“So, this coffee comes out of a cat’s butt?” I muttered, reading the back of the bag of supposedly very expensive coffee sent as a gift by a business associate when he learned of my short stint at the hospital. I made sure a lot of people would know about it because I posted it on Missive, the world’s biggest social media platform, along with the appropriate inspirational quotes bullshit. I got this bag along with several packages when I passed by our new Egret office.

A few unexpected business-related matters held me up at the office, and it was already late afternoon when I returned to my rented two-bedroom suite at Grand Scaup’s, one of the high-end apartment buildings that lined the posh Ruffed Grouse Avenue by the Bobwhite River. I was staying here for the month and a half I had to be in Egret City.

I slowly swirled my peculiar drink in its cup. This cat poop coffee was slightly less acidic than other kinds of coffee I’ve had. Smoother too. The taste, however? I couldn’t say this was better than normal coffee the thirtieth of its cost.

This reminded me of truffles, my mortal enemy. Those dried turd look-alikes tasted a cross of garlic and bland apple but could be more expensive than the dish they were garnishing. I did know truffles were used more for their distinct aroma rather than taste.

However, many were physically incapable of detecting the chemical contributing to the truffle’s signature odor, while a number of those who could smell it didn’t find it appealing at all. I researched this after having my first taste of actual truffle, not that fake truffle oil, and couldn’t understand why I found it disgusting—I had to fake liking it though because of the social setting.

And that was my introduction to the world of luxury where items were in demand because they were obscenely expensive…and also the start of my vendetta against truffles.

In contrast to truffles that weren’t worth what they added to a dish, a top-of-the-line gaming unit was usually worth its price. That was why I bought the most expensive AU-VR Helm sold at Vanguard Gaming.

Well, that was just a secondary reason for my splurge. I mostly wanted to guilt-trip that food-named woman, Eclairs, that I bought a very expensive item from her store even after her less-than-stellar customer service skills. She did try to dissuade me from going for the costliest choice, quite nice of her, but I insisted I was doing it to support Vanguard Gaming out of nostalgia. Hammer in that guilt-tripping.

It had no actual cost to me because I purchased it with a corporate credit card, making it a tax-deductible expense of the company instead of taxable compensation on my part. Thinking back, I now felt bad for what I did to her.

I placed my hot drink on the oaken office desk, deciding that I’d give the bag of cat poop coffee to someone else, maybe my sister, maybe Eclairs, then examined my new purchase.

The box, sleek black with sharp red accents, was surprisingly light for its size and the item it contained. The picture of the product was on one side, plastered with bold words about all of its fancy state-of-the-art features. Another side was transparent, revealing the shiny AU-VR helm.

This was my first gaming unit.

After all this time…I finally bought my own gaming unit.

Our family owned a single clunky PC. I wouldn’t consider it my own. And a ‘gaming’ computer? Definitely not. It ran on charcoal and couldn’t handle simple games, much less Nornyr Online. Even if it could, my sisters were also using it for schoolwork. My only choice was to play at a PC café, paying with my meager allowance plus anything I’d earn working various chores for the neighbors.

I couldn’t help but grin when I opened the packaging and took out AU-VR Helm, setting it on the table as I looked at it fondly.

Time to play.

Am I in the game?

I opened my eyes.

I found myself slowly gliding over sheer cliffs. This…is…breathtaking.

This mountain must have a towering height for billowing seas of clouds to completely cover the perilous fall to my right. On my other side, curious flora of various colors grew above the cliffs, continuing down the gentle slope, becoming lusher, eventually blossoming into swathes of lofty trees that stretched over flat plains as far as the eye could see. Given this altitude, I expected this place to be covered in snow, or at least have sparse vegetation. And I certainly didn’t expect the vast expanse of this otherworldly forest on top of a mountain.

I tried to move my hands and examine my body and found out I didn’t have one. And beyond looking around, I couldn’t control my movement either. Where were my other senses? This was supposed to be full-on realism, right? I expected to feel the temperature, smell my surroundings, all of that. But as I continued in my flight tracing the majestic yet foreboding cliffs, I came to understand what was happening.

This was the game’s introductory cinematics.

There, the background music, the sort meant to be inspirational and magical, welling up emotions and priming players for the start of a great adventure.

I picked up speed, the scenes of the cliffs gradually melding into a blur, the music becoming stronger and faster. I still caught glimpses of the bigger curiosities I passed.

Ancient ruins built near the edge of the cliffs; crumbling temples jutting out the sides of the mountain that defied gravity; colossal statues of humans, dwarves, centaurs, other creatures I couldn’t recognize, dotted the length of the precipices. Skeletons of fantastical beings large and small were also mixed in, the remains of a dragon weaved through the statues, the upper skeleton of a giant clinging to a crumbling obelisk for seemingly hundreds of years.

Back when I used to play RPGs, I usually mashed buttons to speed through dialogues and character interactions, ignoring game lore. But now, I wanted to know the stories of those ruins and monster remains. It might be my age that I was no longer keen on simply speeding through everything to start playing.

Everything here was a whole new world, and I truly wanted to learn about them. It would’ve been better if I could experience this with a body. The sensation of flying, of the rushing winds, all of this would’ve been exhilarating for sure.

Flying faster and faster over the sheer cliffs that continued on and on, I noticed there was a subtle curve to my path. This wasn’t the cliffs of a mountain range; it was the rim of a mind-bogglingly large crater!

That explained why the edge was curving, the areas beyond the crater mostly even forestlands. And the clouds? It wasn’t a sign I was high up. Those were an expansive magical fog rotating around a center I couldn’t yet see.

Suddenly, I was pulled downwards, straight into the fog.

Everything was white like when an airplane passes through a cloud. The white became grey, turning dimmer and dimmer as the light had a harder time penetrating the thick magical fog as I went deeper.

And then it was total darkness.

No.

Not completely dark.

There was light in the distance, a small twinkle I almost missed. With it as my reference, I realized I continued to fall, far faster than I had guessed. The light grew bigger and brighter as I flew towards it. Its radiance illuminated showed the barren lands of this world beneath the veil of fog.

A wondrous city of light…

Intricate spires of alien architecture connected by arches and bridges that defied logic in their arrangement. Only when I neared this island of light in the endless darkness of the crater’s bottom did I comprehend the true scale of the structures. Taller than the highest skyscrapers in the real world with bridges fit for giants to walk through, majestic construction of this magnitude could only be achieved in a virtual world.

Old games had shitty graphics for cinematics, but kid me was more than happy with them. Although far from realistic, my imagination would fill in the rest, turning those pixels into the most immersive fantasy world for me. But this world of Hierakon in Mother Core Online, these structures, I could have never dreamt them up. A game far wilder than any my imagination could conjure.

This was peak worldbuilding. I was sure my real body was unconsciously grinning while sleeping with an AU-VR Helm on.

[Greetings, human mind.]

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. I didn’t have ears, or a body for that matter, so I didn’t exactly hear it. I felt it in my head like it was my internal voice talking to me. I looked around but couldn’t see who it was.

Hello? I thought. How was I supposed to talk back to it?

[Welcome, to the Dolbara, the 17th Conservator Ship of the Dalkan Empire.]

Ship? I didn’t see anything that could be a ship for sailing the seas. Nothing like magical airships in many fantasy games. Or was it talking about a spaceship? The structures around were something out of science fiction, so I assumed this was the case. Perhaps the voice meant this entire city of bright spires was a spaceship?

Am I in the right game? I asked the voice. Mother Core Online was supposed to be more on the fantasy side, mythical creatures, supernatural powers. Not aliens and spaceships. Eclairs mentioned a few other games came pre-installed in the AU-VR Helm I bought.

Damn, I picked the wrong game? This seemed awesome though.

[Game? To the Mother Core, this is the game of life. But to you? It can be so much more.]

Holy crap, it talked back to me. I thought this was just a simple cinematic, but it was actually an interactive one. And I did pick the correct game.

MCO must be using an AI to converse with the players and add to the immersion. My high school pals and I used to mess around with AI chatterbots on the web, teaching them to curse and other juvenile nonsense. Conversational AI had come a long way since, and we also used them in our delivery business, but those had mostly pre-set responses with minimal learning capabilities and needed periodic manual human tweaking to improve them. I wondered how advanced the AI here was.

Okay, two questions, I thought at the mysterious voice as I weaved through the golden arches of this mysterious city that might be a space-faring vessel, who is this us, and when do I start the game?

[We are the Dalkanus. A collect—]

Your name has ‘anus’ in it.

A few seconds of silence passed before the voice answered, [That is quite the observation, meager human mind. An unexpected response, one we are yet to encounter.]

Fairly advanced response capabilities. I might try to mess around with it for old times’ sake. I’m human, and we start as tiny anuses and form—Wooaahh!

I was swept upward an immense spire that dwarfed all else around it, slowing down as I came upon a single outcropping that disturbed its smooth walls. Then I got plopped on this balcony that overlooked the alien ship.

[Most of those that pass here would listen to our story and then hurry to pick new bodies to inhabit], said the voice, almost wistfully. [Of the few that converse with us, only you chose to share such an…interesting thought.]

Well, I am unique, I thought in reply, very impressed with this game’s NPCs. No one else is me, that goes without saying. And I can’t really say anything right now since I’m just a…mind, a consciousness? A soul or something?

[You are you, and only that.] Particles of light gathered in front of me and formed a large ring. The middle of this ring became a void of swirling stars. From this portal stepped out a being of golden light, its upper body humanoid in shape. ‘Stepped’ might not be appropriate because it didn’t have legs. Its lower half was like a genie, or a ghost, wispy or smoky, not really legs. Pieces of bluish armor hovered over parts of its body.

That…is cool as hell.

The Dalkanus didn’t have any facial features on its human-shaped head. No nose, no eyes, no mouth, yet it spoke, [Let us start again, shall we? Are you going to listen to our story?]

Tell me so we can move forward. I’m not going to skip the intro like I did when I was a kid.

[We are the Dalkanus. A collective consciousness of myriad civilizations that have existed hundreds of millions of years before you. We have witnessed the creation and destruction of galaxies. We will exist millions, billions of years after your sun collapses upon itself.]

Okay.

[Our existence is insulated from all there is, all there was, all there will ever be. We will be here even if cold death consumes your ever-expanding universe. We simply are.]

Just to be clear, this is Mother Core Online? If it’s not, I’m still game for it.

[The Mother Core guides us all on the path of Conservation, a portion of each intelligent species we come across sheltered in this world forevermore even if all others will be lost to the devouring nothingness.]

So, I am in the right game. Good. I didn’t expect MCO to have this sort of science fiction twist to it. It piqued my interest and my appetite to start playing. This is a zoo? I asked, wanting to test the game’s AI a bit more.

[A conservatorship.]

A zoo then. I suppose the creatures here, including humans, should still be grateful they get to exist even if…what did you say? ‘Other worlds will be lost’?

[The Mother Core wills it.]

Where does that leave me? Why am I here?

[We are offering you a chance at a second life.] A vertical line on the formerly flawless wall behind the Dalkanus. This line widened, hidden doors parting to a hallway with lofty ceilings. The Dalkanus floated in as it continued speaking, [A chance for your human mind to experience lives you never could, to be reborn in a world where you are the master of your fate. A world—]

That’s for me. What’s in it for you guys? MCO had many secrets, deep lore that needed to be uncovered. Those were very valuable that I considered digging here and there to understand the story and maybe find an advantage for myself.

The Dalkanus turned around.

Are you not allowed to tell me?

[Everything degrades, and so does the consciousness of the creatures in this conservatory. Yet, our goal is not to merely store these creatures, otherwise, we would have kept them in stasis until the end of time. We want them to exist, to thrive, to continue their cycles. But their consciousness cannot survive the cycles of this world. We can repair the bodies but not their minds.]

If I got this right, we’re going to pilot the bodies you have in store to keep your zoo going? My god, this has taken a morbid twist. Just spending a few minutes with this Dalkanus already told me they were not to be trusted, and they didn’t seem to be the good guys the game was presenting on the surface.

[Enough of the questions. Follow me. Now is the time to choose…]

How do I follow—? Oh, I can move again. Hang on, Mr. Dalkanus.

[What are you doing, human mind?]

I floated to the edge of the balcony, the vast city of light below me. Just want to check something. I jumped off.