The year 2050, the far, far, far distant future, a time when cars will drive themselves and seaweed will dominate the food pyramid.

In the decades between now and then, the world would be reshaped by many momentous occurrences, but none of these would be more significant (as far as this story is concerned) than the creation of the life-like virtual reality fantasy MMORPG Saana Online.

Saana Online!

Saana Online, it would become a world away from the world, a world where an average salaryman could be a star loved by millions and a kindergartner could behead a fifty-foot-tall skeletal abomination!

Saana Online, it would become the game on the tongues of every teenager in school antsy to get home and of every disappointed parent struggling to find a solution for their failing grades at PTA meetings!

Saana Online, it would become THE game!

A dreamless place, tens of millions of bodies stacked in a pile, all of them in various states of dying.

The strange pile’s bottom layer was composed of gargantuan monsters with tentacles split, wings severed, fangs smashed, eyesockets emptied. Above them lay the smaller monsters in no better state. Then there was the layer of soldiers: the elves, the dwarves, and the humans in armour pierced and crushed. Above them were the criminals with nooses around their necks, decapitated heads, and faces blue with poison. And the topmost layer was the citizens: the men, the women, and the children, whose skin had been blackened by the flames of the castles in which they’d sheltered, turned green from the plagues that’d swept their lands.

None were fully-dead, though. The dying, stuck for eternity in the last moments of their lives, squirmed and shoved, wailed and howled to be freed from the crushing mass of each other.

On the face of this mountain of the near-dead, a solitary figure was climbing.

Using the bodies as hand- and foot-holds, he was forced to dig his fingers deep into their flesh to secure his grip. The closer he neared the summit, the steeper grew the mountain, the fiercer the gale winds that eternally threatened to knock him off.

He’d lost count of how many times he’d fallen and been forced to restart. This time, too, he would fall, he knew. Nevertheless, he could not stop the climb...

Real life. The city of Auckland, New Zealand. A commercial district late in the evening, its traffic flowing with inhuman grace.

Inside one of the auto-taxis speeding along at hundreds of kilometres per hour, a solitary figure was leaning forward to pick up a book he’d accidentally dropped while dozing off.

In Saana, Henry was a notorious personage, a titan of gaming whose many usernames echoed across the digital world inspiring countless thoughts - some of jealousy, some of hatred, and some of admiration.

In the real world, however, he was just another one of 2050’s forgettable youth. His only noteworthy characteristic was a face that seemed to be permanently frozen in the same exhausted, fed-up expression that one might find on a grey-haired retiree disturbed from his Sunday nap.

The auto-taxi glided out of the flow of traffic and came to a gentle stop by the curb.

“Mr. Lee,” the car’s robotic voice addressed him, “please confirm that we’ve arrived at the correct destination.”

The vehicle’s window lowered on its own to reveal a row of quaint little restaurants.

Henry peeked a glance outside.

In front of an Italian restaurant, a young couple he recognised were loitering, leaning against a wall in the consciously aloof manner of fashion models mid-photoshoot. The male model was styled according to the latest trend: shimmering parachute pants, a fluorescent green wife-beater, and a long, flowing mullet dyed all colours of the rainbow. His female companion defied the norm with faded jeans and a tattered band shirt depicting a zombie being graphically impaled by metal spears.

Henry’s tired gaze rose over the couple, to an object above their heads. Fixed outside the restaurant was a bronze carving of the sun that appeared, comically, to have been encased in a ball of flames.

"No way this is a coincidence..." he muttered.

After he confirmed the destination to the auto-taxi's A.I., the car door sprung open, a robotic voice wishing him a pleasant evening.

Henry approached the models unnoticed, overhearing something that piqued his attention.

“I’m telling you, A.,” the male model was saying. “The way your blade erupted from that Orc commander’s chest, it was music, it was poetry!”

Henry realised they were playing Saana now.

That wasn’t too suspicious. A few months earlier, the developers had increased the pace of production for their VR units while simultaneously slashing their cost by four-fifths. Since then, the player base had exploded to two hundred million, a number which grew each day by another million and a half.

Still, Henry's schoolfriends taking up the game suddenly was an unexpected development, and the past few years had taught him to be wary of the unexpected.

He announced his presence with a cough. “Abigail, Anderson, it’s been a while.”

The pair had been part of his high-school friend group. He hadn't had much contact with them for two years, since dropping out to work.

Abigail swivelled her head at his greeting, a pair of silver shurikens hanging from her left earlobe jingling. “It has.”

“H.” Anderson, not bothering to move from his spot either, gave a rather intrusive full-body inspection. “Firstly, stop growing. You've reached the appropriate height for your personality. Secondly...” He tried to continue but found himself at a loss for words.

Where were they to begin with Henry's tragic attire? Scuffed shoes, unironed jeans, a plain white T-shirt without a dash of colour, hair that hadn’t seen a comb or a brush or dab of styling moose since it’d first sprouted from the follicle - their friend’s attire was a failure on all fronts. Worse, there was no mending this atrocity. Their Henry's family was too financially strained to have him outfitted in something less...offensive to the senses, yet he would also refuse any offer from them of help.

The mule-headed pride of the poor, Anderson wanted to curse it.

Henry made no reply as he mind-read this judgement in his schoolfriend's pretentious glance.

He'd actually become much wealthier than either of them now. Filthy rich. However, it disgusted him a bit to flaunt it.

Anderson threw his hands in defeat in the air. “...Never mind. Come, join us, H., and spin before us the threads we’ve missed of your life.”

Henry joined the two in posing against the restaurant’s façade. They speed through the usual clichés of reunion. Henry told them a white lie that he'd been working a job doing 'digital investing', then Anderson quickly swung the conversation back to the game.

“So H., Saana Online, the thing du jour, are you familiar with it?”

“These days, who isn’t?” Henry didn't elaborate further, being more familiar with the game than any human reasonably should be.

“Excellent. I was just praising our dear Abigail for her finesse on the battlefield.”

Henry asked her what Class she was playing out of courtesy.

“Cutthroat,” Abigail replied coolly.

Cutthroat, this was the prototypical fantasy rogue class, specialised in assassination, thievery, duelling, scouting, and dungeon exploration.

Henry guessed she’d chosen it to roleplay as a ninja, his friend being a weeb. It also explained the shuriken earrings and an uncharacteristic silence she seemed to be maintaining to appear mysterious - the game was so immersive that it wasn’t unusual for one’s in-game role to bleed over into real life.

Henry'd once himself played the same Class, half a decade ago in the previous game instalment. That'd been the first thing he'd earned notoriety for. His rivals used to call him 'The Cripple', although he couldn't remember the last time anyone had referred to him by that nickname. These days, they used a different insult.

He mentioned none of this.

“Let me tell you, H.," said Anderson, "'play’, our A. does not play a Cutthroat. The Cutthroat is the brush and she the calligrapher, the battlefield her canvas, the blood of her enemies the ink. Everywhere she goes, she inscribes another stanza for her endless poem of death...”

Praising his girlfriend, the guy proceeded to dramatically re-enact a dungeon encounter in which, after their tank had drawn the attention of too many monsters, Abigail had temporarily occupied five of them on her own purely through dodging.

The girlfriend didn’t openly encourage or discourage the adulation being heaped on herself. However, when Henry, pretending to be impressed by these newbie feats, remarked how impressive it all was, she couldn’t hide a small smile of pride.

Anderson was about to show footage of the fight on his e-assistant when another auto-taxi pulled up to the restaurant. Out of it disembarked a short, chubby girl in a plain-blue dress that conservatively covered from her wrists to her ankles.

“I’m so so so so sorry I’m late!" The girl hobbled up to them, before discarding a wicker handbag she’d been carrying onto the pavement and locking Henry in a bear hug.

This was Cathy, another school friend, the mother of the group.

Henry struggled to breathe. “How was the trip?”

Cathy, ignoring the question, pushed him back without fully releasing, and a look of life-and-death concern flared in her eyes. “Why’s your skin so pale? You’re too thin! Is your boss not giving you enough holidays? Here...” Bending over to rummage through the bag, she pulled a plastic object and thrust it into his grip.

Henry gave the pills a curious look. The label read, ‘Dr. Maxi’s Organonaturevitality Twice-a-day All-life Multivitamin’.

“Only one bottle?" he asked. "Guess I can't share. Drat!”

“They’ve got theirs," Cathy replied seriously. "Don’t joke. Your health is a serious issue. My naturopath prescribed them. These are backed by the latest science. They’ve got vitamin A and antioxidants, and plenty of phytonutrients. I take them once after breakfast, and again after dinner, and I’ve never felt better. They strengthen your bones and skin and blood vessels, and they prevent Alzheimer’s...”

As the fretting girl continued to rattle on, the four of them went inside the restaurant. Another friend was due, but he had the uncanny ability to always appear five minutes after anything began.

Unbeknownst to Henry, except sensed perhaps in a quiet mood of paranoia, this tardy friend wouldn't be the only one joining them tonight, this first night in his latest strange adventure.