The year was 20XX, and everything was fine in the world.

Climate change had been finally addressed and mostly resolved, through a massive international effort between almost all major countries. Famine, poverty and inequality worldwide had reached their lowest levels yet and the planet's population had stabilized at a sustainable 10 billion people, with a sizeable population in space helping provide for all the materials humans could ever ask for. Life was not perfect for everyone, far from it in fact, but it was undeniable that never before had so many people lived such good lives.

It is in this world, in a small, perpetually rainy city in an unremarkable corner of the North American Union, where an average-looking young man calmly slept, the pitter-patter of the rain on his bedroom window acting like a soothing lullaby even as the light from the rising sun threatened to wake him up.

Eventually, his sleep, like all good things in life, had to end, and he drowsily got up and prepared himself for the day ahead, his breakfast a simple omelette with toast, and left his small apartment still quite early in the morning, hoping to get to the store and back before midday, a hope that was quickly shattered when he saw the massive line that had formed at the entrance.

Sighing and blaming his poor sleep schedule for not allowing him to wake up earlier, the young man resigned himself to waiting and decided to browse the internet in the meanwhile. More than an hour and a half later, he had almost finished reading a rather fascinating interview with one of the last surviving soldiers from the 3rd American-Byzantine war before he realized it was finally his time.

Shortly after, he walked out of the store carrying a large, colorful box, weighing more than 10 kilos, and he cursed himself for the umpteenth time for being stupid enough to pay 4 thousand bucks for something like this. After arranging for a taxi to bring him home, he carefully brought the box up to his apartment and set it down gently on his table, before calling his friend, the one that had convinced him to make this purchase.

"Jess, before anything else I'll just say that if you're wrong and there is no pre-order bonus like you keep saying, know that I will personally obliterate every atom in your body." The young man said as soon as the call was answered, his voice as serious as possible given the absurdity of his statement.

"Shut up Cass, just trust me on this, this will be absolutely worth it. Besides, I know you, you would buy the game regardless of the bonus." Cassiel, Cass for short, heard the annoying voice of his best friend through the phone, her tone of smug confidence.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I mean, maybe, but the Pre-Release copy is three times as expensive as-" He pointlessly tried to argue, despite having already made the purchase.

"Trust me Cass, this is very important." Jess interrupted, a hint of urgency in her voice. "You need to be connected to the game servers before they open for the first time today at midnight, ok?"

"...ok, fine." He meekly answered, not used to the sudden intensity in his best friend's voice. 

The two of them spent the following few minutes just chatting a bit more before ending the call, with Cass now seated on his sofa, looking at the gaudy looking box on his table with a bit of confusion in his eyes, wondering if there was something he was missing about this new VRMMO title. Regardless, he got up shortly after and got on with the day, deciding that if neither his friend nor the game's annoyingly cryptic advertisement would tell him what was so special about it, he would have to figure it out by himself later.

He spent the rest of the day cleaning up his apartment, taking care of his cat, managing the investments that his father had left him with and setting up the Direct Neural Interfacing Equipment that had come alongside the game he had just bought, being impressed at how advanced the equipment looked and felt compared to the ones he had used before.

Finally, an hour before midnight, with everything else done for the day, he decided to settle down for the day and get ready for the server's opening. Laying down on his bead, he put on his custom, form fitted helmet, a birthday present from his step-father, and connected it to the DNIE, already turned on and ready for use.

The first few minutes were always the worst, as the helmet scanned his neural activity and sent it to be analyzed by the DNIE, which then directly interfaced with the brain. It always made him feel quite strange, like he was halfway between being asleep and awake, and he was quite grateful when it was quickly over, substituting the vision of his bedroom ceiling with an expansive black void, all of his other senses telling him that he was floating peacefully in the infinite nothingness.

Within his sight, a timer slowly counted down to zero, the glowing white digits having no sense of scale or distance from him. Right as he entered this space, he received a message from Jess, asking if he was online already. He answered, and the two of them spent the next few minutes talking, mostly just chatting about their days.

"Good luck Cass." Jess suddenly said to him when there was less than a minute left on the timer.

"...Good luck to you too Jess." He replied, slightly confused. Cass was not stupid, and had realized that there was something Jess knew about the game, but for some reason had decided not to tell him about. For his life, however, he couldn't figure out what exactly that was, or why it was so important to his friend, but he had decided to simply trust her, knowing that there was probably a reason behind her weird actions.

With that, he simply waited for the timer to reach zero, silently counting down the seconds.

And then, at exactly midnight, the game server opened.