PROLOGUE

London, England – 10 months until the Exodus

Anderson Hendrix looked out of the window from his twentieth-floor office at the grey dust that had once been the city he loved. He thought about how easy it would be to throw open the latch, step onto the balcony, and then throw himself off of it.

Easy, yes, but who would be left to do what only he could do? What only he had the bravery to do?

He pushed his spectacles up and rubbed his eyelids hard. He wasn’t a psychopath. He wasn’t a murderer, and he wasn’t evil. He knew these things for a fact, but he also knew another fact: he would go down in the annals of history as all of these things.

Because humanity as a whole would need to make sense of what he was about to do.

Anderson saw no other path. He had a direct link with the President of the United States, and a smattering of other important world leaders. The Earth was doomed to shrivel and die, and every day it was eroding a little more, with a scorching hiss like the end of a cigarette butt. But he could delay its death for long enough that the Planet X3 Project could go underway.

The problem was overpopulation. The problem was that the X3 Project was underfunded.

His assistant stepped into his office after several knocks that he could only bring himself to mumble a response to. Her heels clicked across the linoleum as she made her way to his desk. Her calves were pale and shapely. Her pencil skirt fit her tight frame perfectly, and her white blouse was open by enough buttons to show the swell of her young cleavage. Between her breasts nestled a swirling vortex of green and gold in the form of a chunky pendant, and the colour matched her eyes, he appreciated, which were almost concealed by the sweep of her white-blonde hair.

Her eyebrows were furrowed, her lips pinched thin, and Anderson wondered — or knew — that this was because he was openly staring at her. But why bother to hide that he was attracted to her any more? The world was going to damn well end in a handful of years anyway, because he had found no clean solution to his two problems. He would solve problem number one first and foremost, but would the extra couple of years he gifted Earth be enough for the scientists to complete Project X3, and the mass exodus of humans to the Earth-like planet before their own planet literally crumbled beneath their feet?

Outside, the visible pollution curled ominously around the nearby skyscrapers.

There had been a time that Anderson Hendrix had believed that he’d earned a seat in heaven, among the clouds, but he’d soon realised he had earned a chair in hell, among the smog.

“Mr. Hendrix, I have an unexpected visitor for you,” the assistant said, bringing his attention happily back to her full lips.

He imagined what they would look like, exploring his ageing body.

He wondered what she would taste like, too; young and lithe as she was. Probably nothing like his rapidly souring wife, who had not even pretended to love him for a half decade now.

And then, he wondered what his punishment would be for taking what didn’t belong to him, in a world like this one. Would she be worth the slap on the wrist that a ‘lifetime’ in jail had become?

“Mr. Hendrix,” she snapped, and he looked back up into her sharp green eyes.

“You know that I don’t take unexpected appointments,” was all he said, and he slid his chair back underneath his desk.

“Well, I thought you would make an exception for this one. He has a reputation that precedes him, and he wants to help you with your … problems.”

Anderson sat up straighter. “Who?”

“It’s Bryson Mayer, sir,” the assistant said. “He made his way into the billionaire club when he released his latest VR technology: The Afterlife.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Anderson said, and turned away slightly.

She sighed, clearly unperturbed. “Well, the money speaks for itself. He has rather an interesting proposal, Sir. He thinks that he can help you. With all due respect, I think it would be well within your best interests—”

“How would an assistant understand what my best interests are?” he asked, his laughter cracking like a whip and making her flinch backwards.

“Sir,” she began coolly, “I graduated first in my class for International Relations at Oxford, and then at my Master’s degree in Cambridge. Which you know, since you hired me. I would appreciate it if you didn’t reduce me to ‘an assistant’,” his assistant said. “My role here is vital, if I may say so myself.”

Anderson nodded. He was struggling to keep listening.

“Send him in,” he said.

She clicked out of his office and soon a young, scrawny man with a trendy haircut and a wide, gap-toothed smile strolled in and immediately picked up Anderson’s desk plant and inspected it with a squint.

Anderson was taken aback, and felt the need to stand and motion for the young man to return his cactus to his own hands. Bryson made no move to do so, however, and simply turned it around in his hand with an amused stare.

“Listen, can I help you?” Anderson asked, his tone already falling well into the category of ‘irritated’, and they had interacted for less than twelve seconds.

Bryson pulled in a whistling breath through his nostrils and let it out again before opting to make eye contact. “This is a Rat’s Tail cactus,” he said finally.

“Yes. So? Put it down.” Anderson was feeling quite agitated and riled up and he didn’t know why.

“I just wonder why a man would outwardly advertise something so ugly when he has the pick of the rest of the … floral community,” Bryson finished, spreading his lips wide and revealing crooked teeth.

Anderson sat down and rubbed at the salt and pepper stubble on his neck. The man was trying his patience. And his assistant had been snarky towards him. That was it. The younger generation had no respect.

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“Mr. Hendrix,” Bryson said, setting the plant back down on the desk before sliding down into the only other chair, and then threading his fingers awkwardly together as if he had seen the move on television. “I have heard, through the grapevine, of your predicament.”

Anderson watched, sour, silent.

“I think — ah! No, I know — that I can help.”

“Go on.” They were never going to be close friends, but if the man actually had a solution, who was Anderson to shoo him away?

“I started something a number of years ago. Before The Afterlife, in fact. I’m sure you’ve heard of that, at least.”

“I have not.”

Bryson ignored the statement as if it were insane. “A billion dollar game. 50 million copies sold and counting. Millions of people online at once at any given time. An average, excluding much higher outliers, of 55 hours a week per person spent in-game. Do you know what that means?”

“That people like video games.”

Bryson nodded encouragingly. “People want to escape, Mr. Hendrix. My generation has never even seen what the Earth looked like in her glory days. Your generation probably barely remembers clear water — clear skies — am I right?”

Anderson didn’t feel like replying.

“My new game is better than The Afterlife. It’s ten times bigger. Cultures have sprung up. Tribes. Natural selection. Wars. Religions, some following gods that actually exist in-game and some following false gods. Isn’t that fascinating? Flora was my favourite aspect to implement. I meticulously added plant after plant, and I tweaked the code until they all behaved accordingly. There are species I invented, in my mind, Mr. Hendrix, that exist symbiotically with each other in ways I didn’t even plan for! I have created something that meets all official parameters for being considered an actual bona fide parallel universe. Do you understand what that makes me?” Bryson’s eyes were wide and his hands trembled.

Anderson didn’t want to hear the answer he expected, so he changed the course of the conversation.

“What does this have to do with me?”

Bryson paused, his lips quivering with the urge to keep speaking. “It’s a clean, fresh utopia. It’s packed full of infinite ways to live one’s life. It’s realistic — my beta testers say it’s more realistic sometimes than reality. There is colour and vibrancy that really only exists in movies here on Earth.” He paused to take a deep breath. “Hearing the essays of praise that my game has received, Mr. Hendrix, and hearing your issues and the issues facing humanity, I had an idea.”

“Mm, and what was that?” Anderson was not a patient man at the best of times. He was growing hot under the collar with irritation.

“We invite humans to move their lives to paradise. And we charge them for the privilege,” Bryson said, spreading his fingers wide. “The money goes to the X3 Project. The people remain semi-comatose, requiring barely any sustenance and oxygen while they are in-game. We could even fire them off to a space station or shove ‘em underground.”

Anderson paused, wide-eyed, and then scooted his chair closer and laid his palms on the surface of his desk. He was interested now, that was for sure.

“We charge people … to leave the Earth?” he asked, breathless. “How many people would go? A few thousand?” That would buy them a little while longer.

Bryson laughed and shook his head, and Anderson felt himself getting hot again. Was he overshooting? Overexcited already? “Didn’t you hear me? The Afterlife was a rushed, shoddy filler game while I worked on S&S. And people spend more time there than they spend on full-time jobs. They chose to spend the time of a second career there, in that world, instead of with their beloved families. When the reviews come out for S&S those numbers will double. Triple. Millions of people will willingly shut their eyes and leave Earth, Mr. Hendrix, do you understand me now? Millions.”

“And…” Anderson’s mouth was dry. “How much can we charge them each?”

Bryson grinned ear to ear. “The Afterlife, all in, cost each player almost £400, or $500.”

Anderson reeled. “Five hundred million dollars towards the X3 Project, and several extra years? That would … that would really help us out.” He was dizzy, and had to remind himself that good things didn’t just fall into one’s lap like this.

“I got my people to run numbers and with less sustenance needed for these people, Earth might survive another six years.”

With a few hard blinks, Anderson thought back to his own numbers and his own predictions. Even with a few extra million dollars, the project was still ten or twelve years away from completion. He deflated and rubbed his face with his hands.

Moments passed, during which neither men said a word to each other — apparently Bryson was content enough just to sit in an uncompaniable silence — until Anderson lifted his head and croaked, “What about … safety?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s safe,” he said, chipper. “It’s very safe. Especially if we ship ‘em all off. Their bodies and minds are sort of disconnected while they play. Their consciousnesses are essentially uploaded into the cloud, which is a technology Mayer Enterprises alone owns — you don’t get immersion like that anywhere else. Every other company has things like haptics to allow you to—”

“Please, I’m getting a migraine,” Anderson hissed. “I just need to know the basics so I can digest all of this information over the next few days.”

“Right. I forget that not everybody I talk to is a part of my company,” Bryson said with a small laugh. “Anyway. Our technology is such that their consciousnesses are protected no matter what happens to their physical bodies. So we just need to mass-store the bodies for the next few years somewhere and keep them on IV drips.”

“And what’s the most likely scenario that would annihilate every body hooked up to your video game?” Anderson asked tentatively. “For prevention.”

“Well, a natural disaster. Lava. Earthquake. All impossible here in bonnie old England.” Bryson let out another odd laugh. “You can rest assured that the generators keeping the bodies alive will be backed up by as many as money can buy.”

“Money?”

“Mm, some of the profits will need to go towards storage.” Bryson nodded a few times. “I think we can agree, though, that this is the best plan we have.”

We? Anderson clicked his tongue. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr…” He chewed his lower lip and realised he had forgotten the man’s name. He allowed himself to trail off, and nodded towards the door. “As you can imagine, I have a lot to think about.”

“I look forward to helping in any way I can,” Bryson said politely.

He waited until Bryson had let himself out and the door had shut before he used the intercom to summon his assistant back into his office. “Please,” he said, when he saw her still-annoyed face in his doorway. “Set up a line with the President.” He gestured lazily to the screen to his left.

His assistant nodded curtly and left again. Once the door was shut, a large countdown appeared on the screen. 3 … 2 … 1.

The tired, drawn look of the American president appeared, a little too close for comfort since the HD quality allowed Anderson intimate knowledge of every pore on the politician’s face.

“Mr. President,” he said politely, with a small nod. They had passed the point of standing to greet each other during a video call.

“Mr. Hendrix,” the President said, his voice drawn and hoarse. Through the sliver of window behind him, Anderson could see the outside world was as bleak and grey there as it was in England. “Good news?”

“How much time would eighty million, give or take a body, buy us?” he asked, his voice low.

The President allowed his head to loll thoughtfully in one direction. “Just under eleven years for a hundred million.”

Anderson’s face tightened. “Add about a half a billion dollars to the equation.”

The President’s lips drew up, but the rest of his face was in mourning for something and didn’t join in with the smile. “And then, Mr. Hendrix, you just might save all our asses.”