Happy Birthday Rat Shack

Atlantia Year 112 AG (After Genesis)

70% of the surface, which is covered by ocean, the remaining land being 5 giant landmasses the biggest of which is in the middle surrounded by the four others at compass directions of north, south, east and west of the central landmass.

There are also numerous smaller Islands.

On the eastern landmass known simply as the eastern continent, we zoom into the city of Dawnscape with grand skyscrapers that the rising sun is just starting to illuminate.

Zoom in further and we end up in a poorer, dirtier part of the city that can only be called the slums.

In the slums we find a small wooden shack that is weather worn and does not appear to have had a new coat of paint in a long time, though you can see patch jobs in the wood to try and stop the elements from entering.

Inside the shack we find a single room with an old mattress in one corner, old well used looking schoolbooks lay around the bed as if the person asleep in the bed had been reading them before he went to sleep.

On the other side of the room was an old kettle on top of an old-looking gas camp stove with a small gas cylinder attached to it.

Leftover cartons of the type of meals you heat with hot water littered the floor around the stove.

There was a small pile of clothes in another corner that looked dirty and in need of cleaning while hanging from the roof on a few coat hangers was a simple battered t-shirt and jeans and a very old well used set off what looked like a school uniform.

In the old bed covered in thin sheets was a young man who only roused from sleep when the first raise of the sun entered his shack and got his face.

"Ugh" he groaned as he rolled over to hide from the glare of the sun.

A few moments later he found the willpower to climb off his old bed dressed only in boxers

The young man was approximately 6 feet tall and had long shaggy brown hair that had not been cut in a long time.

Behind his long bangs you could just make out two piercing blue eyes, though right now they were still half closed from sleep.

His one admiring feature would be his muscled body which he got from all the manual labor and menial jobs he took to earn enough to eat.

This young man's name was John Michaels and he turned 18 today.

Today would mark the day his school year had their initiation for the MMORPG: Genesis, as the youngest in his year, John who was already hated by everyone in his year for being a poor orphan, now had their hatred magnified because they had to wait for him to turn 18.

Everyone looked forward to being able to finally enter Genesis because they all believed they would be the next Silver Serpent or Blue Ice Queen, the two most famous humans in Genesis .

Young adults entering Genesis dreamed of being war heroes, powerful guild leaders, famous explorers or rich merchants.

Genesis had evolved in a way no one expected, not even its original creators from the five races.

Its original intention was just a place for wars and conflicts to be held instead of on Atlantia, however after it came online and many of the more peaceful races saw its potential, they asked Tia to expand Genesis to give them somewhere they could relax.

Tia did far more than they asked, what she did was basically make an entire second world, from plants to animals, she duplicated the world of Atlantis only changing the places of population.

She changed the location of towns and cities from what the races had in Atlantia, reduced the level of technology back to a level where firearms had only recently appeared.

Npc characters were put into the world to add more interaction, she created a quest system based on computer games with a leveling system to allow the players to grow stronger and feel more powerful in the game.

Tia made the world so realistic and successful that when the races did not have urgent requirements in the real world, they spent their time in Genesis.

It officially became the second world of Atlantia so much so that gaining power and wealth in Genesis, allowed you to gain power and wealth in the real world as bank accounts where linked so they could move money back and forth as they wished.

Alliances formed in Genesis more often than not carried over to the real world.

Those who found love there, found it in the real world.

John however was one of the few who did not look forward to being able to join Genesis, it's not that John did not want to play and enjoy Genesis, it was the opposite, he wanted to escape this shitty reality life had dealt him.

The problem was that if he did not work his after-school jobs he would not eat and then he would never have to worry about how shit reality was ever again.

As John got up, he threw on some trousers before going outside and walking towards an old, cracked mirror with a stool and bucket in front of it.

As he sat down to start cleaning himself, he noticed something floating in the bucket of water he used to wash himself.

A dead rat floated on top of the water and next to the bucket written on the muddy ground with a stick most likely were the words.

Happy Birthday Rat Shack

John sighed before he picked up the bowl of water and carried it over to where there was a trash heap that was far enough away not to be smelled unless the wind blew in his direction before throwing it away.

This was not the first time the kids from school put something in the water he used to clean himself and he knew it wouldn't be the last.