Chapter 1

I remember the first day of my retirement with crystal clarity.

One second, I was strapping a helmet on my head and offering a shaking hand of cookies to two kids who looked like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

They weren’t, of course. They were with EveNet’s continuation services and this was their second visit to my house.

I had been struggling. Tyler, my husband of 61 years, had died. That was three years before EveNet’s first visit.

And yes, I still counted the years we were married after his death. He was still with me, so those years counted.

After Tyler died, I threw myself into being Grandma. I loved Winifred, but it was just as much about not focusing on my loss.

Then I got the news.

Fucking cancer. Again.

I had no illusions of my survival, and it would seem neither did the insurance company. They scheduled for the EveNet boys to show up a week after the doctors gave me my results.

The knock on the door startled me. I swear I almost died right there. That first visit was January 14th, 2056.

“Samantha Howell?” the kid at the front door asked. I’m not being generous, he was probably in his early twenties, but when you’re my age, everybody is a kid. The other one stood behind him with a clipboard of paperwork that I couldn’t see.

Both of them must have thought that they looked like salesmen, but the stark white button ups with the black ties only put that Jehovah’s Witnesses image in my mind.

“That’s me,” I answered. “Can I help you?”

The kid in front was the one leading the conversation. He had a shaved head that was starting to stubble with black hair and a clean-shaven face. His pal behind him was the polar opposite. He had a thick head of hair that was tied off into a ponytail in the back and a thick brown beard in the front.

That was the first time I had heard of EveNet. It turned out they were relatively new in the last year.

My insurance had an option in it, that if I was willing to sign on the dotted line, my children, Ashley and Rose, wouldn't have to deal with any costs from my passing.

The thing they had me sign was called a "Continuation Contract," and even if the deal to wipe out the debt of my death wasn't part of it, I would have still considered it.

"A Continuation Contract is exactly that," the bald one explained. His name was Greg. "You download your consciousness to our servers and we upload you to a digital environment, populating it for other contractees or gamers. Live for a while in our game, and after that you can unlock the opportunity to move to different environments, games, or anything you can dream of."

My 'digital avatar,' as he kept calling it, wouldn't be turned on until I physically died. That way there wouldn't be two of me floating around. It would also be a separate legal entity, with no rights to any of my assets from the real world.

Basically, when I died, I got downloaded to a video game.

I don't remember my death, which is probably a good thing. At 89, and the build up of my arthritis that I was dealing with, it wasn't something that I had been looking forward to. I didn't remember anything after Greg and his friends put that headset on me.

That was the first time I saw them. The second time was when they brought the equipment.

I have never been overly spiritual. I’m sure there’s something out there and I try to live a good life, and that’s about where it ended. Tyler was dead and it hurt more than anything I had ever gone through. I was desperate to see him again and the only way that was going to happen was when this cancer finally ended me.

The problem was that I also didn’t want to die. I still had so much that I wanted to do, so much that I could accomplish with my life. There were adventures that I had never experienced and things that I still hadn’t done.

The Continuation Contract seemed like the best of both worlds. I would die and still get to see my Tyler, but I would also continue on as a digital clone of some kind. Me and my memories would continue on in immortality and my children would have none of my debt.

The hairy one, who’s name I couldn’t remember, placed the weird helmet on my head. I listened to it hum for about half an hour before I realized I was no longer in my body.

That’s a weird as hell situation to wake up into. At first, I thought I had fallen asleep, but that didn’t make sense because I felt more alert than before.

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The darkness, that I thought must have been the helmet, was gone and replaced by a blinding white light. Reflexively, I threw my hands up to cover my face, but nothing changed. That was when I noticed the complete lack of hands, or arms, or anything.

“Welcome to EveNet,” a calm woman’s voice filled the space where I wasn’t. Or was. It was very confusing.

“You are the digital avatar created by Samantha Howell. I regret to inform you that she passed away on this day, May 13th, 2057.”

I died? EveNet? They were just in my house.

2057?

Before I could ask any questions, the voice continued.

“I am sure that you have a lot of questions,” she said. “You died about a year after you put on the download helmet. Your digital avatar was created the day you put the helmet on and left in a powered down mode until the living you had passed. For the digital avatar, it would seem like no time had passed and that you were instantly thrown from one place, your home with the helmet on, to this new and less familiar place. The living Samantha continued with her life, taking off the helmet and spending the next year with many hospital visits.”

The voice grew softer. “If it helps at all, she died surrounded by her loved ones.”

I was crying, or at least felt like I was. Without a body, there were no tears, no screams of agony, no heartbreaking sobs.

Someone, the voice heard me in my grief.

“Take your time,” she said. “This is a lot to take in.”

And I did.

I was mostly alright after what felt like ten minutes. Then, I remembered how this other Samantha, the living one, was able to see Tyler again and I, this digital copy, would not.

That took another fifteen to twenty minutes.

When I was finally collected enough to continue, I said, “What now?”

I didn’t hear my voice, just like I couldn’t see my body, but that didn’t stop the EveNet representative from hearing me.

“Now,” she sounded excited, “the fun begins.”

I was back in my body and the white space shifted into my bedroom. I was standing in front of a long mirror that I didn’t own.

There was nothing special about whatever scene this was supposed to be. My reflection was everything I had expected in my long years. A black woman in her late eighties with a habit of wearing her dead husband’s flannel shirts and my own jeans. My hair was tied in the back and I had my glasses on. Large things, with a purple frame that I had let Winnie pick out.

The disembodied voice returned.

“How old would you like to be?” she asked. “We have access to images of you at every age, thanks to your family and the internet, as well as the best technology for analyzing your visual memories.”

“That’s not creepy or anything,” I mumbled. “If you are going to scan my memories, try to stay out of my early twenties.”

I thought about it for a moment before smirking and answering, “Forever 29, right?”

My reflection showed the years reverse. My back straightened, or maybe I just got taller, and my silver hair turned black. Crows' feet vanished while my breasts decided to shift back to where they had been in those days. In less than two seconds, I was 29 again.

“You can change this in the future, if you wish,” the voice said as I admired the old me.

As I looked over my body as it once had been, a thought creeped in.

“Can I make adjustments?”

“Of course,” the voice answered and suddenly there were digital sliders on the mirror.

I had taken to wearing colored contacts when I was in college. I don't remember why, other than I liked the idea of my eyes always changing colors. Green had been my favorite. I found the slider next to my eye color and started adjusting. I watched as they shifted from their normal brown (Tyler's favorite) to the dark, forest green that I had favored back then.

That was the only change that I made.

“If you’re satisfied with the changes to your avatar, we can move on to life selection.”

“Life selection?” I asked.

“The digital environment that you will spend the next 250 levels, per your contract,” she explained.

That number, 250, seemed like a lot, but I had no point of reference. I was a gamer when I was younger and had started back up when Winnie had taken an interest, but that was mostly survival games without any sort of level tracking. You moved forward by finding new resources and recipes and any levels were arbitrary.

“Sure,” I answered. “Let’s get a life.”

The digital sliders were all replaced with a list of games. None of them sounded familiar, but when I touched one it expanded into pictures and a summary of what the game was about. Most of them were open world and massive. Car Crimes 9 was one that I was familiar with by reputation. It was a world of multiple large cities with options to do literally anything. You could live out a normal existence with a job, an apartment, and whatever else you wanted, or you could be a billionaire on their yacht, or you could be a career criminal.

There were hundreds of games and I wanted nothing to do with Car Crimes, but I liked the open world idea and said as much to the voice.

“By the way,” I asked, “do you have a name that I can call you?”

“You may call me Eve,” she said.

Eve changed the list to all the open world options. A few of them sounded like fun, but were maybe too specific for my tastes. Farmington was a farm life simulator with no cities and only individual houses. This game was more for solo play and socializing was an afterthought. Space Crew: The Game was about assembling a crew for a spaceship and making your way across the universe as a freelancer. Different jobs helped you build a reputation and you could choose to work towards a galaxy wide empire or simple space pirate.

There were a ton of options, but I wasn’t much into farming or science fiction. That was when I noticed the picture of bison on a rolling plain.

I had been selecting each name in order, glancing at the pictures to gauge my interest, and then moving on. The bison caught me and I stared at it for a moment before looking at the title and description.

Wicked West

In this open world adventure game in the wild west, choose your life! Live the simple life farming, hunting, and fishing, or take on the law as a criminal in your own gang. Dislike lawbreakers? Hunt them down as a bounty hunter or become a banker in New Paris. Tame the west or let the west tame you. The choice is yours.

The pictures were of majestic mountains and rivers. It was a world barely touched by civilization and reruns of Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman, Little House on the Prairie, and Bonanza danced through my mind.

Maybe in this new retirement, I could be a cowgirl.

It sounded peaceful, but it also sounded like something that could be fun. I almost hit the button, but had to ask.

“What if I don’t like the game I go into?”

“You can leave to any world of your choice at level 250. This is considered a period of adaptation to your new life. Once you reach 250 in whatever video game you choose, you can move between worlds whenever you like.”

That still seemed like a large number to me, but Eve didn’t seem worried.

Life was about the unknown, so I hit the button and started my journey into the Wicked West.