1 Starting over from scratch

Josh stared at the message presented at him on the log in screen of the Other World online. The other world online was a massive multi-player virtual reality game. It was the first, and only of its kind.

The game did not come come with virtual reality goggles, a game pod, or anything like that. The developers of the game had worked with the United Nations and created a way to synergize the other world with the AI chips that were implanted in peoples heads.

These AI chips had taken years to perfect, and truthfully in the future they would be even more advanced than they are now. The Chips acted as an all around health monitor. They could tell your blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar, rate of breathing and more. Almost anything that could be tracked by medical science was tracked by the chip.

The was not all, the chips also acted as personal assistants to their owners, and had largely replaced the need for smart phones or computers; there was little need to scare at a screen when the information could be sent directly to your brain.

The chips were not well recieved at first. Citizens around the world claimed that the government was using the chips to spy on the populus, and they were not wrong. The chips provided constant location on a person, which was connected to a mainframe somewhere. The chips were also able to record the events the host experienced, allowing them to revisit the event as often as they liked.

The government could gain access to these files, but only if a warrant was issued. These warrants were far harder to get than a regular warrant, and required 3 different judges to sign off on it.

Needless to say in the beginning the chips were not well recieved. But as time went on, and technology advanced it became harder and harder to live without one. Soon bank accounts were linked to the chips, as well as all of a person's important documents.

Because of the increased confidentiality that the chips had access to the security of the chips had been constantly increased. They had eventually reached the point that they were considered the safest thing on earth, even an expert amongst experts could only dream of altering the chips in even the slightest of ways.

This is why the message Josh saw as he accessed the other world online was so strange.

<Character Data Corrupted, Character 'Erkai' unusable.>

Below the bold red letters was smaller letters, written in a business like black font.

<Due to unforseen circumstances on our part, your character data has become corrupted and is no longer usable. To rectify this issue we have compensated you with a new character, as well as a few perks to compensate the level of your loss. As always thank you for player The Other World Online, and have a great day.>

Just as he finished reading he recieved a call from his best friend Tyler. He looked at the notification for a moment before answering the call.

[What the fuck man? I recieved a notification that my character had been corrupted and is unusable.]

[Me too Tyler, at least they are compensating us with allowing us to create a new character, and they even seem to be giving us a few perks.]

[Do you think its connected to that quest from last night? The game glitched and caused us to all log out.]

I nodded, but soon realized he could not see that.

[It must be, have you contacted the others? Christina, Skye, and John?]

[John sent me a text saying the same thing earlier, but he must have already created his character and is playing, he's not responding. As for Christina she's probably still asleep. You should call Skye though, she is your girlfriend after all.]

[Alright man I will do that. Add me in game when you get in, I will use the same name.]

He hung up afterwards and called Skye. She answered after the second ring. Unlike the voice call he used with Tyler, this call was a video call.

However I wasn't prepared for the image that I saw. What assaulted my eyes was an airial view of my beautiful girlfriend. She was on her knees, her mouth open with her tongue out as white substance splashed across her face.

Anger filled me as I connected the dots. This cheating bitch! It's no wonder she had little time to hang out with me lately.

[What the fuck John? Are you recording this? What if Josh sees it?]

A heard a familiar laughter in the background, a laughter that was filled with mocking.

[Oh its far to late for that doll]

The phone flipped through the air, and fumbled for a moment. The image eventually landed on John standing while zipping up his pants. A smirk appeared on his face as he waved at the camera. The image went black after that.

I sighed, if it hadn't been for Skye's obsession with out dated technology I probably would never have found out about her little rendezvous. The anger that welled up inside my slowly shifted to a feeling that was far more painful.

How dare she do this to me? The quest we were on was because of her anyways! Some secret quest she claimed to have found in an abandoned temple.

Because of her I had lost everything! The character I had spent years on! The character that I used to earn money. I lost my lively hood, my woman, and my dignity to this girl. I had an urge to break something, or kill something.

I once again looked at the login screen, I would truly be starting over from scratch.