Perry, with all his excellent options for personalisation and attitude adjustments had some pretty severe shortcomings, Sera noted. For one, he could track the weather, but he couldn’t come out to meet her halfway with an umbrella when she was soaked through. For another, his voice was plain irritating when he kept inquiring about what she wanted while she was busy getting it for herself.

“No, Perry, no help needed at all,” Sera finally said when Perry asked her if she would like to apply sound dampeners and have soothing music played to drown out the storm, after suggesting she change into dry clothes and offering her towels that stayed exactly where they were in the bathroom cupboard.

When they were still a new couple, Gilbert had surprised her once on her way back from work by sneaking up behind her and slipping a hand around her waist to pull her under a humongous umbrella he had picked up from the Re:Act store. Her first instinct had been to crush his instep, but somehow he’d anticipated that and danced about her, laughing about her paranoia and suggesting they take the long way back to enjoy the rain.

“And melt my hair off?” Sera had snapped, referring to the slightly below normal, acidic pH of the rain which had already soaked through to her scalp. Those were the days when the weather drones had not yet been launched.

Gilbert’s face had filled with surprise and a hint of something she couldn’t quite catch. Sera, stunned at her bad manners, had apologised profusely. She was shocked at how uncharacteristically rude she had been, especially after he’d taken the trouble to come get her.

After a moment’s hesitation, Gilbert had looked up again and pulled an exaggeratedly disappointed face. He’d tugged at his own dry, fluffy hair, then tossed the umbrella aside, abruptly picked her up and dashed a few steps to the nearest taxi stand. An autocar came almost immediately, the faint hum of its engines smothering her protests, and they had bundled in, enjoying the rare luxury of a ride home. When they arrived, he immediately made hot chocolate while she rinsed her hair and pulled out fresh towels, dry clothes and soft, warm slippers. They had lain on a rug by the sliding glass doors and enjoyed each other’s company with the sound of pounding rain and  thunder crashing overhead.

Sera turned her thoughts away from Gilbert. She didn’t want to travel along memory lane and revisit the cycle of disappointment and pain that had begun just a few months after that happy evening.

“Perry, I’m turning in for the night. Secure premises and turn on sleep mode. Oh, and switch to a posh British accent, will you?”

“Very well, ma’am,” Perry replied in a voice that oozed respect and sophistication. Sera gave her Butler an amused smile and aimed a thumbs up at his primary sensor on the ceiling.

The lights around the apartment dimmed. Cool, humidified air began to circulate around Sera and she dropped off to sleep as soon as she climbed into bed.

***

It was silent as the grave when she woke. The storm was over and Perry and the apartment were still in sleep mode.

Sera was desperately thirsty so she got up, intending to make her way to the kitchen. A gleam caught her eye halfway there and she turned to look at the delivery hatch in the entryway. The green circle that signified something had arrived pulsed pleasantly and she found herself moving to pull down the lid of the hatch. It slid smoothly open, revealing a compartment that ran along the wall dividing the adjacent apartment with hers. The light above the conveyor belt within the compartment lit up, casting a soft golden glow on a lone bottle standing on the black belt. Perry must have placed an order to restock her drinks. She had to remember to remind him to batch his orders next time.

She reached out and picked up the small bottle. The cap cracked satisfyingly as she twisted it, then took a long gulp. The water had a faint hint of mint and was so refreshing and soothing to her throat that she finished half the bottle before pausing to take note of the label she could feel under her fingers, around the neck of the bottle. She read the cursive text by the faint green glow from the hatch light.

‘We hope you enjoy this free sample of Elysian nanites. For a special discount on future purchases, please allow your Butler to scan this nanocode. Our custom made nanites work best with personal neuronodes or nodepods, however you may experience Elysia from any public node-compatible device at your local cafe.’

Sera frowned and turned the bottle in her hand so she could see the logo on it. It was indeed from Elysia. Underneath the logo and tagline was a shimmering three dimensional cubecode.

So aggressive! Sera licked her lips, only now detecting the slightly metallic taste of the nanites she had consumed that had been masked by the mint. When had the company begun such pushy marketing campaigns? She’d have to ask Monica when she saw her next.

She padded back to her bed and lay down. Several minutes later she was still awake. She was probably imagining it—nanites couldn’t be sensed after they were consumed after all—but she felt as if the influx of the tiny machines had given her a burst of energy and alertness.

The old Gilbert would have laughed at her. Either that, or incessantly nagged at her that now that she had both nanites and a neuronode at her fingertips, she should have better things to do than sleep. Once upon a time, she might even have listened to him.

She turned to her bedside table to check the console she normally wore on her wrist. Its screen displayed the time—three a.m.—and showed wavy lines to indicate that Perry had detected her movements and tracked her through the apartment. If she wanted, she could tell him to set an alarm, put the apartment into day mode, or simply even to sing her to sleep. But Sera didn’t feel like she needed Perry for the moment.

After another moment’s hesitation, Sera got up and went over to the storage box. She had shoved the neuronode back into it and pushed the box behind her couch where it couldn’t be seen. Now she pulled the neuronode out and walked over to her bed.

She thumbed it around until the patch was in the right position, then slid the node over her head, adjusting her pillow to accommodate its shape. The familiar cold was like a faint kiss against the back of her neck.

Darkness melded into colour and Sera found herself back in the circular room. This time the nanites helped the node access her mind and the swirl of coloured motes coalesced to form a glass observatory window overlooking a vast expanse of space. She could see a bit of earth beneath her, just enough to glimpse its blue surface littered with white clouds and a silvery green gleam on the horizon. Light streamed down from the sun which shone unseen above her, and smaller planets, tiny stars and multi-coloured galactic clouds spiraled in the distance.

There was a faint impression of movement and her view shifted. A planet merged out of the darkness to her left. It was a sphere much like Earth and like Earth, it appeared like a blue jewel in the dark, wreathed in snowy clouds and crowned by an auroral glow at one pole. The word ‘Elysia’ appeared printed above it in capital letters.

A sudden crackling like a fire bursting into flame sounded from both sides of the room and Sera saw two fiery wings appear in front of her with a space shaped like a body between them. The words, ‘Your Destiny Awaits’ appeared in fiery letters in the empty space. Beneath it was a small scroll with the terms and conditions and damage waiver in tiny silver letters. Another message flashed at the bottom of the screen, informing her that this was the synchronisation sequence for biometric coordination and she would not be required to repeat it in subsequent logins. It also prompted her to think of a password image, word or sound during entry into Elysia. When she was done reading the message, an option on the left flashed, catching her attention. It was a warning for motion sickness and fear of height triggers and a direction for opting out of the visual simulation, or for skipping the biometric synchronisation altogether and exiting the starting sequence.

Sera glanced back to the wings. There was obviously a particular age group that was being targeted with these special effects. She looked around the round room for Gilbert’s login profile but it was nowhere to be seen. If she ever wanted to get back to that home screen where his profile could be accessed from, she apparently needed to exit the sequence and find her way back to the main login page without succumbing to Elysia’s tactics to get her to play the game.

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Or she could just go along with it for now, since it was a free trial.

Feeling a twinge of anticipation, Sera ticked the T&C agreement and waiver and stepped forward into the space between the fiery wings. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the room melted away and a tingling feeling swept through her entire body as if every nerve she had in her body was being brushed by tiny feathery flames. Her body jerked and her back arched. The feeling was so strong she was sure that she was feeling it in real life.

When the sensation subsided she found her arms had dropped out of view, replaced by wings that were an extension of her body. As she regained control over herself she realised that she was moving forward slowly and that with a single thought, she could flex the wings as easily as if they were her hands or arms. A notice scrolling at the bottom of her vision told her that physical synchronisation was now complete and that her movements should be fully integrated into the game.

Sera imagined herself angling into a horizontal position and found her virtual self fluidly moving to match her mental projection. She began to pump her wings up and down. To her delight, the motion helped to propel her faster and faster through space until the surrounding stars streaked past her in long lines of white.

Soon Earth disappeared from view and Elysia loomed larger and larger before her until it consumed the whole of her vision. Sera entered the planet’s atmosphere in a glow of purplish green mist, bursting through blankets of cloud cover as she was caught by the planets gravity.

Now every pulse of her wings sent her shooting over its surface, skimming over continents spread far below in a kaleidoscope of green, blue and sandy red. There were three moons in the distant horizon and floating islands scattered within the atmosphere of the planet. Wind rushed in her ears and rustled through her clothes but her wings still burned strong. Sera felt like a comet as she streaked across the sky. She was close enough to the planets surface to see oceans in the distance, mountain ranges covered with snow and roaming bands of animals in green valleys. While she gazed down at the luscious new planet below her, a prompt flashed across her screen, encouraging her to think of a password. It reminded her that it had to consist of an image, a word, music, or a combination of all three.

Sera had been considering this at the back of her mind and immediately thought of three crème brûlées in white ramekins against a backdrop of a blue tablecloth patterned with quacking ducks and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik playing in the background. It was the most random and secure password sequence she could think off on the fly.

Immediately the music took a more solid shape in her mind and actually began to sound in her ears. The prompt told her to picture her visual image in further minute detail to ensure she remembered it, so she gave the crème brûlées’s mint leaf garnishes and the ramekins jumping legs to dance to the music. She dressed the quacking ducks in pink scalloped aprons and made little black quaver notes gush from their beaks. A loading bar she had not noticed hovering in the middle of her vision immediately solidified, its progress reaching a 100%.

‘Success! This will be your password to enter Elysia.’

Her wings, which had begun to move without her will while she focused her mind on the password, fluttered even faster than before. Sera found herself soaring over magnificent vistas that she only just began to take note of. She passed over a snowy mountain range whose peaks housed an icy fortress with swooping dragons and zeppelins around its jagged spires, then skimmed over marshy moors obscured by fog that cracked with blue lightning. This in turn bled into a lush forest strewn with moss and vines. She saw a tiny houseboat winding its way down a slow-moving river that twisted through the forest and tried to twist her head around to track the boat, but her wings picked up even more speed and she rose high up into the air again.

Now that she was in an expanse of blue sky, she noticed several transparent panels on her screen. They were mostly blank except for the globe on her right which had a vague arrangement of shadowy continents. They crawled slowly across the tiny map, until one in particular began to scale larger at the same time that Sera began to descend rapidly. Her wings pulled back as she dove and a silver gold aura began to envelope her, trailing behind her in a long, fiery tail.

Sera began to feel a little worried.

No matter how hard she tried to move her arms, her wings remained folded behind her and she kept falling like a stone through the air. Every sensation she felt, from the chill of the wind streaming through her hair to the dryness of her eyes as they were buffeted by air, told her that the incoming impact would be extremely painful. Sera gazed anxiously about, hoping to spot her destination.

Below her was a pinprick of an island within an expanse of seemingly endless sea. It had a single white cliff poking through a shroud of mist, with a rainbow wreathed waterfall churning down into a pool surrounded by a crescent of sharp rocks and lush, green foliage. Though it was surrounded by sea, the lagoon at the bottom of the falls looked unbelievably small from this height, almost the size of a puddle. Her heart hammered in her ears and her stomach spasmed as a flash of realisation passed through her. This was her target. She couldn’t budge an inch to change her course and there was no other suitable landing spot on the island. Despite the volume of water flowing into the pool, she just couldn’t believe it would be sufficient to cushion her fall. After all, didn’t water feel like concrete if one fell into it from a great height?

Sera shrieked and shook her head in denial, inaudible curses passing through her lips to trail behind her as she punctured low-hanging clouds and headed for the island swelling beneath her.

Just before impact, she glimpsed a strange-looking person sitting with his feet dangling over the edge of the cliff. He had a scraggly beard and battle gear on the grass beside him and was lifting a beer mug as huge as his head in a silent ‘cheers’ to her, his ruddy cheeks pulled back in a mischievous grin.

There was no time to respond. Sera felt herself crash into the water. She plummeting deep into its depths, the churning of the waterfall sending her spinning head over heels. Her wings extinguished, leaving her bare arms behind. She sank deep into the midnight blue depths of the pool, struggling to hold her breath and contain her panic. Just as she thought she could hold on no longer, a message scrolled across her screen:

‘Your psychophysiological arousal profile has been successfully calibrated. All game stimuli will be automatically set to 80% of your personal threshold unless manually adjusted.’

Sera released the breath she had been holding and sucked in another one in surprise. She really should have read the waiver and fine print that had popped up more thoroughly before she took those wings. A rush of annoyance coursed through her at the game developer’s sneaky tactics. There had been absolutely no warning of how the calibration would take place and if Sera had taken it all a little more seriously she might have had a heart attack!

While she ruminated about how dangerous the game might turn out to be, Sera abruptly surfaced from the pool of water.

“Welcome to the Sea of Creation. Here you will be able to choose your character race and name,” said a voice in her ears, as she bobbing to the surface of a crystalline pool. There was no sign of the island and the water was shallow beneath her feet. It was as if she had transitioned through a mirror’s surface and was now on the other side.

The water pushed at Sera until she fully emerged, then solidified beneath her feet. She found herself kneeling in a hall with sunshine streaming through a huge domed arbor above her. The light was filtered blue as if she were still underwater, and shadowy water ripples wavered on every surface.

Sera got to her feet. The sound of her footsteps echoed dimly as she walked around. The hall was circular and had several pillars with doorways between them.

“What is your name?”

It was the same voice. She looked around and up, but no one was in sight. “Sera spelled as S-e-r-a.”

“Unfortunately, that name is already taken. Please choose a different name.”

A panel flickered into being in front of her with a keyboard on it. Sera typed in different versions of her name, which was quite long. However, no matter how many versions of Seraphina she tried to spell, all seemed to have been taken already. It was the same with Odilia, her middle name. In the end, she settled on Serares as a sort of palindromic reshuffling of her preferred name.

“Serares, you have the option of remaining with your own facial features or choosing a template face. Please step through the portal for your chosen race to begin the game. You may choose your class now as well or await further in game character customisation.” The words echoed the message scrolling at the bottom of her screen.

Sera walked to the nearest portal. It was flanked by roman pillars on either side and in the middle were shallow steps that led up to a pedestal on which stood a sort of holographic image of an elf against a backdrop of light. The elf switched from male to female and back every few seconds and was dressed in a woodland outfit, complete with leafy borders on their shirtsleeves, leather boots and a set of bow and arrows gripped in their hands. On the left pillar were several options she could choose. Male, female; custom or template face; hair, eye and skin colour, and plenty more. On the right column were character classes with words like priest, paladin, or warrior, accompanied by images of weaponry, magic or symbols. She kept walking to the next portal and the next, scrutinising each race as she passed them.

There were so many options that Sera felt overwhelmed.

Finally, she reached a portal she felt comfortable with. Without over thinking, Sera jumped up the steps and passed through the image. A ripple of warmth ran down her spine as she took its place, as if a feather from her fiery wings had run over her skin. She inhaled sharply, then reached out with her left hand and tapped, ‘custom’, ‘female’ and jumped down to the other side of the pedestal.

Without looking back, she dove straight into the light shining through the doorway and began her first day in Elysia.