Surrounded by many friends and lovers, Aia has always felt lonely. Changing appearance many times, she always felt like she is not enough. Life was passing away, while Aia spent all of her time in the next generation metaverse called Elysium, a real...
It's better here than in the world where I was born. There is no time in Elysium.
I come back here every time I realize that I can no longer be in reality.
Not a pleasant feeling, if you ask me.
I am almost twenty five years old. Left my crazy neurotic family at the age of seventeen, and now living in a small studio on the outskirts of Neo-Seoul, developing and designing locations in Elysium.
Every month I receive support from the state - they give us antidepressants free of charge. As well as a standard set of food. And clothes, which is almost the same for everyone. This is how our world reached perfection. I remember there were whole lectures that if you give a person free housing, food and clothing, then all of his needs will be satisfied, during which the human will go crazy, lose all fear and survival skills. So far, no one has gone crazy yet.
I spend most of the time at home, my sleep pattern is disturbed, I try to fight insomnia, although I am becoming more and more convinced that, in general, I don't really need to get rid of it.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It's enough to put on an elysium-choker and go to another world.
Here, on an empty, cold bed by the window, in the complete darkness, I lie with my eyes closed. Body temperature drops like in a dream, but I do not sleep. The neon choker shimmers in different hues, casting highlights on the white walls. It connects to my brain and checks my body condition. After a few seconds, the choker activates a green glow.
My body is ready to dive into Elysium.
I'm slowly disconnecting from reality.
An endless second before sleep.
Emotions are felt brighter, and the body seems to become weightless.
I get on the server.
My virtual avatar is almost indistinguishable from my face. I synchronized my features with the metaverse, adding only a couple of earrings to my ear. The same dark, carelessly disheveled hair, the same look - only the iris of the eye is light pink, while my real eyes are hazel. I often change my eye color. I also added few tattoos on my hands, and they're also often replaced. I'm literally faceless person. One of my friends once said: "Elysium users don't have any individuality, avatars here are all perfectly beautiful, it's just boring". Maybe he was right. However, these morals are long gone. Here in Elysium you do whatever you want, you look how you want, and I believe this is true happiness. To be completely free. Without prohibitions. Without contempt.
In Elysium I have my own private location. It's a privilege, not every user can afford it, but as far as I work as location designer here, I am automatically given my personal room. I made these apartments to my taste. Can't compare it to my empty cage in the real world. Here I have a huge window and lighting that pleases the eye. There are three expensive guitars hanging on the wall, including a bass guitar, and excellent speakers on the floor. My virtual location is also a studio, but it has a balcony and a new kitchen. The bar is always full of expensive alcohol, although I almost never turn on physical access to taste all of that.
In Elysium I feel like home. Reality is different for me. Everything is so gray, cold, depressing. Wretched. It's hard for me to be there, although it's scary to become completely dependent on the metaverse. Physically scary. It's like I'm losing my body.
Elysium is a paradise, and we are the souls of dead here.
And yet, something makes me uneasy. It's like I've lost something and nothing can fill this void.
At nights, I come to one little-known location which is called - KEEP DR34MING. This location is always empty.
This field seems endless. I feel a cool breeze that makes the grass and ears of wheat shimmer under the star-studded night sky. Most of the horizon is obscured by a duplicate of Saturn, surrounded by a barely visible fog. Sitting on a hill, it is easy to see the rings of the planet. Sometimes it seems that I can even hear their noise.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
In the real world, such proximity of planets doesn't exist - gravity will kill them. But in Elysium everything distant becomes close, achievable and tangible. And while I'm sitting here alone, somewhere in this virtual space there are thousands of different rooms with millions of players, event-lives and fun. Hence it is interesting to think about them. After all, I can move there in a second and see what users do in this exact second. But I don't really want it. In Elysium everything is available, but be that as it may, there must be something unknown in a human's life.
