Chapter One

November 27, 2076 - 4 days before release

Chris woke up in utter darkness with a splitting headache.

“What happened last night?” He muttered into the nothingness, reaching a hand out to the dark for the lamp switch next to his bed. He switched on the light and winced against the sudden brightness illuminating the mess around his bed. He glanced around his tiny quarter-split micro-apartment and his mouth tightened into a line. “Oh, right.” Chris groggily recalled the night before as he sat up and pulled off the clothes he had fallen asleep in.

He had been up all night playing the popular fantasy MMORPG Vorpal Blades and had finally passed out, fully dressed, just before dawn. Chris glanced at the time on his Core before slipping it off and heading into the bathroom shower attached to his kitchen area. He sighed and stepped into the shower. It was late, and he’d slept almost the entire day away, although this wasn’t especially unusual for him. Chris spent a lot of time playing Vorpal Blades, farming the most difficult dungeons for loot that he could then sell on RogueNet, the legal MMO item exchange website. He didn’t make a lot of money but he’d been doing it for several years now and since he was pretty good at it, it was enough to pay his bills.

The lights flickered to life as Chris moved from the shower to his bed a few feet away, toweling himself off. The apartment was very small, essentially a single room with a bathroom duct-taped to one side. Housing throughout the city was becoming more and more scarce, and home owners had started to take advantage of this by putting up extra walls to build quarter-splits. Splitting a single moderately sized apartment up into four micro-apartments. The bed, kitchenette, and a living room sofa all took up the same single space.

Chris pulled on some clean clothes and waved his hand over his old and battered personal pedestal. A semi-transparent digital keyboard flickered into life and a digital screen hovered above it. Chris started tapping away at the keyboard, flipping back and forth between several windows. Many of them were filled with columns of item names and prices - loot from Vorpal Blades that Chris was selling on RogueNet. Though even more of the rows were simple listings for large amounts of gold.

Chris transferred the money that he’d earned from the website into his bank account and his mouth tightened as he checked his total balance. “Barely enough to pay for the electrical this month,” he said finally, closing out most of the open windows on the screen and leaning back in his chair. “But what else is new.”

A knock at the door interrupted Chris’s moment of self-reflection.

“Hello?” He called out while moving towards the door.

A female voice called out through the door. “Chris! Hey, it’s me!”

Chris pulled the door open and was immediately swept up in a hug. “Oh!” He smiled and gently unwrapped his sister’s arms from his neck. “It’s nice to see you too.”

Lily laughed and walked past her brother into the kitchen area. “I can’t stay long, I have to go meet some friends.” She pulled open a cupboard and peered inside, then pulled out a box of cereal. “I actually have a favor to ask though.” She popped open the top of the cereal and shoved a handful of the crunchy food into her mouth.

“Money?” Chris tried not to let the disappointment hang on his face. He was starting to get used to these visits, and Lily barely even made small-talk anymore before asking for cash. “Lily you know I barely have enough to pay rent these days.”

“Really? Well I don’t need much, just a few thousand. I kinda borrowed some money from a guy and it’s not really that big of a deal, but I know he owes another guy and if my marker goes up the chain it might get," she dropped her gaze to the floor. "Well, maybe kinda ugly.”

“Is this…” Chris pulled the cereal box from Lily’s hands and noticed the way she immediately grabbed her wrist, rubbing the tendons lightly. “Lily is this for Sarcoline? I thought you were done with that stuff. Is that why you’re so cool right now? Are you high?”

“What, no! I’m totally done with that. No, I just made a bad bet. I thought it was a sure thing but it kinda went sideways. I’m not taking anything, I’m totally clean.”

“I suppose this guy won’t take credits?”

“Yeah, only cash. You know how these people are.”

“I don’t really have cash around. Especially not that much. If you can wait a few days that new game I told you about, Awaken Online, is coming out. The first few days of a new game are always the best for me to sell stuff. The other people who are just starting out are always willing to pay for a little boost to get ahead.”

“I still can’t believe you make money doing this. It’s kinda ridiculous that you can play video games for a living.”

“I mean, it’s not really much of a living,” he laughed and gestured around himself at the tiny, dingy apartment.”

Lily smiled softly. “It’s better than living on the streets,” she replied under her breath, then looked up and put on a bigger smile, “Hey, this place isn’t so bad!”

“Oh, I want to show you something before you go.” Chris sat down on the floor and pulled forth a small grey box which was attached to his old pedestal by a handful of wires running into the base. “Speaking of bets, I won this last week. It doesn’t look like much, and I never actually expected it to work, but this little guy should be pulling in around a grand every month for us.”

“Really?” Lily’s eyes lit up. “Is this another one of your gaming things?”

“Sort of. It’s running a modified version of the Vorpal Blades game client, with a bunch of scripts and programs running so it automatically farms the in-game gold and then sends it to a different character that I control. Then I sell the gold on RogueNet.”

“It’s that legal? I mean I know you’re allowed to sell gold and items on that site, but I thought running those automatic systems was outlawed.”

“No, it was. This thing is totally illegal, but it’s such old tech that it’s much harder to trace on the modern network. I honestly don't even know how this machine is still running. And it’s got all sorts of.. I don’t know. Sub-routines I guess? There’s a bunch of software to make it undetectable. You know I’m not an engineer, I don’t know anything about how these things work, but it’s definitely working. I’ve had it running for a few days now and it’s solid. It’s not very much, but it’s making money.”

“Chris, that’s awesome!”

“Yeah, so between this and whatever I can get in the first week of Awaken Online, I think we should be able to cover this debt that you owe.”

“Yeah. About that. I better get going, I'm gonna be late.” She scratched absently at her wrist and headed toward the door.

“Lily, wait.” Chris grabbed a jar from the kitchen and pulled out a handful of bills. “I don’t keep very much cash around, but here.”

“Chris, it's..." Lily frowned for a moment and hestitated, before finally taking the money from his hand. "Thanks. I really appreciate everything you do for me.” Lily forced a smiled and closed the door behind her.