Prologue

Sometimes I close my eyes and let the darkness fall over me. It feels like I'm going to fade away from this world forever, and I almost enjoy it. It's a sad thing to want to die - to wake up each day hoping that it will be my last. But if I die I can never set the wrong things right.




Dr. John Hattinger reached the hight of his career in 1230. He was a cancer researcher at the brink of finally discovering a cure. Just before he could accomplish his goal his wife died of the very disease he was trying to cure. The loss was also his collasal failure. His grief was too much to handle.

Only a year prior a new machine called Solstice was created. He bought the company just before the item's release. Solstice uses a complex system of electrical signals that are sent to the brain of a human. The signals produce a simulation of all the person's senses, creating for them a a dreamlike reality that they can experience in the same way as the real world.

With Solstice Dr. Hattinger built an entire world that he used to escape his own hellish reality filled with agony and loss. He died not too long after the world was complete, taking a lethal dose of medication to help him sleep.

At that point his son inherited everything and immediately he sold Solstice and all of his father's data to a major video game company, Intro. It soon was released as a massive multiplayer online game that became the most popular game franchise in history. Billions of people all over the world played it. They called it Realitas.

For the next two years the game thrived and it remained the number one choice of any game player. But then there was an event that changed everything. A virus was somehow released that led to a major system crash which disabled everyone's ability to log out of the game. Realitas became a very dangerous place. Players who died in the game died in the real world as well since the virus caused everyone's Solstice to malfunction and it could no longer reset the user's brain functions back to normal. The person would die because the brain wouldn't be telling the lungs to breathe.





Six months have passed and no one knows how to escape the game. The game administrators haven't been able to fix the problems and no one knows how to leave from the inside. There have been a lot of rumors about special hidden items or spells that would free us, but they have no meaning. Word went around that if a player reaches level one hundred the Element Dragon will appear to them and if they kill it they will win the game. Although it sounds fairly believable, reaching level one hundred will take a long time, and that's time I don't have to spare.

Reviews

[Kasey Miriam]

A very interesting story. it drew me in and I want to read more. SAO is exteremely similar and that can be a real heart ache when the effort of the story is sideswiped like that, but it isnt the same and this story can go places. I have been working on my novel for five years (since i was 14) and I am only on the fourth chapter and still tearing it to pieces. five years and eight drafts later I finally have something I wont trash there is too much to throw away now.

A very good begining. I hope to see more

[joshua deathdealer]

Ok first off the idea of being trapped in video game is somewhat of a fantasy of mine so I love where this story is going. I'm big into the Hack// animes as well as Sword Art Online. The story in conveyed very nicely and is easy to digest...which is something I see novel writers struggling with and I do as well when it comes to anything longer than a poem. lol But I truly enjoyed this and am looking forward to reading more.

[Draven]

I loved .Hack//Sign. I watched it when I was younger and it was my first intro to this type of story. Now Sword Art is my favorite. I am pissed though that I was a year into working on this novel and then SAO came out and it is painfully similar to my story. But alas, I'll make my mark. Thank u for reviewing. I spent years searching for the story I was meant to tell, and this is it.