really hit hard. Those who had work in the real world that morning had already logged out or had decided to try to catch a few hours sleep in game. More pilots than Cam had expected were like Will, having earned enough cash in game to not have to work currently. Most were trying to enjoy it while it lasted. Celestial Void was still such a young game and Numean was fine at the moment with real money transactions, but who knew how long it would last? The market could get saturated with items so the price people paid for them would go down, or people’s interest in the game could drop, or Numean could change its mind about transactions. Other pilots in the wing still kept their day job even though they were making enough money selling in game items for real world cash. They viewed it as a nice extra income stream, but didn’t want to jeopardize their career on what might be a flash in the pan.

Cam planned on making the most of it. He loved gaming, and so far he was loving this game. He couldn’t believe it had only been a few in game days. His vacation pay would supply him for these months and he had a bit extra in the bank as well. Still, he understood the players who had decided not to quit their jobs. His job might not be the best, but it was a good one. If he quit and had to rejoin the workforce later he would find it tough to get a better job than what he had now.

He put those thoughts out of his mind. He had six real-world weeks--six tri-weeks so eighteen in game--before he had to figure that out. That was a crazy amount of time to play. He still couldn’t believe how smooth the time dilation was. He had expected such an experimental technology to be gimmicky or stuttery at best, but the game was completely smooth.

He was the last one still in the hole they were mining. He could see Will walking to the shelter above him. He stepped over to the wall and started walking up the ledge. As strange as it was for the wall to suddenly become the floor, it didn’t feel too odd. The asteroid had virtually no gravity. A good toss or even a huge jump would give something or someone enough escape velocity. His boots could latch into the ground with each step to ensure he did not go flying. He had to mentally shift his “down” so that he didn’t get disoriented. There was no real down in space anyways. The hardest part was walking around some of the equipment, because then his down had to continually shift as he walked part of the circumference of the hole.

It took him a few steps to get used to it. Will had passed out of sight before Cam had moved around the first row of equipment. By the time he made it to the shelter Will was already asleep.

The idea that he had nowhere to be in the real world and nothing he needed to do was intoxicating. He had slept in game before on the Engra but that had felt different. He had done so to be combat ready when events started getting set in motion. Here he was sleeping because he wanted to. Logging out now and sleeping in the real world wouldn’t make him miss anything in game except some dull work digging in the ground. But even though he was stuck on an asteroid with only a thin mattress to lay on, he wanted to fall asleep and to wake up, still in game, ready to work with only a few real world hours having passed.

He was the only one awake in the shelter as he stripped off his suit. If someone else was still up on the tiny asteroid they were in another shelter, which might as well be half a kilometer away for how much he could tell. He passed his suit and himself through the cleaner field. It wasn’t nearly as refreshing as a nice shower, but at least now he didn’t stink of body odor. He went back and forth for a minute wondering why Numean would put body odor in game, but he ended up thinking they were just trying to accurately simulate the human body. He was just glad self-cleaning was fast and easy.

Cam sat down on his mattress and took a couple deep breaths. It had been go-go-go for so long that he hadn’t had a moment to himself in what felt like forever. He looked down at his hands. Stared at them. They were hands that were his, but not his. Oh, sure they looked similar to his real hands, but they were part of the simulation. He hadn’t thought about them much since he had left the Engra never to return. He had been so busy, be it piloting a ship, working in a suit or just working at one task or another to improve himself. But now he sat and stared at them.

He wasn’t sure why he was drawn to his hands. His entire body was different. His face might be similar to his real world face in shape and bone structure, but it had many differences. Why did he latch onto his hands?

Maybe it would be different if he had seen more mirrors. His hands were much easier to look at than his face. These felt slightly bigger than his real hands, stronger and more sure. These could be his hands for the next eighteen weeks. Even with short breaks here and there to make sure his pod was running fine he would get used to these hands, experience them far more than his real ones. Would that make them more real to him that what was real?

A strange thought struck his mind. What would people do if they suddenly found out the entire real world was a simulation and they had real bodies somewhere else? Would people try to get out because their “real” body was no longer real, but the work of a simulation? Because they were at the whim of some other creature? Wasn’t that the same as believing in God and the afterlife? Maybe not, he thought after a moment, but there were some similarities there.

He laid down, trying not to dwell on that for now. He always like the quiet, but sometimes it filled his head with strange thoughts. Focusing on how real the game was would certainly invite some crazy ones. He closed his eyes and pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Falling asleep was surprisingly easy at that point. His brain faded off, while his virtual body lowered its fatigue.