Inside a laboratory located at who knows where, a single old man was finishing a project of his.

He had these dreams that seemed more like visions ever since he was a young boy. At first they were snippets of the same vision over and over again. However, as he grew older, the length of the vision slowly but surely increased.

They seemed like blueprints and plans of some sort, but he really didn't know what it meant because he only saw blurred snippets. Then, during the beginning of his fourth year at high school, still undecided about his major and college, he finally saw the full and complete vision.

He finally knew what it was and what it meant. He now had a purpose and thus he finally found his majors for college. He studied many different types of engineering and sciences to fulfill his goal.

After studying, and mastering, them all, he finally graduated from college. Now he needed money to fund his project. He didn't know what to do.

He couldn't get a job because he needed a lot of time for his project. College already took a huge chunk of it.

He went to sleep one night, pondering on what to do. He had another vision that night, but instead of anything like the first vision, this was a short and complete vision, displayed to him were the winning numbers of next week's lottery, which had built up to 1.7 billion USD because no one had won the jackpot for a while.

With the winnings he had gotten that day (which was about 800 million USD because of taxes and fees of wanting it in cash, upfront), he built a laboratory in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It took him many, many years to make sense of the device since the blueprints were extremely complicated.

By that time, he was an old man. Now he was putting the finishing touches on the device, the VRMMORPG elements. He still had a lot of money from the lottery left over. About 250 million USD. What he planned to do next was market the device that would change the world as we know it.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

***

Other World Online came out.

It was really sudden too.

An old man suddenly appeared out of nowhere to introduce the device at an electronics expo.

He introduced the device as 'The Seed to Other World', or SOW for short. The device came with the game already installed.

Many people tried a small demo that was totally unrelated to the game so the actual Other World Online wouldn't be spoiled.

The old man never revealed his name so everyone just called him THE Old Man, with an emphasis on the word The.

He described that the game had 99% realism for the senses. The only thing that was changeable was the pain setting, which could be from 25% to 90% depending on the player's preferences.

The Old Man explained that the actual game had complete freedom and anything could be done, however the game world did have laws.

Laws that could be broken.

The day after the EXPO ended, game stores all over the world were selling the devices. They already had a contract with The Old Man.

He would provide the devices and they would sell the device for 400$. The stores would keep a 10% commission while the rest went to a offshore bank account that The Old Man had.

He was never to be seen again... at least not in person.

Author's Note: The Old man isn’t really that important. He will show up here and there.

If I were to describe him, it would be that he is only a link in the chain. (Reference to a book series I read a while back. If you can guess what the series was called, kudos to you)

The main protagonist will be introduced in the first chapter.

Edited and Proofed by Fangtooth, The Crumpet Lord