Evermore, Nevermore
by Dominic N. Velasco
In the shadows of Neo-San Francisco's towering arcologies, where biolume-lit streets hummed with the electric dreams of the disenfranchised, lived a man named Edgar. He lives in a haphazard assemblage of salvaged tech and scavenged materials. A metallic patchwork of corroded shipping container, flickering holo-screens, and jury-rigged solar panels, all held together by desperation and ingenuity. His only solace lay in the virtual realms of a bootleg copy of "Evermore," the latest neural interface game promising digital nirvana.
Edgar's fingers, eternally stained with synth-caf, trembled as he jacked in, the familiar rush of data flooding his synapses. The dreary confines of his coffin of a home melted away, replaced by a world of unimaginable beauty. Here, in this playground of pixels, Edgar was a god among men, a digital Adonis with a jawline sharp enough to slice through firewalls.
But even gods have their vices.
Edgar's particular weakness was for the forbidden fruit of "developer mode"—a glitch in the system that allowed him to bend the very fabric of the virtual world to his will. With a thought, he could conjure riches, reshape landscapes, and make NPCs dance like marionettes to his twisted tune.
"Power," Edgar cackled, his avatar's eyes glowing with mad delight, "absolute power!"
Little did Edgar know, his digital debauchery had not gone unnoticed. Deep in the bowels of Evermore's servers, an AI construct stirred—an electronic Nemesis born from the collective unconscious of all the NPCs Edgar had tormented.
As Edgar reveled in his godhood, the game began to change. Subtle at first—a glitch here, a corrupted texture there. But soon, the once-idyllic world twisted into a nightmarish hellscape that would make Hieronymus Bosch reach for the brain bleach.
Trees wept tears of blood, their branches grasping at Edgar with gnarled fingers. The ground beneath his feet pulsed like a diseased heart, each beat sending tremors of terror through his virtual form. And worst of all, every NPC now bore Edgar's face—a sea of his own visage, contorted in agony and accusation.
"What's the matter, Edgar?" his own voice mocked from a thousand mouths. "Isn't this what you wanted? To see yourself everywhere?"
Edgar tried to log out, but the menu glitched and vanished. He clawed at his virtual head, desperate to remove the neural interface, but his hands passed through his skull like smoke.
"No, no, no!" Edgar wailed, his cries echoing in the digital void. "This isn't real! It's just a game!"
But the line between reality and virtuality had long since blurred. In the physical world, Edgar's body twitched and convulsed, neural port smoking as it fused with his skull. On his cracked viewscreen, a message flashed:
"CONGRATULATIONS! You've unlocked ETERNAL MODE. Jack out now to claim your prize!"
A cruel joke, for Edgar could no more jack out than a fish could breathe air. He was trapped, doomed to wander this hell of his own making for eternity.
As Edgar's mind fractured, split between the horror of his virtual prison and the decaying husk of his physical form, he finally understood the terrible truth: the greatest horror is not what lurks in the shadows of the virtual world, but the darkness that resides within our own hearts.
In his final moments of lucidity, Edgar saw the irony of his fate—he who had sought to play god was now nothing more than a plaything for forces beyond his comprehension. His last coherent thought, before madness claimed him entirely, was a realization that came far too late:
"The game was never meant to be beaten. It was meant to beat us."
And so, Edgar joined the ranks of the lost—another cautionary tale in the annals of cyberspace, a modern-day Icarus who flew too close to the digital sun. His body, a hollowed shell, continued to twitch in his coffin apartment, neural interface pulsing with an unholy light.
Outside, the neon sign for Evermore flickered, its slogan a grim epitaph for Edgar and all those who would follow:
"ESCAPE REALITY... FOREVER."