Four AM is just too freaking early. Four o’clock should come once a day, and it should be when the sun is already on its trip to China.

Jeff Driscoll groaned. This wasn’t one of those times where he slapped his snooze button ten times before finally getting up. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even bother to turn the damn thing off.

What’s the point?

He threw off the covers, immediately feeling the cold climate-controlled air of his apartment, and reached for his bathrobe. He shivered on his way to the bathroom. For Jeff, getting ready for work really just involved emptying his bladder. Sure, there were rigs available where doing that wasn’t even a concern. He’d watched a vid last week highlighting the TerraMount 720. It had a tube running to a reusable storage tank, that, when full—or the smell managed to escape through the supposedly odor-resistant seal—it would take only a simple flip of a latch and a walk to the nearest drain. Then, right back into the system for another week of uninterrupted play.

Too rich for my blood, Jeff thought as he did nearly every morning as he finished the job.

His actual job paid decent enough, covered the bills and a little extra. The hours, however, were a bit rough and as for that extra bit of money? Didn’t matter. He spent all his time alone. So, that usually meant an extra tub of Chunky Monkey in the freezer.

Everyone who’d ever played a VRMMORPG—Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game… yeah, it’s a mouthful; hence, the acronym—thought it would be awesome to be a GM, or Game Master. Jeff thought it was cool enough, but it just wasn’t the same as playing for fun. He was still gaming, though, right? At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he should probably eat something. Really, it hadn’t been that long since his last meal, and his shift was only a couple hours this morning.

Or night?

He kept losing track. It was the weird hours.

The company, Hard Rock Data, limited their employees’ in-game time to four-hour stints. Usually. But those stints were never consistent, especially during the game’s peak usage. And believe it or not, that was in the middle of the night.

There always had to be someone—multiple someones—online to provide coverage and oversight. Automated as things were, technology would never make up for the human touch—Jeff hoped. For now, he had job security. If a player had a problem that lasted longer than fifteen minutes, HRD would lose business. And if there was one thing HRD management hated more than anything, it was losing business.

“Customer experience is all that matters,” Dan Shaklee, CEO of Hard Rock Data would say—not that Jeff had ever met the guy. Still, he’d seen enough of the “propaganda videos.” That’s what all the Game Masters called the monthly update vids that came with each new patch.

There was always something for players to complain about, wasn’t there? Especially with a VR game as expansive and interactive as Infinite Worlds.

It was the fastest-growing VRMMOPRG in the world. All the games claimed that title, but IW really was.

Relatively new, it had been out for just under a year, and membership had been exploding. Leaps and bounds.

“The most interactive and immersive game out there,” said WinGamer eMag.

“Makes all other VRPGs go to bed dreaming of waking up like it.”

That was a real quote from the less-than-reverent vlogger @unnameableBIG.

It was one thing to get good reviews from websites and eMags, but even the players said the gameplay, once hooked into their VR chairs, was absolutely stunning.

“Feels like being in a fantasy world. Sights, smells, sounds. Even the horses take dumps. And it smells. Awful.” —EunuchHornDog69

“The quests are fun and challenging. The lore is deep and engaging. The fights are physical. You have to learn to really fight to succeed.” —SirOdemusLeigh

That last bit was true. The game’s AI did nothing to assist. If a player couldn’t fight with a sword, they’d die by any one of the hundreds of monsters in the gameworld. There was a training module separate from the main download where people spent months learning all sorts of stuff before tapping into IW. It was almost as much fun as the actual game… people said.

Jeff wouldn’t know. As a GM, he was forbidden to play the game.

A strange rule, but another one of those things HRD insisted on. They felt it would keep the GMs unbiased, therefore preventing them from being influenced by players. Play in one of the many raiding guilds but also be a GM? Might be tempted to help the guild out, throw them a Valiant weapon or a special boon.

Dan Shaklee couldn’t let that happen. No way. So, GMs playing the game was forbidden. Taboo. TOS violation. Enough of those and he’d end up not only fired, but blacklisted by just about every other company out there.

What’s funny? GMs can play the competitors’ games. But not the best freaking game on the market.

Nope.

Jeff’s living room had a large window that looked out over the city. It was summer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The devil’s butthole. So much heat and humidity, it was easier to breathe underwater.

His apartment was on the backside—the industrial side—of the building. He couldn’t see the beach from there. Just mile after mile of warehouses and strip joints. It was cheaper. Not by much, but every little bit helped. He slapped a button by the window, and after a slight hiss, the glass fogged up, blocking out the view, as well as the blinding lights of the Lauderdale strip.

He strode over to his middle-of-the-line rig. It may not have been the 720, but the 360 did what it was supposed to. It sat in one corner, a small couch next to it, a coffee table in front of that. Both faced the large UHD flatscreen mounted to the wall.

A small apartment, but it was home.

He had just a little while before his shift started. Long enough to grab a bowl of Cruncher Browns and check out the latest nonsense on the IW boards.

Bowl of cereal in hand, he flipped the switch, and the TerraMount hummed to life.

Guhhh.

Big issues in starter zones today. Newbie-newbs.

HRD’s CEO, Dan Shaklee, was right about one thing. The worst PR came when one of the players glitched and got stuck, or their spellbook wigged out and the only spell that worked was Minor Sleep or some other moderately useless cantrip. Really, it didn’t matter what the issue was, if a complaint got posted on the boards, suddenly everyone and their mother had experienced “the exact same thing” and it was “at least a hundred times before.”

They hadn’t.

It was a load of crap, but everyone seemed to hope HRD would start doling out free months or something.

Jeff scrolled through page after page of this crap. Biggest complaint? HRD’s customer service response time.

Fifteen minutes. Tops. And people still complained. Ridiculous.

As one of the Game Masters for Infinite Worlds, it was Jeff’s responsibility to make sure all problems were solved within that magical fifteen-minute-timeframe. And guess what? It was usually more like three-to-five minutes. Ninety percent of the time. That’s probably why his name rarely came up in the complaints. And how stupid is that? Why would it be a smart idea to have the GMs appear with names?

But HRD had insisted—“customer experience…” Yada. Yada.

It didn’t matter; it seemed the players liked GM Driscoll.

Jeff’s metal cereal bowl clanked in the sink, and he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his bathrobe. He then plopped down in the TerraMount, adjusting until he felt comfortable. It didn’t take much. Sitting in that thing was like coming home in a way. He spent so much time there—maybe more than even his own bed. Leaning back, he reached for the helmet, his fingertips grazing the wires connecting it to various points in the rig. After slipping the helmet over his head, he slid his hands into the gloves mounted to the armrests. All he could see was black with a single blinking light in the center.

Calibrating…

Tapping his fingers in a set pattern, the light grew closer and closer. Then, words flashed in front of his vision.

Log In? Y/N

Again, his fingers drummed the armrest, and the words disappeared. A second later, the Hard Rock Data insignia appeared, then faded into the logo for Infinite Worlds.