Volume 1 – The VR World
Chapter 2 – Genesis Protocol
The lights in the testing lab stayed dim through most of the night. Ezra preferred it that way—less interference, fewer distractions. I didn't bother turning them up.
One of the server racks kicked into a cooling cycle behind me, cycling hot air through the vents and humming like a distant engine.
Soren's voice drifted through the ceiling speaker system, filtered and too loud.
"You know we have an actual office for meetings, right? With chairs. And windows."
I didn't look up from the screen. "I like the hum."
"Is that what we're calling obsession now?"
A hiss of air as the door opened. Footsteps on rubber tile. Soren stopped behind me, always careful not to crowd. He read the monitor over my shoulder without asking.
"She prayed again?" he asked.
Third time this month. The same NPC. Same location. Slight variance in posture, but not enough to trigger behavioral anomalies on its own. Just enough to feel like it meant something.
"She looked scared this time," I muttered.
"Scared how?
"Like she thought someone was listening."
The silence that followed wasn't like Ezra's. Ezra let silence settle like dust. Soren's always felt tight, like he was holding back a dozen arguments and choosing which one would cause the least damage.
I leaned back in the chair, pinched the bridge of my nose, and stared at the corner of the ceiling.
"Do you remember why we started this?"
"Which time?" he said. "There were a lot of Red Bulls and bad ideas."
"The first prototype," I said. "The sandbox we built in your dorm room."
"Technically a stolen server in a broom closet," he corrected. "You coded an AI that didn't speak, I built an economy with fake inflation, and Darius programmed an orc that murdered us every time we logged in."
I exhaled half a laugh. "And we still kept coming back."
"Because it wasn't real yet."
I nodded.
He stepped forward, rested a hand on the desk. "We're damn close now. The tech's stable. The brainwave patterning is tighter than ever. Naomi's been working on this neuro-spiritual alignment theory that—"
"That isn't the answer."
His eyes narrowed.
I tapped the monitor. "She wasn't reacting to anything. No input. No prompt. She knelt because she wanted to."
"It's a ghost in the code. A hiccup. A random neural echo."
"It's not."
He didn't argue.
The door opened again. Heavy boots this time. Darius. No armor here, just black cargo pants, a thermal long sleeve, and that permanent don't-waste-my-time posture.
He crossed to us, picked up a neural band from the table, turned it over in his hands. "Tell me what I'm testing next."
"You're not," I said.
"That's funny," he replied. "Sounded like you needed a volunteer for the final link."
"There is no final link."
He stared at me the same way he did in raids when someone missed their mark and caused a wipe. Not angry. Not disappointed. Just... coldly calculating what needed to die first to fix the problem.
"Then why are you still here?" he asked.
There were five of us when this started.
Soren handled the vision. Ezra handled the shadows. Naomi shaped the heart. Darius enforced the structure. And I—
—I chased something that didn't exist.
The first version of Aetherreach was nothing more than ambition duct-taped to faith. I coded the bones, drew on the walls, tested loops until my hands stopped working. Soren built us a company when all I had was a concept. Naomi gave it purpose. Ezra gave it form. Darius made it survive.
We launched in pieces. Closed betas, staggered alpha waves. Player feedback shaped the systems. Some of them stayed. Some of them nearly killed the servers. Every month, we got smarter.
But the dream was always full-dive.
A complete escape. Not just sight and sound, but soul. A reality indistinguishable from this one. Or better than this one. A place where someone could be exactly who they were meant to be—without gravity, without pain, without memory of the broken world they left behind.
And every test brought us closer.
Every test also failed.
"You look like hell," Naomi's voice, warm and soft, flowed through the doorway before she stepped inside. No robes. Just jeans and a slate hoodie. She carried a mug that smelled like honey and something floral.
"Thanks," I muttered.
She passed the mug to me without asking. Her hands were ink-stained, fingers marked from writing.
"You slept?" she asked.
"Define sleep."
"You closed your eyes and didn't talk for a few hours?"
"Then yes."
She sat on the console edge beside me, ankles crossed. "Ezra's in the subroom. He says Subject Lauren is dreaming."
"NPCs don't dream," Soren said, leaning forward.
Naomi didn't look at him. "That's what I told him."
"And?"
"He said neither do we. Until we do."