If ever there was a day when something good came of the phrase, “dude, check this out,” it was not today—I thought—staring at my roommate who had apparently lost his mind.

He was tall, curly-haired, and always wearing something formal. Today, it was a pink dress shirt and tweed vest. 

The barest upturn at the corners of his lips told me that he was, in Ellis’s own special way, grinning like an idiot.

“What the hell did you do?” I asked, eyebrows raised and locked, gesturing at the elephant in the room.

The elephant was, at that moment, being leaned on by said roommate. His elbow rested against its top, coming at about chest level, for him, while his feet crossed in the very picture of elegant nonchalance.

I'd like it to be noted that it wasn’t a literal elephant which took up center stage of our shared living space, normally occupied by a modest coffee table. An elephant might have been cheaper. 

It was a Big Black Box.

The Big Black Box, with a very recognizable company logo. Not that it needed it. The thing itself looked like a shrine to an alien god.

Our living space, in its better days, might be called a modest-sized studio apartment. Meaning that the kitchen and living room are basically the same place, and its cramped nature was circumvented by strategically placed furniture, giving it the illusion of floor-space. 

“Nothing much.” Ellis said, examining his finger nails with the hand not resting on the machinery I knew cost several months rent. “I mean… I did get a new job last week, but I already told you about that, right?”

I blinked at him. 

“You know,” he prompted. “The graphic design job? I get to work from home? StarkArts studios?”

I blinked again, looking between him and the monolithic device. Not a cube, exactly. More like a pyramid that was sanded down and had an intimate evening with a hydraulic press. “Yeah…” I said, slowly. “You said. The studio owned by the company owned by the company that owns…”

I gestured, once more, to the large piece of machinery. “That thing costs more than my fucking car.” There was horror in my voice.

I didn’t let myself come within ten feet of it. The sheer expense of the thing repelled me. My feet were stuck in the hallway leading to my bedroom, planted at the edge of a kitchen which served as a buffer between me and the incarnation of crippling-debt. 

“Her name is Sandman, and you will give her all the respect she deserves as a member of this family, thank you.” Ellis said in a crisp voice, shifting his weight from it.

Sandman was, I knew, the sole property of perhaps the most ludicrous business on the planet, MoreMorpheus. Within certain communities, it was all anyone could talk about for the last three years. Last year, when the price was announced, a significant amount of internet buzz died, for the simple reason that what rich idiot spends thirty-thousand dollars on a fucking video game?

‘It’s not just a video game,’ many of Dreamland’s supporters would say, attempting to defend the price. 

‘It’s the future!’ They’d say, ‘it’s coming whether you like it or not!’

As far as I knew, it did come, last month, to a great deal of fanfare, followed by an even greater deal of silence. Presumably because no one could afford to actually play the thing.

However did he pay for this, I asked in far less polite words, when he owed me nearly two month’s rent?

“Shame on you for thinking I’d do something as plebeian as spending my own money.” He said, strolling around the machine, examining his fingernails.

I raised my eyebrows. “What’d you do, steal it?” I asked. 

For all that Ellis didn’t care for the law, he only ever broke it recreationally, and never with damages in excess of three hundred dollars at a time.

“Not technically.” Ellis said in a high voice, smiling.

My eyebrows shot higher, and I pressed my lips into a thin line. 

“This gorgeous piece of hardware,” he started, smugly, “happens to be a perk of my new job.”

“Perk.” I echoed, synapses misfiring. “Thirty thousand dollars. Graphic design?”

Ellis rolled his eyes. “It’s not that weird. It’s basically a company car, except it’s never ever leaving our living room.”

“And they just gave it to you?”

“For the next fiscal quarter.” He frowned. “Unless I break it, but that’ll never happen” He waved his hand.

I frowned at him. “So, what, this is just a perk of working for a studio owned to the nth degree by the richest man on the planet? Does everyone have one?”

Ellis grinned. “Oh, it’s better than that. This isn’t a just a perk of the job, my friend, this,” he laid a hand on the machine, “this is the job. Drawing monsters and playing video games. My fourth and twelfth favorite things to do, respectively.”

I stared at my friend. “I fucking hate you.” 

He grinned harder. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“When did it even get here?” I asked, running fingers back through my hair, still wide eyed. 

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“This morning. I’m surprised we didn’t wake you. Rough night?” 

I sighed. “Blame the hangover, I guess.”

Ellis’s eyebrows went up. “Ohooo, you had your thing with Kaley last night. How’s that going, by the way?” He asked, leaning to his right, peering past me and into the hallway that housed my bedroom. 

“She still here?” 

I ignored the first question. “No.”

“Sad.” He said, shaking his head. “Might this also be the reason behind the hangover lasting until…” he made a show of checking his watch, “goodness me, half past noon!”

There were, in my defense, many good reasons for drinking that night. One of them happened to be that a—now former—paramour of mine didn’t appreciate the gray area between ‘friends’ and ‘couple’ where I was most comfortable, and she made the fact transparently clear to me the night before.

I wouldn’t say that I was ‘dumped,’ as much as ‘let go.’ 

Is that denial? I wouldn’t say that either, no. 

I would say that I should have made it abundantly clear I wasn't looking for anything more stable than an isotope of Fermium-257 (which has a half-life of one-hundred days, and is therefore the perfect element to describe my average relationship, and is in fact the only reason I know anything at all about Fermium-257, which I discovered in freshman chemistry.)

Overall, the night could have gone better. It was, in my opinion, as good a reason as any for drinking, and it was very much none of Ellis’s business.

“I’m entitled to drink away my Friday nights and Saturday mornings for whatever reason I want, thanks.” I said, crossing my arms.

“You’re right.” Ellis waved both hands as if in surrender. “Totally right. It’s a Saturday afternoon now, you’re up, and it’s a bright and beautiful new day.”

“It is.” I frowned, nodding once.

“So…” Ellis said, inching towards the gigantic machine, “is there anything you want to do on this gorgeous-gorgeous day with your good friend Ellis?”

There’s a… voice Ellis uses when he wants something. High and slow and exaggerated, especially if it’s a question. My eyes flickered between him and the machine. He also doesn’t like to do things by himself.

I blinked at him. “I’m sorry, are you implying that your work won’t care if you let your roommate’s grubby paws all over their expensive machine?”

That Ellis would… wouldn’t be an incredible surprise. The man was generous to a fault, and I do mean that literally. He simply did not know how to draw a line between ‘helping out a friend’ and ‘feeding a parasite’ and I had to help make that distinction for him several times over the course of our friendship.

I’ll just say that this isn’t the first time I’ve had to cover his side of the rent, and leave it at that.

Ellis flashed a confident and lazy smile. “Not only do they not care that your paws are grubby, they are literally encouraging you to put them all over.”

I asked him, calmly, to please explain. 

Not only did he oblige, he showed me the paperwork.

It wasn’t even a long document. Only a few pages saying that, yes, Ellis has a roommate, and yes, said roommate gets to make and use a player account for recreational purposes, so long as they—me—didn’t use the machine or associated content to make upwards of two-hundred-thousand dollars in a year. 

How they expected me to make that much, or any, money, I have no idea.

All I had to do was sign my name, confirming that I was Ellis’s roommate, and that I held neither him nor MoreMorpheus accountable for any injury or illness developed while playing. That last bit might have concerned me if you didn’t have to sign something similar every time I bought a new normal person video game.

Nowhere, not once in that entire document, did it say why they were letting me do this. The altruism of trillionaires, maybe? The fact that they were already giving away the entire system for free, and that they didn’t care if their lowly workers shared a little with the other peons? I was certainly never gonna buy one myself, so maybe it didn’t affect the market whether I played for free, or didn’t play at all?

The finer points of business strategy have often escaped me, and I wasn’t inclined to look a gift horse too close in the mouth.

“So…” He started, after I finished reading, and I was staring at the dotted line. He sounded oddly nervous. “You gonna sign it, or…”

I feel like now is as good a time as any to note that I had resigned myself to never playing this game in my entire life. Not only could I not afford it, but the expense of it was so… ludicrous, 

“I…” I shook my head. “Sure, sounds like a cool way to pass the day, I’m in.”

…

…

The first thing to greet me, after I put on the slick black helmet, was darkness.

The second thing to greet me was a woman’s voice, soothing and calm as it echoed all around me. 

“Stand by for initialization.”

“You got it, buddy.” I muttered, and was immediately surprised by the echo in my own voice. 

“Neato.” I said, a little louder, testing the echo, smiling at the reverberations, catching the tail end of an— “eato.”

“Neato!” I tried again, still smiling.

“Neato!”

Am I a child for taking it a bit of pleasure in an echo? You don’t need to answer, I know I am. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love to hear myself talk.

“Initializing.”

Immediately, sideways became down. “orrigh shiyagh!” I let out in sheer surprise. 

The target phrase I was looking for was ‘oh shit’, and if you can’t understand how I messed up saying such a simple thing, you’ve clearly never had ‘sideways’ become ‘down’ before.

Until that point, I could feel myself, my body, lying down on the couch at home. A constant and warm pressure all along my back, head propped up on a pillow so that the muscles in my neck and back didn’t get any funny ideas about cramping.

All that was gone. Disappeared. Replaced.

It was still dark, but my feet were on the ground, and I was standing.

“Please state your name.” The soothing voice echoed all around me.

“Quintin Stells?” I said, caught off guard again.

I winced, ‘agh, there goes your chance at a clever sounding name, genius.’ 

“Would you like to play a game, Quintin?” 

It was odd, hearing the voice say my name like that. Like it knew me. Though, no one really called me Quintin anymore, except for Ellis. Quinn was my preference.

I shrugged into the void. “Yes please?”

“Are you prepared to enter Dreamland?”

“Um,” I looked up, frowning. “Yes, again? I think so.” 

“Then welcome to Dreamland, Quintin.”

“Thank you, I gue—”

Everything went white, like someone set off a magnesium flare an inch from my face, and I fell backwards. Smudges swam across my vision, and I tried to rub them out, clearing the way for—

“Hello, stranger.” A warm voice welcomed me.

I opened my eyes.