I am not a god. At least I don’t think I am. If I am then we all are. They called it the Singularity and I paid a hundred and thirty thousand dollars for a copy of the program. I financed it. I became very knowledgeable and very powerful with it. It allows me to make machines that create or find universes. It came bundled with the sum total of all the knowledge known to Man already installed. Every book, and song, and computer program, all of it. It was connected to the planetary network. It was also a portable factory that could create anything. In a sense, it was everywhere. It was also connected to a molecular factory system which allowed me to create anything I wanted. That’s very powerful. I hooked my brain up to it to make sure the games I played didn’t have lag. I hated waiting for my EIS system to work, that's lag.

My name is Michael Tanner and I create gaming worlds. Now when I say that I create gaming worlds, I mean real worlds in an alternate reality. I specialize in fantasy roleplaying games but I can create games in any genre if I got enough money and time to create. People always tell me that I am a fantastic universe creator, it puts a smile in my heart when people enjoy my work. And almost everyone enjoys my work.

Today is May 23rd, 2057 and it is the first day of my retirement from game making. I am one hundred seventeen years old and I believe that I deserve a break. I created a special universe for myself. String Theory Engineering opened many doors for me and EIS. What is EIS? It is the Evolutionary Intelligence System, it holds the sum total of the knowledge of the human race. Most people on Earth have a copy. It is an AI connected to everything. String Theory? This is a model of the universe that EIS improved upon. It gets us the ability to create other worlds and dimensions.

“Susan, create for me a sandwich,” I ask my apartment AI. It is connected to EIS and knows that my favorite sandwich is a Rhueben.

“Yes Michael, a Rhueben is on its way,” the female voice acknowledged.

I got up and walked to the kitchen area and got my food. I have a small studio apartment that is more than enough for me and my nanotech devices. I keep a hundred kilograms of factory nanomass onhand for my late night ideas and creations. I have lived in this apartment since two thousand and ten. It has seen a lot of changes in the world. It saw the world evolve into what it is today. I sit down in a stuffed chair Susan created for me. The far wall I faced blurred and became a two-dimensional screen showing me the news from around the Solar System.

“There is some news that I think you will find interesting tonight,” said Susan.

My eyes widened.

“A large gravitational field has been detected moving into our Solar System. It is moving at two one-hundredths of the speed of light and is on a collision course with the sun.

“Really, what are the scientists saying about it?” I ask.

“No official reports yet,” Susan answered.

“Call my sister please,” I ask.

Within seconds my sister is in front of me, she appeared out of thin air. Her brown skin contrasts nicely with her white jumpsuit. Her jet hair was in a nineteen seventies afro. I prefer silver and black jeans clothes and a bald head.

“I am sending you a verbal report that Susan just told me about. This is really interesting and maybe you can do a story on it, Marsha. Something is on a collision course with our sun,” I say.

My sister stares offscreen for a moment and then says, “two percent the speed of light? How is it going that fast?”

“No clue but I bet you can make a really good story about it. Then you can have EIS animate your story and you have another bestseller on your hands,” I like suggesting things like that to her, help her out after her husband of fifty years ran off with a thirty-five-year-old.

I continued with “good luck Sis, I know you will knock this out of the park.”

“You have so much faith in me I don’t know if I deserve it,” was her response. Ever since that fink, her husband left she says stuff like that.

“I’m a good judge of character sis, you deserve it,” I said. I made my goodbyes and pulled up my nanobridge.

“Susan please open the file My Retirement,” I ask and a glowing archway appears in my room. The archway is formed by a cloud of molecular robots coming together in millions of ways to produce what looked like a doorway. The result was an actual doorway leading to another realm that I could see as I looked through it.

I finished my sandwich, stood, and walked through. I found myself standing in a white area that had no walls. There was just a white space for as far as the eye could see. My heart began to beat faster and faster, this was for me. It was my retirement. It was my fun. This was the bridge that linked my world with this Earthen one. I looked around to find the doorway gone.

“Susan, open Character Creation State,” I ordered. I would create my character now and hang out for an hour or so to see what can be seen in the game I created.

“Loading Character Creation State,” said Susan. Within a moment I was looking at myself in grey homespun breeches and shirt. My dark brown skin, like my sisters, did not contrast well so I changed the color of the clothes to black. The image then cycled through the possible races of this universe I was entering. There were many of them, hundreds of them. There were the normal fantasy races such as gnomes, elves, and dwarves. There were not so normal races like the glowing Star Runners and Mer Folk.

“I will be human,” I said. In almost all of my games, I played straight, black, humans. Now I needed to choose my skills. I get three skills, to begin with. Had I chosen a race other than human, the attributes that described myself as a man would be determined, I would have been able to be stronger or more dextrous. I liked playing humans because, in all of my games, humans are the base. There are limitations for other races though there are no limitations for humans. Elves were smart and gifted with magic, though they could only level up so far. Dwarves were shorter with less strength than a human on average, but they are sturdier and could see with very little light.

“My first skill will be Spell Crafting. I will have the following background. My parents were wizards. I learned magic theory and spell casting as I grew up. Magic Theory will be my second skill. My final skill will be Enchantment. I will start the game at eighteen years of age, I will be apprenticed to my father. Lastly, maintain a connection to the Planetary Network on one hundred locations in this game.