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  “Well, looks like we found ourselves a wasteland, my dears,” I say, laughing into the microphone, prompting a chorus of chuckling in response.

  I hear a few people shout, “Let’s go!” into the stream, and I grin at their enthusiasm, even though the excitement might be for nothing. A Class Two usually has few resources, though water is always useful.

  “Shall we claim this one for the Armada?!” I shout, throwing my hands in the air and raising my eyebrows in question. My headset blares with cheerful shouting from the other players. This was only the sixth planet that we’d be claiming for our Armada, despite several game sessions of exploring. Some just weren’t worth it, and players that traveled with us had scooped them up for themselves. Like Class Ones, which were basically just patches of dirt or useless asteroids without any minerals. But this planet, with all that water?

  I’ve got a good feeling about it.

  Rebekah chimes into my headset, on our private channel.

  “Hey, when we sign off, an offer just came in from Samsung for them to sponsor you for another month with a different watch,” she exclaims happily. “And they’ll pay you this time, instead of just giving you the product. Which means I get paid, too, and don’t just have to sit around writhing in my own jealousy.”

  My dad’s last text flashes through my head.

  Maybe get a job.

  Fuck you, too, Dad.

  The option to claim and name the planet still floats in front of the cockpit. As I type, the Armada roars in my headset, and I’m glad they all approve.

  Would you like to claim and name this planet?

  [YES][NO]

  What would you like to name this planet?

  BEKAH

  Are you sure you want to name this planet

  BEKAH?

  Once a name is chosen it cannot be changed.

  [YES] [NO]

  I click Yes.

  “Oh, aren’t you just adorable.” Rebekah laughs.

  “For my first mate!” I shout into the microphone, for both Rebekah and the Armada. “Without her, there’s no show, no Armada, and much like this planet, she’s as cool as ice.”

  “Damn right,” Rebekah growls.

  “Descend!” I exclaim.

  I tilt my ship forward, and the blue sphere with swirls of white rushes toward me as I speed down from the blackness of space. It’s silly, but I worry for a moment about what my viewers are going to think if this rock is a total waste of time. Which it very well could be. The water resources will be great, sure. For trading, for building. But explorationwise, which is the best part of playing this game, it might be a total buzzkill. That’s one of the unique joys of adventuring in Reclaim the Sun—the possibility and the disappointment that comes with trying to discover something new.

  Which, you know, mirrors life quite well. Maybe that’s why people love it.

  My ship rattles as we break through the atmosphere, the sky echoing with a loud sonic boom, the hundreds of other vessels thundering through the cloudy sky. The sound is like someone beating on a bass drum way too quick and sharp. I glance out the side of the cockpit, where rows of ships fly beside me, heading for the icy planet below.

  This close, I can see that the frozen landscape is dotted with patches of sea greens and purples, blooming and shifting beneath the hardened surface. I wonder if that’s just the color of the water, or if there are creatures living under the ice. Reclaim the Sun spontaneously generates planets and galaxies, but it also creates the environments on the planets. The ecosystem, the wildlife, the weather. Part of me wants to know exactly how it all works, and there are countless articles floating around on the Internet that’ll dish all that technical stuff out, on sites like Polygon and IGN and Engadget. But most of me doesn’t want to ruin the wonder of it all.

  It’s far more fun to think of it as magic than bits of code.

  The scanners on my dashboard pick up a section that looks suitable for landing, and I punch in the coordinates.

  “Let’s go!” I shout, my little ship soaring across the frozen tundra, the shimmering colors of the ocean speeding by as some of the little mountains start to peek up in the distance. Those mountain ranges give way to what look like bits of land frozen beneath the ice, and I press a few buttons, taking my ship down toward the ground, the landing gear extending with a loud hum and snapping into place.

  I hear the other ships buzzing in my ears, their gear and landing procedures all the same as mine. The ships in the Reclaim the Sun universe are varied in terms of colors, shapes, and upgrades, but everyone has the same kind of weapons, same navigational gear, all that. The upgrades help, but they don’t give you an extreme advantage. A little one, sure, but nothing major. Keeps it fair, particularly when fights break out—which they do, per the many videos trolls have been posting online, taking out other players for kicks. Tricking them into thinking they’re going to get a free resource drop from a helpful player, only to be blasted apart. Stuff like that.

  Bunch of tools, those ones.

  My ship nestles down on the terrain with a satisfying crunch, the landing gear pressing against the hard ice and snow underneath. The crunching of snow, programmed into a game. I can’t help but smile. Those little details always get me.

  I take a quick look at the display and note that the air is breathable and doesn’t require any kind of helmet or mask, which is great, considering we might have some new players in the Armada who haven’t explored or scavenged enough to buy the needed gear. I push a few buttons, and the cockpit opens with a hiss.

  I’m immediately overwhelmed by the intense wind pummeling me from outside. I push against it as I climb out, the roaring loud and breaking apart my signal to the Armada. When I reach the ground, I turn to see several cockpits open and my people wrestling with the same issues, their avatars all looking fairly similar to mine, save for custom-colored outfits and little changes to their gaits and facial appearances. Customization isn’t huge in Reclaim the Sun for the pilots, which makes for a massive army of people all looking somewhat the same. You can certainly dedicate an hour or two to making your character look more like you, but I seldom find anyone who has the time or patience for that.

  Mine... She’s close, but different enough that no one would look at the avatar and me and think we’re the same person. Not that it really matters, anyway. I have a Glitch stream—you can see my face on video. Not much to hide.

  “Sorry, you guys!” I shout over the wind, which dies down a little bit, then picks up again, shifting back and forth in loud blasts, sweeping bits of snow and frost with it. Players and their avatars are sliding across the white ground, bodies pressing against their ships. I turn to look up at the mountains and notice bits of green hidden among the white and beige. Maybe all the life on this planet isn’t just underwater.

  I glance over at the other players and give them an encouraging wave, one of the few physical gestures you can do in this game. All of them wave back simultaneously, the movements identical, and unintentionally hilarious coming from a hundred-plus people at once. I hear a bunch of people laughing in my headset, including Rebekah, who is currently walking right next to me.

  I’m not sure it’ll ever not be weird, having her as a second camera. It’s not like her in-game character can carry an actual video camera or something, so she walks facing me, to pick me up for the second video from her character’s perspective, which is streaming off her actual screen. It’s like having a friend who won’t stop staring at you the entire time you’re out together, no matter what you’re doing. Watching a movie? Looking at you. Walking down the street? Eyes all on you.

  “Can you like, get some video of the mountains?” I ask, turning to look at her.

  She wiggles her body right to left, like that’s a good way of saying no instead of talking to me through her headset, and keeps her eyes on me. We could just use the in-g
ame recording system to capture stuff, but Rebekah insists it looks better like this. More like an action movie.

  “You’re so weird,” I say, looking back at the Armada. A few ships are still landing, but if we waited for absolutely everyone, the streams would take several hours instead of just one or two, and we’d never get anywhere.

  “Let’s go see what’s hidden in those—”

  The loud thundering of ship engines interrupts me as several vessels tear across the sky from behind the mountains, slowing to hover above me and the rest of the Armada. Rebekah directs her gaze away from me and up at them, and then her voice chimes into my headset.

  “Whoa, these guys aren’t registered in the Armada. What are the chances of someone else showing up on this planet at the exact same time?” she asks excitedly. “This is good footage. Really good. We can send this to the blogs. You should try to connect to them, see where they’re from.”

  Behind me, I hear the members of our Armada talking among themselves, voices from all over the world trying to figure out who our guests are, and echoing Rebekah’s words about how weird it is for them to be here, right now, out of all the trillions of planets across the digital galaxy.

  “Hey!” I shout into my headset, waving at the ships. I offer to open a channel with them, sending a request over. “Open a private channel!”

  There’s a soft buzzing sound, followed by a number of sharp clicks, like something snapping into place.

  I know that sound.

  “Oh.” I hear Rebekah in my headset. “Oh no.”

  Blaster fire hammers down on the planet’s surface, lighting up the ground, taking out ships and avatars all around me. An explosion erupts just a few feet away, and I throw myself to the side, the flying debris missing me by mere inches.

  The bastards are firing on us.

  Rage wars with disbelief as I climb shakily to my feet. The rest of the Armada is scattering all around me, clamoring back to their ships.

  “What the hell is this?!” I shout, sprinting toward my ship, joining the rest of my Armada in the scramble for safety. The blasters of the dozen or so ships above us pummel the icy terrain, breaking holes in the ice. I suck in an angry breath as several of my people are vaporized by the blasts, while still more flail about in the frozen ocean. Rebekah is still running by my side, though at least she’s looking ahead and not at me, her avatar capturing the carnage all around us.

  “Rebekah, who—” Blaster fire takes out more of the ice around me, and I’m forced to veer off course to avoid plunging into the freezing water.

  “The social fee—are explo—over —ere!” Rebekah shouts, the latency making her voice break up. There’s way too much going on, too much incoming and outgoing data for her crappy Internet connection to handle. I spare a glance at her video feed in the corner of my screen. The image is choppy, but I can make out her face, harried and stressed, as she looks from the game to a tablet she’s now got propped up next to her.

  “It’s some o—the trolls —ave been going off on—”

  She cuts out completely. Her avatar comes to a standstill on the ice and is promptly blasted away, along with the ship she’s worked so hard on.

  People are screaming as they run by me, intent on reaching their ships, but for a moment, I find myself unable to move.

  Rebekah is gone. I’m alone.

  Because when you die in Reclaim the Sun, you die in real life—

  Okay, no, that doesn’t happen, just kidding. This isn’t Tron or something.

  But when you die in the game, you do lose all your stuff. Which is almost as bad. You’ll respawn someplace in the universe with a basic ship and blank avatar. Your former body and the ship you likely spent however many hours customizing and upgrading are left behind, potentially across the cosmos, waiting to be collected and scavenged by anyone lucky enough to stumble on the wreckage first...or by the jerks who shot you down.

  And as the people in my Armada fall around me, I can practically hear the cackling of the people shooting at us, eager to reap their spoils.

  Actually.

  I do hear it.

  They are laughing.

  I want to scream at them, curse, shoot at them with the little blaster in my inventory bag. But my small gun won’t do anything against an entire fleet of ships, and probably wouldn’t even damage one in all this madness.

  So I flee with the others, intent on reaching my ship. It’s there, just up ahead. If I can get inside, I can jettison off, maybe get away, maybe save my vessel. Otherwise, I’ll be starting all over again.

  The paint. The small upgrades that make it pilot a bit better. The scanners that help me detect faraway planets. And all the stuff in my inventory—the weapons and the gadgets that help me navigate on the ground. The boosters that make running across terrain easier, giving me a little extra speed. And there’s the mini jets in my pack that help me jump just a tiny bit higher. Not a huge advantage. But just enough.

  And hopefully just enough to get away.

  Dozens of ships are taking to the sky, the Armada blasting off. I watch two get shot down and explode in a massive fireball across the bright white sky, while others warp out, several sonic booms thundering in the wind. Elation at their escape wars with the soul-crushing disappointment and rage I feel for those who have not been so fortunate today.

  All these players. All this effort. Wasted.

  I wish logging out was as simple as just turning off the computer or console. Pulling the plug. But the developers thought of that when creating the game, kindly leaving you active for a few minutes in case it was an accidental disconnect.

  Plenty of time for someone attacking you to finish the job. Like they did to Rebekah.

  The cockpit window of my ship opens, the glass rising high as I get closer, another little upgrade I paid handsomely for. Well, paid for using in-game currency from running missions and discovering things. Not actual money. But paid for with something far more precious than funds.

  My time.

  The more you play, the more experience points you get, and the more stuff you can purchase with said points. But when those things are lost or destroyed...there’s no just buying them back. You have to go back to the grind, leveling up more and more to get that stuff all over again. Doing menial tasks, like fighting alien monsters or cataloging plants or discovering small planets.

  Just as I move to hoist myself into my ship, the blaster fire begins to die down. And then I realize it’s not dying down just a little—the attack has ceased completely. I pause, turning to look at the enemy ships, the players that came to take out all my people. They’re just...sitting there, floating in the air, ominous and silent. No laughter, no talking. They must have switched to a private chat channel.

  “Divya!” My headset explodes with Rebekah’s voice, and I see her reappear in the small video window on my screen. “I got disconnected. Lost all my stuff, damn it.”

  I glare up at the sky, at our attackers. There are at least a dozen of them, all painted the same colors. All on the same team, the same clan. The ships are a solid white and would almost disappear against the clouded sky and snowcapped mountains if not for the angry red zigzag pattern tearing through the sides of the vessels, like claw marks across skin.

  “Why don’t you come down here and face me?!” I shout, wondering where the hell my entire Armada went. There were hundreds of us making our way to that mountain. I get them running back to their ships, as one direct shot from a blaster would take you out. And trying to get away from the crumbling environment, sure. But now that there’s this odd cease-fire...why was no one coming back to help me?

  What’s the point of all this if no one has my back?

  “Man, fuck this bitch,” a voice suddenly shouts out. A guy, his voice masked by something that makes him sound like a deep-voiced robot.

  “Dude, don’t!” anot
her one yells, his voice unhidden, soft and young, like a kid in junior high, maybe. “We need her in the ship!”

  “We need her off the streams,” the deeper voice growls. “It doesn’t matter how we do it.”

  “It’ll look cooler if we—” Yet another new voice; another male.

  “I’m not waiting any longer,” the masked voice says.

  The blaster fire hammers down from a single ship, which swoops in low toward me, the plasma weapons battering the ground around me. I hear his blasters hitting my ship, loud against the steel chassis. Warning alarms sound in my headset as lights flash red, and I dash away before—

  The ship explodes.

  Flames of red and orange billow up from the snowy white ground, and a plume of black smoke pools into the clear sky. The explosion echoes across the frozen tundra, and the ice beneath me starts to crack and splinter. I glance down at my feet, wondering if I can make it back to the mountains, just as the ice splits open, giving way to an ocean of water tinted blue and green and purple.

  I plunge in, my vision fading.

  “Bye, bitch,” I hear the deep masked voice snarl, a thick chuckle following.

  Then everything goes black, and the Reclaim the Sun title screen comes back up, inviting me to start all over again.

  “Fuck!” I shout, slamming my hands against the keyboard.

  “And...the stream is over,” Rebekah announces, her voice coming in crystal clear. She’s in her little video screen box, no chop or lag or anything holding her back now that the chaos is finished.

  “What was that? Who was that?!” I demand, raking my hands through my hair in frustration. “My ship. All my upgrades. Where the hell was the rest of the Armada when I needed them? Goddamn it, that’s going to take me weeks to build back up.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Rebekah says, trying to calm me down. “But as for who... Some army of trolls calling themselves the Vox Populi, per the social feeds. They’re...” She clears her throat. “They’re celebrating. There’s already a GIF of your ship blowing up and you falling through the ice.”