A shout coming from the athletics track brought him back to reality.

“Liam! You have 1min to be in position or you will have to wash everyone shirt for tomorrow! “

“Yes coach, I’m coming.”

Liam was part of the athletics club. He always loved running. In fact he was the ace of the club with a personal record of 10.9s for 100m. Even if his running skills were high enough to take part in the dome’s competition he chosed a scientific path and kept running for fun. His coach had no mercy for him because of his decision but he had not resentment. He perfectly understood his reaction after he trained him for years and saw him grow.

But today Liam was not in the mood and neglected his training. He got scolded for this quite a few times yet his head was filled with images of Last Hope. He couldn’t forget this feeling of freedom and wished to explore this new world free of radiation. Since his childhood he has always wanted to explore the world in a way to see more than what a travel between cities allowed.

After the training ended he made his way through the university to go back home while listening music. Near the exit a tall male student put his hand on Liam’s shoulder to stop him. He was one head taller than Liam and was quite in shape. Liam guessed the man just ended his training too since his rugby jersey was full of sweat.

“Hey what’s up Liam?”

“Same as always… wait, did you see Last Hope trailer ?”

“You mean the new game developed by AC? Everyone in my class was talking about it today. I can’t understand the popularity of this game.”

“Come on Luca. Just watch it, trust me.”

“Yeah maybe. Anyway, did you get the number of the waitress?”

“ No, she was not my type…”

They kept talking about girls on their way home. Luca was Liam’s best friend, they have know each other for 18 years already. He loved girls as much as he loved himself and had a certain popularity among the university’s girls. He was according to Liam a crazy person, always searching for new sensations but he would always be here to help if needed.

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When they split up Liam started to run, he enjoyed feeling the wind on his face. When he got home, his sister Celeste rushed toward him and jumped. Liam caught her and started kissing her forehead. She was wearing a red skirt with white circles and a red headband. Her eyes gave an abnormal feeling of intelligence for her age,she was ten.

Their father often left late his work because of the game development and their mother worked at night at the hospital. She was a famous neurologist. Liam had to take care of his sister most of the time and had little time left for himself. But soon his father as well as his colleagues will have a one month holiday. His father promised to take care of Celeste during his free time.

Tonight Liam made hamburgers for dinner with a tomato salad. Hamburgers were Celeste’s favorite dish, Liam tried to please her as much as possible. When they finished eating Liam washed the dished and went to his room. He turned on the Dive helmet and read AC’s forum.

People were over excited after the announcement and grew impatient to play Last Hope. AC’s forum was saturated, people wanted to know more and asked various questions on it. Most of the time admins answered: ‘’No information will be disclosed. It’s up to players to discover it.’’

The effervescence created by the teaser obligated AC to disclose information about Last Hope creation. According to its press officers, the engineers improved the system of other Virtual Reality. They were able to encode smell, touch and taste in addition to view and hearing. Furthermore they enhanced the realism of NPCs by collecting the data coming from the dive helmet. NPCs behaved like real humans and thought of players as world travelers.

The game release date was scheduled three weeks later which coincided with the beginning of the holidays. They planned to attract as much people as possible during this month of break.

Few television channels already planned to change their schedule as they hoped for Last Hope to become a common thing in the life of the dome’s citizens. Strangely enough, even national tv channels , which were not known for broadcasting entertainment, planned to do the same.

Suddenly a window appeared in front of Liam’s eyes: it was his father calling him.

“Liam, is everything okay at home ?”

“Yes dad, I already cooked for Celeste, she went to her room few minutes ago.”

“Thanks son for taking care of your sister every day… .”  His father stopped speaking for few seconds. Liam felt remorse in his father’s voice.

“Anyway, I hope you watched our trailer.”

“Of course, it was fantastic. I feel proud knowing my father contributed to this game.”

Hearing this his father laughed a bit.

They spoke for another ten minutes before Liam hanged up.  With the end of the call, he could once again browse through AC forum. He looked for information but found none that were interesting, a few caught his attention but their veracity was doubtful. Someone even proclaimed that the dark knight was the final boss but considering his username, xXx_Dark_Shadow_xXx , Liam rapidly changed page.

At some point he just gave up and switched to his guild chat room which was literally a room. Old forums were replaced by these rooms where people would meet and chat just like in real life. Most of his guildmates were planning to play Last Hope at his release and already planned to reform the guild in it. His guildmaster already announced that he would also stop playing their current game in order to focus on Last Hope. He was a good guildmaster who knew how to manage a guild or even lead a 100 characters party to kill a boss. He was charismatic leader and his announcement convinced even more people to switch game.

Liam started talking with 3 of his guildmates with whom he often played with. All four of them used to play light melee class and little by little a deep friendship bond grew between them. They all lived in Naporia or, as they used to call it, the dome of death, and often met in real life.

Knowing that Liam father’s was working on Last Hope they bombarded him with questions but unfortunately for them Liam knew as much as them on this matter. After a long talk he disconnected and slept.