Second Life Novels & Stories

Raina snapped, "You can't marry Elara!" I raised an eyebrow, a mocking laugh slipping from my lips. "And who exactly are you to say that?" "Your wife!" Raina shot back. "In our previous life, we were happy! We had a perfect family! Everyone envied us! We were the couple people couldn't stop talking about!" She'd finally said it out loud—the secret that she had come back in time too. I burst out laughing, as if I'd just heard the biggest joke of my life.

This was Eos, the First World. "My tablet..." Rhys whispered, staring at his device. The screen was no longer displaying code. It was showing a complex, organic lattice that looked like a nervous system for a planet. "It’s not reading data anymore. It’s reading Entropy. We aren't in a simulation, Elara. We’re in the 'Real'—but the 'Real' is dying."

for the dying elite of the human world. Silas lay on the white-glass platform, his teeth clenched against the rhythmic, soul-shredding pull of the pumps. He felt his "Unmapped" frequency being "Down-sampled," his very identity being siphoned away to fuel a world that viewed him as a "Resource." "I can... I can feel her, Silas," Lyra gasped from the platform beside him. Her eyes were closed, her brow furrowed in a look of agonizing concentration. She wasn't talking about herself; she was talking about the "Duplicate Lyra" in the simulation.

"And now it's done. Not perfectly — there are still threads, there are always threads. But the thing that brought you back has been addressed. The unfinished thing is finished." "And?" Nyla said. "And I think what happens is that you stop running and start living," Sophia said. "Not in a small sense — not just that you take a breath and then keep doing the same thing more slowly. I think the quality of the life changes. I think you stop being someone who is returning to something and start being someone who is simply here." She paused. "I think the second life, when the purpose that called it into existence is resolved, becomes just — a life. Your life. Contin