1: a/s/l?

                                    

                                          
If we were to meet IRL I predict the first thing (or things) you would notice about me would be the horns. I have two, coiled and black and twisting back from my temples like nightmares trying to escape my thoughts. My skin is light, almost translucent but with a metallic sheen. The markings on my face, thick, undulating lines that start at my ears and converge beneath my lips, glow bright green in the dark. My hair is pure white and is drawn into severe spikes that defy gravity in the way they just from my scalp at impossible angles and remain rigid even in a breeze. My name is Wolf, I'm eighteen years old and I'm an Inquisitor tasked with uniting the divided tribes that inhabit Ferelden and Orlais against Corypheus and his infernal demon army. Some of this is true.
                          
I don't really look like my Dragon Age: Inquisition character but I like to think that from this moment forwards some of you will forever picture me with horns. My username is always Wolf followed by a random string of numbers depending on what was available at the time. The numbers don't matter although sometimes I'll tell people they do. The Wolf part does matter and has been key to my online identity for as long as I can remember. There is a reason for this. Maybe I'll tell you someday. I'm not eighteen anymore, but I was when this story took place. Is that enough truth for now? You should be able to piece together the rest yourself. Let your imagination run wild.
                          
Should you have no imagination I recommend the following:
                          
1) I am you. Whatever you look like, that's what I look like. For the purposes of this story you can picture yourself at eighteen. Use actual pictures if you like, check Facebook or whatever you were using back then. If you're not yet eighteen I'm sure there's an app that will age your face for you. Go on, you need to get that picture just right, I'll wait for you.
                          
2) Use the character creator from Dragon Age to create your own Wolf. You could use one from a different game if you like, Mass Effect is also good, Dragon's Dogma maybe, even the WWE games would do. If you get stuck use one of the presets then burn that image into your mind. That's me now.
                          
3) Go with the description of my Dragon Age character detailed above. It might seem a little weird at first but then the story gets pretty messed up pretty quickly so before long my horns and shiny Qunari flesh will seem vanilla.
                          
By the time I was eighteen I had already explored distant galaxies, adventured through alternate histories and conquered a hundred universes. My decision to go to uni was based purely on wanting to do more of the above free from parental interference. There was nothing to keep me at home, all my friends were online. My one friend, Fox, was online.
                          
I first met Fox in prison. There's this game, Rec Room, it's hard to describe if you haven't played it. It's hard for me to describe. I'd say it's like a youth club or a leisure centre but to be honest I've never set foot in anything like either of those so it would be phoney of me to start using comparisons like that. It's maybe like halls at uni? You start in a room, like it's your bedroom, and there's a mirror so you can decide what your character is going to look like. Your character is this collection of floating blocks held together with invisible string. I'm not sure any of this is helping but I've committed to describing this stupid game now so I feel like I have to go with it. That's the thing, it's not even a good game. Anyway, you step out of your room and you're in this kind of what I imagine a leisure centre would look like with all these rooms and stairs and things to do and there are other people there too who look like you. These people are other players online so they can walk up and chat to you or whatever. This isn't even the game, it's like the hub; it's where you choose what game you're going to play. So you pull up a list of games and most of them are made by other players so they're all pretty awful. Most of them are like awful-looking first-person shooters or PvP combat games where you just choose a team and then try to kill as many people on the other team as possible. One of them was set in a prison.
                          
I'm playing this in VR, by the way. I think that's important, so you don't just imagine me sitting in my bedroom staring up at a 55" TV (I wish) tapping buttons on a controller. I'm in there. I move my hands and my character moves their hands. I see what my character sees. It's glorious.
                          
I'd wanted virtual reality since I was really little, too little to really get it. Nandi had introduced me to games way too early, or so Steve thought. I was an addict from age 5, mostly playing on Nandi's old Wii, which was at least two generations out of date even back then. One time we watched Tron, which I hated but Nandi seemed upset when I told him that so I pretended it was my favourite film and we watched it every weekend for a month until Steve introduced me to his Disney blu-rays. Once at the part where Jeff Bridges is getting scanned into the computer I asked Nandi if that was possible to do in real life; if it was possible to go inside a computer and live the game. Nandi told me it was and it was called virtual reality.
                          
Nandi told me about the VR they had back when he was a kid, these big, chunky machines that were designed for arcades but the technology was so expensive you never really saw them anywhere. He'd only seen them on TV and never tried it himself, but as far as he knew you put the gigantic headset on and there you were. Most of my childhood wants and dreams changed when I hit adolescence, but not that one. I wanted to escape into the games.
                          
The PS4 was a present for passing my GCSEs. Steve took some convincing but then he'd never really been a gamer. Nandi could see I needed it as much as he'd needed his SNES and had he had any disposable income of his own he would've bought it for me but Steve has always been the one who brought in the money and he never liked letting go of it. My parents are probably the two least compatible men on the planet and sometimes I think that's what makes them work.
                          
Getting a VR headset was trickier. Steve wasn't convinced it was safe and even Nandi had his reservations. He'd read that the age restriction on VR was because it messed up the way your eyes work on purpose to trick your brain into thinking it was looking at something in 3d and not just staring at two screens inches away from your eyeballs. He said there were concerns around the effect that would have on developing eyes. I explained that at 16 my eyes were pretty developed but he was skeptical. Eventually he admitted he was looking for excuses because he knew Steve would never go for it. Steve already thought Playstation was killing my brain, despite my above average (and better than his) GCSE performance. If I wanted to escape into my games I would have to pay for it myself.
                          
I took a weekend job in a clothes shop I wasn't cool enough to work in Steve had sorted out insurance for the owner or something so they did me a favour. I then took up smoking and drinking to cope with the weekend job in the clothes shop I wasn't cool enough to work in (tbh, I had taken up smoking and drinking to get through my GCSEs but standing in that place for endless hours watching Brightonians act all Brightoney made me more of a tobacco and alcohol enthusiast). In the end I traded in a bunch of PS4 games and just scraped enough together to pick up a second-hand headset, at which point I quit the shop job and spent my weekends exploring other worlds, like that prison in Rec Room.
                          
So somebody had designed this prison and the idea was you were put on a team, either the guards or the inmates, and then you fought until the timer ran out and whichever team had the most kills won, just like prison riots in real life. It was awful and the prison wasn't even that well designed, it looked like a medieval castle with way too much gray. I was about to quit when I heard this girl make an Oz reference. Oz was a brutal prison TV show from the 90s that Steve had on DVD and would occasionally rewatch in its entirety. Nandi hated it because it was too depressing. I actually kind of liked it and it turned into this one thing that me and Steve bonded over. Some kids watch reality TV with their parents on a Saturday night. I watched a nihilistic, ultra-violent prison series with mine.
                          
Anyway, this girl shouts, "Nice hat, Adebisi!", which was a stretch because my character's hat was barely at an angle at all and I told her so.
                          
"You've watched Oz?" she said, her big chunky hands waving up and down in excitement, "No one watches Oz. It's like from the 80s."
                          
"90s," I corrected her, then immediately apologised, "Sorry."
                          
There was a pause then, "Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons; the season finale aired February 23m 2003. According to Wikipedia."
                          
"Then it must be true."
                          
The username floating above her head read Fox4324332. The numbers didn't matter although sometimes she'll tell people they do. The Fox part does matter and has been key to her online identity for as long as she can remember. Together we would take on the world.