Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Login now or else

“Hey Chad, another gamer disappeared yesterday, did you hear?” Fred asked as he stopped me on the sidewalk on my way home from the local gaming store.

“Shit, dude, you scared me.  Walking up on someone like that can get you knocked on your ass!” 

“Sorry man, I thought you heard me coming from behind you.  My bad!”

Fred was 23 years old, which was three years younger than me.  He was a scrawny Asian fellow with long, stringy black hair.  It didn’t go to his shoulders, but it draped halfway down his cheek.  He kept it rather unkempt.  His hair didn’t look like he intended it to look.  Fred and I were huge anime fans, and he was clearly going for the hair-type of the cliche anime guy protagonist.  It differed greatly from my style, which was a simple buzz-cut.  I was lazy and didn’t want to spend time on fixing it every day.  He wore a Hatsune Miku t-shirt and ripped jeans with Vans shoes.  My hair didn’t look like his, of course, but I enjoyed wearing the equally geeky anime art shirts like he did.  I had a Dragon Ball Z shirt on myself with an enormous picture of Lord Beerus eating a giant chocolate sundae. I couldn’t pull off the ripped jeans look, so I just had my usual khaki cargo shorts on that I wore entirely too much, no matter what the temperature was outside.  I had some very unattractive orange Crocs shoes, but I loved them.  Gone were the days of wearing socks and tying shoelaces.  Yes, I was lazy, and I was perfectly fine with that.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “You were saying?”

“Right, I read about it on the FFO subreddit about an hour ago.  A gamer from Florida disappeared while playing the game… supposedly. She was–”

I cut him off immediately. “Gamer girl?  Nice.”

FFO stood for Fantasy Frontier Online.  It was a MMORPG that we had become obsessed with since we were laid off from our phone technical support jobs because of the modelovirus pandemic that took over the damn planet.  It forced me to move into my parent’s basement and turned me into a freaking NEET through and through.  The job market was in gridlock from the modelovirus, and I couldn’t find work anywhere.  So my life sucked, and I dove headfirst into the MMORPG, FFO.  It turns out the make-believe world that I lived in 16 hours a day beat the hell out of my real life.  My parents were so proud of what I had become. Snort.

“Yes, she was a girl.  Geez.  Anyway–”

“How old?” I asked with a brow raised and a shit-eating grin on my face. I knew I was driving Fred up the wall with the interruptions.  I loved busting his balls and seeing his frustrated reactions.

“She was in her teens, I think.  Goddammit, you keep breaking my concentration.  Forget about the girl!” Fred’s brow furrowed and he grit his teeth.

“I’m just fucking with you, man. Go on.”

Fred sighed and continued. “She was in her room playing the game, which wasn’t out of the ordinary.  Her parents didn’t check on her until supper was on the table.  They called for her, but she didn’t come.  Eventually, the mom went up to her room, and she was gone.  She saw the girl’s computer chair knocked over and her iPhone was on the floor.  The game was still going on her PC.”

“Couldn’t she have just crawled out the window and run away or something?”

“From what I read, the room was on the second floor with no way to get down without jumping or a ladder.  Dude, that brings the total number of missing FFO gamers worldwide to 187 total. The same shit happens every time. A person is simply playing the game and poof, they’re gone. The game stays on and their phones are usually on the floor.”

“I dunno, man, how the hell can you disappear while playing a game.  Hell, how can someone just disappear, period?”

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“Chad, it’s scary.  I’m thinking about quitting the game.”

“Quitting?  Fuck that.  You’re going to just throw away your 5,000 hours of progression because of some kind of conspiracy theory?  Have you lost your mind?”

“Dude, I don’t wanna get vaporized or kidnapped or whatever.”

“I think it’s all bullshit. Do you think anyone on Earth would want to kidnap me or you?  Especially you,” I smirked as I punched Fred in his upper arm.

“Touche,” Fred snorted, “I bet the game developer shuts the game down before long if these disappearances continue.”

I laughed as I shook my head.  “FFO makes billions and billions of dollars.  You really think they are going to shut it down.  It’s the #1 game on Earth right now. Quit with all this nonsense and get your ass home and log in.  That’s where I’m headed.”

******

I tried to sneak past my dad.  I loved my father, but I just wasn’t in the mood for one of his lectures about how my life was swirling down the drain.  He was technically right, but I didn’t want to hear him tell me about it for the millionth time.  I preferred to live in denial and log in to my virtual world.

“Whatcha got there Chad?” my father asked as he turned his head to give me his full attention.

Fuck.

I held up my shopping bag from the local GameGo store that contained my new anime Pop Funko figures and shook it quietly. One was a limited edition Saitama from One Punch Man, and the other was an Android 18 in a nice blue bikini. She was my waifu. I had to buy her, of course.

My dad scoffed and stood to his feet, crossing his arms.  “You do realize that you are unemployed with no job prospects. These frivolous purchases make little sense.”

“Sorry dad, I’m off to my room.”

“You’re headed in there to play that damn video game, I’m sure.  I mean, are you making any money playing this game?”

“Well, not exactly.”

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