East Sea City, Riverview New Area.
Sunlight filtered through the smart-tinting windows, adjusted to the perfect soft glow for human comfort, spreading evenly across the top-floor bedroom, a space that took up half the floor and was surrounded by 270 degrees of floor-to-ceiling glass.
The air circulation system hummed quietly, delivering purified air with a hint of cedarwood. The temperature held steady at a comfortable 72 degrees.
Beyond the windows stretched a meticulously maintained private garden, green year-round, and past that, the city's orderly skyline punctuated by the streaming lights of hovering vehicle lanes.
This was the Federation's post-Singularity society in miniature: material abundance made real, a nearly perfect living space shaped by AI and technology.
Yet in the middle of this bright, spacious, fully-equipped room, on an expensive ergonomic smart bed, a young man lay buried under a thin blanket, completely still, a dark spot utterly at odds with the perfection around him.
Someone knocked gently at the door, the sound soft and careful. When there was no answer, the knocking continued for several minutes, growing more worried with each tap.
"Alan? You haven't come out of your room in three days... I'm really worried about you. Please, come out and eat something."
A muffled "mm" came from under the blanket, heavy with exhaustion.
The door cracked open.
A woman in simple but perfectly tailored clothes and understated pearl earrings slipped inside, her face etched with concern and a hint of barely concealed weariness.
She walked to the bedside, looking down at the shape beneath the blanket, her voice softening even more: "Alan, sweetheart, I know you're feeling down... but hiding in here isn't going to help.
I've scheduled an appointment with Dr. Alvin. He's the best adolescent therapist in the city. Let's go talk to him together, okay?"
The figure under the blanket, Alan, finally stirred, slowly pulling the fabric down to reveal a strikingly handsome but pale face.
His eyes should have been bright and clear. Instead, they were dull and empty, ringed with dark circles like twin bruises.
He glanced at his mother, then quickly looked away toward the too-perfect view outside, his voice flat and dry: "Not interested."
Those same words again. The woman's concern deepened. Nihilism, this "modern disease" afflicting more and more young people in the Federation after extreme material abundance, wrapped around her son like an invisible shroud.
He had everything. A bright future ahead of him. Yet he couldn't find interest in anything and felt that life was utterly meaningless. Even basic emotions, joy, anger, sadness, happiness, seemed to reach him through frosted glass, blurred and distant.
They'd tried positive reinforcement, art therapy, social programs, everything. Nothing worked.
She took a deep breath and adopted a slightly firmer tone, one of the few tools she had left: "Fine. You don't have to see Dr. Alvin. But I heard about this game that's blowing up online, something called 'Battlefield: Warhammer 40K.' People say it has an incredibly powerful emotional impact.
A lot of players claim they were 'profoundly affected' after playing it. I pulled some strings to get you a beta testing slot."
She watched for his reaction. Alan's expression didn't change, but his eyelashes flickered slightly.
"Here's the deal," she pressed. "If you won't see the therapist, you have to at least try this game. At least... experience something new."
Silence. The only sound was the faint whisper of the air circulation system.
After a long moment, Alan gave the slightest nod, a single syllable rolling from his throat: "Fine."
No enthusiasm. No resistance. Just inertia, almost mechanical compliance.
His mother sighed inwardly but also felt a flicker of relief.
Getting him to move, to engage with some kind of external stimulus, anything was better than watching him wither away like this.
She immediately contacted the household staff to have the latest full-immersion game pod set up and filled with premium nutrient solution.
Thirty minutes later, Alan was half-guided, half-pulled into the sleek pod that looked like something out of a sci-fi film.
The door sealed shut. Soft light glowed. Body-conforming sensors activated. He closed his eyes, reflexively bracing himself for another boring, pre-programmed virtual experience.
Darkness. Then light.
No flashy opening animation. No cheerful welcome screen. Just a bare-bones virtual panel with a cold metallic finish, floating in the void.
[Please enter your character name]
Alan stared at the prompt, his mind blank for a few seconds. A name? Just a label. What did it matter? Too tired to think, he swiped randomly across the virtual keyboard and typed three equally meaningless characters:
[See You Tomorrow]
Confirmed.
Darkness again. But this time, a low drone that seemed to emanate from the edge of the universe began to resonate around him.
It wasn't music, more like background radiation, like some vast, sleeping consciousness murmuring from across the galaxy.
Then a line of harsh Gothic script appeared, looking as though it had been branded into steel with red-hot iron. A male voice, heavy as a mountain, began to chant:
"In this moment of eternal strife, a mighty empire spans the stars. It is the legacy of a fallen god, forged in blood and battle, seeking hope in the darkness. This is a cruel and terrible age, an age where only war is eternal..."
Alan's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. This tone, this content, was nothing like any game he'd played before. No cheerfulness. No comfort. Only crushing, almost despairing weight.
The scene cut violently!
Not to beautiful landscapes or cute characters.
To a battlefield.
Burning ruins. Crisscrossing laser fire. Deafening explosions. Soldiers charging and dying in the mud. Commissars brandishing power swords and screaming hoarse battle cries. Leman Russ tanks grinding across scorched earth, cannons spewing deadly fire...
A tsunami of visual and auditory information slammed into Alan's sensory nerves like a fire hose, shocking systems that had been numbed by months of emptiness.
He felt himself violently hurled into a completely alien world, one filled with violence, chaos, and raw, primal energy.
His heart, silent for God knows how long, suddenly hammered hard and wild from the visceral threat of death and desperate struggle flooding the screen.
A strange sensation shot up his spine, cold but electric, stinging.
The thick blanket of despair and apathy that had smothered him for so long seemed to crack, just slightly, torn open by this brutal alien stimulus.
Without thinking, he licked his dry lips.