Everything had the colour leeched from it, leaving behind a grey, dark and smoky world.

Your character has been slain.

You have 2,374,587 hours remaining in the afterlife.

At my feet lay a mess of butchered platypus and diamond shards, what was once my Infinite Fantasy Online character.

A new grey robe covered my dull cold body. Ahhh, this explains the Liches... they were just ghosts, So, I’m dead too? But I’m still kinda alive... . There was a notification in my peripherals that I must have missed.

Logout.

Load New Character.

This is too crazy! I needed a breather. Although, what about Jonas? What about the drops? There might be some legendary loot here. But, my character is dead, and I don’t know how to revive. From what I could tell, the area had no NPCs, only the two monster corpses. I rubbed my hood vigorously. I need more information, I thought, and pressed the ‘logout’ button. My body lurched back as if someone had hooked me to an outstretched bungee. The world blurred, and I found myself whipped towards a bright white light. I sprung up suddenly and banged my IVR headset on the toilet seat.

  

The cold toilet tiles greeted me, “Hahaha, this is so weird.” So, was it some strange hybrid VR entrapment? I don’t think so, as life-like sensory feedback hasn’t been developed yet. My vision included my status bar, a side effect perhaps. My mind raced through the possibilities. Was it a dream, some sort of portal to another world, or was my headset hacked, or even something to do with the quantum server? That’s right… The countdown coincided perfectly. I checked Jonas’ chat status, it said he was offline, he was never offline, maybe away, but never offline.

The mobile on the arm of my VR chair vibrated, as I sat down. There was a message from Jonas.

“Mark! I saw you defeat the Time & Gravity God, well done, a shame we all died in the end. I must type quickly, you need to change your address details to the attached, if they aren’t already. This will ensure we port back into the God’s Tomb. Watch the news, and you’ll understand why we need that loot. I got to go, they’re watching me, see you in there.”

My face scrunched “Huh?! Why in the world would you go back there?”

I brought up my augmented reality interface, but the option to play ‘Infinite Fantasy Online’ was replaced with gibberish. I had no idea what that new game was called, or even how to get back in. All I remember was the news anchors counting down, then suddenly finding myself in a character login screen. This was all just a little strange. I shutdown the gaming portal and accessed the internet, figuring it would be prudent to check if this was a one-off thing or more widespread. There were many articles about reality being bent by the quantum core.

Oh, no, this isn’t good.

I went straight to my most trusted independent news source.

“The world as we know it has been changed.

The activation of the quantum core interstellar transporter has set into effect changes that cannot be undone. Our world… Our universe has been merged with one or more popular video games that were running on the same energy wavelength, but that’s the least of our worries. Due to the merge, much of our world doesn’t fit into the new reality and is already falling apart. Experts suggest Earth has become uninhabitable. The silver lining is that with the bent reality has come a new accessible world. Experts’ preliminary results findings suggest it is an artificial world, a gaming world now accessible to us. To access it, all we need to do is log in from a VR gaming system.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Oh, that’s not good at all. Maybe it was all a hoax, or a conspiracy? I checked the official government website. Shit, it is real. The newly established government department of Game World Migration had detailed migration centres plans based on area codes. Mine was being set up at my high school.

Mum was still at work. I couldn’t leave without her. I fumbled for my phone, but she didn’t answer. I tried my brother, who had moved into a shared house, but he too didn’t answer, and dad didn’t answer either. I just hoped his brothers would take this whole situation seriously, they have always been a bit aloof.

Text flittered onto my phone, I hope they get this. Catherine’s number was still on my phone, should I call her and let her know what’s going on? No, the whole world knows by now, and I would just end up looking like an idiot, I shook my head of the thought, and instead turned to packing my backpack with as many of the emergency survival kit items listed on the website as I could. I scrounged a combination pocket knife, two large containers of water, first-aid kit, sanitary bag, candles, sanitiser, a pot and utensils, lighter and matches, and sleeping bag. We didn’t have a tarp, so I grabbed my poncho and cooler bags, some warm clothes, and a battery pack for my phone. I also decided to download some survival guides.

For the most part, I was ready. There was new information on the GWM website about the evacuation plan. They were organising the evacuation by streets, and mine wasn’t in the first round. Damn! It was so anticlimactic. Should I meet up with Jonas, or wait for my family… No, I can’t leave without them. Old pizza boxes and drink bottles littered the floor, and I kicked them out of the way to open the curtains. The skies were still dark and the smog still blanketed the city below, but it seemed to be moving, perhaps a strong breeze was blowing? The movements were too erratic.

My heart pounded in my chest.

“Fear-is-the-mind-killer, fear-is-the-mind-killer …”

Then I saw it— a distinct body of smog, with seemingly a will of its own. The condensed body looked like a gigantic dragon-like beast, light seeming to die in its abysmally dark black eyes. My body stiffened and refused to move. The smog grazed the side of an apartment high-rise, shattering windows and sending debris flying through the air. The building keeled, and slowly fell into its neighbour, sending both careening through the layer of smog towards what lay beneath. I stared into the eyes of the embodiment of smog. Is it looking at me? They seemed to have locked their gaze with me. It changed direction, to my direction.

Oh, what? No! Surely, I could not have managed to draw its attention just by looking at it?

Backwards stepping, not that that would do me any good, my foot caught something and I slipped over. I scrambled to get up and ran into the kitchen, grabbed a few kitchen knives. Looking back, the creature’s black eyes bored into my soul, I dropped the knives, quickly heading to my Dad’s room. I glanced at his ornamental replica Spartan shield and sword hanging on the wall and spent no time thinking about it. I whipped them off and returned to my gaming chair, grabbing my backpack on the way. I whacked my headset on and loaded the console up.

The boot up sequence displayed a progress bar, it got to the typical ninety-nine percent and froze. I knew this meant it would be another minute before it completely loaded. Why the hell did I shutdown the console? I stared out the window, but couldn’t see anything, perhaps the abomination wasn’t looking at me. Just as I thought that, the creature’s smoke fumed face glanced by the window, and our eyes locked for a split-second. I felt all my blood vessels constrict and my body seize. The smoky beast’s body followed its head down. My muscles constricted so violently that I was visibly shaking, though it wasn’t just me shaking. The whole building shook, and then the windows and external wall broke away from the apartment.

My gaze fixed on the new open space, waiting for the thing to reappear. Suddenly, I felt a little vertigo, like I was on one of those free-falling amusement rides.

No, no, no-no-no!

The monster must have severed the building below, and now the apartment, and me with it, were crashing towards the streets below. The familiar login menu music played, and my hands jarringly raced over the augmented reality keyboard, ah shit forgot about the address details, my fingers raved over the keyboard. I pressed enter, but I was greeted with a connection lost message. It must have severed the internet cables! Shiiiit! Fear etched itself on my face. The one way I thought I could escape was gone, I could only hope I survived the destruction of this building. No, wait! I pulled my phone out, accidently sent the message I prepped, whatever! I glimpsed a message from Jonas’ mum [Marco, Jonas isn’t back yet, if you see him please tell him to come home right away.”] She always gets my name wrong… I felt lump in my throat, but I pushed it down. I flicked my phone’s hotspot on and tried to login again. After I pressed enter, everything went black and quiet…

[Digital signature recognised. Linking character now.]

This was it! The same notification as before. I’d made it!

[Character perma-death detected…]

[Searching for backup Character…]

[No Character found… Loading Player…]