Stepping into the rippling door, there was something immediately amiss. It didn’t feel right, not at all, and I would know. I had used the portal hundreds of times, and they always felt the same.

Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say that it didn’t feel anything. You were just walking on a teleport point where your avatar is sent to a different point.

This time? I was assaulted by a wave of nausea and a general feeling of malaise. This was not normal. I easily endured it through years of suffering from medication though, but that still wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Not long after, sunlight finally reached my eyelids as I opened it to see the world of Adonis. The city of Blaine and its sprawling glory was just under us from a cliff. This was the spawn point for every new player in the game.

Something wasn’t right though.

We should have a heads-up-display. We do not have a heads-up-display. I think it important to repeat it one more time. We do not have a heads-up-display.

“Nis... is something wrong?” Immediately, I went to the side to see Nis equally bewildered. No, horrified was the more accurate term. Her expression was bleached over.

“I... was cut off from the system.” She started trying to open the console with her fingers darting around the air, but nothing came of it. “The moment we stepped into that portal, I lost connection to the servers.”

I started to open my own inventory, or any menu for that matter. I had no such luck.

“Alien tech?”

“Most likely, Master Chris.”

I calmed down for a moment and thought through this. It would be unbecoming of the one of the greatest minds of earth to be flustered over something menial.

“Could be a server issue. There were rare bugs in the system that cut off players from the UI when they connected under server stress.”

I spoke and looked at the city.

“Likely, but we’ve already patched the bug years ago.” I commented further and paced back and forth on the patch of grass on the cliff.

Each blade of grass was licking at my boots, and I felt the cool air breeze flow through, causing my hair to dance with the wind. Then, I felt the intense rays of the sun bleach my skin.

It hit me.

No way.

If this is caused by an alien tech just as we joked about earlier, then this is huge. A very huge problem.

I hurriedly looked to my side to find Nis also with a shocked expression. Most likely, she’d also realized something, and most likely, it was the same conjecture as mine.

“Tell me, Nis. This shouldn’t be possible, right? After all, we never implemented such graphical capabilities within the game.”

“... I can’t access my databanks, but I’m also quite aware of the limitations of our hard and software back then. Realism to this degree was just not possible.” She crouched down and felt the grass with her palm.

“The fact that we’re both experiencing the same thing...” I added further, licked a finger and brought up into the air.

“Most likely, we’ve been...” Our words interjected as we thought aloud.

“World-Chasm Phenomenon. Right into the bowels of it, even.” I finished out thoughts and just stood there, looking at the clouds pass us by.

World-Chasm phenomena was only something recently discovered by quantum physicists. I wasn’t too learned of the complicated nature of it, but it had something to do with worlds interconnecting at the height of subatomic activity after quantum testing.

It was a very rare phenomena to happen outside laboratories, if even at all.

Its discovery was caught on by the media after a researcher made a slip during an interview. Now, the world knew for sure that there wasn’t just our world, there were more behind the veil of quantum physics.

I sat on the ground with a thud, ran my fingers through my hair and slumped back. I could feel it, everything around me, all so realistic, all so stupidly vivid.

“Perhaps we discovered a condition for World-Chasm to happen? But to think it would happen in a digital space.” I started postulating. “Nis, jot this down.”

Wait, now that I think about it, weren’t we using a quantum computer as a server? Wait, dont’ tell me that stupid decision was the root cause of this? But even then, it hasn’t happened to anyone else. It must be something more recent.

“Nis, did they ever fiddle with the hardware after your upgrade?”

“Apart from my data banks? Nope. It was all software.”

I laughed nervously.

“This is unreal, Nis. This is too much for an old man.”

I laid there on the ground, unmoving. I let the world run me by as I let the situation settle in my head.

I jumped up and stretched my body, which felt suprisingly ‘real’. Maybe the avatar was turned from pixels to actual biological tissue, which would be amazing.

I looked to Nis, who was absentmindedly staring at the sky. She was no better, and everything came as a shock to her.

“Nis, with things as they are, do you feel... alive?”

She nodded silently and pressed her hand across her chest. She bit her lip and stared at me.

“What do I do? My chest feels like it’s beating. My skin feels hot, my mouth feels wet?”

There was utter confusion on her face. Not surprising since she was never ‘alive’ in the first place. I stood up and rustled her hair.

“It’s fine. Let’s take it one step at a time. Baby steps.”

Nis nodded her head and cast her gaze down. “Ok...”

“Wow, surprisingly docile now, aren’t you?”

I messed her hair up real good, just like how I did back in the old days with Mike. I always found it oddly relaxing, and it felt just the same as it did all those years ago.

“Enough with the moping. If this really is a dimension or world where my creation was made manifest into reality, then we’ll have to get our bearings.”

I started walking down the slope behind the cliff.

“You said you were accompanying me, yeah? Come on.” I gestured with my chin to get moving.

Nis nodded meekly, still slightly out of it.