In an office of a tall building Kvervesh was happily doing his job of assigning entertainment boosters around the universe or as the rest of the universe called them systems. They came in different sizes and shapes. They had different abilities and corresponding golden fingers. The only thing they had incommon was they all came from this place.

As usual he got a list of twenty names, addresses and ages and he quickly imputed twelve of them. As usual he let artificial intelligence choose the most appropriate form of the system. He ran into a bit of a snag as he imputed the thirteenth name.

Galaxy: 754583896

Star:348752251

Planet: 3

As he pressed apply he was shown a blue planet on the holographic screen.

Planet name : Earth

Population: 6,245,644,487

The number kept rising and falling in real time.

‘Looks like a nice planet. Not like this piece of artificial junk,’ he sighed in his mind.

Name: Zhang Wei

As he pressed apply a number jumped at him.

353,467

‘F#$k. F#$k. F#$k. I will be stuck here all day,’ he started cursing inwardly.

He suddenly remembered he still had the age of the candidate. The number was so big he forgot about it in shock.

Age: 22

The number changed to 972.

“Fuck me!”, he growled in his language as he manually started going over the candidates.

‘They should really make it possible to sort them by karmic score. Now I have to go over all of them to find this stupid bastard.’

As he was scrolling the list and finally reached the end he went back to the owner of the highest score and was just about to click apply a voice interrupted him.

“I heard what you said before. Are you in heat like me?”

As he turned around he could see a female of his species approach him and his tentacles raised themselves and hit the holographic screen. One of them clicked the scroll button just before another one clicked apply.

His mind was preoccupied with double the tentacle action of the most extreme tentacle hentais for a second before he realised what he had done.

He thought about it but he figured everything was probably normal and then with a lascivious attitude he responded: “You know me. I am always in heat.”

If he had an eyelid he would follow that with a wink probably.

“See you after work?”, he hastily asked.

“Sure.”, she replied before she returned to her post.

That was about as romantic as it got in their species.

Meanwhile…

Galaxy: 754583896

Star:348752251

Planet: 3

Zhan Wei aged 22 just returned from work and found a big package in front of his graffiti ridden door.

‘What the hell is this.I didn’t order anything and how the fuck was it not stolen.’

He unlocked the three locks on his door but not before checking if the leaf he stuck in a corner was still there. It was. He had an altercation in the place he lived before with a landlord who would randomly visit his place and borrow his stuff without asking and ever returning. So now he was always careful.

Although his boss sorted it out in the end with a beating of the landlord he left the place with a black eye after confronting the landlord about it. Having a special status as an illegal immigrant in the USA had its perks. Reporting the landlord would mean he would get deported which could complicate and shorten his already complicated life.

He put it away in his room anyway before he scavenged his fridge for food.

Taking out some toast bread and some bologna he made himself a sandwich. As he chewed on his tasteless sustenance to lessen his hunger he thought about how he found himself in this dinky apartment.

A year ago he was happily studying in a prestigious university in the USA before his parents, who were the reason he was there in the first place, decided to visit him. Their visit was tragic to say the least.

It was Christmas time in the year 2002 as his world as he knew it crashed and broke into fragments. His parents were a success story in China and seemingly had it all. Money, power and all the other stuff you can expect from self made multimillionaires that were about to become billionaires. As they finished a merger they hopped on a plane to the USA to see their only son they had not seen in more than a year.

After the September 11th 2001 attack in New York the flights in the USA have gone through a much more vigorous check and somehow Zhang Wei’s name found itself on the no fly list. He tried to purchase a ticket to home several times but was denied when he needed to enter his data.

He blamed his common name for it and was handling it with the consulate but the mills of bureaucracy were especially slow for some reason. He already had a similar problem in China due to his name and was falsely arrested, but his parents got him out in no time, so he was kind of used to it and didn’t think much of it.

Christmas was not celebrated so much in China but they knew in the USA it was a big deal and they wanted their son to know they loved him.

As they wanted to surprise him they rented a cab from the airport which unfortunately was run over by an eighteen wheeler at a crossroad.

His father died three days after the accident and his mother followed two days after.

Shit happens!!!

That is what Zhang Wei thought as he was devastated and had no one to blame. The driver of the eighteen wheeler was not found and the truck reported stolen. The cab driver was dead on impact.

Then some more shit happened.

His father and mother were rich but Zhang Wei had no direct access to the money. Zhang Wei’s uncle kept insisting the money of his parents was untouchable and that he had no way to send the amount needed to the USA. So when the US hospital bills kept coming he spent all his savings and even borrowed from a loan shark to send their caskets to the homeland to be buried.

The loan shark made him leave his passport as collateral. Unfortunately after he did that he didn’t even have enough money to buy himself an airplane ticket and he also needed a new passport.

Normally this would not be a problem since he was the only direct heir and he figured he would get help from his relatives like they promised after he called them with the tragic news.

Things soon changed. His bank account and his credit cards were frozen and his relatives were suddenly unavailable.

First it was his uncle and aunt who didn’t pick up his phone call when he tried to find out if the caskets arrived at their hometown. Next time he called them all he got was a busy signal. The same thing happened with his cousins. He got a burner phone and called and it rang but they didn’t pick up since they could see an US prefix on the number calling them.

Things were highly suspicious and he finally got his answer when he called his childhood friends who were surprised he was still alive.

His uncle had declared him dead in the same accident and buried him along with his parents to steal his inheritance as the next in line. That was the conclusion to which he arrived after two weeks. His only hope for them was that they were just using the accident as a spark that set them into action and that they were not the cause of it. He swore to himself that if he ever found out they had anything to do with it he would make them regret ever being born.

First he had to get back home but somehow they even managed to buy off the Chinese embassy and five consulates in the USA and they would not grant him a meeting at any that he tried.

The loan shark was surprisingly the only one who helped him during his predicament. He gave him a job and a place to live. He only passingly mentioned breaking his legs if he didn’t work off his loan every now and then.

He had to quit his school and pay off the loan shark before he could even think about getting back what rightfully belonged to him. His status changed from a student to an undocumented immigrant which didn’t help either. He had to work seven days a week for twelve hours just to make ends meet since workers without a work visa were paid way less than legal citizens.

His worldly possessions were his phone and a bunch of cheap clothes. Everything else he sold off to pay the loan shark or the hospital.

As he munched on the last part of the sandwich he looked at the box.

“I wonder if I can even connect it since I don’t have internet by either cable or WiFi,” he mumbled as he looked at something he had only ever heard of before. A stand alone virtual reality device in the year 2002 was a lot more of a laboratory device than consumer equipment. The technology was not quite there as the CPU and GPU power required to power it were not found in the form factor that allowed it to be in a helmet.

Finally curiosity got the better of him and he opened the box. Looking at the manual. He tossed it away before opening the rest of the protective covers. Inside it was an oversized bicycle helmet that made him look like he was a mushroom man as he put it on.

The on button was clearly visible and he pressed it.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a sense of weightlessness and from the initial darkness he found himself looking at the stars and he felt like falling from a great height.

He chose HUGE naturally…

He thought about it and tried to choose all three and it worked.

Finally the view of stars changed as the blackness rescinded and a blue sky appeared. Soon he fell through a cloud and started to feel the air resistance. He managed to turn around only to see the ground of a huge planet quickly closing in towards him.

He remembered a line from a famous book.

“Maybe it’s friendly.”

The ground was closing fast and he could see a sea of green littered with yellow rivers and a big yellow river in between.

“Fuuuuuuuuu…. You! Log out!!!” were his last words before he suddenly decelerated 50 m off the ground and came to halt 10 cm above it. Then suddenly he dropped on his nose.

Spitting out some grass he accidentally bit on, he stood up. Falling from 10 centimeters he was not hurt at all but he was annoyed.

Looking around all he saw was an endless plain of grass except there was a dust storm in one direction. There was nothing remotely interesting for him here except for the feeling of realism. He could smell the grass and feel the wind. He could feel his body and the effect gravity had on it, but that was it. It was basically no different than standing in the middle of the prairie on Earth.

“Logout.”

Nothing happened.

“Quit.”

Nothing happened.

“Exit game.”

Nothing happened.

“Menu!”

Nothing happened.

“F#$# YOU. I don’t have time for this.” he yelled at the sky.

“Forget it. You are stuck here and I am stuck here with you until you die.” Suddenly a voice interrupted his banter.