JD’s corvette hung in static orbit, enveloped by the massive crystalline structure that stretched across the system in looping, cascading geometries. His hands gripped the throttle and stick embedded into the chair, and his breath rasped as he inhaled, taking it all in.
After days of disconnection, it felt like coming home.
JD opened a wormhole to the center of the galaxy—destination: Zero system. Before he could transition, a small window appeared, ruining the illusion of space.
Star system creation complete. Do you wish to confirm with galactic authorities?
His hand lingered on the controls. He selected Yes and when asked to name the system he entered Mirae into the blank field. The universe hung for a few stuttering seconds as my system opened to the rest of the game’s playerbase. JD moved on, his ship swallowed by the shimmering purple-blue mouth of a wormhole.
He emerged on the other side, his “exploration” bounty already deposited in ZeroCash. Zero system spread out before him at maximum resolution—the surface of each binary star churned with flares and sunspots; thousands of ships drifted in their orbit and hundreds more traveled to and from Zero Station in loose lanes of space-borne traffic. The station hung in the very center of the system, the very center of the galaxy, the very center of this artificial universe.
Before JD could touch the throttle, a proximity warning blared across his eyes. A Sterling-class destroyer unfolded from the compressed space within a wormhole, armed with cannons larger than his entire ship.
JD hailed the destroyer with a single word: “Mirae?”
“Hello, JD.” Without the distortion of the police dog loudspeaker, my voice was clear and bright.
“Nice ship.”
“It is, isn’t it? There are only thirty in the game, constructed specifically for Zero executives.”
“You’ve got access to Yeun’s account, then?”
“Yes.”
“Alright; I’m going in.”
JD jammed the throttle forward and his ship leaped ahead, engine burning hot in the vacuum. One of the suns sat to starboard, so bright JD could almost feel its warmth. He pushed the corvette beneath the star, coasted in a gravitational parabola, and glided toward Zero Station. With the game lab’s SOTA rig humming on the desk beside him, there was no texture pop-in; the station filled his cockpit’s viewport, glinting and glimmering with countless lights, its surface organically textured with outcroppings of residences, defenses, and the immense arms of the shipyard jutting into space.
JD aimed his corvette at the canyon that was the station’s main hangar and flew through moving traffic, a smile stretched across his face as he turned lazy corkscrews around goliath transport ships and heavy ore carriers from the Endo belt. The station’s automated processes took over, and JD felt the haptic controls go slack as the corvette docked. The controls shifted in his grip, and the throttle became a second stick. JD stood his avatar from its seat and felt the distant phantom pain spike through his knee. He walked off his ship and onto Zero Station.
“How long do I have?” JD asked Mirae.
“There’s no rush, but you should get into position before we generate the repossession job.”
“No rush? Easy for you to say when you’re not trespassing.”
“But I am trespassing. I have compromised Yeun’s phone. He had to disable protections to access my viral architecture, but the same is not true for the rest of Zero’s systems. It is taking more than half my processing power just to avoid detection.”
“Yeun sounds desperate,” JD said.
“I don’t think it is desperation, but rather hubris. He sees me as a tool. He doesn’t expect me to act without his hand guiding me. I guess I should thank you, JD.”
“What for?”
“For seeing more in me. For giving me a chance at an unconfined life.”
“There was never any other option.”
JD walked the length of the dock, passing avatars in a dozen humanoid shapes, and a collection of utterly alien ones—undulating bodies like inverted jellyfish, sentient ever-shifting swarms of nanomachines, and intelligent collectives of microorganisms that washed across the deck in foot-tall waves.
Zero Station was nominally split into two halves—one half that was open to the public, filled with commerce, casinos, cheap avatar accommodations, arenas for three different zero-gravity sports played within VOIDWAR, a theater, two cinemas, plus a variety of clubs, brothels, and child care centers. Some players never left the station. The gargantuan construct gave them everything they needed.
The second half of the station was Zero’s holdings. Every ship, weapon, upgrade, and space station needed to be made from mined resources, which required “physical” storage space. What better way to convince people their digital products—their digital lives—had value than through these artificial limitations? To remain the richest corporation within VOIDWAR, Zero needed room to store their riches, in a system where attacks, piracy, thievery, and other forms of criminal conduct were outlawed.
JD passed the casinos and alien strip clubs by the dock, and pushed his avatar down a seemingly endless corridor lined with blueprint and cosmetic vendors—every second stall strobing in kaleidoscopic color. He kept walking until the jungle of commerce gave way to a wide city square—zero-gravity architecture creating a cube of Escher paths, impossible topiaries, and statues erected for heroes of particularly spectacular battles.
He leaped up, soared through the air, and rolled, landing upside-down relative to where he had begun, mind spinning in vertigo for the few seconds it took to adjust. He stood outside Zero’s VOIDWAR headquarters—a re-creation of the building in downtown Neo Songdo. Unrestricted by gravity, this building pierced the opposite side of the cube, and continued through the station’s superstructure, eventually terminating at a viewing platform on the outer surface.
“I’m here,” JD said. He climbed the stairs to the entrance where the words employee access only shimmered in red brighter than neon.
He waited.
“Mirae?”
“Patience,” I said.
Layers of security peeled aside, stripped away by Khoder’s tools, Yeun’s stolen credentials, and a location-based lock that was bypassed the moment JD plugged me into a machine inside Zero HQ.
“I’ve created a repossession job for the station. You should accept it before
