Prologue

Many creative minds have dreamt up the day of the System Apocalypse. For some, it was pure fiction. For others, a real possibility. Yet none got it right.

On August 8th, at 4:03 am UTC, human life on Earth ended. Nominally, it took 1.3 seconds, even so, there were some stragglers that lived for a couple of seconds longer. Yet, nobody on Earth, or to be more precise, no human on Earth knew it had happened. We all knew that something happened. The people awake at the time all claimed various harmless symptoms like a short bout of dizziness or some disorienting deja vu. It wasn’t something that had a real effect on them; there were no plane crashes, not even someone tripping and falling.

Yet, it was so widespread that humanity was puzzling over it for weeks. With no result. No matter what the scientists measured, the priests prayed, or the charlatans promised, nothing came out of the investigation. No instrument had recorded any kind of blip. Nothing on seismic, no radio waves, not even the big gravitational arrays had gotten anything. Which, if you knew what happened, was no surprise. Asking a simulated reality that was designed to pretend to be real if it differed from reality was futile.

However, there were some people who had massively different experiences. For them, the transition from being flesh and blood to being a digital simulation of themselves wasn’t as seamless as it should have been. They noticed. I know that because I was one of them. Or so I thought at the time.

Chapters

  1. Prologue
  2. Chapter One - Liverpool Girl
  3. Chapter Two - What is Love?
  4. Chapter Three - Strawberry Fields
  5. Chapter Four - Livia all along
  6. Interlude One
  7. Chapter Five - Who you gonna call?
  8. Chapter Six - Digging Deep
  9. Chapter Seven - Tall Dark Stranger
  10. Interlude Two
  11. Chapter Eight - Theme From…
  12. Chapter Nine - Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting
  13. Interlude Three
  14. Chapter Ten - Material Girl
  15. Chapter Eleven - Candy Shop
  16. Chapter Twelve - Never gonna give you up
  17. Interlude Four
  18. Chapter Thirteen - Tubthumper
  19. Chapter Fourteen - Baby, don’t hurt me
  20. Chapter Fifteen - And frolicked in the autumn mist
  21. Chapter Sixteen - I ain't dumb, she my Tweedledee
  22. Chapter Seventeen - No time for losers
  23. Chapter Eighteen - Got a black magic NPC
  24. Chapter Nineteen - Call my name and save me from the dark
  25. Interlude Five
  26. Chapter Twenty - Ruffians, thugs, poison ivy, quicksand, cannibals and snakes, the plague!
  27. Chapter Twenty-One - In the loudest storm, we can be so proud
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two - And I've been working like a dog
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three - Let them stay home and comment on the internet
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four - We'll find a pond, we'll find a puddle
  31. Interlude Six
  32. Chapter Twenty-Five - Knee deep in the hoopla
  33. Chapter Twenty-Six - There beneath the blue suburban skies
  34. Bonus Chapter - Down the Rabbit Hole
  35. Chapter Twenty-Eight - I keep your secrets, cross my heart to die
  36. Chapter Twenty-Nine - Fight for Your Right
  37. Interlude Seven
  38. Chapter Thirty - I say, "High", you say, "Low"
  39. Chapter Thirty-One - Eight Days A Week
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two - Locked you away behind cast iron doors
  41. Chapter Thirty-Three - Just as mother-less birds fly high
  42. Interlude Eight
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four - Come join the fun, it's a merry-go-round
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five - Silly people run around
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six - Can You Dig It?
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven - Meanwhile
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight - Out Of The Dark
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine - Meanwhile (2)
  49. Bonus Chapter - Charlie and the Player Factory
  50. Chapter Forty - 秘密持ちたいな 罪を感じたい
  51. Interlude Nine
  52. Chapter Forty-One - El Baile de los Pajaritos
  53. Chapter Forty-Two - 愛する人守る力両手に持ってるはず
  54. Chapter Forty-Three - Let it be
  55. Bonus Chapter - The Ruined Girl