On a balmy summer afternoon, Stephen Cray was clicking away on his custom PC. He and his friends just finished an online raid in their favorite role-playing game. After a long three hours, Stephen leaned back in his chair and stretched. His perfect Tuesday afternoon was half over. School was out for vacation, so Stephen adopted the perfect routine. First, he woke up when the sun started cooking his face through the curtains. Then, Stepehn lazily stumbled into his desk chair, waited for the PC to boot, and opened up a game.

It was heaven.

A ping sounded from his computer. A little message icon popped up on the screen:

BagelBot: It's a date! We'll meet up at The Brew this Saturday, at 4 pm.

Stephen groaned. He forgot the IRL meeting his online friends took it upon themselves to set up. Stephen’s stomach twisted when they all started responding:

SteelDaisies: Can't wait! Players Assemble!

BeesWithKnees: A thousand gold pieces says you're a chai girl.

SteelDaisies: Nope 😊 Strict vanilla soy right here.

BagelBot: Oh god, I think that's even worse...

Stephen turned away from his friends' optimism and stared at a poster above his bed. It was an life-size painting of a sorceress from his game. She was forming a fireball precariously close to her ample (and, frankly, sparsely protected) chest. Stephen couldn’t help but wish she’d throw it at him right now. His online friends were supposed to stay on-line. They were amazing and he loved playing with them, but the electronic veil that kept their interactions at a keystroke distance was precious to Stephen.

Stephen sighed; it was too late now. If he canceled it'd look bad, but if he tried to postpone it and come up with a better plan, they'd never let him live it down. He turned back around and regrefully chimed in to the runaway train:

CrayCray: I'll be there, but soy is banned. Real milk for real warriors!

SteelDaisies: Awww, no fair! Tell you what, you buy the cow-juice for me and I'll spit it out on you instead

CrayCray: Ack, my one weakness... Fine, drink your vanilla bean bean-juice with bean-milk

Stephen stepped away from the computer. It was time for snacks and avoiding conversation. That meant chips and cola with a healthy helping of the nature channel. There were few things better for Stephen's mental health than eating processed foods, in air-conditioning, while he watched a grizzly bear fish with its paws in 4K resolution.

It was a Tuesday evening, which meant Stephen had three more hours to himself. His parents usually brought back take-out, since neither could cook anything more complex than burnt grilled cheese. Today was Thai-Tuesday.

This was nothing new to Stephen, he'd grown accustomed to his parents' regular absence. They were researchers at the top of their field and obsessed with work, but sice they were gushing parents when they were home. So Stephen learned to appreciate his semi-independent lifestyle. A lifestyle that consisted of video games until his fingers hurt and sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a documentary, eating a chip every time the narrator said the words nature, beautiful, and lovely.

The chips were long-gone when the narrator described certain slug-like fish. It spent its day swallowing large amounts of sand and water just to vomit it up to build a nest for its eggs. Stephen giggled, deciding he'd have to look it up again later. BeesWithKnees would get a kick out of the clip, she loved weird facts like this.

Stephen reached up and pulled at his hair, suddenly nervous. What would his friends think of him? Stephen was sure he wasn't completely gross, but he never cared much for maintaining an appearance. His body was naturally thin, not that he ate much anyway, and his hair kept up with some hair paste. He dressed okay, too, since his parents made a reasonable amount of money. What Stephen knew he lacked was charisma, a nack for talking to people, and ambition. He admired the heros in his games. They came from all walks of life, but they all learned to grow into themselves.

A spit of resentment bubbled in Stephen’s gut. The point of having online friends was to have people you shared interests with. There were no preconceived notions, no reputations, and no judgments. Meeting in real life seemed like it was an excuse to see if the people you’d spent three years with online measured up. Stephen wished he could come up with a reason not to show up, for something to happen before the weekend.