AlterWorld

I winced. In this electronically-controlled world, privacy was quickly becoming obsolete.

"So I know all about your situation. My mom died of cancer three years ago, too," she faltered and sniffled. I could see her wiping the corner of her eye with a Kleenex trying not to smear her mascara. "This was what influenced my decision to work for Chronos. But there’s something I want you to know… Max," her voice grew stronger. "Cryonics isn’t the only solution. There’s another option, too."

I pricked up my ears. "Which is?"

"Have you ever tried playing computer games? Those online multiplayer ones?"

I winced again. "I used to. A lot. Really a lot."

"Are you a professional gamer, then? You know all about these things, do you?"

"No, I don’t," I crumpled the paper napkin and shoved it into an unfinished soft drink. "You need to earn serious money to be called a pro. You must use your skill to help push the product, or at least to farm elite items to sell, or rush newbies. I was a regular hardcore shithead, excuse my French. Spent twelve hours a day playing. I’ve pissed away my friends, my girl and my studies. Only when my Dad died in a car accident and my Mom was left on my hands handicapped for life, only then did I manage to pull myself away from the monitor. I freaked out and formatted the disks. Since then I don’t even read gaming news for fear of a relapse."

Olga sniffled again. I made a mental note not to go ballistic every five seconds. I was getting too easy to wind up. My nerves were like live wires.

"I’m sorry, Olga. I’m just tired. And it still hurts me to talk about it. So what’s that option you mentioned? What’s that got to do with gaming?"

"Have you ever heard anything about going perma mode? You haven’t. That’s fu

"Just spit it out," I butted in. "I don’t give a damn about your sensitive shit. What’s this perma stuff you’re on about?"

"Please understand, I’m not an expert. I don’t think I can explain it correctly. Look it up. It’s all over the Internet."

"I will. Thanks for the tip. I owe you one. Do you like champagne?"

"I prefer flowers."

"Agreed. Flowers and champagne," I couldn't help smiling.

I thanked her some more and mumbled a hasty goodbye. Then I jumped into my trusty Korean tin can and headed back home, the new hope forcing my foot down. In less than an hour, I was sitting in front of my computer screen taking in search results.

The Internet community was in a frenzy. Apparently, about two years ago, gaming blogs, portals and clan forums had been flooded with the first scary reports as more and more people had become stuck in a game for good. Nothing could sever the person’s co

No one was sure of the existence of those unlucky enough to get perma stuck (or go perma mode, or get digitized, as some had put it) within a basic game of chess or Tetris. Nor would you envy those whose mind was locked inside various tanks, fighter planes and other combat simulators. No matter how much you loved your fighting gear, getting burned alive dozens of times a day scorched inside a tank's red-hot hull had become many a gamer’s personal hell—literally.

Luckier were those perma-stuck inside full-feature worlds of multiplayer online games. Billions of square miles of their premises offered a well-developed social structure and a life virtually indistinguishable from reality. Apparently, quite a few victims were happy enough to escape there. No need to work or study, no worries about tomorrow, no staring into the mirror contemplating your flabby body and spotty (or, alternatively, wrinkled) face. Within FIVR, you were tough and strong. You were your own master. Certain population categories had come to appreciate a virtual life over their current existence.

The handicapped and terminally ill would attempt to go perma mode in the hope of obtaining new healthy bodies for themselves, however virtual. Some of the more computer-literate senior citizens took their places inside FIVR capsules looking forward to immortality, especially desirable when life is already slipping through your fingers. They were joined by those on death row. Star-crossed lovers, too, instead of hurling themselves from a cliff in one final embrace, chose a suitable world to get stuck in. Tolkien’s fans and historical reenactors with their dreams of being reborn as Elves, dwarfs and mages entered capsules in an ecstasy of anticipation. The statistics pointed at a growing suicide epidemic raging among the unlucky seventeen percent immune to the perma mode effect. They craved being digitized. The timing was fatally right.

Governments sounded the first alarms. New laws restricted the duration of full-immersion capsule time. The state monitored every game server containing even a single perma player. Official statements promised that such servers would never be disco

No idea how I’d managed to miss all that hoo-hah. My fingers trembled as I kept digging deeper and deeper into the Internet. Cigarette butts floated in empty coffee cups after I’d rummaged the cupboards for a long-forsaken pack of Camel.

I met the morning by the open kitchen window, drawing on the last cigarette. My eyes watered. The coffee I’d drunk was now churning in my stomach. But everything inside me cheered at the news. This was it. This didn’t involve paying a king’s ransom for being deep-frozen like a drumstick. This was an honest-to-God hole to escape into giving the Grim Reaper the finger.

I still had a lot to do. There were technicalities to consider: which capsule would allow me to bypass the preinstalled timer restricting immersion type and duration? Numerous freshly-baked perma forum gurus recommended aiming for a week or two of full immersion, but how was I supposed to last all that time without food, water and medication? Lots of people had successfully answered those questions for themselves: all I had to do was dig for more info and process it wisely choosing the solutions that suited my particular situation. A dozen manuals and video guides were already downloading. The links to several dodgy sites that sold FIVR jailbreak chips were already sitting in my Favorites. Open browser tabs glinted with scary-looking pictures of multi-stage IV drips and saline canisters. Things had begun to cook. The technicalities proved doable, after all.

I still had to choose the world to go to. I had to decide who to play and how to do it. I had tons of sites and forums to peruse. If you set aside two weeks for the attempt itself, it left me with five to seven days to do the research. Way not enough. It was hit or miss. Time to bet on zero!

* * *

From Wikipedia:

AlterWorld is an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) first released in May 203X.

Number of players: 48,000,000, with an increase of 1,400,000 new players each month.

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