When first contact was made, it wasn’t through some observatory. It wasn’t through some interstellar colonization ship. It wasn’t even through some kind of flying saucer landing on the White House lawn.

It was through Node Sol-3, which landed in the middle of Alaska.

As far as we can tell, now, it’s some kind of Von Neumann probe. It lands on planets with sapient life, replicates itself, and then sends copies of itself off into the unknown. As for the original - the one that landed on the planet? It replicates, spreads itself across the different continents…

And it connects people to the Simulation.

It goes by many names, of course - The Game, the Dimension, the Tree - I think the Reilans have a word for it that, roughly translated, goes like ‘Second Life and Rebirth in the Dreamworld of the Ancestors’. It’s a bit of a mouthful. We still haven’t met any alien species in person - interstellar distances are simply too great - but the Dreamworld is the next best thing.

Some kid, Charles Notley, in the middle of Alaska, was the first to find it. After touching it, it ejected a little earpiece. Since he’d watched plenty of sci fi movies, he knew it was clearly a terrifying mind control device that would turn him into the first of an alien invasion wave. Either that, or it was some kind of badass alien technology that would give him superpowers, or let him transform into different animals.

Naturally, he put it on without a second thought.

Now, I wasn’t there, of course, but I assume what he saw next was something like this.

The world faded to black, and he found himself in a simulated environment indistinguishable from the real world - except, of course, for the fact that this world was of some alien landscape that couldn’t have existed on Earth.

Welcome to the Simulation, A voice in his head would have spoken in perfect English. You are user SOL-3-000000000001.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

The government did its best to keep things under wraps - to keep the tech and the Earpieces contained. Letting alien technology spread across the planet wasn’t really the safest thing to do. In the end, though, they had no choice, and no means of stopping it. Luckily, it wasn’t hostile. Whatever the Ancients, or Precursors, or Elders wanted, it wasn’t conquest.

Notley got all the fame an eighteen-year old kid could ask for, of course. Media interviews, a book and a movie deal, and of course, the prestige of being User Number 1 on planet Earth.

It wasn’t long before everyone was playing. It was funny how random chance worked out - because it wasn’t all that different from the MMORPGs of ages past, if you ignored the impossible visual fidelity and galaxy-spanning, zero latency speeds. For VR MMO enthusiasts, it was a bit of a dream come true. And humans were good. Really good.

People crowded around Notley in the years that followed. After all, being User One meant he had early access to everything. He runs one of the largest Human guilds now - and they’ve got more than a few alien members. I got early access to everything, too, though I kept that under wraps for as long as possible. I wasn’t in it for the fame. I just wanted to play the game.

I wasn’t User One.

I was User Two.

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The day the Node landed was like any other. I woke up in a daze, went through school in a daze, and stumbled home in a daze.

When I got home, I grabbed a snack and went straight to my room.

It was a messy place, littered with books and posters. The only clean area was the space around my VR station, which was the latest high-end SimStation. A headset and a pair of gloves hung on a rack nearby.

I slid on my equipment and booted up Striking Distance II. Though I’d already beaten it three times, I’d always enjoyed speedrunning, and I was looking forward to shaving a few minutes off my last time.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And then, as I was putting my headset on, a fucking meteor landed outside town. I saw it through my bedroom window.

…Striking Distance could wait, I decided.

Getting to the crash site was a trick and a half, and involved a dog, a rusty bike, and no small amount of shouting from my mother - but I’ll tell that story another day. When I got there, I found the Node sitting in the middle of a smoking crater. Charles was on the ground nearby, with an Earpiece behind his ear.

“…Charles?” I called cautiously. “You okay?”

There was no response. I drew a little closer just to check his pulse, and his Earpiece blinked. Once I was satisfied that Charles was okay, I approached the Node, which whirred as I drew close. It was about three meters tall, and a roughly spherical. A stand at the bottom was already burrowing into the earth, scooping dirt and other materials into the bottom of the Node. A port on the side ejected a second Earpiece as I drew close.

And naturally, since I’d watched a little too much sci fi, I picked it up. A display on the side of the Node showed a glyph of a human being wearing an Earpiece, with picture instructions that showed how to properly attach the device. I was intrigued.

I wasn’t stupid enough to put it on right there, outside of town, though. Oh, no. After I made sure he was still breathing, I placed a call to emergency services with Charles’ phone, then disappeared. When I got home, I locked myself in my room.

With some amount of trepidation, I laid on my bed. I turned the Earpiece over in my hands. Would I end up in a coma if I put it on? Charles seemed fine, but there was no way to be sure that this thing was safe.

Still. Every day was the same - and I’d finally found something interesting. What did I have to lose? I put it on.

My room dissolved into blackness.

“AAAAAAAAAGH,” I screamed into the void.

The void answered.

Welcome to the Simulation, a voice in my head hummed. You are user SOL-3-000000000002. Your species is new to the Simulation. Would you like to play the tutorial?

A world faded in around me - only it wasn’t my world.

I found myself in an alien landscape. The wind brushed against my cheek, and the sun warmed my skin. A floating sign nearby read ‘Sol 3 Starting Area’.

I wasn’t sure what to think, at first. Some kind of prank? Some government tech? Some new VR MMO’s guerilla marketing?

I tried any number of standard VR exit commands. Nothing. I tried again. Then the emergency exit commands. Still nothing.

Welcome to the Simulation, the voice in my head repeated. You are user SOL-3-000000000002. Your species is new to the Simulation. Would you like to play the tutorial?

I tried to push down a growing sense of panic.

“EXIT,” I said. “Cancel program. Emergency eject.”

Exiting the simulation is not recommended at this time. Your Earpiece detects no physical danger around your body.

Are you sure you want to exit?

I wasn’t sure what to think. There was no way any developer could have created something like this without any information being leaked - was there? I hadn’t heard anything about a new VR device, and I read a lot of gaming news.

If this was really a prank, or some guerilla marketing scheme, they’d gone to insane lengths to make it look like alien technology.

I could respect that. I’d always liked MMOs.

“No,” I said. “Start tutorial.”

The Game is a galaxy-spanning network built by the Ancients in order to facilitate peaceful communication between species.

I grinned. It was always interesting to see what kind of lore a new game would have. I’d often spent hours reading wikis for my favorite universes.

The Game is a simulation. Your technology level and local language have been taken into account for this tutorial.

“What do you mean?”

Had your civilization been pre-Silicon, this simulation might have been explained as a dreamworld, an afterlife, or any number of low-tech cultural equivalents.

You will encounter other sapient lifeforms within the Game, including species from other worlds. Depending on your level of technological development, the existence of life on other worlds may come as a shock. Please try to remain calm.

I snorted.

This is possible through advanced quantum link communications with zero latency and near-infinite bandwidth across interstellar distances. Now, for a brief explanation of game mechanics and menu options.

And it ran through the basic options. Waving my hand and saying ‘Menu’ opened up a menu, but I could also set macros and toggle certain menu options just by thinking about them. Strangely enough, it explained things in detail that any human gamer would have known. It could be that this game was aimed at the general population - but was it possible that… No. I pushed the thought aside.

Character customization took very little time - mostly because it wasn’t an option. Somehow, the game had scanned my entire physical appearance. Fine by me - I usually opted to stick with the same appearance I had in the real world, anyway. Stat customization, on the other hand…

A stat menu appeared in midair. It displayed stats like Vitality, Toughness, Precision, Endurance, Strength, Speed, and Concentration. They’d been translated into the closest cultural equivalent, the game explained. The list of stats seemed to stretch on into infinity, and many of them were determined by other stats. There were only a handful of base stats I was able to modify, though. I was tempted to start spending stat points at random, but I restrained that impulse. I sat down and had the game run through the tutorial and stat explanations again.

Because if there was one thing I wanted to do in a brand new super-MMORPG with unknown hazards…

It was min-maxing.