Alex was a man that came from a respectable family. Good money and above-average genes, as his father would have put it. A history of successful men and women in most things they did. Not enough to retain political or celebrity status, but enough to earn a wealthier than average lifestyle.

It's why Alex was able to afford the VR pod made specifically for Death Galaxy. Travelers Games faired no expense, intending to provide the most sophisticated graphics in recent history. A fact that Alex just confirmed.

Stepping out of the giant black egg that was the VR machine, it still was a stark change from the other market items. Everything else was just a helmet that induced controlled rem sleep. They were good, no questions about it if you bought the right model. Even then, there was still a noticeably clear disconnect whenever someone played. A detachment from your real body that your VR avatar always had. Traveler’s Capsule instead sported near indistinguishable senses from real life.

Of course, such quality would be out of the price range of most people.

His family lineage was the only reason he had been able to afford it in the first place. A fact that was lorded every day above Alex’s head. Not that there was anyone else around to reminded Alex of this fact. Other than himself.

Alex left his game room, a place entirely built for virtual entertainment, and headed for the bathroom. It was time for his daily medication. As much as he hated it, it was necessary for his survival. And as much as sweat relief death would bring him, it wouldn’t have been a painless exit. It would be much better to die in his sleep.

Reaching into the bathroom mirror, Alex pulled out a bottle of pills and a small syringe with four needles. The syringe was for his heart. The pills were for his brain. Unbuttoning his shirt, he aimed for the same scars that never healed all his life over his breast. A quick plunge, a sharp pain that Alex had gotten used to over the years, and the chest pain that was starting to develop disappeared. Turning on the faucet, he downed the required daily pill. He didn’t feel like he needed them, but that meant they were working.

Closing the mirror, he was presented with reflexing. The sad little man that always looked a jump away from death. A life of medication and depression would do that to you. Or this was always what Alex would have looked like in better circumstances. He couldn’t jump into other dimensions to check. The new humans had vetoed that technology long after they had arrived.

Maybe his roots would have been a dull blue instead of bright pink. God, he hated the color. No amount of shaving or hair die was going to get rid of it. It was the only piece of dysfunctional biology that worked in any capacity that could be called well.

That’s what Alex got for being born a mixed race. It wasn’t anything trivial like skin tone or cultural divide. No, his parents turned out to be a literal tridimensional union. Usually, there wasn’t anything wrong with new humans and old humans reproducing. As far as science could tell, there were more genetic similarities between the two than a human had with a banana.

Visually, the only real difference was the fact new humans had different hair and eye color. Instead of being limited to variants of red, brown, black, and blond hair, new humans sported every color of the rainbow except those four. Their eyes themselves sported variants of red, yellow, orange, and white.

You’d think hair color wouldn’t cause so much trouble, wouldn’t you? You’d be right. But like all things, there’s always that one-million-dollar lottery winner. Alex turned out to be the unluckiest guy on the planet. Because its malfunction was literally one in a billion.

Turns out, there was a rare occasion where there was just enough DNA diversity that human bodies were considered to be different species entirely. Essentially, instead of a human born with a percentile diversity of both races, he was treated like a half bread. Like how a tiger and lion would make a liger.

Unlike how it's commonly portrayed in fantasy, half breeds are full of biological disfunction. In Alex’s case, it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain and the mussels in his heart being self-destructive. The first leads to near-constant migraines at best, psychotic breaks at worse. His heart tended to cannibalize itself as his cells saw each other as invaders.

The pills provided a vital solution that controlled the biology of his brain and kept things stable. The syringe was just a quick patch of vat-grown cells that temporarily patched his heart and speed up his healing. Alex had to apply his medication daily to maintain a stable living. Unique medication meant specifically for him.

Regular life would be difficult but not impossible in this state. As long as he took care not to commit to a too physically demanding lifestyle, his weak heart wouldn’t rupture. If he kept taking his pills at a regular pace, he was a functioning member of society. Expensive but doable.

So why did he hate his life? People with much more crippling deficiency would be able to do more if they tried hard enough. The difference between them and Alex was rather simple. They wanted to make something of themselves. Alex just wanted to curl up and be forgotten by the world.

One of the side effects of crossbreeding was the fact new human hair color was dominant but quickly ‘died’ after enough time. This led to the vibrant hair color blending into a more standard old human hair color. Alex’s lineage was rather obvious as his old human hair was straight black like his mother’s.

He looked like a new human trying to masquerade as an old human that forgot to redye his roots. A controversial fashion choice in this day and age. A fact his so-called family never let him live him down. Apparently being born a mistake was as much your fault as it was your parent’s.

Alex got a call. Checking his wrist phone, he saw the one person he didn’t want to talk to the most in his life. His father.

The universe was laughing at him.