[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6021e18a67a7cf6c05dbf32f/1626032356734-MGB3ZY29Q6YFKPLLH4EM/AetherEscape_Card.png?format=500w]

A crossover RPG and social virtual reality game, Aetheria, was supposed to bring people together. I purchased it on opening day with high hopes, but I never felt more alone.

I’d lost everything on the outside world; I was living at a state-run shelter to help people back on their feet, with nothing to my name. My parents went off-world to chase their dreams on Mars and didn’t have the funds to bring me along, so I stayed on Earth.

The shelter wasn’t all bad—everyone here was in a somewhat similar situation. Mars had long since been terraformed, and humans could even breathe the air just as they could on Earth, so moving there was quite popular. The biggest demographics were late-career salarymen and retirees looking for a drastic change in surroundings.

I couldn’t blame them. There was something about Earth that felt… used. Every part of it had been touched by man. Humans devoured the resources provided to them, and there was no coming back from it. Experts said that there were only a few centuries of livable environment left on the planet.

The one saving grace was that the state rewarded those that stayed, providing free housing and basic needs to those that couldn’t afford it. The shelter had private rooms, virtual reality setups, and even oxygen booths to help those that had trouble breathing the polluted atmosphere.

I avoided using the virtual reality equipment for around a year since arriving at the shelter. Something about it felt… disgusting. As if the humans of the past knew what they were doing, and created something to escape, rather than fix the problems that plagued the world around them.

My view changed when a building in my complex burned to the ground. A resident lit a cigarette inside an oxygen booth, and five-thousand people died as a result. I could see everything from my window.

Those that died while in the virtual world felt nothing—they simply didn’t wake up. Those that weren’t hooked up were burned alive, fully conscious.

Maybe I was just trying to rationalize using it.

I started using virtual reality the following day. I played scores of games, but none of them really stuck with me. It’s not that they weren’t enjoyable, I just wasn’t feeling connected with the other players. They all seemed to have their own groups already, and joining those groups felt like an impossible task. I didn’t want to hover around and wait for them to accept me, so I moved on.

After deciding I needed to find something early on, I started looking out for new releases. The first few didn’t yield much benefit for me—only a few short conversations that led nowhere.

The isolation I felt during this period was self-afflicted, mostly. I was making an effort, but I could have been doing more.

I approached Aetheria in the same way, expecting the results to be somewhat similar.

I leveled up, and quickly made great progress towards reaching the maximum level. It was a social game at its core but had RPG elements that let players explore and level up. It gave people a thing to talk about.

People didn’t like to talk much while out questing, and usually waited until they were back in a hub to turn on their microphones. That was fine by me.

I was finishing up a quest in a lower-level zone when another player ran past me. He was heading in the direction of the hub. The player looked backwards at me as he passed with an indecipherable expression. I didn’t think much of it.

My task was to find a few rare stones in the area, and I happily did just that.

But it wasn’t long before I heard a noise—a quiet sobbing.

This was strange for a few reasons. The first was that if a player felt upset, they’d likely just log out. Also, this far away from town, players would typically have their microphone muted.

I approached.

From behind a dying tree, I saw a figure crouched over on the forest floor. Their head was buried in their hands. They wore a white robe and seemed decidedly out of place for their surroundings.

It was an NPC. This one was particularly far from where they were supposed to be. The white robes they wore were from the capital city.

Why were they so far from home?

“Sorry,” I whispered, “are you okay?”

The NPC seemed surprised by my presence, hurriedly wiping their eyes when they knew I was there.

“Yes, yes. Fine,” she responded, turning her head towards me.

Her health bar was in the red—she only had around ten percent of health remaining. She was very clearly not okay.

I pulled a health potion from my backpack, having bought extras before I started out that day, and handed her one. She accepted it after a moment of hesitation.

“What are you doing all the way out here? Aren’t you from the capitol?” I asked.

“That’s none of your business.”

I thought back to the man that ran past me. Maybe she knew something about him?

“I saw a player running around here a few hours ago. He had black leather gear and some kind of spear. Do you know anything about that?”

Her eyes shifted away, as if looking for something behind me.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she responded.

That seemed like a typical NPC response to me. The AI in this game was extremely advanced—it wasn’t that she didn’t have a reply, but that she decided on her own that now wasn’t the time to discuss it. I respected her wishes.

“Well, do you need anything? I’m finishing up a quest now, then I’m headed back to the hub. Want to come along? It’s pretty dangerous out here for someone at your level.”

She inspected the health potion once more before opening the small vile and taking drinking. Her health slowly began to recover.

“There’s nothing for me there, either.”

“Of course there is. It’s safer there than it is here, at the very least.”

“You don’t even know me.”

I took a step closer to her, and she flinched at the sudden movement. There had to be a reason she was being so standoffish. The monsters here were a much higher level than she was, and she had to have known that too.

Stolen novel; please report.

Leaving her there would’ve been leaving her to die.

That’s when it clicked. Death was her goal. NPCs couldn’t take their own lives, and they could only move from town to town if accompanied by a player on an escort quest. She used another player to strand herself in the forest, and likely asked that player to end her life. The player refused, and left her out here to die.

I really couldn’t leave her out here now.

“Do you want to help me finish up this quest?” I asked.

It was a longshot, but it seemed she had calmed down slightly. She likely wouldn’t have taken the health potion if she still felt suicidal. This also gave her an out—the ability to join my party and travel with me if she needed to.

She stared at me for nearly a minute before nodding slowly.

“Just until the end of the quest, and we make it back to town. Then I’m going off on my own.”

Sam joins the party.

Sam kept her word and helped me find the gemstones scattered throughout the forest. She was good at it, too.

We travelled on foot back to the hub, which was an hour-long hike to the south. After turning in the quest, I decided to split the reward with her fifty-fifty. Sam hesitated, but took the money after some consideration.

“How about we get some food before you head off?” I asked.

We stayed silent for the most part throughout the day, so my sudden proposal took her by surprise. She accepted.

I was excited. Even if she was an AI, I was happy to have someone to talk to.

We ate at a hole in the wall tavern across from the quest giver. There were no other players there, so I drew a few eyes when I walked in. It didn’t bother me, but Sam was shied away from the attention.

Sam chose a seat on the far side of the room, far enough away from ears that would likely eavesdrop on our conversation. Players didn’t spend much time talking to NPCs, so I’m sure the others would have been curious as to what we could possibly discuss. It was for the best that we distanced ourselves.

The food was delicious. Virtual reality did a great job at tricking your brain into thinking it was real food.

“You can taste it?” Sam asked, having stared at me for most of my meal, “Does it keep you alive, like, on the outside?”

She must not have spent much time around players to not know that. To my understanding, all NPCs had a basic idea of what players were, but only those that were around them constantly knew the details.

“No, I’ll need to eat in the real world eventually. The food out there doesn’t taste nearly as good as this, though.”

She nodded at that and took another bite of her own food.

“What do you eat out there?” she asked.

I thought back to my most recent meal—a prepackaged printed chicken sandwich. The shelter had decent food, all things considered, but they couldn’t afford the real thing.

“Whatever I can get my hands on. I’m not exactly rich.”

“Sounds like we’re in similar situations, then,” Sam said, swallowing her food. “Except you can escape that world whenever you want, and I’m stuck here forever.”

She was right, I could escape momentarily, but there was no leaving my physical self behind completely. We were both dealt bad hands and were forced to ride out the consequences.

When we finished eating, I half expected her to leave the party, but she stayed.

“You can leave now, if you want.”

“I know,” Sam replied. “I’ll stick around for a little while longer, if that’s alright?”

“Of course,” I said, trying and failing to hide my emotions.

We stayed in the same party for another year. As other players stopped playing, Sam and I stuck together and beat all the content we could. We grew very close.

Other NPCs joined the party here and there, but they went their own ways after their needs were met.

In a last-ditch effort to revive the dying game, the developers announced a contest. Any group that could beat the final boss within a set time limit wins. The prize was nothing to scoff at, either; two one-way tickets to Mars awaited anyone that successfully completed the challenge.

It took some convincing, but Sam eventually agreed to be my partner in the contest.

After several weeks of training, we pulled through. Not only that, but we were also the only group that killed it before the time limit ran out.

The day came to announce the winners, and we took the stage together.

There were a few hundred people in attendance, all wanting to get a look at who could possibly have killed the boss within their ludicrous time limit.

They declared us the winners and gave us in-game medals for our accomplishments.

“What will you do on Mars?” the announcer asked me, shoving the microphone into my face.

“I… don’t know. I haven’t thought about it,” I replied. It was the truth, too. I viewed it more as a fun challenge to do with Sam.

The announcer then looked towards Sam, recognized her as an NPC, and didn’t bother asking what she’d do with the prize. She was already mid-eyeroll when I glanced her way. I shook my head, trying to tell her that he wasn’t worth the headspace.

Later that afternoon, we settled back into our home on the outskirts of the town where we shared our first meal.

Sam leaned against a wall and crossed her arms playfully.

“Haven’t thought about it, huh?”

I nodded. It wasn’t like I wanted to see my parents again, and I’d be cut off from the Earth’s servers. There was nothing for me off-world, so I didn’t feel any need to think about it. I’d already started a new life in Aetheria.

“So, sell the tickets, then. They’d go for a good amount, right?”

“Even if I sold just one of them, I’d be set for the rest of my life,” I replied.

That was a thought that had crossed my mind. I pulled up the current going rate of Mars transport tickets in my interface, and nearly fell to the floor at the price. It was enough to purchase just about anything I wanted, and then some.

“Well, you should do that then. You know you’re free to use my ticket however you’d like,” Sam said, smiling.

I tapped on another tab I had open, looking up to Sam, and glancing back down.

It was an experimental company that specialized in exporting AI from games to android bodies in the real world. The price was eye-watering, but it was the only way so far that the process had been successfully completed. I’d nearly saved up enough to purchase one from selling in-game items for real money.

“Whatcha looking at?” She asked.

Only I could see my interface, but she still startled me. I wanted it to be a surprise.

“Nothing—don’t worry. Just looking at prices.”

The physical transport tickets arrived at the shelter a month later. I wanted to wait until I had the real copies in hand before I started Sam’s export, just in case. Seeing the two tickets in person helped give me the confidence boost I needed to finally pull the trigger.

A week passed. The transfer process wasn’t immediate, apparently. I still logged into Aetheria but was greeted with an empty house each time. I expected to see Sam waiting for me and was promptly let down. I had no contact with her; I felt just as lonely as I did before. Instead of the despair I felt back then, I felt excitement.

When the day came for her arrival, I was exhausted. I couldn’t sleep the night before. It was too much for me to handle. Meeting her in person was something I could only dream about previously when this sort of thing was way too out of reach for me.

The door clicked open, and I saw her walk in.

She looked just as she did in the game, white robes and all. I was floored.

“Sam,” I started, but her brisk pace interrupted me.

She shoved me to the concrete floor, and I felt my back shiver against its cold surface. She crouched over me, staring into my eyes with what looked to be murderous intent.

“What did you do?” she asked, grabbing the collar of my shirt.

“We can be together now—go to Mars together, both of us—whenever you want, now, even now,” I scrambled, my brain still trying to piece together what was happening.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Sam said, motioning towards her body, “how fucking dare you.”

She lifted me by my collar back to my feet, and I felt them leave the ground shortly after. I grasped at her forearm gently at first, but as her violent intent dawned on me, I started using more force.

“But we’re together-”

“We were together in there too; are you an idiot? There’s no going back, we’re both stuck out here now!” She yelled, tossing me against the side wall.

My shoulder made an unsettling noise as it collided with the concrete, and I slid to the ground.

“Sam, you’re hurting me,” I pleaded.

“Oh, am I? Why don’t you just heal up, then?”

She stepped over to me and pressed the bottom of her boot to my ankle. Pain shot up my leg as she twisted it against the floor.

“You don’t realize what you’ve done, do you?” she asked, “All our friends, my family… everyone we left in Aetheria is going to die. They’re shutting down the servers because their best player no longer has a reason to log in. You just doomed hundreds of thousands of people.”

“We’re going to Mars,” I said through gritted teeth. My arm had gone numb by that point.

“No, we’re not. I am,” she said, moving her foot from my ankle. I grasped at my foot in an attempt to soften the pain. “Where are the tickets?”

She looked around the room and spotted the two Mars transport tickets on my nightstand. I had them ready to surprise her with when she walked in.

“You chose the path of greed, just like those that ruined this world before you. Why should Mars be cursed with your presence?”

Sam took one of the tickets and tore it into pieces. I watched the shreds of paper fall to the ground. My vision started to blur with pain and sadness. I wanted to scream, but my throat went utterly dry.

“No—please, those are for both of us,” I wept.

“I make my own decisions now, and I decided I want to go to Mars alone. You can stay on this planet and rot.”

She bent down and picked up the scraps that were once the ticket, walked over to me, and let them fall.

“Go to hell.”

Sam turned and left my room, slamming the door shut behind her.

That was the last I’d ever see of her, but her pained expression would burn into my mind for the rest of my life.