My name was Lain Erickson and I was never meant to be anything but an Olympic gold medalist wrestler.

I was certifiably bred for it with a pedigree to match. From the time I knew what a belly was mine was scraping blue mats. It was in my face when I woke up, chased me through the mud and snow at 0500, screamed at me from a fuckin’ Pennywise lunch box with nothing inside but a note that said “MAKE WEIGHT PUSSY!”. Yeah me and wrestling were close, but we weren’t fucking friends.

My dad (rest in peace Admiral Dickface) was a retired navy brass and former Olympian himself, guess he thought Dale and I were both just little clones built to carry on his vision. I guess maybe we were, but like most clones we couldn’t hit shit we aimed for. Dale bit the dust early and I red shirted the rest of my adult life until there I was...

“Happy birthday you fucking loser.” I grumbled to myself. My eyes lingered lazily on the bottom right of my computer monitor where the trusty clock read 12:03 AM on 11/11/2029. It also informed me the temperature was a lovely sixty one degrees and mostly cloudy outside, whoopty fuckin’ do. “Thirty nine years old sharing a shitty dump in Tucson with three college kids half my age. We really made it bro!” I added, talking to a canning jar half filled with dark grey ashes sitting a few feet away on a big blue plastic storage tub. My brother’s ashes shared the space with a tower of empty pizza boxes and green soda cans, you know the ones. The room was small and dark, lit by a single lamp with no shade. The bare LED bulb gave off a cold bluish light that only exaggerated the sad state of the place.

My pathetic little monologue was interrupted by a hot burp that reeked of cheap pepperoni pizza which I had eaten a full large one of just an hour ago. I wore a sweat and pizza sauce stained white XXL t-shirt which would never be washed, and blue mesh gym shorts that smelled like a war crime. Thanks to a career shattering back injury in 2011 I was on enough disability to barely pay for rent, games and junk food. Food and self pity were my drugs of choice in the real world, luckily I didn’t spend much time there.

“Hope I never come back.” I wished with all my heart as I always did when I reached for the headset that would, as if by magic let me ditch this rotten shit-hole.

Exiled Gods was a next gen VR-MMORPG that had blown up in popularity in the last two years with more than fifty million registered users worldwide. It boasted the most complicated skill system ever conceived with an AI that generated new skills based on player actions in real time, meaning that each and every character was as unique as the person playing them.

The game world was massive, and beyond realistic. Current virtual reality tech used a headband that emitted a specific frequency that effectively hypnotized the wearer into a guided and lucid dream state. It mimicked actual sleep in such a way that “going to bed” now meant going to EG for many people. A person could get away without actually sleeping if they played enough of the game. The actual health effects weren’t yet fully known but it was a controversial topic with many health professionals claiming this or that. I could care less either way. Aside from meals and bathroom breaks (sometimes clean up breaks if I’m being honest) I never left the game. I had the longest time played of anyone in the world. By now it was closing in on fifteen thousand hours.

As the headband powered on, my monitor darkened and I caught my reflection in it for just long enough take me in. I had gotten so damn ugly. My face was puffy like I had mumps and my greasy skin was pale with red splotches. The salt and pepper beard I grew out to hide my extra chin was scraggly with crumbs all over it. I had serious cauliflower ear on both sides from putting my time in on every mat in the Midwest. What was left of my dark hair was greasy, flat, and pathetic as the rest of my posture.

The saddest thing was my expression. I’ve seen alot of dead shit in my time, and I made every last one of those bloated corpses look fresh as fuckin’ Bambi. I was a fat, nihilistic loser through and through. Get the picture yet?

My eyes closed and my tired shitty heart finally settled into the forced rhythm of the Exiled Gods software.

Logging in had the sensation of falling. I mean asshole between your ears, here comes the splat FALLING. I hated it, but the view on the other side made up for it with enough change to buy Bezos a boat. Have you ever woken up on vacation after getting the exact amount of sleep you wanted? In silk sheets that make your home sheets feel like sandpaper smeared with diarrhea? In a Greek style mansion on your own island that you were given for kicking the shit out of a battleship sized fire monster? Next to the literal TEN naked goddess that gave it to you?

It’s cute how I used to think Vicodin was addictive.