THERE WAS ONLY five minutes left in class, and the students were starting to get restless.

"The bell hasn't rung yet," Greg Kovacs, our history teacher, noted sternly. "Take your seats! Edward! Sit down this instant!"

Ed Rodriguez, leader of the Dementors clan, was scraping his desk along the floor. He quickly sat back down despite himself. Modern history was our last lesson for today, and he just couldn't wait to get back into Disgardium.

"I’m not finished," Greg frowned. "Alright kids, class is extended by two minutes! You know who to thank."

"But teacher!" Ed objected. "Mr. Kovacs..."

"No 'buts,' Rodriguez!"

Tissa, the blonde girl sitting behind Ed, hissed out something that sounded very much like "shit!" She was in Ed's clan and, seemingly, they had a raid scheduled today.

"Let’s make that three minutes, Melissa Schafer," the teacher corrected himself nonchalantly. He continued the lecture: "After the collapse of the world banking system..."

Tissa rolled her eyes and gave a loud sigh, not unclenching her lips. Ed, turning around, blew her a kiss. Tissa shot him a middle finger back.

"... the UN," Greg said, writing the name on the whiteboard and underlining it. "That led to the creation of the Worldwide Bank and the global monetary union. Who can tell me what their new unit of currency was called?"

"The phoenix," the class answered in unison.

"Exactly," the teacher nodded. "And who knows what a phoenix looks like?"

Silence. Knowing Mr. Kovacs, it was better to answer. Otherwise we could end up sitting here for half an hour.

"The phoenix is a mythological bird that can burn itself up and rise from the ashes," I said. "The first written mention of the phoenix myth is found in Herodotus."

"I appreciate your knowledge of mythology, Alex, but I was asking about the currency. The phoenix doesn't have a material form. It is a digital currency, independent of economic and political considerations. In the same year, another important change took place in society..."

He had moved on to the mandatory citizenship tests. Ours would be coming soon enough. And Greg touched on the pitiful existence noncitizens were shackled to, the fact that they outnumbered citizens, and that they were dying en masse, abandoned and forgotten by society... But by the end, no one was listening anymore. For the last seconds of our extra minutes, we were drumming on our desks and shouting out a countdown:

"Three! Two! One!"

The thunder of every chair scooting back at once drowned out our homework assignment and the date of an upcoming test.

The Dementors were the first out of class, driven on by Ed. They took Disgardium seriously, because they saw it as their future. Snowstorm Incorporated, the developer, was the first company to ever pay people to game.

And since then, it is the most widely played full-immersion game on earth, even receiving certification from the United Nations itself. And now, it was where noncitizens and underqualified citizens spent their days and earned their money. For many, it was the only way to improve their lot in life.

But definitely not for me.

It had been a year and a half since I first loaded up Dis. I remember thinking I was very clever investing equally in all attributes. How wrong I was! That gave me a character with piss-poor damage and dispiriting aim. I was hardly fit to live. Unfortunately, even though I had read a few guides before my first session, I never read the best way to make a new character. I knew that every level would give me five attribute points so I figured, if anything was wrong, I could just fix it in no time at all. Gaining just a few levels seemed trivial.

But it wasn't all puppies and rainbows. Bots were in no rush to give me quests, and farming mobs turned out to not only be tedious but difficult!

Level-one rats refused to be easy farming, and took me down in a couple of bites every time. I had to land ten or so blows, constantly swinging, just to take down one. And that was if I had someone holding the rat for me.

And when I joined a group with beginners like me, those drips of experience turned into mere dewdrops. When I realized that, my enthusiasm was extinguished. And this wasn’t exactly an uncommon experience. Some just stopped playing, others opted for social quests.

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But leveling like that was hopelessly boring and never-ending. Just to get one experience point, for example, you had to spend a few hours doing social labor like cleaning stables or pulling weeds. Half a year in the game to get a couple levels? Oh nether!

And one day I quit the game, but the next I was inspired by the success of a few classmates and entered again with new hopes and plans. But the longer I played, the more disenchanted I grew.

At the beginning, I couldn’t get any equipment, armor or weapons. The lowliest knife in the weapons store cost a few silver, and I’d have had to complete fifty social quests to get just one silver coin. Fight rats with my bare hands? Ha! Those things were so big they’d have the upper hand on a rottweiler IRL! And even if I could kill one, the reward was just one experience point, maybe two if I got really lucky.

So in the end I just couldn’t stand it. After a few weeks trying every which way to level, my experience bar was no more than five percent full. I didn't even hit level two.

For some reason known only to the developers, it was impossible to delete a character and create a new one from scratch in sandboxes. Maybe that was to make us take more responsibility for our decisions.

Meanwhile, I was disgusted by the idea of spending real money on the game both then and now. I mean, I knew how hard up my parents were for cash. It wasn’t like basic gear would cost some astronomical amount but, by the time I considered it, Dis had already lost its charm to me.

Sure, at first it was fun to explore a totally new world with its own laws, rules, geography, history and races. It even had different physics, given both magic and teleportation were possible.

But that was only truly enthralling for the first few days. Weeding or respawning time and again after the fatal bite of some overgrown spider? No thanks.

What was more, my heart yearned for outer space. The first settlements were being made on Mars, and it seemed to me that exploring a real new world was somewhat more interesting than a virtual one. I greedily devoured any materials I could find about space expeditions, studied the requirements for getting into university and prepared for exams. My parents supported my ambitions too, and had set aside some money aside for my studies.

But I still had to play Dis. And every day.

From the age of fourteen, everyone was required to spend at least one hour per day in the game. Snowstorm Inc.’s long tendrils reached deep into the UN Department of Education. Now it was thought to be an important part of a child’s education, providing necessary social skills and preparing us for adult life whether in the real world or Disgardium.

Every day was exactly the same for me there. I usually spent the whole hour sitting on a bench opposite the Bubbling Flagon tavern. Just after I entered the game, the neighbor girl Eve O'Sullivan would come join me. She couldn't stand even a hint of pain, so she didn’t find the game much fun either. And for that reason, she would sit around killing time with me.

The sooner we got to our citizenship tests the better. After that, I could be done with this onerous requirement.

With that thought in mind, I hurried to leave school. Our parking lot had a limited number of public flying cars, and if you didn't manage to get one on the first go around, you'd have to wait for one to come back.

And that's just what happened. Or more accurately, one of the last ones still had an empty seat, but I wanted one to myself so I could drive it manually.

The school lot was on the roof, next to a solar panel array. Eve was sitting there. She always waited for me so we could fly home together. Her father's business was really taking off, but they were still in our apartment complex.

"Alex!"

Eve's face lit up. I might have thought she liked me, but that didn't do anything for me. She was sweet, but not at all to my taste. Plus she didn’t mind her figure, eating chocolate bars in quantities that far surpassed Department of Health guidelines.

"How was your day?"

"Like normal, Eve. Two periods of ethics of modern society, two of programming domestic robotics and two of modern history. Dullsville."

"Oh god! I never understood why we need history!" she shouted. Then she changed her voice, trying to parody Greg's distinctive manner of speaking. "The last president of the United States..."

"Mhm."

Eve got distracted and started thinking. I threw off the backpack and sat down next to her. All the flying cars were gone, so we would have to wait here at least ten minutes. Then a tarry column of acrid bitumen shot up into the air from the asphalt of the launch pad.

"That damned Dis again," she sighed. "When are you gonna play today? Right after you eat like normal?"

"Mhm. The sooner I start, the sooner I can finish. Then I can do whatever I want."

"So, what would you rather be doing?" Eve asked, emphasizing the word "rather.” She even attempted a languid tone, drawing out the last word and cocking an eye.

Aw, nether! Flirting was definitely not her strong suit. Where had she seen that move? Nevertheless, I was caught off guard.

"Probably not what you had in mind," I answered with a smile. I didn't want to offend her, she was a great girl and I had known her since childhood. "I'll be studying materials on the Leman expedition to Mars."

"I see. I just thought... Maybe you'd want to..."

"What?" I didn't want to embarrass her, but it was better to break this off before it turned into an upwelling of unjustified hope.

"Maybe... Maybe we could watch it together?" she blurted out in one breath.

"Sorry, not today. My parents are working on a new project, I don't want us to distract them."

I tactically said "us," although I meant only her. My father and mother had finally gotten an easy order, but the client was fickle and it was best to keep risks to a minimum. Money had been tight for us recently.

Dad suspected mom was having an affair, which was driving him more and more to the bottle. And when he drank he got paranoid, suspicious and aggressive. Mom, of course, didn’t like that. And so she left home on the sly and came back around morning. I definitely think she’s seeing someone.

Their constant fighting ruined my mood so much I didn’t even want to do my homework. And that was a problem. To get into university, I need high average points.

"We can watch it at my place," Eve wouldn’t relent.

"We can talk about that later," I answered, hoping that by then her spark would have gone out.

Flying cars began returning to the parking lot. We got into one, and I gave a nod to Eve:

"So, are you flying, or the computer?"

"Me."

I changed steering to manual and took off into the air. Flying... what could be better? Only the stars.