Emma's left hand fingers danced across the keyboard with practiced ease, while her right hand gripped the mouse as if it was the most natural thing to do. Her eyes flickered with the light of virtual explosions and the rapid movement of her in-game character. The world around her was still and quiet, save for the occasional distant sound of traffic that managed to creep through the closed windows of her apartment. Her head bobbed in sync with a nondescript heavy metal tune, which was now and then covered with the sounds of virtual magic spells. It was late, the kind of late that made you feel like anything important that could happen should either have already happened or would wait until morning.

Her computer was her sanctuary, carefully built throughout years of finding the best deals in used but not beaten components. The desk was cluttered with action figures, a bottle of water that was half full, a cup of coffee that had been empty for a few hours, and a few scattered notes from her day job – a job that was as far removed from her passion as could be. Emma worked in data entry, a monotonous cycle of numbers and spreadsheets that seemed to stretch endlessly, day after day. It's not what her life was supposed to be. She was supposed to be doing something interesting, traveling the world, maybe even changing it. It would come, Emma told herself. One day, she would leave this life behind and go on a real adventure. But the months and years went by, and that adventure didn't show any signs of coming anytime soon, other than in a virtual form.

On screen, Emma strafed her character through a labyrinth of dark corridors, on a mission to infiltrate an enemy base undetected. It should have been hard, but she found it relaxing. She was good at this. In these moments, she felt a sense of control and excitement that her real life sorely lacked. Here, she could be anyone, do anything. But no matter how many quests she finished, how many levels she gained and how many opponents she defeated, it was a fleeting satisfaction at best. As soon as the screen went dark, she was back in her apartment, back to her mundane existence.

A glance at the clock told her it was way past midnight. She should have been asleep hours ago, preparing for another day of typing meaningless numbers. But the thought of lying in bed staring at the ceiling while her mind churned with what-ifs and if-onlys was more exhausting than any lack of sleep. So, she played on. Just another kill, another level, another quest, anything to keep the real world at bay for a little longer.

As she dealt the killing blow on the dungeon's boss, the screen suddenly flickered. Emma frowned, slightly worried. She tapped the side of the monitor, hoping against hope that a simple tap would magically fix the device and she wouldn't need to buy a new one. She wasn't sure she could afford it. However, the flickering only seemed to grow worse.

"What the—" she started, her confusion cut short as the power surged, a bright flash engulfing the room.

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And then, darkness.

The abrupt darkness was made even more disorienting by the lack of sounds. Emma sat frozen, her heart pounding with adrenaline triggered by the game, and which now had no purpose to serve but to turn into anxiety. Her screen was dead. Her headphones were dead. Her computer case shone no RGB lights whatsoever.

She fumbled for her phone. Its screen flickered to life, casting a pale light that seemed too feeble to disperse the shadows. A power outage, then. It must have been a big one, Emma thought. As she approached the window looking for confirmation, she heard the first drops of rain hit the glass. Two seconds later thunder rumbled so close that it shook the curtain and the window panes, and it started pouring.

As she watched the storm to end all storms, a flash of lightning illuminated the night, followed immediately by a crack of thunder, so close it felt personal. Emma flinched, and took an instinctive step back, and accidentally let go of her phone. Then something that shouldn't happen at this late hour, or at any hour really, happened.

The air in her apartment shifted, a sudden pressure change that made her ears pop. Emma turned from the window. She was about to scream, but her breath caught in her throat. Her room was gone. In its place was something completely foreign to her life, a view so vastly different from her accustomed urban landscape that for a moment she wondered if she had been struck by lightning, her last sight before losing consciousness a vivid hallucination.

What gave it away was the smell. You don't usually hallucinate with your five senses, right?

The cheap carpet of her bedroom had given way to soft, verdant grass. The smog-filled smell of the city was completely gone, replaced with the scent of earth and leaves. The storm was here too, but it was different, less threatening. Lightning illuminated a sky that stretched wide and unblemished by city lights, and the thunder was a distant, almost musical rumble.

Emma spun slowly, taking in her surroundings with a growing sense of bewilderment and dread. Tall and imposing trees surrounded her, their leaves whispering in the wind. In the distance loomed huge mountains, their peaks shrouded in mist. And above, the sky. As the stormed moved on faster than it seemed natural, Emma looked up at the sky and realized it was… beautiful.

She stood there for what felt like forever, contemplating the starry sky. She had never seen something like it. There was no light pollution, and the moon was absent as well. Then she noticed so was the galaxy's accretion disk. That streak of white in the sky that gave the Milky Way its name wasn't there. Was that even possible? She had never seen it herself, but all the pictures she'd seen online of the sky in remote places always had that streak of stars. Yet here it was…

Wait…

No way…

Am I in another world?

It was impossible, of course. Yet here she was, looking at an alien sky where a few minutes ago she would have found the roof of her apartment.

Her phone was gone as well. Luckily she still had her sweatpants and tank top on, her typical attire for another night of digital adventuring.

As she was thinking about that, the most obvious fact finally clicked in Emma's head. There would be no more digital adventuring. No more videogames. No more boring numbers work. No more city sounds, no more tiny apartment, no more escaping life through a screen and a dozen cups of coffee.

She was free.

"What do I do now?"