Side story

My name is Philip Jones; I live on planet Laers, a small, around half the size of the earth, earthlike planet that was colonized by my parent’s generation. The population of this backwater paradise is still only less than five thousand, while the estimated population it is capable of supporting is closer to 20 billion with today’s technology. Today I am waiting for a games server to come online, a game called Life, I was ecstatic when I heard that was going to one of only one thousand people in the galaxy, not that humans have expanded to any other galaxy, yet, to get into the beta test for this game. This game is supposed to be the greatest fantasy game of the next generation, with only one server spanning the entire galaxy. The world, of which there is only one, has to be at least the size of a mid-sized black hole to be able to accommodate all the players based on the hype that the game is already receiving.

And not just that but 4 of my closest friends also got a copy. I haven’t met them in real life yet, only really in games, which is pretty normal in today’s galaxy. Space flight isn’t really expensive but it still takes a while.

I climb into the capsule that was already shipped to my home and lay down waiting to be linked to the net. When I finally get in notice two things, the grayed out cover art of Life with the word offline on the lower right hand corner and a text box alerting me of new messages in our group chat.

Arbiter: hey! Yips is finally online.

Revenant: Yips! Yips! Yips! We’ve been waiting for you man.

I chuckle softly as I recall my tag for almost every game we have played together. It was to result of a stupid bet, I knew I couldn’t last ten seconds against a dragon at level one in legendary swords online, but I had to try anyway.

Yips: hey guys, miss me?

Pbj: Why would I miss your human ass? Laovos are much better.

Arbiter: guilty as charged.

As it turns out I am the only true human in my group of friends, two are half humans, pbj and revenant, neither one told me what the other half is despite my asking over the years, one laovos, arbiter, who pbj has had a crush on for years, which supposedly evolved from humans a couple hundred thousand years back, they are on average about 3 feet tall with a thin build, and insanely intelligent. the last member of our group goes by titan, he is a Levi, basically a large muscular species, they look like big stupid brutes that would mug you in the streets, but they are actually more like gentle giants, about as intelligent as a human while being extremely docile until you piss them off, then don’t bother running, instead shoot yourself in the head, it would be less painful.

Titan: can you believe that we will be some of the first people to play GGG’s second masterpiece?

GGG, or Gods Gaming Group released a game called Death a while ago, it was based in a post apocalyptic world and it had a player base exceeding 100 billion, which was virtually unheard of at the time.

Yips: ikr, out of the how many trillions of people in the galaxy us 5 managed to all get access to the beta.

Arbiter: so we all agreed to become monsters and start on the alfalm continent right? It’s going to be a pain in the ass to find each other still though.

Pbj: yeah, I’m going to start off as a slime, I think it’ll be fun.

Titan: the servers are open.

titan has left

Yips: I’m going to go too

‘Well, here goes nothing. ‘

I step towards the previously grey cover art and touch it; a soft light envelops me, making me instinctualy close my eyes. When I open them I see a blue box floating in front of me.

welcome to this game we call life, you are going to have great fun here

End side story

i know i promised the background chapter for lucy, but i was having a bit of mental blockage with that one so here is this instead. for those of you wondering, yes the main world is a real world, not just some video game.