The Virus

The start of an uprising

And so it happened. Our planet was attacked, not by the military, or by another nation, but rather a virus that spread like wildfire, making some people sick, and for the most part creating a pandemic worldwide. We should've seen the warning signs then, this would the first steps towards the apocalypse.

We were already living in the future without even knowing it. The things we thought were impossible were possible, limits were broken- nothing seemed too far out of reach.

"Come on, move along" the line was long, incredibly long in fact. Guards were stationed at every angle just to keep the people in line. "HEY! STOP HIM!" someone further back in the line freaked out, and were handled by the security. "This happens more and more often. Hope I never get it..." me and my friend Kai were standing in line to get checked for the virus before going to work. The virus changed our entire lives, and not for the better. Class differences had never been more apparent, the rich stay rich, and the poor get poorer. "So where are you stationed today then Zavis?", "Floor 15. Can't say I'm looking forward to it much", "FLOOR 15? How come you get stationed so far up and I get one of the lower floors?" Kai was fidgeting, and nervous. "Because you have more experience than most, obviously they could use that in the lower tunnels". Finally, after a long wait time, it was our turn, we had to present or hands so that the guards could take tests, first, there was or blood value, then or temperature followed by a quick examination of our spit. "Alright have fun then Kai" "Yeah haha funny, see you later!".

The elevator was crammed with a bunch of other people, I hopped off at floor 15. Me and Kai worked as miners, a new mineral was found, a mineral that works to create a bunch of new tech. Upper floors have minimal of ores, and deeper floors have more and more, most of the people who go to the deepest floors are chimeras, as they are created with more useful skills. Kai was sent to the lower floors as he had experienced more work than people most and helped learn new recruits on how the mines worked. This job wasn't exactly something one got rich of, nevertheless, it brought food on my table. The was long and brutal, lunch wasn't exactly fun and relaxing as one had to eat down in the mines amongst the rubble. I have always found tech to be something interesting. I had a dream as a kid that I would help create technology that would help humanity, I lost my parents pretty early on due to the virus, and when I came of age I had no other choice than to work for the mines. The orphan house I came from had a deal with the mining company where the children that don't find homes, get sent to the mines when they get old enough. So I've never really had education or childhood, It doesn't really bother me that much as most kids or young adults these days haven't either. Our world went from a peaceful world full of green to a jungle of concrete and isolation.

"Fun day in the mines right?" I asked Kai when he came out of the elevator. "Fucking brilliant, a chimera went berserk an attacked one of the miners again, I swear Zavis, one day-" Kai stopped for a second, "Whatever- let's go stamp out". We had gotten out of the gates and through the security, "See you later then?" Kai asked me, "Yeah of course!". The virus caused most of the old world to disappear, most notably was the lack of human contact. Other than my daily contact with my job, I had no other contact with anyone else. The social interactions happened over the 'Space'. Now the Space is a virtual world where most people today interact and spend their time, just like everyone else, my time was spent in the 'Space'. The Space consisted of multiple worlds, your own homeworld that was made from your IRL living space, and then many other meeting spaces. The Space worked as following: you registered yourself as a user, bought a headset and logged in. Previous versions of the headset only allowed you to move around in the space trough IRL, but the newer ones put your body into some sort of trance and allowed you to feel the Space and move around freely without having to move your own IRL body.

IRL: another name for real life, or In Real Life.

"Logging in..." the headset was booting up, and logging me into my home space. My home space was the same size as my IRL space. Not big, and with every accommodation except the bathroom into one room. There were a few changes to my home space compared to my IRL space, I had more stuff lined around my room, most of them achievements I was proud of from the Space. There was no bed, instead there were brighter windows, my view in the Space was of a deep dark forest. I could see the trees swing around in the artificial wind. I felt more relaxed in the space then I could ever feel in my IRL space. A message popped up in front of me, "You ready to go kill some orcs?" the message was from Kai. And so we dove into the most famous and popular RPG game Zendaria. We spent maybe a few hours before we decided to go chill in a cafè before logging out.

"Damn! Got a ton of items from today's game, talk about lucky haha. You get anything good from today's raid?" I looked over my inventory- nothing special it seemed, except for one item, it had a class rating of S- Legendary. "Actually, looks like I've gotten a legendary item. It's a two-handed sword named Ferandeia. It's a time-critical sword, meaning after every 10 seconds the damage increases. I doesn't tell me by how much" Kai looked at me with a dead face, then he got super excited. "What the FUCK. You're so freaking lucky man" "There is something more written but I can't make it out", "Whatever, equip it so I can have a look!". It was relatively large, bigger than any other sword I had equipped previously. It was made from a dark material, it oozed with dark effects. "THAT AWESOME!" it really was awesome. "Well I'm heading out now, gotta get some food and then head to bed" "Yeah same here, see you at work tomorrow" Kai vanished into the air as sparks of glitter flowed through the air at the spot he just stood. Before I managed to log out someone approached me, a man, and by the looks of it, he seemed like a really high-level player. "Hi, I couldn't help but overhear you managed to get a legendary item?" The guy's avatar was of the elf class, dressed in all white, presumably rare armor. "You see if the item was of a high rarity I might just trade it with you for some large IRL cash? That is if it's something good" I was unsure of how to react, the guy seemed somewhat off, and dangerous. "You must have heard wrong then, sorry but I need to go" "Ahh well before you go, well my username is Ailuin if you ever wanna get in touch".

I made myself some quick micro food, and went to bed awaiting a new day in the mines.