Fatal Virtual

I survived. I can tell you that right from the start, although I'm not sure if the rest of my life will be worth anything. The Earth's energy resources were depleting much faster than the scientific teams could work on inventing entirely new ones. And yet, the solution was so simple from the beginning.

To transfer the entire civilised world, along with its whole economy, into the virtual realm. A computer generating a virtual world consumes a billion times less energy than the real one. Absolutely brilliant. However, someone had to remain in the real world to keep it running and to take care of these 'maintainers'.

I am one of them. I live on the ninth floor of an abandoned office building, and I have it all to myself. All the buildings in the city centre are deserted because ninety-nine per cent of people are sitting at home in residential districts on the outskirts, almost non-stop connected to the virtual world. And everything was working beautifully, really, until it started to seem to me that their stupid virtual world was beginning to merge with the real one in a strange way. To seep through. There must have been a mistake somewhere. But what can you do about it? I got myself a Glock. But as it turned out, what was needed was something much more drastic. Like a wagonload of plastic explosives.