Phil was well prepared when the moment came, all of his group had been warned well in advance. He knew that his character would be erased, for that had been clear on the contract he had signed before joining the game. Somehow, this upset him, because after spending five weeks submersed in the game, he had grown fond of the life he had been leading. He had only just advanced to such a level that he was gaining a little reputation among the other, normal players. Looking at his internal clock, he saw it was time and lay back on the rough bed, feeling the loose straw sticking into him, knowing he would soon come to miss this feeling. As he felt the darkness creeping across his awareness, he took one final, deep breath through his nose, and relaxed, smelling the smoky beeswax aroma of the lit candle that illuminated his small room. Finally the darkness overwhelmed him and his thoughts drifted away.

He awoke again, seemingly almost instantaneously, to a feeling like he was drowning. Before he could panic, hands grasped his head and turned it to one side. The feeling of nausea overtook him and his chest and throat spasmed, vomiting forth a stream of tasteless liquid from his mouth and nostrils. He found himself unable to draw an inward breath, then something thrust itself between his lips and down his throat. At first he panicked, but relaxed as the drowning feeling eased slowly, and finally passed away. The tube in his throat, obviously, was providing him with life giving air. He relaxed back on the comfortable surface beneath him, eyes still shut.

A voice to his left broke into his thoughts. It sounded about the same as he currently felt, rough and tired. “Hey, Phil. You look like shit.” He recognized the voice immediately, even though it was low and croaky. It belonged to Andrew Mueller, a fellow test player. Andrew wasn’t one of those he had teamed up with, but they had spent a fair bit of time together in the time before they were all tanked. He managed to turn his head slightly, just enough that he could make out Andrew through his half closed eyes, lying on a bed next to him.

“Hey, Andy, long time no see. If you think I look like shit, you should really take a look in the mirror.” He smiled to take any sting out of his words that may have been inadvertently misconstrued. “I see they have managed to reincarnate life back into your corpse.” He tried to lift himself up into a seated position, but there wasn’t any strength in his limbs and failed. There was pain along with the bone deep weariness he felt everywhere within his body. “This is what the old astronauts must have felt like when they came back.” He stated to Andrew.

“Nah,” replied Andrew, “This is much worse, much, much worse. At least they could sit up, I have been trying for about five minutes and I still can’t even raise my head off the damn pillow.” To illustrate the point he strained and only managed to raise his head a few inches before having to drop it back down onto the pillow. “See, that’s all I can manage and I have been out of the tank for at least an hour now.” He closed his eyes, resting from the exertion.

As the two lay there, resting, the door into the room opened inwards, allowing the entry of two workers, each of them pushing an empty wheelchair equipped with a head brace. Without speaking they rolled the chairs to the side of each of the beds and assisted the supine test players into them. This task was obviously difficult due to the debilitating effects of their bodies being comatose for the past five weeks. After a few minutes of struggling the two were finally placed properly in the wheelchairs, then they were strapped in securely, purely for their own safety, and wheeled out of the room.

After passing through a series of corridors, all white and sterile, they finally were wheeled into what could only be an auditorium. The room was quite warm and full of many other wheelchairs, all of them occupied. At the far end of the room was a raised dais, a table and two chairs placed centrally upon it. As Phil could clearly see, neither the chairs or the dais were presently occupied, but he expected it wouldn’t be long before this was the reverse. He realized that had been in this room before, but that was prior to his ‘tanking’ along with all the others who had agreed to be in the game test.

The attendants wheeled Andrew and Phil into a position among the others, facing the podium, and left them there. From what Phil could see of the others around him, he knew most of them by sight, and all of them were members of the tester group, but none were familiar enough for him to strike up a conversation with. He slightly turned his head towards where Andrew was, finding it a little more easy to do now that his had been out of the tank for a while. “So, how was your experiences with the game ?”

Andrew, who had also been looking at the wheelchair bound people around them, sat for a moment in contemplation before answering. “Ummmm…. I don’t think we are supposed to talk about this yet. They did tell us that they wanted to go over all that with them first, and I’m not going to risk losing the money they are going to give us for doing this. After we have been debriefed, I’ll tell you everything.”

Phil knew Andrew needed the money and didn’t push him for any more information. Even though all the volunteers for this test had been taken internally from the company, Andrews job was a low paid one, being one of the janitors, and he still had to support his ex-wife and two kids.

The room was suddenly silent as two people made their way over to the podium and stepped up onto it, all eyes in the room following them. Everyone knew these two, by sight if not by name, for they had been the company executives who had dealt with all of them leading up to the tanking procedure. Naeve Millson, the female of the two, took one of the seats while the other, Daniel Rakowski, stayed standing, facing out into the crowd .

“Welcome back.” He started with, smiling as he let his eyes roam across all of them. “We wont be holding you up long here, but first, did you all enjoy the last five weeks in the game ?” he paused while there was a series of affirmative remarks from the gathered testers, then continued “Good, that’s what we wanted to hear. We will be talking to each one of you over the next couple of days to get your individual experiences and opinions in regard to your time playing, and please feel free to express any problems or misapprehensions you may have had, as well as any suggestions for improvements.

At this time, though, we will be taking you one by one to be examined by a doctor, and to start off your physiotherapy to get you back into top form. The physio will take a few days, so while this is ongoing we will provide you will a room for you to stay in. Listen to the doctors and the physio, and please follow their instructions, it’s for your own benefit, remember.” As he finished, double doors on one side of the room opened and a couple of medical orderlies entered. They approached the nearest person to the doors and wheeled them out of the room. “While we are waiting for your turn, raise your hand if there are any questions you want to ask us ?” People started looking at each other at this, then a realization that he was trying to be funny became apparent when he broke into a laugh. “Sorry, I couldn’t help that. There are buttons on the armrests of your wheelchairs, press that if you have a question.”

Phil didn’t have any questions he wanted to ask, but it seemed that many others did, for the room was suddenly lit up with attention lights that each of the wheelchairs were installed with. There was so many it reminded him of a Christmas tree. Daniel Rakowski pointed out into the seat of lights, indicating someone Phil couldn’t see. “You, what’s your question ?”

Phil didn’t listen for the question, or the answer, because he had become overwhelmed with a bone deep weariness and had nodded off to sleep. He only awoke when the time had come for him to be taken off to see the doctor.

........

After the meeting Naeve Millson and Daniel Rakowski sat in the canteen. Two steaming cups of coffee sat on the small round table in front of them. Picking her cup up, Naeve looked at Daniel, and sipped it. “I noticed you skirted around that question about the servers, Daniel. When that one was asked, I wondered how you would handle it.” She placed her cup back down onto the table.

Daniel scowled, not at what Naeve had said to him, but at the remembrance of the original question. ”Not much else I could have done, it’s not like we can tell them there are no servers. Forget the secrecy around this for a moment, but how do you think they would react by me telling them that everything they were doing was operated by picobots floating in the electrosphere. I have been onboard that research from the beginning and I still don’t comprehend how they can shoot tiny robots up to the top of the thermosphere and have them float up there, being powered by energy drawn from the ionosphere. I also do not understand how they can operate up there like a giant processor and server, running a game down here. “

Naeve looked amused. “Electrosphere ? Is that what they are calling it ? All I know is what I am told, and what I am being told is this is a game changer, one that once set up will cost nothing to run and will not suffer from downtimes. It’s been described to me as coating the atmosphere of this world with another, digital world.”

Daniel looked seriously at Naeve. “Yes, it all sounds good, but once this thing is completed, it is totally autonomous. It will update itself, expand the game world by itself and ever create its own rules. I know that they say there are systems in place to limit it and direct it, but I have an uneasy feeling that this will all come to no good in the end. For Christ’s sake, if things go drastically wrong there is no, and never will be, any way of destroying the damn thing, not even to just switch the thing off.” A haunted look came into his face. “What have we created? Will it be something beautiful, or will it be a Frankenstein’s monster?” He quickly lifted his cooling coffee and drank it all down at once.

Naeve looked at him with some alarm. “Are you serious? That’s not likely, is it? It’s only a game, a greatly advanced game, for sure, but still only a game.”

The laugh that Daniel suddenly gave was not one of amusement. “It will be controlled by the three most advanced artificial intelligences we have managed to develop, and once released will have no human overseer at all, they will be in total control of themselves and everything to do with the game, we, and by that I mean the company, will have extremely limited options to influence or adjust anything in the game . Not only that, they will be untouchable, and have full access to everything on this planet by using their own picobots to infiltrate communications streams and gather information.”

Now Naeve looked as nervous as Daniel. The only response she could formulate was “Well… shit.”

Daniel nodded. That’s not the worse thing. The worse thing is the there isn’t one game up there, floating above our heads, but three.”

“Three?” Naeve spoke, confused by this statement. “What do you mean three ?”

“Well, two really, the third is a secret program the company has worked on for the Government. They funded the tanks development as long as we gave them access to a whole separate world for their use. A world where they could train their soldiers, virtually, as well as a world where they could imprison their criminals. The concept is good, but again, I feel this will lead to problems. There is a risk that the game worlds could ultimately merge, blending into each other and allowing access between them.”

Naeves hand rose to her mouth in disbelief. “Oh, my god. How is it that I have never heard of this before, and what is this third world ?”

“Only a few know of this, and all of us were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement. If anyone finds out I have told you about this, I will probably be locked up in the deepest prison they can find. In regard to the third world, I only know of this because one of the developers mentioned something to me before realizing I wasn’t cleared to know about it. What it is and what it does is unknown to me, he wouldn’t tell me after his initial mistake.”

Naeve just sat there looking at Daniel in silence.