Brian had just left the bathroom and was heading back to his table when his phone began to ring. He waited until he had sat back down before he answered.

“Hello?”

“Brian Lin?” The voice on the other side of the line asked.

“Yep, this is he.” He answered cheerfully before sipping on the latte on the table before him.

“This is Kim from HR,” She explained. “I'm sorry to tell you that your services as a night guard for Celeste Warehouse and Storage Services are no longer required.”

Brian tried to interject a, “What?” but got cut off.

“The belongings in your locker have shipped to your address already, so we must ask that you do not return to the premises. Your final paycheck will be deposited, as well. Thank you for your work up until now.” The call ended.

“What?” He half-yelled at his phone, garnering stares from the few other patrons.

Blushing, he tucked his phone back into his pocket, slumped his shoulders, and went back to sipping on the still much-too-hot latte.

Just great. He stared out the large glass window at the fading sun on the horizon. Why couldn't they give me more warning? He had been just moments from leaving the cafe and heading down the road to the large warehouse complex he had worked at. He hadn't even known Celeste had an HR department until just then. As far as he knew, it was a family run operation. He had shook the owners hand on his first day.

Brian was settling into his newly formed melancholy when he got another call. Sighing, he took his phone out and a smile spread across his face when he saw who it was. He answered.

“Uncle Jie!”

“Brian! How are you today?” The old man who had raised him for most of his life asked.

Brian's smile widened, it seemed like each time they talked, the old man's Chinese accent became more and more faint.

“I'm doing alright.” He wasn't able to keep his voice cheerful, “How are you doing?”

“Hmm, you don't sound alright,” Uncle Jie accused, ignoring Brian's own question.

“Eh, I don't want to talk about it.”

“Well, we will talk about it,” A loud chuckle emanated from the phone and then his uncle got serious.

“Listen, Brian, tonight Aniyah is coming over for dinner. To celebrate my latest release,” Brian could hear a twinge of hope in his voice, “I was wondering if you would come, too.”

It had been a while since he last spent time with Uncle Jie. Even though they lived in the same city, he never seemed able to find the time to stop by. And seeing how he was fired, he had all the time in the world. I guess losing my job isn't so bad.

“Sure,” He replied, sounding more happy already, “What time?”

“About seven thirty is when the food will be done. Can you make that?”

Brian pulled his phone away from his ear for a moment and looked at the screen. It read 6:13PM. It would only take maybe thirty minutes to navigate through the traffic and get to his Uncle's house.

“Sure can,” I let him know. “I may even come a bit early, if that's alright.”

His uncle chuckled and said it would be more than alright. They both said goodbye and Brian ended the call.

However, just as he was putting his phone in his pocket, he noticed a gaunt man shambling towards him. Man, I'm popular today...

After taking more time than Brian thought was necessary to cross the cafe, the man finally made it to his table.

“Brian Lin?” The man asked.

“Sorry, man, but I've already been fired once today.” He joked.

The man, looking baffled, reached his hand out for a shake.

“Randalph,” Brian shook his offered hand, “Randalph Klein.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Klein.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Randalph sat down opposite of Brian. “And please, call me Randy.”

“Alright.”

There was an awkward silence between the two, as Randy just smiled at Brian. He took the time to examine the guy. He was taller than Brian's own five feet and nine inches, that was for sure. His hair – of the tiny amount left – was a light gray, suggesting his age. Brian was sure there wasn't a muscle on the mans body, as his arms looked incredibly tiny in the T-shirt he wore.

“Er... Can I help you, Randy?”

Brian's words caused the man to jump in his seat, but he quickly composed himself.

“Yes, I noticed you after I had entered the cafe,” He nodded towards the door. “And thought, 'That looks like a grownup version of Ming's kid!' and decided I had to come over.”

This shocked Brian, as he hadn't heard his fathers name in years. The last time had been when Uncle Jie told him how his brother Ming, Brian's father, would be proud of him at his High School graduation.

“You knew my father?”

“Oh yes. We worked together quite a lot, back in the day. Had a picture of you at his desk.”

“Really?” Brian prompted. He didn't know much about his father's work, besides the fact he was a scientist.

“Mmhmm,” The man eyed Brian. “Did old Ming ever mention our research?”

The question caught him off-guard, but he answered anyway.

“Nah, he and mom tended to keep their work away from home.” Brian sounded solemn about it.

“Indeed? Well, it was interesting research, I can tell you that. Your father wanted to change the world with it.” The man explained. “Tragedy he couldn't continue.”

“Yeah, but I would love to hear about it.” He was almost desperate to hear anything about his parents at this point. Uncle Jie didn't know much about his mom, nor his father after he had left China. Or he said he didn't, anyways. Brian had his suspicions, though.

Just then, the man made a show of checking his watch.

“Oh, is that the time?” He said, almost as if he had rehearsed the line. “I've got to go. Great talking to you, Brian. Maybe we can talk about your old man some other day. Goodbye!”

The man promptly got up and left, his awkward shamble gone. Replaced with a long, quick gait.

Brian watched the man go through the door and then watched him through the window as he got into the backdoor of a black car with tinted window. Almost immediately, the car peeled away from the curb and headed down the road. What a weird guy.

**

Later the same evening, Brian pulled up outside of his Uncle's home. A swanky little two-story in one of the better suburbs of the city.

Letting himself in, he called out to let his uncle know he was there. After a few moments of getting no reply, he realized he smelled something burning and sprinted to the kitchen.

“Uncle Jie!” He called out as he entered.

Not getting an answer once again, he began to worry. He turned off all the burners and the oven itself, not bothering to check what was causing the smell. Calling out again, he headed back into the front room and shot up the stairs, hoping to he was working with his ear buds in again. For some reason, though, he couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong.

And what he found as he stepped into his uncle's study validated the feeling.

Slumped against the desk was his uncle, a small pool of blood still expanding from where he sat.

“Uncle Jie!” He yelped, “What's wrong?”

He rushed to his uncle, dropping to his knees besides him. In a moment of panic, he reached down and shook his uncles shoulder, causing his head to fall forward much to easily. He wasn't sure what he should do.

Sniffling, he took a deep breath to help calm him. Then, he tentatively reached out and placed his fingers on his uncle's neck, hoping to feel a pulse. He has a momentarily surge of hope when he felt his uncle was still warm, but the hope died when he felt no pulse. He then checked his wrist for a pulse, but nothing. As a last-ditch effort, he pulled back his uncle's still-warm head and moved his ear to his uncles open mouth, praying for a breath. But there was nothing.

Flashbacks of his parents, in the same state as Uncle Jie was now, forced their way into his mind. Unable to cope with the devastation, Brian fell into massive sobs.

He didn't know how long he had been crying when Aniyah had come, but his uncle had begun to become cold.

“Aw, are you boys having a mome- Ohmigawd!” Aniyah screamed, coming upon Brian sobbing over his dead uncle.

Brian turned his head to look at the black woman, but he wasn't able to meet her eyes. Instead he stared at the ground, mimicking the way he had coped with his parents death years before.

“Oh god, oh god,” Aniyah seemed to be on the verge of a panic attack.

But, as if a switch had been flip, she stopped.

“It's going to be alright, Brian,” She assured him as she took out her phone and began dialing.

“Just wait here,” She told him, as if he had planned to leave his uncle.

A moment later, she was telling the 911 operator about his uncle.

**

Brian rolled over in his bed, trying to muster the will to do something.

It had been almost a month since his uncle had died and been buried next to his parents. Yet every morning he woke up with teary eyes and evidence of a fitful sleep. He was thankful he usually did not remember the dreams. Even the pleasant dreams of his uncle would make him overly emotional and start the waterworks. The dreams of his dead parents had started again, too.

He did, however, remember what he had been dreaming about prior to waking up. It had been a flashback to the days when he had first lived with his uncle. When he was just eight and the nightmares about finding his parents dead on their kitchen floor were frequent.

In this particular flashback dream, Uncle Jie had been reading Brian the manuscript of the second adventure from the story he had created for him as a kid. Uncle had just finished the last page and asked what Brian had thought.

Instead of answering as his uncle had expected, Brian had jumped out of bed and hugged his uncle close. He then whispered, “I love you, Uncle Jie.” And he had awoken.

Thinking back on the dream made him feel bad two-fold. Because remembering the good times with Uncle Jie still hurt. But also because, for the life of him, Brian couldn't remember much about the story his uncle had written.

It was a want to remedy this that convinced him to finally get out of the bed and start his day.

He hopped out of bed, not bothering to put on a shirt, and headed towards the spare bedroom; the only other bedroom in the small house he rented. He had stored most of the boxes of stuff from his uncle's house in there, including several containing books. He hoped one would have the Young Adult novels his uncle had published, based on the original story he had crafted for Brian.

This was the first time he had bothered to look through the boxes Aniyah and her husband had packed. Thinking back on it, he felt bad for not thanking them at the time. But then again, Brian hadn't muttered a single word for over a week after his uncle died. Brian noticed a pattern. He seemed to completely shut down and go on auto-pilot when he became depressed. He made a mental note to talk to the doctor about it. Then he, surprised to find he didn't sound so gloomy, wondered if going through his uncle's stuff was helping.

By the time he had finished this thought process, Brian had two stacks of books in front of him. One contained all six books of Uncle Jie's series, each looking brand new and obviously never used. Wonder if he was shy about his work.

The other stack was an odd find. They were a bunch of old Chinese novels, most of them thin. Brian probably wouldn't have paid attention to them if not for someone, his uncle he assumed, had written in English in blue ink pen on all of the covers.

Judging by what was written - Epic of the Crane Heroes, Half-Gods and Almost-Devils, The Frowning, Morose Wanderer, to name a few – he assumed the English to be the translated titles. One in particular caught his eye, though. At the top, like the others, was a translated title. However, there was another translation circled in red. He initially assumed it to be the authors name, but the oddness of it made him second guess.

Heroic Forest. It just didn't make sense as a name. Unless it happened to be a literal translation of the name, instead of the pinyin most Chinese names used when being translated.

His interest piqued, Brian got up and sat at the computer desk was also in the room.

Deciding his uncle thought this particular novel to be important, Brian began his search. He was able to confirm that Heroic Forest was indeed the authors name. Well, a pen name. He was apparently respected for a certain type of fiction, called Wuxia. He even had a large number of his works translated into English. Brian found himself impressed at how many reviews some of his translated works had. Almost all of them five stars.

Sure, it wasn't near as many as a native best seller would have. But this Heroic Forest fellow had seemed to have gathered a cult following in the States.

He decided to place orders with all the translated novels he could find. However, he couldn't find anything to match the one he had found in his uncle's collection. He wondered if his uncle had just translated the title wrong, but he couldn't find anything on the Internet to match the Chinese characters, either.

As he searched, though, he did come across an interesting tidbit. Apparently Heroic Forest had written the lore for a certain game.

It was the worlds first, and still only, true Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online, or VR MMO, game.

Brian had done some PC gaming during his early High School years, but had fallen out of the hobby during his senior year. He thought he still had the Virtual Reality goggles he would use to play most of the games.

However, this particular VR MMO was supposed to be true Virtual Reality. Upload your mind to the game type stuff.

This surprised him, as he hadn't thought technology had come so far along yet. As far as he knew, the closest tech had come to achieving this was basic brain-interface stuff which let you move the cursor with your mind. That and electronic drugs that induced hallucinations. But they could only be partially influenced, not controlled. Kids called it Drifting when he was in school, but he wasn't sure if it was still a thing.

As he delved deeper into the information, he found the tech had been out for a while now. He wondered why he hadn't heard of it sooner. But then again, I have spent the past two and a half years sleeping most of the day...

The more he read, the more he wanted to get his hands on the device; called an Ingenium.

Not just because he found the possibility of real Virtual Reality mind blowing. But also because of the flagship VR MMO, The Jianghu.

The Jianghu. A unique Wuxia setting created by Heroic Forest. One Wuxia blog he had stumbled upon described it as the most detailed and exciting Wuxia setting to date. A few gaming blogs heralded it as the most realistic game to date. I guess that wouldn't be hard to achieve in Virtual Reality.

Brian was all-around excited up until he visited the Ingenium store page.

Buying the most basic model, a simple black pod about the size of a single bed, costs over ten-thousand dollars. And that wasn't including the installation fees or the mandatory one-year subscription to the Jianghu. Altogether, it would come to just under eleven-hundred dollars.

For a while, Brian just stared at the screen and weighed his options. He had the money for this – his uncle had left his entire estate to Brian. A hefty lump sum, all future royalties for his novels, his house and all his possessions. And Aniyah had taken most of the important items from the house and sold it as-is, furniture and all, at his request. He was going through the final phases of the sell already, and would have the money soon.

But that was still a huge sum. He could pay all his bills for a year with so much cash.

However, he also saw this as an amazing opportunity to connect with his Uncle Jie in ways he had never taken advantage of while he was still alive. Uncle Jie had always talked about this Wuxia thing, but Brian had never paid it much attention. Now his uncle was dead, and each memory of a mention of Wuxia stabbed at his heart; thousands of tiny failures he regretted.

He almost felt like he owed it to his uncle to do this. That if he didn't go into The Jianghu and discover the mystery of just who this Heroic Forest guy was, and why his uncle had this mysterious book, he would be betraying him.

In the end, Brian made the purchase.

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