The nearest habitable planet is in the Proxima Centauri system, which is located 4 light years away. Even with spaceships that can travel at the speed of light, it still takes 4 earth years to get there.
Scientists seeded this planet with life and terraformed it to perfection. It wasn’t long until greedy corporations convinced the Space Government to approve lightspeed tourism. Investors from across the solar system scrambled to get a plot on the “paradise planet,” which was nicknamed Proxima. Starships ferried the world’s best construction crews to Proxima, where they built next-level theme parks, hotels, restaurants, and every sort of establishment you could imagine. Rumors spread across the solar system that Proxima could fulfill any desire.
Finally, the paradise planet was ready for paying visitors. For a small fortune of $5 trillion gigabucks, citizens could buy a ticket aboard the starship Xanadir to Proxima, where the promise of true happiness awaited. Human and robot staff ran the starship while the space tourists spent the 4-year journey immersed in water inside of Dream Pods. Their bodies would sleep while their minds would play in a virtual universe called Stellar Dream, the metaverse between the stars.
Thanks to a proprietary blend of sound waves, hallucinogenic chemicals, and lightspeed physics, the flow of time within a Dream Pod felt much slower than real life. To the Dreamers, as the players were called, one second in the real world felt like a whole day in the metaverse. Death was no big deal either. The only annoying part about dying was the load time to spawn into a new avatar.
metaverse time
days
months
years
1 second
1
1 minute
60
2
real time
1 hour
1440
48
3.9
1 day
34,560
1152
94.7
1 month
1,036,800
34,560
2,840
1 year
12,592,500
419,750
34,500
4 years
50,370,000
1,679,000
138,000
Dreamers could spawn in the body of a royal and create a dynasty, guiding their kingdoms from the stone age all the way through interplanetary conquest. They could build intricate temples the size of a moon or take command of huge space vessels in glorious wars between competing solar systems. Guilds were formed around hunting legendary space beasts, cosmic racing, and many other incredible mini-games. Dreamers could literally do anything here, even bend the rules of human physics, but far-and-away the best part of Stellar Dream was becoming a God-Level.
Scattered throughout the metaverse were 100 Filaments, legendary items that gave the Dreamer incredible powers. The path to becoming a God-Level was clear. All a Dreamer had to do was to hold a Filament for ten seconds. Of course, there was a catch. The only way to obtain a Filament was by killing the God-Level who owned it. Only one Filament could be held at a time. However, as soon as a Dreamer was upgraded to God-Level, they instantly became a target. God-hunting guilds formed armies to take on God-Levels. These epic wars could run for decades. If they managed to kill a God-Level, the God-hunters would have to fight each other down to the last Dreamer. In the end, there could only be one Filament holder. Then the cycle started again.
They even had a whole synthetic moon called Xanadir modeled after the starship that only God-Levels could access. Xanadir was the hangout spot for Stellar Dream elites, but the God-Level Tournament was guaranteed to bring all the God-Levels to the synthetic planet. Every fifty years, the whole metaverse would tune in to an unforgettable fight.
The metaverse was designed so that no one Dreamer could hold a Filament forever. Each Dreamer needed to have a chance to become a God-Level. That's why the four longest surviving God-Levels would be summoned to Xanadir every fifty years to face off against each other in a fight to the death called the God-Level tournament. Three losers would die and their Filament would be dropped on a random planet, where another Dreamer would be destined to find it. The one surviving winner of the tournament would be allowed to keep God-Level status until the next tournament, if they survived that long.
Everything was awesome in this epic metaverse until about halfway through the starship’s journey. One day, the entire metaverse glitched up in a weird pixelated mess for just a split second. When time returned to normal, 40 years had gone by—an entire ten hours back on the spaceship! To top it off, all current God-Levels were inflicted with a strange status called Rot. Dreamers tried to log out, but the function was blocked. Naturally, the entire metaverse flew into a panic, but the in-game staff, led by God-Level Admin Sadara, who was also inflicted with Rot status, reassured players that everything would be fine.
Two years went by. God-Levels inflicted with Rot didn’t see any major changes, just a few hit points shaved off from their durability bar. The Dreamers came to think that this was just a feature designed to make Filaments cycle through the metaverse faster. One day, the developers sent a message:
“Error discovered in time-experience code. Initiating patch sequence. Estimated time until patch delivery: 94.7 years.”
The patch would only take a day to build aboard the spacecraft, but within the metaverse, that would feel like nearly 95 years. A countdown timer appeared in each Dreamer's menu bar. The Admins decided to postpone the God-Level Tournament until the patch was deployed. Dreamers nervously continued their games. Time went by. After thirty years, hardly anyone even thought about it anymore. Dreamers would die and get respawned just like normal. Gameplay basically returned back to the way it was before the glitch. God-Level durability declined further and some stats took a small hit, but players were led to believe that this was a feature, not a bug. Everything changed when one of the God-Levels was finally killed by the God-hunters.
Millions of NPCs commanded by 15 Dreamers did battle with the armies of Yutu, the Beast Goddess. When they finally took the Beast Goddess down, a strange thing happened — Yutu didn’t die. Instead, her body was engulfed in a bright light. When the light subsided, Yutu transformed into a demon. The demon quickly finished off the God-hunters and disappeared.
Dreamers were very excited about this new feature at first. All the in-game forums were buzzing with wild ideas about how it might work. The community waited patiently for the dead Dreamers to respawn so they could ask about the new gameplay experience. Usually, respawning took about two game years, but none of the Dreamers involved in the fight with the demon came back, even after five years. Even the in-game staff didn’t know what was going on.
Panic unfolded like a slow motion train wreck. Over the next twenty years, it was discovered that the Rot status didn’t affect all the God-Levels equally. Some of the God-Levels began to age quickly. No matter what items they used, they could never recover hit points lost to the Rot. When their durability reached 0, their character transformed into a demon while the player character disappeared from the game completely. Those who became demons would never respawn into the game again. Any Dreamer killed by a demon would also be unable to respawn. The in-game staff wasn’t immune to the effects of the Rot, either. Their only advice was to wait until the patch—they didn’t know any more than anyone else.
Some of the God-Levels formed parties to hunt the demons, but when a demon was killed, it would drop a Filament and the cycle would start all over. Even worse, some of the God-Levels were killed in these battles and became demons too. Thirty years of bloody conflict followed. Hopelessness spread among the Dreamers. Some of them gave themselves to demons willingly, thinking that they could manually log out.
When the countdown timer reached one year, the whole metaverse received another notification from the dev team. The patch would fix the manual logout function, but it would have to be used one at a time. Suddenly, the fear was replaced by hope, which united the community. In the months and weeks leading up to the patch, the Dreamers voted on who would get to use it first. It was decided that God-Levels would use the patch starting with those God-Levels with the lowest durability first. After all the God-Levels had used the patch, then all the remaining Dreamers could use it too. The God-Levels gathered on board the synthetic planet Xanadir for the big day. The event streamed to all corners of the metaverse. A big countdown party was held and the timer finally ran down to zero.
The center of the spaceship flashed with energy. A new item was being created. The energy dissipated, revealing a golden helmet. Just like they had agreed, the sickest among the God-Levels was brought forward to become the first to try the patch—Andromeda, the Goddess of Light. All the Dreamers held their breath as the helmet was lowered onto her head. As soon as it touched down, the metaverse glitched again.
During the glitch, a series of images flashed quickly. The synthetic moon Xanadir lost power and crashed onto the surface of a planet, cracking the planet's crust. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions broke out suddenly and swallowed the synthetic moon Xanadir whole into the planet's underbelly.
***
When time returned to normal, Sadara found herself on the ground in the long dead ruins of Xanadir. As she rose to her feet, she coughed from the dust. The whole bridge was covered in a thick patina of dust and cobwebs. The giant windows that had faced out to a planet what seemed like only seconds ago were now filled with rock. Her mind flashed to the images of Xanadir crashing to the planet below.
‘The glitch...’
She checked her in-game clock and gasped in disbelief. Nearly 6,000 metaverse years had gone by since the glitch! That equated to 2 months in real time.
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‘Just what the hell is going on?’
God-Levels were starting to wake up across Xanadir’s bridge. She didn’t have much time and decided to act on her instinct. Spotting the golden helmet on the ground, she used one of her Filament moves.
“Ouroboros Filament, Quantum Cloak.”
Her Filament, a magic necklace in the shape of a figure 8, glowed with energy. An eye appeared in the top chamber of the necklace and began to spin around. A dimensional cloak covered her body, making her invisible. She grabbed the helmet and ran toward an exit. The Quantum Cloak began to deplete her energy bar, which she would have to conserve for the inevitable fight that would happen when the other God-Levels caught up with her. It couldn’t be helped. There was no way that she could let anyone else use it, not after what just happened. Two whole months had gone by on the starship in the blink of an eye! She sprinted down a passage and yelled a command.
“Disable location tracking!”
Thanks to her administrative privileges, she could turn off her location. That would at least buy her a little bit of time until the other God-Levels realized that she had run off with the helmet. She turned another corner and slowed down to assess the situation. Seeing that her energy bar was running low, she disabled her Quantum Cloak to let her energy refill. She leaned behind a broken metal wall and called another command.
“Display Xanadir map.”
A glitchy map of the synthetic moon’s floor plan appeared in front of her. Some areas appeared to have been totally destroyed. The teleporters were all offline. She noticed that the fuel storage wing was glitching harder than other areas of the map. She accessed the CCTV cameras on board Xanadir to take a closer look. The entire fuel facility was destroyed. The fuel cells must have exploded after impact. Oddly enough, the rock outside of the walls seemed to have an empty cavity toward the back, something like a cavern that seemed to continue on into the darkness...
A loud boom echoed from far down one of the many empty metal halls, jolting her heart rate up. Trouble was brewing with the other God-Levels. She set a course for the fuel wing and took off running, clutching the helmet tightly. According to the map, she would soon pass another metal door which led out to a long, straight hallway. Another huge explosion rippled somewhere behind her, encouraging her to move faster. Luckily, she had more than a few tricks left up her sleeve.
“Ouroboros Filament, Fast Forward!”
The intertwining snakes of the Ouroboros Filament glowed with energy. An eye appeared in the top chamber of the necklace and a strange power spread across her hand. She pointed her index finger, now tipped with glittering energy, at her own chin. A sparkling trail of light jumped from her hand to her face and enveloped her body. The world around her slowed down. She had used Fast Forward on herself to speed up her own body.
Finally, time was on her side again—time that she wasn’t about to waste. Sadara broke into a faster run, sprinting through dilapidated rooms full of ancient rubble, looking for the way out. Debris flew against the walls from the force of her speed, but with every step, she felt her energy bar depleting. Using Fast Forward like this consumed a huge amount of energy, much more than Quantum Cloak—she knew she didn’t have much time before she would have to slow down again and recover. If she let her energy bar deplete all the way, she would collapse, making her an easy target. The golden helmet caught her attention. She shuddered thinking of what might happen if it were to be used again.
“Two whole months of Earth-time!”
She almost couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even want to think about what would happen to the company once this was all over. Sadara decided that she couldn’t think about it now, she had to focus on getting this golden helmet away from the other God-Levels before they tried to use it again. Bounding up another flight of metal stairs, she rounded the corner and burst through yet another metal door frame into a huge room that had been destroyed beyond recognition. Scraps of metal and other trash had mixed in with the rock, and everything was collecting dust. Sadara canceled the Fast Forward just in time before her energy bar was sapped totally dry. Stumbling, she caught her breath, but drove herself forward to the unexplored cave system. Another explosion shook the world behind her, but she didn’t even bother looking back. She knew that she would never get another chance to escape.
When she scanned the caverns, her eyes picked up a faint glow. Outside, dim dots of light illuminated a wild cavernous landscape. She moved forward, straining to see where the lights were coming from. Finally, she realized what they were—large glowing mushrooms!
She crossed the last bit of metal and stepped out onto an open expanse of rock. After climbing a few ledges, she found herself in an opening surrounded by glowing mushrooms. Her energy bar was almost completely recovered. A hungry noise to her right forced her to stop wondering about the mushrooms and turn her attention to a potential threat. She barely had time to see a flash of limbs flying toward her. Instinctively, she dropped the helmet and pulled her hands back as if drawing an arrow from an imaginary bow.
“Cryofreeze!”
Her necklace glowed, the eye appeared again, and her hands lit up with an icy energy. When she released the icy arrow that had formed in her hand, the freezing-cold javelin flew forward and crunched into the flying shape, encasing it in shards of ice. It fell from midair and shattered into pieces. Nearly a quarter of her energy bar disappeared. She eyed the strange legs of the creature that stuck out of the ice, but more of those hungry noises prevented her from taking a closer look. Dozens of pairs of eyes glowed in the darkness between the mushrooms—hungry eyes with hungry intentions.
Sadara readied her hands on the imaginary bow. She hadn’t expected to encounter any living beings out here in this irradiated wasteland, but quickly realized that this escape would be much harder than she thought. There were just too many of those creatures. Her energy bar drained quickly when she used Cryofreeze too many times back-to-back. As the creatures prepared to jump, she called the next move.
“Ouroboros Filament, Infinity Arrow!”
Infinity Arrow was much less powerful, but it also used much less energy. Just like before, the necklace glowed, the eye opened up, and an arrow of space-time energy appeared in the imaginary bow. As soon as she let the first arrow fly, another appeared in her hands. She fired off shot after shot at the leaping creatures, lighting the caverns up with her magic while her energy bar barely moved. Infinity Arrow was perfect for these creeps. Sadara focused her attention on blasting the rushing spiders, so she wasn't able to pick up on the fact that a different pair of eyes had spotted her from the ruins of Xanadir.
Back inside the destroyed fuel room, Andromeda crossed the piles of rock and metal effortlessly. She floated forward, hovering across the room with ease while looking for signs of Sadara. The Goddess of Light didn’t have to search long. Flashes of magic erupted from the caverns above. A satisfied grin spread across her face, revealing her blackened teeth. Andromeda held up her Filament, a staff topped with a mysterious pyramid gem, and pointed it in the direction of the flashes.
“Tetragrammaton Filament, Lightspeed!”
Accompanied by a godlike sound, the jeweled tip of her staff glowed with energy in response to Andromeda's command. A beam of light shot straight out from her staff. She aimed the beam carefully until it extended through the caverns and stopped abruptly in the air just above the flashes. A split second later, the pyramid jewel on the staff flashed and Andromeda flew through the beam at the speed of light, reappearing in the air above Sadara instantaneously. Infinity Arrows sparked with light as they struck their targets, but Sadara was wide open from behind. Aiming her staff, Andromeda decided to make full use of the element of surprise.
“Solar Flare!”
A stream of liquid hot sunbeams spurted out of the end of her staff straight for Sadara, who noticed just in time and dodged to the side. Several of the jumping insect-like creatures were fried in the Solar Flare, but Sadara managed to get out of the way. The liquid solar energy splashed onto the rocky cavern floor, melting it into erratic shapes before cooling off in clouds of steam. More of the insect monsters leapt out from the mushrooms at Sadara, who shot them down with Infinity Arrows. Taking advantage of the chaotic situation, Andromeda spotted another chance to take Sadara by surprise. She pointed her staff at Sadara’s feet.
“Supernova!”
A ball of pulsing electricity formed beneath Sadara’s feet. A large sphere showed the range of the coming explosion—Sadara wouldn’t be able to outrun it. Just before the Supernova exploded, Sadara called out another move.
“Quantum Leap!”
Time froze around her. A quantum trail formed behind her containing all of Sadara’s movements for 5 seconds into the past. With Quantum Leap, she could warp instantly to the back of this quantum trail. Right after she teleported to safety, Sadara immediately called out another move as the Supernova exploded in a fiery ball right next to her.
“Infinity Arrow!”
Sadara fired some Infinity Arrows at Andromeda. Although Andromeda dodged quickly, one of the arrows managed to clip her leg, slicing it open in a burst of light. Gritting her teeth in anger, Andromeda called out another move.
“Solar Flare!”
Sadara was already waiting for it. Just like before, she dodged the Solar Flare while looking out for more leaping creatures. Apparently, those mutated insects must have realized that attacking Sadara was a suicide mission and had retreated back into the mushroom forest.
“Supernova!”
Andromeda suddenly called out the same move as before. Another glowing ball formed at Sadara’s feet. Just like before, Sadara called out “Quantum Leap,” but that was exactly what Andromeda had been expecting.
“Laser Cannon!”
Andromeda had memorized Sadara’s position and pointed her staff exactly where Sadara’s Quantum Leap would spit her out. A beam of light energy pierced Sadara’s side, sending flecks of skin and blood flying. Her durability dropped from being hit. She collapsed to her knees, gripping her injury. Acting quickly, she called out another move.
“Reverse!”
Sadara pointed her index finger at her wound, directing a blast of glittering energy right to where the blood was flowing. The magic reversed time in a given area while time continued moving normally around it. Slowly but surely, the injury on Sadara’s torso healed itself, reversing the damage that was done by the Laser Cannon. Her durability began to rise, but while she was nursing her wound, Andromeda saw an opening. It didn't take long for Andromeda to pinpoint the location of the golden helmet. She pointed her staff at it and yelled a Filament command.
“Lightspeed!”
A beam of light illuminated the golden helmet on the ground. Andromeda could already feel the helmet back in her possession. Her black teeth showed through her victorious smile as she aimed the lightspeed beam directly at the helmet. Wincing through the pain of her injury and with her energy bar running critically low, Sadara knew she didn’t have many options. She made a split-second decision out of desperation.
“Paradox Beam!”
A beam of time-space energy shot out from her hands and crossed the path of the Lightspeed beam just before Andromeda’s staff glowed, locking the beam in place. Andromeda grimaced, realizing that she couldn’t change the direction of her Lightspeed in time to avoid the Paradox Beam. The Lightspeed flung her forward across the Paradox Beam, ripping her in half. Her staff flew off into an outcropping of mushrooms.
Sadara’s energy bar depleted completely and she fainted as soon as the Paradox Beam disappeared. Even without her legs and her staff, Andromeda could think of nothing but getting her hands on the golden helmet. She had to log out of this hell, the helmet was the only way! Stretching herself toward the helmet, she inched closer with her arms, sputtering up blood as she crawled. Her body slowly began to regenerate, but not fast enough to make a difference. Sadara finally woke up and struggled to her knees. When Sadara regained her senses enough to notice Andromeda inching closer to the helmet, she realized she needed to get there first. Andromeda looked back and noticed that Sadara had started to move. The Goddess of Light seethed with hatred.
“What the hell are you doing, Sadara? We all voted that I should be the one to use the helmet first.”
“I can’t allow any Dreamers to use the helmet right now, Andromeda. You saw what it did.”
Sadara crawled forward, slowly at first, but faster as she recovered more and more of her energy. Andromeda realized that Sadara would beat her to the helmet.
“I get it, Sadara’s time is pretty short, too, isn’t it?”
Andromeda burst into a violent coughing fit.
“No, that’s not... We’ve got to study it first to make sure we don’t have another glitch!”
Sadara found the strength to stand and scrambled to the helmet. When she wrapped her arms around it, she let out a sigh of relief. She faced Andromeda with conviction.
“Listen to me, we don’t know what will happen if someone uses the golden helmet again, the whole metaverse could be completely wiped.”
Andromeda laughed in disdain.
“Stellar Dream can crash and burn for all I care. And you’ll burn too, as soon as we get to Proxima.”
Andromeda broke into another coughing fit. Part of her arm started glitching. Sadara tried to run deeper into the mysterious caverns but Mevisto, the Mine God, suddenly tunneled up from the rock, blocking off the exit. When she turned to find another way, Kirin, the Sacred Beast, flew down and blocked the path forward. Sadara barely hadn’t even recovered a quarter of her energy and her durability was still down, too. There was no way she could take on two God-Levels full of energy.
Out of options, Sadara realized that she didn’t have any other choice. If someone was going to test the helmet, it needed to be her. She brought the helmet up to her head.
“No! Stop her!”
Andromeda’s screams of despair wouldn’t change anything. The other gods began to call moves into their Filaments, but they were far too late—she put on the helmet. The metaverse glitched. Time skipped. She found herself farther in the caverns. The mushrooms were bigger and wilder. Some words in red appeared in the middle of her screen.
“Warning, Connection Unstable.”
To the other God-Levels, it seemed that Sadara had simply disappeared into thin air, but Sadara only saw a terrifying pixelation. Every so often, the pixels would refresh, showing that she had moved deeper in the cave system. With each new refresh, Sadara felt the energy sap from her body as the Rot status spread. The experience was nauseating and intense, almost like when a player tried to use two Filaments at the same time...
‘That’s it!’
If the devs coded the golden helmet as another Filament, she would need to get rid of her Ouroboros Filament for the helmet to work! She fought hard against the glitch and the Rot to access her menu and begin the process of manually removing the Ouroboros Filament from her inventory. Red flashing letters appeared, reminding her that her connection was unstable. The Ouroboros Filament began to glow with energy and floated upward, rising into the air. Sparks of energy crackled from the necklace, rapidly becoming powerful bolts of lightning that exploded into glitchy pixels where they struck the floor of the cavern. The Filament began to separate right down the middle, breaking into two parts. Then, there was a blinding flash of light that glitched out into randomized pixels.
When she came to, she was standing at the edge of a cliff. Behind her was a roaring waterfall that dropped down into an abyss. She had appeared in the center of a city buried deep underground. A crowd of people had gathered to watch her. The Rot had completely transformed her body.
Something clinked on the rocky ground. One half of her broken Filament had fallen. She stooped to pick it up, but the helmet slid off her head and clanged to the ground, too. She stretched her arm out to grab the helmet, but her fingers glitched. They moved right through the helmet as if it wasn’t there. She stood up straight and looked at her hands in disbelief. They wouldn’t stop glitching. Her vision began to dim and her legs began to give out. Just before the world went black, she saw two kids running toward her. She felt herself falling backward into the Abyss and the world went blank.