Ember Wind: Online

A Past to be Remembered

Dear Family,

I write this from a land so far away yet so close to home. It's been some time since we last spoke. It's been even longer since I've last spoken to anyone from the real world. During the months that I have spent in this game, I become familiar with it. I recognize this place as home. I long to return home, to be within the confines of our house in suburbia. Yet at the same time, I long to stay.

It's an odd thing for me to say considering I was so abruptly removed from the land of the living, but I know it in my heart to be true. I have made many good friends in this artificial paradise. The lands we live and fight in have been the sources behind many friendships. This event was a good thing to some degree. In the real world, not many people cared about me. It was always a competition to know who was better at everything, who slept with the most women, who owned the most luxurious cars. It was always about yourself. People were only used to get oneself to a higher standing, like a game of chess. We're all pawns. Pawns to an unknown and cruel king.

In this fictitious land, yes we still have competition but it's done differently. It's hard to explain but people here, they seem to rely upon and trust each other more. I wonder if it's because there is nothing truly gained from the lands of fiction. People are kinder if there is no true advantage. People on the internet, although hidden behind icons and false pictures, they were themselves. Anonymity gave people the chance to be themselves and to be free. The internet was the greatest gift to us but here we are in this paradise and we're trying to escape it.

I may be a Catholic in the real world but the real world is unnecessarily cruel. At least in this gaming world, I have a chance to be someone and not just a blur in the field of a thousand. I know how God works, struggle hard and you earn his mercy. Why does it have to be that way? I suppose it'd be no fun if no one had to struggle.

In this artificial world, we struggle because we want to. We were torn from our homes and we fight to make it home. Many have been lost in the first months alone but many more will perish trying to go home. If God is truly watching, I hope he has mercy upon us all. We fight fictional characters in a fictional world with fictional abilities. There's bound to be some merit behind our struggles in here, no? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

Either way, I suppose it doesn't matter what the answer truly is. The importance is what we believe it to be. If we believe our struggle and fight to get home is worth our lives, then so be it. If isn't then what is? If seeing what we lost is not worth the effort of a second glance, then what is?

Long before I became trapped here, dad told me stories of his unending wish to become part of virtual reality. He told me of his life struggles and while they sound less than annoying, they were his struggles. I looked back on what I had to do in school, home and for my friends. Many times it just felt overwhelming. Sometimes to the point of wanting for it all to go away. I guess I finally got the chance for it all to go away.

I got pulled into a game where I knew no one. I knew nothing about the world I was forcefully sent into. But there's something about this that bugs me. Here I am in the greatest dream I could ever hope for but I long to return back to hell... Earth where I suffered the same daily struggles as the next man. It's ironic, isn't it? I guess it is.

I keep calling this world, this game, this alternate virtual reality a paradise. How? Why? What makes it such a grandeur place? To be honest, I'm not sure. Is it the landscapes? Can't be because they exist in the real world. Is it the people? I doubt it because those same people are in the real world. If neither of those, then what? My guess is the chance to start over.