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  “So which way?” he asks, turning around in a circle. I feel the urge to pull out my blaster again at the sight of his back, but shake it off, immediately feeling a bit guilty.

  “I saw some green off to the west, I think?” I shrug. “We could get in our ships and hover over there, see what resources are worth scrounging up.”

  “Great, great,” Aaron says. “Why don’t you go ahead and claim the planet, and then we’ll go see what we can dig up.” He chuckles. “Get it, because we’re looking for resources—”

  “Wow, now you’re making me regret NOT shooting you,” I say, loading up the menu and typing out a name.

  Would you like to claim and name this planet?

  [YES][NO]

  What would you like to name this planet?

  INITIUM NOVUM

  Are you sure you want to name this planet

  INITIUM NOVUM?

  Once a name is chosen it cannot be changed.

  [YES] [NO]

  A new beginning. I smile and hit enter.

  INITIUM NOVUM

  Discovered by D1V

  I hear Aaron gasp.

  “What?” I ask, readying myself, waiting for him to pull out his blaster.

  “Your username... Oh. I should have just clicked on you... Oh shit,” Aaron stammers, and I whip out my gun, sights right on him. His character takes a few steps back. If he’s one of those damn trolls from the Vox Populi, I’m going to blast—

  “You said a bad word,” I hear a small voice say on the other end of his headset. It must be the little sister he mentioned.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs away from his microphone, but I can still hear him. “Don’t tell Mom, or she won’t let you hang out in here with me.”

  “Why would you curse—”

  “Because we’re playing with someone very famous,” Aaron whispers.

  I shift awkwardly, feeling my cheeks warm beneath my VR headset, though I’m relieved that he doesn’t seem to be one of the trolls. I cough slightly, and I hear his microphone rustling as he returns to it.

  “Did you, um—” he starts.

  “I heard it,” I admit, trying not to laugh.

  “I, um, I totally watch your stream,” Aaron says, and I can hear the nervousness in his voice. It’s almost endearing. “None of my friends are going to believe this.”

  “It’s really not that big a deal,” I mutter.

  “What? Are you kidding?” he says, laughing. “You’re a big deal. And I read about what happened, saw those recap videos. I wasn’t on that day. Fuck those guys.” He grows quiet for a minute, then turns toward his ship. “Look, you can just take the resources. I don’t need—”

  “No, it’s okay,” I insist, hurrying after him. “We can split it. Maybe we’ll find something good out there. Come on.”

  I offer up a smile as he turns back around, even though I know he can’t see it.

  “She sounds nice,” the small voice declares from Aaron’s side of the headset.

  “Shh, oh my God, Mira!” he exclaims, sounding embarrassed.

  “Aaron,” the voice—Mira—says. She sounds a little farther away, and I squint as I try to listen harder.

  “Mira, come on, I’m trying to—”

  “Ask her if she’s been to Planet Butts.”

  I can’t take it a second longer. I have to mute my mic to hide how hard I’m laughing.

  Reclaim the Sun: Chat Application

  AARON: RYAN. RYAN PLEASE BE ONLINE.

  AARON: RYAN.

  AARON: DUDE.

  RYAN: Why are you blowing up the game chat app right now.

  RYAN: You have my phone number. You could text me like a human.

  RYAN: And no, I’m not online. I’m working on some drawings.

  AARON: I AM PLAYING WITH D1V RIGHT NOW.

  RYAN: Who is that? And also stop talking in all caps like you’re a toddler.

  AARON: WHAT?!

  RYAN: Stop. Talking. In. All. Caps.

  AARON: D1V! The famous Glitch streamer!

  RYAN: I don’t watch YouTube shows.

  AARON: It’s not a YouTube show!

  AARON: You are killing me right now.

  AARON: Okay I gotta go we are exploring the planet.

  AARON: I seriously can’t believe this is happening.

  AARON: I’ll tell you all about it later.

  RYAN: Please don’t.

  6

  AARON

  “Who is that? Who are you talking to?” Mira asks, pointing at the screen as I click the chat window away.

  “No one,” I say quickly, focusing back on the game.

  “And why are you sweating so much?” Mira asks. Face burning, I put my hand over my microphone, like it’ll somehow stop D1V from hearing what has clearly already been said.

  “I—I’m not sweating,” I insist. “It’s just a little hot in here.”

  “No, it isn’t. The air conditioner is—”

  “Mira, why don’t you go play with some of your toys?” I suggest, picking her up off my lap and setting her down next to the computer. She pouts at me. “Please?” I ask desperately. “I just need some unwind time. Aaron time. We’ll watch a movie later. Anything you want.”

  “Yay!” Mira cheers and goes bounding out of the room.

  I turn back to the game, and D1V is staring at me. At least her blaster isn’t drawn again. A little green icon appears above her head when I move my mouse over her avatar, which means she’s using VR. Of course she is. A famous streamer like D1V can totally afford that kind of tech. Hell, sponsors probably give it to her. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to find an old headset in a neighbor’s trash, but I’m not counting on it.

  “Sweating?” she asks, turning around and walking toward the expanse of green in front of us. It only took a few minutes to soar from the place Reclaim the Sun had landed us for our supposed challenge, and over to the bit of wilderness we both glimpsed while landing. “Come on now, Aaron.”

  “Hey, you’re a big deal,” I say, moving to catch up with her. “You’re like, famous!”

  “Not that famous, really,” D1V says, her voice strangely sad and far away, very different from how she sounds in her streams, all lively and psyched. “So how long have you been playing?”

  “All my life,” I say, immediately feeling stupid and wishing the ground would open up and devour me. “I mean, er, you mean, Reclaim the Sun, this game? Right? Right. Yeah. Um, since the day it came out? I preordered it, got the Day One special edition, even took a day off from school. Just explored all day. Lost a lot of sleep.”

  “That long?” D1V asks, sounding surprised. “But your ship and your level are—”

  “Oh, I get blown up a lot.” I laugh. “Upgrading isn’t really a priority for me.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a PvP type of player, though?” D1V continues as we walk, the planet’s trees coming into view. They’re large, towering green things whose trunks resemble the base of a palm tree, but the canopy and foliage are leafy like a fern. Small leaves and stems, like green feathers.

  “I’m not, it’s just... Well, me and my friends just aren’t terribly serious, I guess?” For someone who’s been playing as long as I have, I definitely should have a better ship and accessories and upgrades. I know that. But getting into dogfights in my ship with Ryan, Jason, and Laura is just too tempting, and all too frequent. “I have a few friends I play with a lot, and we tend to just...um, well, blow each other up all the time?”

  “Sounds...fun?” D1V says, tone skeptical.

  “It is,” I press. “It’s just a silly game, you know?”

  “Ah, sure,” she says, and again, there’s that sadness in her voice. I feel an odd twinge in my chest, like I should ask what’s wrong, why she sounds like she’s having a rough tim
e. But I think I already know, what with her public destruction in that Glitch stream and all. It’s probably not just a game to her, much like writing the kind of stories I want to write isn’t just a game to me.

  I wish there was something I could do to help her.

  Ryan’s advice echoes through my head.

  Not everyone needs saving. Or wants it, for that matter.

  He’s right. It’s probably not my place to press. I don’t even know her real last name. Where she lives, where she’s from. Digging into all that feels like too much. Who am I, after all?

  We come to a stop as the strange-looking patch of forest starts to loom overhead, casting D1V, and I suppose myself, in light shadow. She’s looking all around, her avatar’s head moving this way and that, facing up, glancing side to side, and I can’t even imagine what this all looks like in VR. I click away and move with my keyboard as we traverse the landscape. The ground is all littered with patches of green shrub-like plants and a yellow-green moss that crawls over little inclines on the forest floor. Small insects flit by my line of sight, too fast to be seen, and I take a few screenshots to catalog them later and maybe get a better look at what’s here. While I might not care about upgrades that much, it’s nice to occasionally get them, and keeping track of wildlife in the game is an easy way to get experience points.

  The silence between us begins to stretch on a little too long. The ManaPunk crew and I tend to chat up a storm while playing, and the quiet, save for the sound of the breeze and insects in the weird fern forest, is feeling heavy.

  “So...what’s your life like outside the game?” I venture as D1V steps forward into the woods, her feet crunching against the planet’s green surface, the sound crackling in my earpiece. “All I know about you is from the streams, and the articles that are basically about the streams, really.”

  She slows to a halt and seems to hesitate before responding. Did I say something wrong?

  “Listen, you seem really nice, Aaron, but...” she starts, then fades off for a moment. “I just don’t like to share that kind of information. Please don’t be offended,” she adds quickly. “It...keeps things a bit safer for me. I mean, you saw.”

  I think about the videos of those trolls blasting apart her ship and spouting all that hate on social media.

  “No, I get it,” I tell her, feeling like a jerk for even asking in the first place. “That makes sense.”

  “Thanks,” she says, sounding relieved as she continues walking forward, back to looking around. I hurry to catch up with her, the two of us walking side by side through this uncharted patch of alien forest. “Actually...” D1V stops again. “Speaking of the streams and all, do you mind if I record this?”

  “No, go ahead,” I say, a bit puzzled. Record?

  But...no.

  There’s no way.

  “Good. ’Cause I have been the entire time,” she continues, and I can almost hear the smile in her voice as my heart pounds in my chest. Does she mean...for one of her videos?

  “You do realize how strange this is, right?” she continues. Something small tumbles through the brush, bits of the shrubs rustling as it passes, but I can’t quite make out what it is. “Trillions of planets in this place, and you and I find one at the same time. It’ll make for a good video. Especially the part where it asked us to contest the planet. To fight for it and whatnot? I wonder if we’re the first ones to have that happen. It feels like something impossible.”

  I can’t wait any longer. I have to ask. I have to know if this is going where I think it is.

  “Wait, I’ll get to be in one of your videos?!” I try to hide my excitement, but epically fail. Just terribly fail. My voice gets all kinds of high, and I’m sure my face is beet red. I’ve never been more grateful for the fact that in-game avatars always keep their cool.

  “Yes, and I’ll see if I can’t cut that excited squeak you just made from it,” D1V says, chuckling. I feel myself blushing even more.

  “Thanks,” I say under my breath.

  “Maybe the part where you kept running into your ship can stay, though. Or the part where you were...sweating?”

  “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point,” I grumble.

  “You picking up anything?” D1V asks, laughter in her voice, looking around.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you been scanning at all?” she asks. “Resources and all that.”

  “Oh, er—” I start, and quickly hit a few buttons to load up my inventory and environment scanner. “Sorry. Like I said, me and my friends mostly play for fun and get into nonsense. I took some screenshots to get some points, but yeah. Not a serious player.” I force a laugh, trying not to sound awkward. “In fact, the latest planet I discovered I named—”

  “Planet Butts,” D1V says deadpan. “I see it in your public profile here. What’s Hamtaro?”

  “Oh, er, another planet my sister named.” I can’t help but laugh for real this time. I turn to look toward my bedroom door, to see if Mira is lurking over there. She’s not. “It’s this old cartoon show she likes with hamsters that go on adventures, and it didn’t sound like a bad planet name—”

  Another one of those unknown creatures rustles by in the green, splitting the foliage as it goes, followed by another and another. I take a few screenshots, hoping to maybe catch up on those experience points.

  “That’s odd,” D1V murmurs, turning to face where the critters are coming from. “Oh. Oh my.”

  “What—”

  I take a few steps forward and follow her gaze.

  A large dinosaur-looking monster is lumbering slowly through a small clearing beyond the trees, and whatever the creatures underfoot are, they’re definitely hurrying our way from that direction. They’re running.

  You know, because giant monster.

  I take some screenshots, imagining something like this will make for a lot of easy points, and D1V moves ahead, clearly captivated by the creature.

  “It’s amazing,” she breathes, and the wonder in her voice genuinely warms my heart. “I know everything in this game is randomly generated, so no one planned that...but isn’t that what makes it beautiful? I’m so glad we’re capturing this. Rebekah is going to freak.”

  “Oh yeah, your streaming buddy,” I say, watching the monster. It looks like it’s trying to eat something, and its body twitches a bit. I’m sure Laura would have some things to say about the coding right now, how the randomly generated parts sometimes lead to creatures that have a hard time moving and all. An odd leg here, some poor coding for an arm there. But listening to D1V’s excitement as she talks, I’m glad Laura isn’t here to bring us all down with that crushing reality. Getting lost in the magic is nice.

  The creature’s face resembles that of a mythological dragon, like a beast you might see in Game of Thrones, but with a body that’s bulky and somewhat elongated. It’s low to the ground, with a gait like a rhino, or maybe a hippo—thick and stumpy, but long the way a giant lizard might be. Randomly generated, that’s for sure. No way any game designer would ever come up with something as strange as this beast.

  “I mean, we’re probably the only two people who are ever going to see this particular creature up close,” D1V continues. “And here on this planet—”

  She takes another step forward.

  I hear a branch snap.

  The monster’s attention immediately fixates on us.

  It roars, another randomly generated sound, a bellow that rings out like a mixture of metal being compacted and a dog snarling. It sounds ridiculous coming from the creature, all off pitch, but I don’t have time to judge.

  I barely have time to blink before it charges at us.

  The little creatures in the underbrush catapult into the sky. They’re odd, overly plump birdlike things with wings the color of the plants surrounding us. No wonder I couldn’t get a
good look at them as they fled from the dragon-rhino-snake creature, which I should probably come up with a better name for. They flutter by me, and I pull out my blaster, aiming for the charging beast.

  “Don’t bother!” D1V shouts. “Run! We need to run!”

  “Come on, we can—”

  “The one upgrade I have on my blaster shows me the level of monsters. That thing is a thirty-seven!” Her voice is fading as she speaks, and I turn to spot her dashing away.

  “So what?” I ask, taking aim.

  “We’re both level two!”

  The creature roars again, and I dash after D1V.

  If this was any other gaming session, with Laura or Jason or Ryan, I think we would have stood our ground, firing away at the beast until we were all taken out and had to start over again. Laughing as we got our virtual butts kicked. Part of me still wants to wait and see what happens when that thing attacks. Will I get thrown across the forest? Will it eat me? Will it be funny?

  I’m torn between running with D1V and blasting away to my imminent doom, but something about staying on with her feels more fun. Besides, if I lose now and get logged out, I’ll probably never be able to find her again. I’m not connected with her on my friends list here in game, and as a celebrity, there’s no way she’s open to friend requests. And even if she is, it’s probably strictly through her clan channels, or her backlog of requests is so big she doesn’t even check them anymore.

  I should stay.

  Maybe I can help.

  She needs to level up in this game, for her streaming and videos and all that. Maybe instead of throwing it all away for a good time, I should try to do something. Be her ally. In a way that Ryan would actually approve of.

  “Where are we going?!” I shout into my headset. She’s a little ahead of me, and I need to make sure she hears me.