Zereh checked the time and scowled. It was past time to go. Her encounter with the Demon of Greed had taken longer than she’d hoped, but there had been a countdown timer on the quest return. Not her favorite feature, but what was a girl to do.

She initiated the logout sequence. The aesthetic of it had changed greatly over the year since she’d started playing the game. Where once the logout process had been a sudden, unpleasant jolt from one version of reality to another, it had since become a gradual pixelization of the scenery around her, before her vision cleared to show the thin film of the VR visor. Tests had shown that a more obvious transition from game to reality helped prevent psychological breakdowns where people lost track of what was real and what wasn’t. That had been a PR nightmare.

Sarah took off the helmet and shook out hair that had gone slick with sweat. It was an unfortunate downside of the older model. She had been begging her parents for the new version, a fully immersive pod that tapped into every nerve and sense.

She could get by with the helmet, glasses, and omni-directional treadmill, but she dreamed of being able to feel the artificial sunlight on her skin, to taste the odd foods she encountered in the cities.

An impatient knock on the door startled her out of her musings. Without waiting for a response, Sarah’s sister came barging in. Ruth was already dressed to the nines in a black and white dress that hugged her in all the right places and flared out in the skirt.

“How do you always look so good?”

“It turns out when you live your life in the real world, you have time to curl your hair.” Ruth looked Sarah up and down and crossed her arms. “At least you’re awake. I was afraid I’d have to force you to log out.”

“It’s not– I’m awake while I play,” Sarah corrected hopelessly. There was a safety feature on the VR system that allowed someone to manually log her out of the game if necessary. It wasn’t pleasant, but that didn’t stop Ruth from making use of it if she was running late to dinner.

“I was keeping an eye on the time,” said Sarah. Even to her own ears, she sounded petulant.

Ruth waved a dismissive hand. “Either way, we’re cutting it close.” She eyed her sister’s hair. “You don’t have time to shower, so just throw some dry shampoo in it and I’ll put your hair up.”

Sarah went to the bathroom to do as she was told. Of the two of them, Ruth was the one who understood their parents and how to please them. She would never admit it, but she appreciated Ruth’s assistance. Without her smoothing over the familial disagreements, Sarah would likely have been thrown out of the house long ago.

So, she dutifully sprayed the shampoo through her hair and shook it out until all traces of sweat had disappeared, or at least grown less noticeable. By the time she was done, Ruth had set up shop with all her makeup. She’d long since perfected the art of quickly transforming her errant sister into a presentable member of the family.

“You’re lucky Mom and Dad were at Cheryl’s. Did you spend all day playing that game?”

“I don’t know why they care what I do,” Sarah grumbled.

Ruth used the handle of a makeup brush to smack Sarah on the nose. “They care what all of us do. We ‘represent the family.’ Close your eyes.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m just saying, they wanted me to go to college, so I went to college. They decided they wanted me back home, so I came back home. But I guess I don’t even do that right.”

“Don’t play dumb,” said Ruth. It had become a sort of tradition for the two sisters to rehash the old argument every time they had a family dinner. “Social anarchist groups don’t put our family name in a positive light, and you know it. You knew it then, you know it now, so knock it off.”

“They wanted me to join an extracurricular.” Sarah shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “If anything, they should have been proud I worked my way up to vice chairman so fast.” But the words rang hollow. Ruth was right; their parents’ reaction hadn’t come as any sort of surprise.

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She had gone off to college wide-eyed and naive, but higher education had introduced her to the ever widening gap between the upper and lower class. The middle class was in the process of dissolving entirely, and when she learned that her family’s obscene wealth was predicated on the suffering of so many others, she rebelled against it.

Faster than she could blink, her mother had clipped her wings. She pulled Sarah out of college with an embarrassing public statement about “health issues” and dragged her back home.

“Okay, now smile.” Ruth brushed blush across the apples of Sarah’s cheeks. “I just don’t get why you had to be so militant about it. You could probably get away with running a charity or throwing fundraisers. That’s close enough to being a party planner that mom would have been mollified, and you still would have accomplished something.”

“She’d be okay with it because it wouldn’t ever be effective, not really. At most it would be a drop in the bucket for all the people struggling out there. They don’t need handouts, they need a systemic change.” She sighed. “You don’t realize how bad it is out there. I didn’t either until I started talking to some of the scholarship kids at school. You and I, we’re insulated from the rest of the world. We only meet people like us, who have the same warped viewpoint of the world.

“And it’s horrific, the way so many people are forced to live. We live in a world where nobody should go hungry, and most people shouldn’t even have to work, yet the majority of our country’s population is forced to work two jobs just to feed their children.”

Ruth shifted uncomfortably. “They aren’t managing their money properly then, or they should work on getting a better job.”

“The system works against them!” Sarah could feel herself getting worked up, but she was on a roll. “It’s expensive to be poor. If the choice is between investing in stock or eating dinner, which would you choose? Not to mention how many people die because of entirely preventable illnesses, just because they couldn’t afford the treatment. We should all be so much more angry than we are. I was on a path to make a real impact, when mom dragged me back home.” She heaved a sigh. “I think that’s why I enjoy Trillium so much. The problems are simpler, and it actually makes a difference when I help people.”

Ruth paused in her work. The face makeup was finished, so she was working on braiding Sarah’s hair into an elegant updo.

“You know they’re not real people though, right?”

“Out of everything I said, that’s what you’re focusing on? Of course I know they’re not real people,” Sarah scoffed. “I’m not one of those nutjobs who loses track of reality. But that’s what escapism is all about, you know? I may not be able to control my life here, but I can in Trillium. I’m powerful there. Respected. I can make a difference. It’s the only place I can make a difference.”

Ruth continued twisting the locks of Sarah’s hair. The one rebellion their parents had allowed Sarah to keep was the silver streak in her pitch black hair. Ruth took advantage of the color difference by pulling the silver into the border of the braid.

“There is something else I was wondering.” Ruth’s voice was uncharacteristically hesitant.

“What is it?”

“How’s your mental health?” Ruth ran a brush through the last section of loose hair to prep it for braiding. “Are you retreating into the game because you’re, I don’t know, depressed or something?”

Sarah tensed. “Did Mom tell you to ask me that?”

Ruth tugged her fingers through a persistent knot, loosening it gently until the brush ran freely through the hair.

“No,” she said. “Every now and then I am capable of independent thought.”

“Oh come on, you know I meant–”

“I know what you meant,” snapped Ruth. “I’m worried about you. You spend more time in the game than you do with me, and I can’t even tell if you have friends you play with or if it’s just you.”

“I… Actually, I made a new friend today.”

“You did? Tell me about them!”

“His name is Emrys. He’s… He plays a fire mage. I think he’s even more passionate about saving the world than I am.”

“The real one, or the fake one?”

Sarah looked away.

“Sorry. That was mean. I’m glad you made a friend. That makes me feel a little better.”

“You could play with me if you’re so worried,” Sarah teased.

Ruth visibly shuddered at the thought. “And give the government access to my thoughts and memories? I don’t think so.”

“Do I look like a government zombie to you?”

“Just because they haven’t done it yet doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Call me crazy, but I’m just not going to take that chance.” She clapped her hands together and sat back. “Okay! All done. What dress are you wearing?”

Sarah shrugged. “The blue one, I guess.”

“You wore that last month,” Ruth groaned. “Let me take a look.” Sarah followed her back into the bedroom.

“Oh, this one!” Ruth’s eyes lit up as she pulled out a black and maroon dress. It had one long sleeve that came all the way up, around the neck and connected as a strap on the other side. The neckline was angled so the fabric drew the eye down while still covering the chest.

“Are you sure?” Sarah grimaced.

“Definitely. Mom and Dad are getting annoyed with you playing that game all the time, and they said we’re having a guest. I’ll get you a pair of earrings and you’ll be ready.”

“Nobody said anything to me about a guest,” Sarah grumbled as she pulled on the dress. She struggled with the sleeve until Ruth gingerly lifted it up over Sarah’s hair.

“That’s because you don’t talk to Mom unless you have to.”