[Incoming Transmission]

I know, I know. I should really be writing my other stories. It's just that I was writing down a little tiny plot idea, and then all of a sudden it was an hour later and I had the beginning of a story with an actual plot lined up for it. Anyway, here ya go!

Prologue: The End of the World

The year is 2028. Nearly six years ago, SAO had it's disastrous opening. Ten thousand lives - including numerous children, elderly, and corporate suits from Argus - were lost in an instant. The game went online, and the NerveGear fried the brain of each player with high-density microwaves as soon as they logged on. Argus summarily terminated everyone who had worked on the final patch before the release. Warrants were also issued for their arrest, but none of the charges could stick.

Notably absent from this number was the game's creator and head of the design team, Kayaba Akihiko himself. He had a solid alibi in that he had left the project once beta testing ended, trusting that they would be able to iron out the final bugs. He, on the other hand, turned all his attention to a different project he had been working on during the previous year, but he has kept it under wraps, working alone on the game.

He expressed deep distress when we interviewed him shortly after the incident, stating, "I had intended Sword Art Online to be a place for players from across the globe to come together and enjoy the world I had created. This was precisely what had happened in the Beta release, so this horror show was not at all what I expected when I left the project in May. I can only hope that the malicious code was not integrated into the C4-DN1 system, as that forms the basis of the game I began development on last year."

When further questioned, Akihiko provided almost no insight into his new game. The only thing the tight-lipped designer has said is that it is "a throwback to one of the great RPGs of last decade." We can only speculate on what his game will be about, but if previous titles on the NerveGear and the seven-year production time are anything to go by then the first MMO to hit the platform since SAO will prove to be spectacular.

-/-/-

I stopped reading the article and placed the paper down on the desk in front of me. It may have been about the greatest failure of my career, but the company and even the whole VR gaming media still survived. I looked across the desk to the man who created both of the only two RPGs to ever hit my company's leading platform.

"So, Mr. Akihiko. Is there a chance you'll tell me what the game is about? Strictly off-the-books, of course; we wouldn't want the hype to die off if it got leaked."

He smiled at me in that infuriating half-smile of his that doesn't quite reach his eyes. It's almost like he's trying to cultivate the sociopathic mad scientist image that the media was painting for him.

"Why sir, it's quite simple," he said, the smile seeming to stretch to Cheshire Cat proportions. "My game is about the end of the world."

Waking up as a pokemon was the last thing I expected when I turned on my NerveGear. The HUD and menu were even more confusing, because there was no inventory, just a list of commands that made no sense. What was even worse was that I had no arms. Or legs, for that matter, or a torso. No, I found myself waking up as a Ghastly. I didn't even get to be something cool, I had to be a damn floating ball of gas with a face. Over 1000 Pokemon that I could've ended up as, and this is what I got?

Oh, but I'm being rude, aren't I? I haven't properly introduced myself. The name's Kirigaya. Kirigaya Suguha.

What, expecting someone else? My brother? Pfft, as if! Ever since he found out that we were only even related on a guardianship technicality, he just threw himself into his studies and video games to escape reality. I don't understand why he did it, but he did.

He never really caught on to the VR fad when it started a few years back with the Oculus Rift 4.3 came out and allowed cheap and easy full-body game control. He stuck more to 'traditional' gaming, if you will, keeping on the straight and narrow of the 'PC Master Race'. I, on the other hand, Dove right in. The VRFPS games, parkour games, the occasional RPG… I didn't especially enjoy the games, but they were okay. I guess it was just as much a way to stay connected with Kazuto while he tried to push us away as it was a coping mechanism for the same thing. I even got into the beta testing for SAO and let him try it out, and managed to get him back into kendo in the process. Still, it was just another way to keep him close. I didn't want to lose him, and I knew I would if we continued like that.

It was a wonderful couple months while I still had Kazuto with me. Then the full version of SAO launched. I remember waiting in line for four days to get one of the ten thousand copies that were released for the opening. I put on my NerveGear and activated it at 13:00 on the sixth day of November in the year 2022. The next thing I know, I woke up three feet off the ground as a ball of purplish gas. It didn't make any sense. I had been in the beta for SAO, and not to mention all the leaked concept art and in-game images, and I knew that this place was not inside the game at all. Also, there weren't pokemon in SAO.

Where am I?

I imagined the hand-swiping motion required to open the menu, and it opened again. Apparently, since the NerveGear ran off of brain waves, thinking about the action still worked despite having no hands to speak of. Like it had been every time I opened it, there were only two things in the menu: a tab titled "commands," filled with unreadable lines of code; and the clock. The clock wasn't linked to the time in the real world, obviously, since there were twenty-six-hour days. There was a date, too, but in no calendar that I recognised. Thus, the more important question occurs:

When am I?

It's been six years since I lost Sugu. I don't know why I even kept the damn NerveGear and the discs after she died; it's not like I actually play VR games. PC master race and all that. I guess it's paid off somewhat, considering that I've got a platform to play this new game coming out that everyone's hyping about, but the gaming world kind of soured for me with Sugu's death. I stayed with computers, of course, and I'm working on degrees in robotics and programming, but I've tended to stay away from games.

I really don't know what possessed me to get it. Maybe because it was the huge secret project that Akihiko has been stringing us along for since SAO. Maybe because I want to kick back and relax without getting carpal tunnels. But I think that, deep down, it's because I've dabbled in neuroscience just to figure out how the NerveGear works, and I think she might still be out there.

Of course, it sounds like a pipe dream when I put it like that, which is why I haven't told anyone, but it's probably the only thought keeping me from giving up. College is soul-crushingly difficult, programming is advancing almost faster than they can teach it, and projections say that we'll have fully-sentient AI to do the job I'm studying for within five years. Hell, genetics is advancing to the point that there could be furries walking down the street and looking the part too within as little as three years. The world is moving forward at a rapid pace, and I just can't keep up with the changes.

So it's a break. A sabbatical. A way to just let go of reality, if only for a little while.

It's just a game.

What could possibly go wrong?

I welcome any critique that you might have for the story, but please try to hold back on the huge flamey criticism, okay? They make me feel bad, and that's not nice.

[Transmission Terminated]