Teresa let out a squeal of delight, racing out of the bedroom and nearly tackling William on the couch. “Honey! Honey, guess what, guess what?”

“What? A new game coming out?” William asked, giving her a small smile.

“No, like, a dozen times better. A hundred times better!” Teresa said before holding her phone out to him. “Read the email. Read--” She went quiet when he reached up and gripped her hand, lightly pushing it down and out of his face.

“Baby? Honey? Calm done. Please calm down. For me. Okay? Just a little bit. Just tell me what it is,” William said in a soothing tone.

Teresa sighed before holding the email up to her face. “So. Rush job. A biiiig rush job. Now, it’d mean I’d need to burn my butt out this week, but I can do it. And the payout, well, look at this,” she said before pointing to the screen. To her delight his eyes bulged. “See? See? It’ll be a pretty big project, but I can do it if I really work on it. Can I?”

“I mean, if you think you can do it, I don’t see why not. Why are you asking for permission?” William asked.

“It’s a huge project,” Teresa said, slowly pulling her phone back again. “A really, really huge project. I won’t be able to do much around the house while I’m working on it. I’m talking working on it by getting up, start work, only taking ten or twenty minute breaks in order to get something to eat, then going right back to it. I won’t be able to do much around here.”

She could see most the excitement disappearing from him after a moment. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Teresa said sheepishly. “Listen, I know it’s asking a lot. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to do many chores around the house, cook meals, all of that. But it’d just be for a week and--”

“It’s fine,” William said with a loud sigh. “Listen. If you really want to do this, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll take care of everything for the week. I do it half the time anyway, it’ll be easy,” he said in a teasing tone.

Teresa winced at that. “Are you sure? I mean, if you’d prefer that I don’t take it, I--”

“No, take it. Honey, if it’ll make you happy, do it. Really,” William said before reaching out and patting her on the head. “I can handle the apartment until you’re done with your ‘work’,” he said with a light chuckle. “So go on.”

Teresa stared at him, the guilt forming a knot in her stomach. She stared at her phone for a few moments before looking up. “It is a lot of money, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” William said.

“Would it help?” Teresa asked, unable to keep the hope out of her voice.

“A little bit. It’s okay, though. I take care of the money stuff so you don’t have to,” William said, reminding her again of how much he did for her.

But that was why this job excited her so much. It was finally her chance to give back. “Right. Right. I’ll go get started on it, then. Thank you for this. It really does mean a lot to me,” Teresa said softly.

“Good. That’s all I want. Just go have fun, okay?” William said.

“Right,” Teresa said, making her way back to the bedroom and laying down on the bed. She reached out for the headset and held it up, staring at it.

It was a lot of money, at least it was in her mind. A week worth of work, even if it required her to burn herself so hard, wasn’t so bad when the payout was more than she’d normally make in two months time. But she couldn’t help glancing back towards the other room. Was it really fair to leave all the chores for him? He worked hard for them every day, not just for short bursts every few weeks. Was it really okay for her to leave all of the housework to him for a week? Cooking, cleaning, dealing with anything that came up?

She shook her head. No. He agreed. She could and would do this.

Teresa pulled her headset on and laid back down, closing her eyes. Slowly the world faded away and she was soon floating in the empty black void of the main screen. She reached out and started opening the menus, loading her tools before opening her email, quickly sending an acceptance of the request back to her friend. She could do this.

Teresa paused for a moment before tapping the menu one more time. She opened Landasy Reality and let the game load. Before long she was logged in and quickly sent out a message to her friends.

‘Sorry, I won’t be able to play the game much this week. If you need anything, please feel free to message me outside the game. Big project came up that requires all of my time.’ Satisfied with the message, she sent it and then logged right back out of the game. She cracked her knuckles before giving a soft sigh. She opened the email one more time, looking over all of their requests.

This was going to be a rough one. But, in the end, there was no time like the present. She began to tap on the saved bases she had. Fortunately, this one was more of an ‘out of this world’ vibe. She quickly loaded an old moon demo.

First thing was first. Fixing the gravity. Despite the fact the moon obviously had different gravity than the real world, she found it often upset people to go into an area where it felt so unlike the real world. Especially if they would be walking outside of space suits on it. Since she had designed the base with realism in mind, she quickly had to adjust the gravity to match earth’s. Next was the view. She looked up to the sky and adjusted the earth so the details could be easily seen from this position, adjusting different swirling clouds and the continents so they were far clearer than they likely would have been on the moon. She then adjusted the size a little, making it a little smaller so it was closer to how the moon appeared on earth.

Next, she adjusted the temperature. The sun wasn’t viewable from this position, so she adjusted the temperature down, making it a little colder. She frowned before pulling up an internet window and quickly looking over the average temperatures of the client’s headquarters. She then adjusted the temperature ranges so it matched the colder nights the region could have. “There. Now, for the design,” she said before glancing around for a moment.

Teresa tapped on her menus and selected the space dust, storing it away. The moment that was gone, everything seemed to turn to rock and dirt around her. Too clean and perfect. But that was fine. She’d add the dust back later, once she had finished organizing and creating all of the features for this moon.

“Now comes the hard part,” Teresa said softly before she got to work. It was going to be hours of tedious work now. Resizing things, adjusting, ensuring they all flowed and matched well with the environment. Making sure nothing felt out of place. Which she’d have imagined would be easier, considering she was going to be doing stuff on the moon. The first part was the moon pool, creating a pool that felt both ‘out of this world’ while still comfortable enough to swim in. She tapped on the menus and started some calm, gentle music, hoping it would help her focus without going out of her mind of boredom from the tedious repetition.

After a few hours Teresa jumped when she suddenly heard a ringing sound. She glanced up and saw she received a message from Orion. She tapped on the message and gave him a quick call back.

“Hey, what do you want?” Teresa asked, a lot more curt than she intended. “Sorry. Working.”

“It’s okay. I just wanted to know how you’re doing? I got the message, wanted to make sure everything is okay,” Orion said.

“I’m fine,” Teresa said. “Just setting up a moon pool. Trying to get the design right so it feels like, well, a normal swimming pool. While also feeling super high tech and like nothing on earth. Adjusting the buoyancy and water pressure. Making it a bit more slick, so it kind of moves differently. Also thick enough so more things float and so the water still feels heavy. I’m also trying to set it up so there’s a kind of waterfall that goes up rather than--” She stopped short and shook her head. “Sorry, right. That’s probably really boring.”

“Not at all, please. Keep going,” Orion said and, to her surprise, he sounded genuinely interested.

“Really?” Teresa asked, her hand pausing over one of the buttons. She knew she had a tendency to ramble when it came to this stuff. It was why she had stopped talking with William about all of it except the bare minimum, otherwise he got annoyed and tired of her constant distractions. “Are you sure? Because I could go on about this for hours.”

“Please do. It actually sounds pretty cool. Assuming I’m not bothering you with this talk,” Orion said quickly.

“Not at all,” Teresa said, a smile on her lips. “Okay, so they want a pool, easy enough. The biggest issue is that, well, it’s in outer space. That means a few things. It can make people a bit sick going through the real world to space, you know? So I have to adjust the main location to have standard ‘earth’ gravity. Of course, when it comes to a pool, how it’s designed is incredibly important. One trick I love doing is going full sci-fi with it. Completely different from a normal pool. First is how the water looks and are you sure I’m not bothering you with this?”

“I’m sure. Please, tell me all your dirty little secrets,” Orion said in a teasing tone. “Most interesting thing I’ve heard all day, to be honest.”

“Okay, well, appearance is nine-tenths of it. If the water looks weird, then it will freak people out. Especially if on the moon. So I start by using water that is overly pure, but tinted blue. Letting people see all the way through it makes it seem safer to go into. However, by adjusting how the water reacts it creates a more alien feel. Even a little change can make it feel strange and alien. Especially because I plan to have the ‘pool’ hover in the air when I’m done. So people can enter from the bottom and then swim up it.”

“Really? People like that?” Orion asked.

“Usually. I make the water feel more slick too. Not TOO slick, mind you. But just a hint more slick than normal water. Then there’s the issue with gravity and buoyancy. See, the water isn’t entirely controlled by gravity, meaning it’ll bounce and move differently. But if people aren’t pushed up, it’ll make them upset. So they are kind of being affected by gravity and the buoyancy and… I’ll be completely honest. I don’t get it entirely myself.”

Orion gave a laugh then. “Really? Then how do you set it up?”

“Honestly I just adjust things until it feels right. The end goal is that they go up faster, but if they don’t move, they just kind of float there,” Teresa said with a light laugh. “It’s kind of unnatural and feels freaky. But people seem to love it. It’s a pain to calibrate for this, though. Since the settings have to be adjusted differently for every body of water, then making them feel just right. Then there’s how the water is contained.”

“Oh? How do you do that?” Orion asked.

“Sci-fi magic,” Teresa said, drawing full, hearty laughter from him. “I’m serious. Magic force fields. Tinted blue, of course. The field makes it so water can’t go past, but people can.”

“Wait, if it stops water but not people, how does it not stop the water in people?” Orion asked.

“It’s virtual reality, Orion,” Teresa said with a chuckle of her own. “It’s not a real force field. It’s just the excuse to explain how it doesn’t stop people from going in, while also stopping the water from getting out. Also, why people come out quickly dried. There’s no actual sci-fi explanation. That’s the best part about force fields, people just accept them as magic and I don’t have to explain anything.”

“Oh dear, are you sure it’s okay for you to tell me this? Now that I know the secret, what if I spread them across the world?” Orion asked. “If people knew that your designs weren’t entirely scientific, there could be chaos. Anarchy.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I have plans in that case. I know a guy who can make little information leaks like you disappear,” Teresa said, trying to make her voice sound as ominous as possible while holding back more laughter. “But nobody expects everything to be really realistic. In the end, they want it to feel realistic enough that they can forget they’re in virtual reality, but fake enough that it feels like they’re escaping the real world. It’s the beautiful mix of being just real enough they can believe it. So of course it all takes place on the moon.”

“Fair enough,” Orion said. “So, what part of the project are you looking forwards to the least?”

“Easy. Bouncy house,” Teresa said with a shudder.

She received a long, long moment of silence after that. Finally, Orion spoke up again. “Did you say a bouncy house?”

“Yup,” Teresa said,

“On the moon,” Orion said.

“Yup,” Teresa said, already knowing what was coming.

“WHY?” Orion asked.

“I don’t know,” Teresa said, not truly understanding it either. “Because people want to jump higher? No, the fun part is that I always have to adjust it. Inside the bouncy house people want the moon gravity. But they don’t just want the moon’s gravity, they want almost none. People want to be able to jump like fifty feet in the air. So I need to adjust it and have multiple areas with the moon’s gravity, places with even less, then some without any gravity at all. At least it’ll be a lot easier than the pools, though. It’ll just be kind of boring. Lots of basic coding and design.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Seems kind of weird. You’d think they’d want the whole moon to be at that gravity.”

“At first, yeah,” Teresa said. “But if they’re going to have, say, a barbecue on the moon, if all of a sudden you try to lightly toss a burger on the grill and it goes flying off fifty feet, you’re going to have a problem. Or you try to lightly flip a burger and it sails across the map.”

“Is that from experience?” Orion asked and she could hear him strugling to stop from laughing.

“Oh, indeed. I can’t tell you the complaints I’ve gotten over the years over things like that. If you want low gravity, you get low gravity,” Teresa said. “Fortunately, they were very clear in the contract. Just the feel, not the actual gravity of it.”

“Sounds pretty tough, but exciting,” Orion said. “Are you sure I’m not distracting you?”

“Honestly, it’s kind of nice talking to you,” Teresa said and almost instantly regretted it. It wasn’t that she liked talking with him, she just enjoyed having someone to talk to when she did this work. Otherwise it got a bit lonely and she felt like she was cutting herself off from the rest of the world. “Sorry, I didn’t--”

“That’s a relief,” Orion said with a soft sigh.

“It is?” Teresa asked. “I mean, I figure I’m just talking your ear off about my project. Its got to be boring you, right?”

“Not really. I don’t really know much about this kind of design work, I’ve never tried it myself. But it’s nice hearing you so excited,” Orion said. “That and I always get worried that I’m just annoying people when I talk to them anyway.”

“Really? You best be careful. I’ll talk your ears off for hours about this stuff. Just wait until I get to telling you about the color swaps I have to do to simulate the stars,” Teresa said. “Then there’s the whole thing with getting the sounds right and organizing the dust so it feels very moon dusty, without actually getting into everyone’s hair.”

“Try me,” Orion said.

Teresa paused for only a moment, before getting into the details. To her surprise, he really didn’t seem to mind. In fact, before long he was even offering her suggestions and ideas while she worked. He seemed to really be enjoying it, even if he didn’t fully understand it. Despite herself, she was enjoying it to. Before long she stopped talking about this project and started talking with him about the guild hall and how she wanted to organize it. Setting up the coliseum, having different monsters fighting in it. That, at least, he kept up with far better. He even had a few suggestions on trophies they could unlock by beating different dungeons.

When he finally logged off she had made quite a bit of progress on the project, at least getting the early steps done. Having someone to talk to had made it actually pretty fun to work on. Though, the moment she logged out she felt like she could eat a horse and had to pee. The worst part about the long sessions was it was so easy to forget everything and just get lost in the work until the world reminded her she had to do things to survive.

After using the restroom she quickly made herself a small sandwich, getting a half-hearted wave from William. “Making good progress?” he called from the other room.

“Yeah,” she called back, her mind already drifting back to it. She still had so much work to do, though. She wondered if she’d hear back from Orion before it was done.

She felt heat rise in her cheeks when she realized how much she hoped she would. She pushed that thought away. It was just nice having someone to talk to about it. Once she finished her sandwich, she put the plate in the sink and then walked back out to the front room. “Hey, honey? I’ve been working on it and I wanted to ask your opinion on some things. Namely, it’s--”

“Teresa? Baby? I’m watching a show. You know I don’t know anything about that stuff. Just do with what you feel is right,” William said.

Teresa gave a nod before making her way back up to the room, trying not to feel too dejected. She really did hope Orion would come back on. It would just be a single week of hard work. She could, would, do this.

------

“So, what do you think?” Teresa asked, glancing back at Orion. Or, well, Orion’s avatar. He really didn’t match her expectations at all, but at least now she felt she knew why he played a leviathan. He really seemed to like the color blue. His chosen avatar had short blue hair, light green eyes. He was still just as tall. Not nearly as wide, though. Then again, his leviathan form was fairly muscular as opposed to his current form.

Teresa felt a little silly doing this. She didn’t know why she’d even asked him if he wanted to come and see the progress she’d made. More importantly, she didn’t know why he’d said yes. But he had. So now she was slowly walking across the moon’s surface and showing him all of the little features and design tricks she’d used. “Surprisingly, one of the hardest touches is the dust. See, if you adjust it poorly, it gets everywhere. But if it doesn’t get everywhere, it feels fake. So what I ended up doing is set a timer for it. Once it’s more than five inches above the ground for about ten seconds, it disappears. Watch,” she said before reaching down and picking up a handful of it, before tossing it into the air.

For a few moments it hung in the air, before slowly disappearing. When she walked through it, some of it stuck in her hair for a few moments but then even it disappeared.

“That’s incredible,” Orion said, glancing around, his eyes wide. “You actually made this? All by yourself?”

“I mean, the assets I use are mostly purchased with license agreements, but yes. Coding everything, organizing positions, reshaping and resizing is all done by me. This should be the final version, though. So if you wanna try anything, please. Go ahead.”

He nodded before lightly running off, admiring her handiwork. She couldn’t help but watch him as he went, her heart doing a small flutter. It felt like it had been so long since someone last appreciated her craft like this. She wondered when the last time she’d been able to drag William into one of these. Sure, she supposed her clients got to enjoy them, but that was different. She rarely got to see people enjoy them. This was something she made, designed herself. Watching Orion light up at the sight of them made her--

Her eyes widened and she felt her heart do another jump. She quickly pushed those thoughts away. No. That was a really, really dumb thought to have. It wasn’t fair, either. To him, her or William.

“Okay, that’s it. You have to let me pay you,” Orion said firmly.

“What?” Teresa asked.

“Let me pay you. Your work is amazing. If you’re designing our guild hall then you have to let me pay you for your time. Please,” Orion said, before walking to stand in front of her.

Teresa shook her head. “We talked about this. It’s just going to be a simple thing, it’s not like I’m designing it all from scratch. I’ll probably just spend a few hours working on it, at best. So--”

“Please. It’s your livelihood, isn’t it?” Orion asked.

“No. It’s nothing hard, though. In fact, it’ll probably be incredibly easy once I get started on it,” Teresa said. “I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to--”

“No,” Orion said firmly, shaking his head. “It’s a fun thing. Unless you’re going to let me pay you for it, you can’t apologize. But please. Let me do something.”

Teresa gave a small smile, her heart pounding a little harder. “I’ll think on it. Maybe it’ll be nicer to just have you owe me a favor, mister guild master. After all, I still have a lot of levels to go. On top of that, I have… oh… who knows how many other classes and weapons to master. Speaking of...” She lightly tapped on the air, bringing up the menu. No message yet. “Once I get a response back from the client, I should hopefully be done. Maybe I’ll make you take us through some dungeons. Or something else.”

Orion gave a small sigh, before nodding. “Actually, about that. Your armor skill is maxed now, right? Medium armor?”

“Yeah, of course. Why?” Teresa asked.

“Then it might be time to get your master armor,” Orion said.

“What? My armor’s fine. I upgraded it a while ago,” Teresa said.

“Ahhhh, but you don’t have maxed, now do you? The end game armor has different properties depending on what you like. For example, some of the demon sets are pretty cool. There’s one that lets you move through webs and stuff without sticking to them. Some that make you better at reflecting attacks. There’s some heavy armors that work great with large weapons and--”

“You know none of that is going to work with me,” Teresa said with a roll of her eyes.

“There’s some demon armors that let you run THROUGH things.”

Teresa paused, her mouth falling open. “THROUGH things?”

“Yep. Through things. So you could run through a monster as if they weren’t even there,” Orion said, grinning at her excitement.

“That’s awesome! How do I get that? Where? When?” Teresa asked.

“You’ll need the full set if you decide on that one,” Orion said with a laugh. “But I think we can get started on it. It’ll require some group things and you’ll need to do some higher level stuff. But I’m sure I can get Blueberry to help too. Ervent is almost max level now as well and we have a few people working towards that. It’ll be fun. We can do it as a kind of guild event, working to get everyone their end game armors.”

“Cool! What then?” Teresa asked.

“What do you mean?” Orion asked.

“Well, what do we do then? I mean, there’s got to be something to do after that, right?”

Orion gave a shrug. “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. We could try doing some of the higher level dungeons, go for some of the cosmetic things. Event missions, anything we want. So long as we all do it as a group, that’s the important thing right?”

Teresa nodded. “It is. Hey, Orion? Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” Orion said.

“Why do you play these games?” Teresa asked.

Orion paused for a few moments before crossing his arms. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean, there’s got to be a reason you like them, right? So why these? You played a bunch of online games before, right? So why?” Teresa asked.

“Oh. Huh,” Orion said before giving a light sigh. “Well, I guess a bit on the spot. But, if I had to be completely honest, I’d say the community.”

“The community?” Teresa asked, not quite understand.

“Yeah. I guess it’s just nice to be able to work with everyone and do these things together. It’s not so much the items we get, but knowing that we all got together and did this one call thing just feels really nice and makes me feel connected,” Orion said.

Teresa nodded, though she found her mind drifting back to one of the talks she had with William. “Does it feel real?”

“Does what feel real?” Orion asked.

“This? I mean the game. It’s not real. Right? It’s all magic and pretend and games. You don’t even get to see any of us in real life. I could be anybody. You could be anybody. So I’m curious how you can really have a community like that,” Teresa said.

“Oh,” Orion said before crossing his arms. “Right. You used to play a bunch of offline games, right?”

“All the time,” Teresa said.

“Well. The thing is? In the real world, this might be hard to believe, but there’s something about me you don’t know,” Orion said, his tone turning serious.

Teresa felt her heart start to beat a little faster. “Yeah?”

“I really don’t like people,” Orion said.

“Sure you don’t,” Teresa said with a roll of her eyes.

“Oh, no. I really don’t. I deal with a lot of really dumb people in my job. All the time, the stupid questions, the silly requests. It’s ridiculous,” Orion said before shaking his head. “I hate it. I used to be a total shut in too. Never saw anyone. Haven’t really changed much.”

“Oh?” Teresa asked, staring at him. “But you’re always in the game. Even when you’re working.”

“I hate people. But I don’t want to isolate myself, either. I used to be really bad about that. I’d just do whatever I wanted. But then I started playing with some people online. Had some nice get together. Really fell in love with this one online game. We’d host all kinds of events, go through different story lines together. Make our own. It was a lot of fun. Then when the game closed down, well, I realized I didn’t want it to stop. So we moved onto another game. Made some new friends, some others fell out of touch. But I realized I wanted to keep doing this kind of stuff. I wanted all of us to keep playing. Some of us drop, some new people end up joining. We go to new games sometimes. But, in the end, it’s still a community.”

“And it feels real?” Teresa asked.

“Eh. As real as anything else. Even if you don’t see someone face to face doesn’t mean they’re fake. Heck, there are people you see every day who spend their whole lives never showing you anything about them. The only difference here is that I can’t see what they are physically. But in some ways I think it’s a great way to get to know people. You don’t have to deal with the issue of preconceptions. The only thing you get to see is their mind and, in many ways, their tastes. Heck, the fact we create our avatars ourselves, in some ways, tells a whole lot about who we are as people. After all, you made Kira. So that means you’re someone who wants to be like Kira in some ways. Right?” Orion asked.

Teresa gave a light chuckle, covering her hand with her mouth. “Yeah. I guess. I’m definitely not her, though.”

“Maybe not. But either way, you’re a lot of fun. More than that, you’re pretty smart. Just look at this world you created. I could never build something like this,” Orion said. “It’s amazing that you did this all by yourself. If I’d met you in the real world, I might have never known. But now I get to see this side of you, all because we met online. So, yes. I definitely feel this community is real. It’s just a different kind of real.”

Teresa nodded, her heart giving another flutter. “So you don’t think it’s less important than real friends?”

“Nah. Just different. Besides, meeting in real life means I’d have to put on pants all the time. It’s really hard to compare fighting off giant demons and stuff in your boxers to having to sliding on pants and going to the local coffee shop to buy some over priced drinks while talking about… well, whatever it is people talk about in the real world.”

Teresa gave another soft laugh at that notion. “Yeah. Thanks, really.”

“Still, I wouldn’t say in real life friends are bad, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve made a few of those. In fact, Blueberry is a good one of mine. Though we don’t hang out very much except online. He hates putting on pants about as much as I do.”

“Really? Is he a lot like his avatar?” Teresa asked.

Orion gave a light laugh and shook his head. “Not really. He’s tall, I guess. But I don’t think he’d be what you’d imagine.”

“Oh? Not as much muscle?”

“Nope. A lot less of that,” Orion said with a grin that she couldn’t help finding a little annoying. She wondered what she was missing.

“Oh? Does--” A light alarm chimed, cutting her off. “Oh, there we go. Client dealing time.”

“Right. I should probably get to work, anyway. It was great seeing this, Kira. I hope everything goes well.”

“I’m sure it will,” Teresa said, giving a small wave before he logged off. Just a quick transfer and she’d be all done. Though, she found her eyes wandering to where he had been standing. A part of her missed him already.

“What’s wrong with me?” Teresa asked gently, slowly kneeling down. Why was she feeling this way? Why was she having so much fun being around him? What would William think if he ever found out? Was she actually starting to get a crush on him? She tried to push that thought away, shaking her head.

“Stop it,” Teresa whispered to herself. “It’s not a crush. You’re overthinking things. He’s just a friend. That’s all. Nothing more. Besides, you have a boyfriend. You’re just excited to have a friend who’s interested in this kind of stuff. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less. Now, you’re going to deal with this client, get paid and then go and make dinner. Like a mature, responsible adult,” she said to herself, before reaching out to tap on the menu again.

Teresa just wished she could get her feelings to understand that.