Aaron unlocked the door to his apartment with a sigh and a groan. His left hand rubbed around the blue and black bruising on his face. It was surprisingly difficult to fit a key into a keyhole with messed up depth perception. Finally, he got the door open. As the wooden slab creaked and lazily drifted inward, Aaron noticed something on the ground. A white envelope had apparently been put through his mail slot. He bent down and picked it up, examining it as best as he could with his uninjured eye. He kicked his door shut behind him and reached back to lock it. The envelope was clearly addressed to him, but had no return address, or even his address. He turned it over and over, seeing only his name. Whoever had given it to him must have delivered it personally. Aaron walked further into his apartment, tossing his keys on his sole, messy table and hoped they weren't lost for good. He made his way into his kitchen and fished an ice pack out of his freezer, still staring at and examining the strange envelope. He held the ice to his face, sighing with relief. He'd gotten into a fight on his way home. He hadn't meant to. A group of teenagers were throwing rocks at a stray cat. Aaron tried to convince them to stop, but the teenagers apparently decided that the three of them could up their fun by switching from a cat to a loser. Luckily, the sound of sirens in the distance broke the fight up before anything too bad, leaving Aaron only with a few minor scrapes and bruises, except for his left eye, which had been blackened. After a few moments, Aaron tossed the ice pack into the sink and sat down on the only chair in his apartment. It was a small place - a tiny area barely worth being called a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living space barely large enough for his gaming rig. Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he began to scratch open the envelope. Inside was a typed letter and a small SD card. He examined the SD card. It's label had been peeled off, and nothing was written on it. He put the card back in the envelope and pulled out the letter. He let out a long sigh as he realize it was going to be a pain in the ass to read this with his eye still hurting. He cursed and set the letter and envelope down on his chair and got up. Searching his table, Aaron soon found a half-empty bottle of painkillers. Fishing two out, he tossed them in his mouth before looking around for a cup. Not finding any that were clean and not particularly feeling like washing one, he stuck his head under the sink and turned on the faucet, trying to catch as much water as he could into his mouth without losing the pills. Once he had enough, he swallowed hard and shut off the faucet. Walking back to his chair, Aaron grabbed his VR headset. He might do some gaming after figuring out what the letter had to say. He collapsed into his chair, fished the letter out from under himself, and took a deep breath. Time to see what this was all about.
Aaron mumbled aloud to himself as he read the letter. "Aaron. You probably don't remember me, never really talked to you much. But we went to college together for a bit. I remember you being into old school RPGs and the like. Dungeons and Dragons, all that nerdy shit. Pfft, rude. Anyway, one of my friends passed this along to me a bit ago. It's some online, VR rpg as far as I can tell. Apparently, the government's trying to keep it down and quiet. I'm not really into that sort of stuff, but I knew you liked games and didn't always follow all the rules too closely. The game's called Terrasphere. Apparently, it's selling point is that you can do whatever you want, be whoever you want. I remember you always tried to stand up for people, and I admired that in you, even if you just got both of you into worse trouble in the process. Maybe in this game, you can actually help people for real, eh? haha." Aaron sighed. That was all the letter said - no address or who it was from, nothing. Still, that did sound interesting. Last VR rpg he had heard of... didn't go too well, as far as he understood. He pulled up his computer and pulled up an internet search, looking for any references to this "Terrasphere". Nothing. At all. He wasn't the best with computers, so maybe he wasn't exactly looking in the right place. He looked at the SD card. Was it worth the risk? He groaned out loud, somewhat expecting an answer but knowing he wouldn't get one. The game did sound like everything he could have ever hoped for - a world other than this one where he could actually have the ability to influence things? To be whoever he wanted, to actually have the power to stand up for innocent people? Was that a weird dream? He imagined most people would hear about a world where they could be anything and do anything, and dream of power and riches and fame and glory. And sure, Aaron wasn't against those things, but he'd rather help people. Aaron picked the SD card out of the envelope and plugged his VR headset into his computer. It couldn't hurt to just have the card in, and not actually boot up the game, right? Aaron pushed the card into his computer and put the headset on his head. It hurt a bit, where his eye was bruised, which caused him to pull the headset off. He scowled in pain, and stood up. He paced around his room for a bit. He could feel the painkiller starting to kick in... "Ah, fuck it!" he said. He sat back down in his chair and slammed the headset on. "Link, start!"
