18 IronAge

Sara hurried to change her bedding and clean the mess made through staying in the game too long. Usually, your body won't pee or poop while connected to the VR, as it acts almost like one is sleeping and if one is not prone to night time accidents, then they won't have to worry while connected to the VR. However, it's also true that most people will eat drink and go to the bathroom before connecting and won't stay connected for longer than, at most, eight hours. Some will occasionally stay connected for as many as twelve hours, but most did not do that regularly, especially since in games time seemed to pass faster, so it could actually be two to three days in a game before the twelve hours were up.

After finishing up with her bed, Sara reentered the create space and fixed the kick issue immediately. She hesitated while deciding the time limit, but felt six hours was fine. When she installed some games in and started playing them, she'd have to remember to sync the two kick features so she wasn't getting kicked early.

After settling her kick feature issue, Sara came back out of the VR and sat down. She hadn't felt tired before, but after realizing just low long it'd been since she'd actually slept, her body seemed to crash all at once. As she lay on her bed, she began thinking about her plans for the coming days.

She knew that she would need to post another video on her other channel, and she needed to prepare for that. This façade of being a viral star would need to be executed well enough that no one would question her about it. Sara had a few ideas for videos, but she couldn't execute them for a little while, or until after her other channel had begun to take off. The game that she wanted to make her debut with on her second channel would be released in a little over a week's time.

As Sara made plans for her two channels, her eyes grew heavier and heavier. Slowly, she drifted off to sleep without noticing.

Her dreams were ones of her working hard every day on her two channels. In them, she never realized her dream for fame and fortune, as if her working hard and striving for her dreams was a constant loop in her life. It was as if no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, or how many followers she had; she could never have enough to break out of the Labor Force.

In her dreams, she gained more than enough followers to stay out of the labor force, but she was never recognized as someone who was famous. She went out into the world and nobody knew who she was. She had the numbers, but it didn't matter. By the end of it, she was there, in her house watching her numbers plummet for whatever reason, as a knock sounded on her door, signaling her to begin her work as a labor worker.

Sara awoke with a jolt. Sweat covered her form from her nightmare, and her breathing was heavy. Her bedding was soaked again, this time from sweat, but Sara just adjusted her blankets and curled back up.

She lay staring at her wall, uneasy from the nightmare.

It took her a while before she calmed down enough to slip into a dreamless slumber.

The next morning, Sara had all but forgotten her nightmare. She began preparing to film a couple videos for her first channel. They were mostly 'getting to know you' types of videos, as most people that suddenly shot up in fame in such a short amount of time would usually do such videos. She was still trying to play her part, and her bad overacting caused perhaps one of the biggest misunderstandings to happen in recent years on the internet. All her new followers thought she was over acting on purpose, trolling those viral sensations before her and making fun of the entire situation she'd found herself in.

People were even speculating if her original videos on her channel were also spoofs on people trying to make their way into fame and fortune. Her entire channel became a parody channel; even the genre was adjusted, without her knowledge, to comedy.

After becoming a viral sensation, she'd successfully gone up a rank and was about to break into the next fame rank already.

The payments she was receiving for her fame were higher than ever before.

She was already a high F ranker, if she was able to become an E ranker before the end of the year then her goal of making it out of the woods of joining the Labor Force would almost certainly be realized.

Sara spent a few days readying videos to be posted on her first channel.

Without noticing, Sara's work ethics and scheduling took on a massive change. Before, she would desperately want to gain more followers, but she never put in the required effort. It wasn't on purpose. She wanted it so badly that her mindset had begun to take on this idea that it was almost impossible for her to achieve her goal. When someone earns a million dollars a year, their mindset about what's possible is very different than someone that makes twenty thousand a year. To the person that only makes minimum wage and has to struggle with a six hundred dollar a month rent or mortgage, the idea of making a million dollars or more in a single year seems unattainable, despite the fact that there are many people that do just that.

A person's limitations are very often inflicted upon them by themselves.

Sara saw her goal as overall impossible. Though she desperately wanted it to happen, though she "worked" for it every day, she never really thought it would ever happen. This caused her to lose hope and her work ethics and quality of videos fell because of it.

She saw her goal as something that was life changing, something that was world altering. Because it was built up so greatly in her own mind, to her, reaching D rank and SSS rank might as well have been one and the same. To outsiders, if they were to know she thought that way, they would have called her a fool. But, those people that called her a fool, would already have made it to D rank.

Let's look at it this way.

If you are making $2,300 a month, if you were suddenly told that you needed four thousand in a week's time in order to keep your home, the feeling would be the same if they had said you needed a million. If, in your mind, it's impossible, then it doesn't matter how impossible it is. Impossible is impossible.

If you have $200 in your account and your car engine blows and you need to pay $2,000 for a new engine, then it's just as impossible for you as if they said it was $20,000 that you needed.

So what if someone else can pay that amount? Will they pay it for you?

No.

Sara's mindset was similar to this.

However, now that her channels were coming together, now that she could see a way for her to succeed, her quality of videos were going up and her work ethics increased. When there is light at the end of the tunnel that you've been traversing for weeks, you suddenly feel that your feet no longer hurt and that you are able to muster the energy to run toward that light, even if a few moments before you were almost dead from exhaustion and despair.

Sara began to work every day on her videos. Hours and hours passed as she planned, filmed and edited. She even bought a brand new editing software and computer in order to bring up her video quality.

In fact, she worked the same hours as a labor force worker. Twelve hours a day, sometimes even more.

She didn't call her friends, didn't take many breaks. She was working constantly. And she enjoyed it.

She finally felt that she was making progress toward her goal. She no longer felt like she was stuck running in place, she was moving forward. This drive toward her goal was the first time Sara had actually had the proper ability to mature and grow into the person she was meant to be.

As the end of the week came to a close, Sara received the notification that she had been waiting for.

She glanced at her phone, then jumped up, knocking her camera's tripod down as she did.

She cursed, paused, her hands hovering over the fallen tripod, then said, "Fuck it," and continued to the gather her VR equipment.

That's right, the day had come that IronAge was ready.

When prepaying for a game, there was no hardware, not anymore.

The game was scheduled for download on your registered VR system and once it became available, you would be allowed to create your character and play.

The notification she received was an alert, stating that the game would be ready for play within the hour and that the character creation process could begin now.

Sara hurriedly slipped into her VR equipment and waited for her system to log her in. The familiar night sky of her create space greeted her and she felt her stomach doing flips.

Na-Na appeared in front of Sara, but Sara paid her no mind as she hurriedly summoned the menu options.

Sara had looked through her menu before, it gave the list of games she could play and gave the options to select pre-created create spaces and Avatars.

Those pre-created spaces were probably for the people that didn't want to bother with decorating and designing their own create space and couldn't stand to just be standing in a white ethereal space.

The create space functioned as the home screen that existed for PC games, most people preferred to have something interesting in the background of their home screen and the same was even more true for create spaces. After all, you could invite others into your create space. Who would want to invite someone in and then have to explain why you haven't put anything inside of it? Though some people might not have minded, for most people, having a well decorated create space was a sense of pride and gave a certain amount of bragging rights.

There were themes for girls. Themes for boys. Themes that were retro, like a 1950's theme. There were theme parks for themes. There were themes based on old video games that weren't on VR. Free themes and themes that cost thousands of dollars.

You could find a theme for anything.

Most people went that route after the novelty of the creating your own world wore off. There weren't many that actually created and kept their create space. Especially after the limitations of the create space were taken into consideration.

Sara's situation where her create space was entirely unique and designed by herself for herself was something that rarely happened.

Truth be told, if she had begun posting videos of her just designing her create space, she would be able to climb the ranks just as well. There were very few content creators that did such things. Then, if she had tried and applied to somewhere that designed and created create space themes, she would also be able to build up some theme, depending on how many people used her themes. If a product becomes well known, then the fame the product has is directly contributed to the person that designed it.

There were a few people that had become famous for creating themes for create spaces. Most of the themes created, however, were created by teams employed by the companies that sold the VR equipment, so there weren't too many independent creators of themes, but there were a few.

Like PsychoJanJan, who usually created themes that revolved around retro games like the old arcade games created in the beginning of the gaming industry.

Or, Jack Dynamite, who created…adult themes.

These two had channels on Televiz where they allowed people to watch them create the themes and for every person that downloaded and recognized their theme, they were credited with fame.

Sara's creative ability could have placed her at the top of the community of creating themes, but she was dreadfully unaware of her own talent.

As Sara stood in her create space, waiting for the menu to load IronAge, the room suddenly turned dark. The air around her grew cold and the lack of light felt heavy. The ground beneath her felt rocky, uneven. The scent of sulfur filled her nostrils, causing Sara to want to take smaller breaths. This was the first time Sara had truly experienced the 90 some percent realism. She felt as if the world around her had truly changed, as if she really was standing in a dark environment.

Before her, a red flame began to grow, illuminating some of her surroundings. Around Sara were boulders and rocks, as if she were standing in a rocky lake bed that had long dried up over time. Slowly, as more of her environment came into focus, Sara felt fright at what was revealed.

Crushed and splintered bones of those long passed were littering the ground around her. The bones were not white, but dirty, grey and covered with black soot. As if they had burned in a terrible flame.

The flame grew brighter, seeming to draw closer. Sara dared not to move, her heart pounded in her chest.

Slowly, as the flame was still some distance away, little wisps of it flew out, they sounded similar to how bottle rockets sounded when shooting up into the air.

They shot toward Sara, causing her to panic and duck out of the way.

They zipped past her. She turned to see where they were heading.

She received a fright as she turned. They did not go far, instead stopping in the air behind her, coalescing into words as more and more tiny flames shot out, gathering in the air.

Sara's eyes darted over the words, as she stood dumbfounded. Slowly, she began to read.

"The characteristic of an Iron Age culture is the mass production of tools and weapons of steel. The world has gone through many different arcs and ages. The past is the past and the future is the future. Once progress in technology and science is made, the aforementioned progress cannot be taken back. This is the belief of many in the world. However…"

The words ended, with no more to read.

As Sara's brows furrowed as she tried to imagine what the rest of the paragraph could have said. As she stood there, however, the flames scattered, disappearing into the darkness.

Sara heard a cracking behind her.

Turning, she found the flame from before was growing larger, hotter.

Despite being almost twenty yards from the flame, Sara felt the need to step back.

The flame's color changed from a red orange hue to a blue and white dancing flame that was far hotter than the previous. Despite its small size, the flame caused Sara to rapidly step away, until she was over thirty yards from it.

As she stood watching, sounds other than the crackling of the flames were heard all around her.

From the corner of her eye, Sara saw movement.

Turning, a scream caught in her throat at the bones from before began to shift, dragging against the ground beneath.

The skeletons began to move. An arm slowly dragged itself forward, towards the blue flame. Legs shifted and twitched on the ground, unable to grab hold to move more effectively. But what was most disturbing for Sara were the still partially intact skeletons that were desperate to make their way forward, crawling toward the blue flame.

Sara heard something dragging behind her and felt something brush against her. Looking down, she found a skeleton, its lower jaw gone, and missing its legs. It slowly dragged itself forward, not paying her any attention, with its lone remaining arm, its bones dragging against the ground giving an eerie effect.

Sara gasped and jumped away, only to find her beside yet another dragging itself forward. As she looked around her, she found that there were hundreds, no, thousands, of skeletons slowly making their way toward the flame. A few were intact enough to walk, but many were forced to drag themselves atop the ground, forcing their way forward.

Like a fallen army that had found their general and were gathering, waiting for their next orders.

Sara watched with fear in her throat at the terrible scene playing out around her.

As the first skeleton reached the flame, a flash of light caused Sara to be momentarily blinded. She looked to find that the skeleton was gone, eviscerated from the flame.

More and more skeletons reached the flame, each producing a flash of blinding light before being consumed.

As Sara watched dumbstruck, she felt something grip her leg.

Looking down, she found a skeleton gripping her ankle. Sara screamed and jumped back. The skeleton seemed not to mind and continued to drag itself toward the blue light. Facing away from the blue flame, flashes of orange caught her eye. In the distance, Sara saw the orange flames beginning to coalesce once again.

Not wasting any time, Sara sprinted forward, toward the orange flames.

Anything was better than standing in that field of death.

The orange flames were once again forming words, Sara wasted no time in reading, beginning before they were even fully written.

"...The universe itself is a constant cycle, always moving forward, but sometimes replaying the past. And sometimes, this endless cycle affects even the miniature worlds that call this universe home. Sometimes worlds are cleansed, forced to start from the beginning. And even rarer…sometimes those inventions and that progress in the future can find itself in the past, used by people and those that call the universe home that do not fully understand their uses and capabilities. An IronAge with the technologies of the future can be birthed."

The words ended.

As she finished reading the final line, a loud explosion was heard from behind her. Turning, Sara found that the blue flame had grown in size once again, but this time it wasn't stopping. It was coming directly at her, consuming all that existed around her.

Sara screamed in fright and began to run.

Sweat had long soaked her clothing from the intense heat of the blue flames, her body felt tired and sluggish. She ran as hard as she could, however, because in her mind, her life depended on it.

It was futile; however, as Sara's fear reached its peak and she felt herself being swallowed up by those flames.