Adam woke up to his phone alarm just like every weekday morning, and then just like every morning he turned it off and went back to sleep. This repeated five times for five different alarms set on his phone until he finally rolled out of bed at 8am. He looked around his one room apartment. Clothes were scattered on the small leather couch with more on the floor. He spotted what he was looking for on the coffee table. His work uniform. Luckily it was only blue jeans and a black work t-shirt with colorful letters on the back that spelled out Gas and Gameland. His name was embroidered on the front in white with “manager” underneath. He brushed his teeth, pulled his dark hair into a loose bun, sighed, and left. He grabbed his keys and cigarettes and was out the door fifteen minutes after waking.
The drive in his beat-up 2019 Kia Niro took him thirty minutes on the dot even if it was a mom-mobile. As he rode with the windows down he lit up a cigarette and turned up the late 2000s music. He liked his vintage car, it was reliable, strong, easy on gas, and got him from point A to point B without issue. Traffic was as shitty as ever. But once he got onto the highway there were few cars this late in the morning. He rolled up to the store at 8:45 and saw Josh standing outside buried in his phone. Adam parked out front next to Josh’s car so that customers knew they were open. As Adam got out of his car he could hear a voice blaring from Josh’s phone ten feet away.
“Come get some you noobs! I’ll kill you all! You pathetic idiots!”
“Still hate-watching that nerd in the Nexus?” Adam said as he walked up to the door to unlock it.
Josh looked up from his phone. “Yo, yeah bro, this guy is insufferable.”
Adam shook his head, “Why do you watch him then?”
“I like to watch him die. He whines so much, and he’s so bad. You know how you root for the villain to fail. It’s kind of the same thing.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Adam didn’t get it. He liked to watch people who were good. He wanted to see the best and find out what they did so he could be better. Josh would do this a lot too, but he had a thing about hate-watching the same streams over and over.
Adam walked into the store with Josh right behind him. As he entered he flipped on a switch and the familiar sound of arcade games filled his ears. The inside was 3000 square feet with the walls lined with old vintage pinball and arcade games. All had been refurbished and upgraded to be more energy efficient and not break down as often. The middle area held everything a normal gas station would, from snacks, to Slurpee machines with two registers in the middle in a round, closed off island. Behind the registers were cigarettes and a few nicer bottles of alcohol. The gray-white linoleum floor squeaked slightly as the both walked behind the island.
They sat, with twin sighs, in the tall stools behind the counter. Josh hadn’t looked up from his phone for even a second. This was so routine for the both of them that he could have walked blindfolded to his chair without missing a step.
“You ever thought about streaming?” Josh asked Adam.
“Me? What would I stream? Everyone watches the Nexus now.”
“True,” said Josh, “but what if you were there? Would you stream then?”
“What would be the point?” He looked over to Josh. “Can you even chat in there?”
“Yeah, bro. They can see chat, get donations, and you can even send them help or challenges if it’s allowed.”
“What would they need donations for? Isn’t everything in there free?”
Josh looked up with a glint in his eye nodding. “Everything is free, but the donations go to the Nexus to keep it running without issues. I heard that the revenue they got from streams in the first month was enough to keep the Nexus powered for the next one-hundred years. The streamers are rewarded in different ways inside and outside their chosen world apparently. There’s some kind of streamer store and for every bit of revenue you make the Nexus you get corresponding points to spend in the store. Apparently the store changes constantly and won’t affect the worlds they live in unless it’s allowed, but there is one leaked item that never changes.” Josh’s voice got quiet and looked around like he was checking for someone listening. “A world seed.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s literally the seed for a world. You are able to create the world you want, or at least most of it, and then you get to live in it.”
“Alright,” said Adam as he leaned back on his stool slightly, “that sounds pretty cool. But I don’t know if I’d stream. It would be weird with people watching my entire life in there.”
“You can turn the stream off at any time. It’s not like you’re being watched all the time. Look.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
There was a scream of rage from Josh’s phone. He pushed a button and a hologram mirroring his screen popped up showing the words (PPGigantus is currently offline)
“Holy shit, is that the guy’s name?”
“Yep, he changed it in the nexus. I told you bro, he’s the worst. Anyway, see, he just rage quit another world. This nerd has almost fifty thousand people watching him most days.”
“How close is he to a world seed?”
“No idea, it doesn’t seem to be one of his goals so we don’t know. He just likes the attention I think.”
The bell on the front door rang as a trucker walked in. He came up to the counter a few minutes later with a few sodas and a bag of chips laying them on the counter.
“Let me get a fill up on one,” he said.
Adam rang him up and punched in the gas. “Fifteen fifty-three for the soda and chips, and the gas you can charge at the pump.”
The trucker tapped his phone to the card machine as Adam watched his screen confirm the payment.
“Have a good one,” said the trucker as he left.
“You too,” said Adam.
The bell rang again as the man left and started pumping his gas.
“So, would you?” asked Josh. He had his arms crossed looking over at Adam.
“I don’t know man,” said Adam. “I might just enjoy the experience if it’s even actually me in there.”
“What do you mean of course it’s you.”
“You never know.”
“Bro, you signed up for it right?” Josh looked concerned.
“Yeah man, we went together when we turned eighteen. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.” Josh laughed a little as he rubbed the back of head. His hair was cropped short and it stood up all over the place in a way that made it look deliberately chaotic like he stood in the mirror for way too long making it perfectly messy. “It’s just, you know, It’s been seven years. I feel like we’re stuck.”
Adam nodded at his friend’s words. He had been feeling that way for as long as he could remember now. No matter what they did it never seemed to fit. Adam had tried a lot of things in his twenty-five years. He’d worked at a cinema, a pizza shop, studied in college before getting bored and dropping out, and finally ending up back at the gas station he and Josh had worked at in high school. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the things he did, but he never really found anything he was passionate about.
“I get it,” he finally said.
“It’s not bad, but there has to be more. I mean I see these people in the Nexus living a hell of a life bro. They can be whoever and whatever they want.”
“You said that they can see chat? What stops them from cheating and stuff or getting stream sniped?”
“Bro, it’s a massive AI. Don't you think it can filter out chat like that? It can literally upload our consciousness.”
“Fair.” Adam got up and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” Josh nodded and they headed outside.
Out on the sidewalk they watched the cars speed by as the trucker finished up and pulled away. They lit up their cigarettes and Josh let out a sigh as he inhaled.
“We playing tonight?” Josh asked.
“Of course.”
They had their online game that they had been playing for years now. It was what originally brought them together and created an instant friendship between the two that had lasted most of their lives now. It was an mmorpg that had been through so many iterations at this point it had started over with classic servers. They were reliving their childhoods and it was nice.
Adam thought about what Josh had said though. The nexus had changed things. The idea that people could live forever, if it was actually them, was pretty insane in itself, but the creators took it even further. They allowed for the development of worlds. Some were paradises where crime wasn’t even an option, and others were pretty much real life video games. There was only one condition. The Nexus and its worlds were free to access for everyone. It was programmed into the core of the system and was impossible to change.
Adam laughed to himself as he thought about all the advertisers and companies that had a meltdown over that. It had almost caused a global war until the rich had realized they were vastly outnumbered. Things had calmed down a lot since then though, and like Josh had said there were certain things that people could spend money on, but it could in no way affect the world or the participants without their full consent.
He hadn’t really checked it out since it wasn’t something he could be a part of anytime soon, but after seven years it had just introduced the ability for people to stream. So, there wasn’t much to go on yet.
I wonder, he thought, what it would be like to be in there.
Josh took the last puff of his cigarette and threw it into the can-turned-ashtray next to the sidewalk.
“You know,” he said, “these things are going to kill us one day.”
“Yeah,” said Adam. “Gotta die somehow.” He threw his cigarette in the can as the both looked out at the highway. Adam took a deep breath of the clear air and thought life wasn’t too bad after all.
At that moment an 18-wheeler was turning into the parking lot. It was a big lot, but the truck didn’t seem to be slowing down. The man inside pulled on the horn with a panicked look on his face. He swerved away from the pumps. Everything slowed down in the moment as Adam watched the trailer tilt over. It was like something out of an action movie where the heroes would jump out of the way at the last second.
Adam and Josh both just stared at the oncoming truck frozen in confusion and fear. As the truck’s trailer screamed against the asphalt Adam turned his head to see cartons of cigarettes spilling out of the back just as his world went black.