Raphael's emotions stirred as he started recalling the events that had transpired years ago.
'Feels like it was a whole lifetime ago…, hah, it's actually funny how it was actually days ago for everybody else.' he thought, as the bitterness of sorrow swept over him.
His parents had always been the type of people you would call 'free spirits'. Born in the beginning of the century, they had met each other in college and had fallen in love at first sight. They shared a lot of the same passions - travelling, music, sports and retro games. Every year they would plan a trip, prepare their trusty old electric Missan van and disappear for a few blissful weeks - both for them and for Raphael, who would get to visit his grandparents or even stay alone. Their trips has always been uneventful, barring a few times they got lost, up until this year.
On the 4th of August, 2052, in the midst of a storm, Ines and Jack Simon's car had missed a turn and gone off the side of the road into a shallow ravine. The police had done thorough examinations of both the car, road, even going as far as ordering autopsies, but nothing came out of it.
It was simply a freak accident with nobody to blame - his parents had been sober, the road had been recently repaired and the van had no problems whatsoever. Be it the slippery road or the torrent of rain, the only thing that could be blamed was the bad weather.
In his previous life, Raphael had been devastated by his parents' death, as they were his last living relatives, hence he had lost all motivation to strive for anything. After the funeral, for 6 months he had barricaded himself in the little apartment that was passed onto him and lived off the generous savings he and his parents had amassed. He did not even go out for groceries, opting to order food for the first time in his life.
It was not until one night, while wasting time browsing the internet, that he had stumbled upon an advertisement for Origo. His curiosity peaked, he decided to look through some playthroughs. Hours later, after watching a dozen videos, each longer than the previous one, he had decided that he had found something he could muster himself to delve into.
The concepts behind Origo had completely enchanted him.
The game was not the first VRMMORPG to be released, but it had taken brave steps to further the genre in its own way. When Raphael had found the videos, the game had been available for quite a while and had been steadily skyrocketing in fame. Were it not for the information that one could actually make a living by playing the game, Raphael would not have been as enthusiastic about it.
Origo had a few methods of allowing a player to make a living. The first and easiest way to make money was to simply exchange the in-game currency. Older VRMMORPG games also offered this option, but they offered exchanges by way of an outdated model - a virtual market, which had to go through numerous checks and allowed for users to both sell their gold coins, as well as use their country's currency to buy gold coins.
Unlike those games, Origo offered one-way exchanges from gold coins to real currency, by way of their own personal cryptocurrency called Oricoin. Once your gold coins were exchanged for Oricoins, you could further exchange those for any currency you liked and have it deposited in your virtual bank account. Unlike their predecessors, they lowered the tax rates, taking a small cut of a percent of the transaction. On top of that, Origo explicitly forbid the exchange of real currency for gold coins, in any way whatsoever - a player could only exchange their gold for Oricoins and then turn that into money, but not the other way around. Numerous mechanics were created and anybody caught doing such a transaction would be permanently banned from the game, whether as a player, an owner of in-game real estate, or even as an investor.
This in itself spoke volumes of how serious the developers were, as they had cut off one of their easiest sources of income, in favor of creating a balanced game.
"Welp, can't sit around all day now Raphael, Mom and Dad are waiting after all." he said to himself, standing up. He started looking for some clean clothes. He chose an all-black style for the day, from his shoes and jeans, to his jacket and shit, not one thing differed.
After he placed everything on his bed, he decided to take a shower, as the stress of the whole morning had taken a toll on his body and he felt sapped. It took him less than five minutes to clean up, but he lingered under the shower head, enjoying the hot water and blanking out. This was a form of meditation he had come up with in the latter part of his previous life, and it had helped him numerous times.
Having successfully vented all of the negative emotions and layers of sweat, Raphael dried himself and put on the clothes he had prepared for himself.
Entering the small kitchen, he wearily opened the fridge, and his suspicions were confirmed. "Yup, nothing left. How in the world did I manage to make a pineapple go bad‽"
Raphael took out all of the food in the fridge, all of which had gone bad, stuffed it into a garbage bag and proceeded to clean the whole refrigerator. For a minute, he had even thought that there was mold, but it turned out to be an ancient ketchup stain. After leaving the garbage bag by the front door he continued to hastily clean out the apartment of all of the rubbish that had piled up. He even opened up all of the windows so that the air could circulate, as it had gone stale.
In the end, dressed up in his all-black outfit, Raphael put on his favorite pair of punk white shoes and made his way down the narrow staircase, exiting onto the small street with three bags of garbage in both hands.
It took him a bit more than expected to find the nearest trash container, where he proceeded to unload himself of the waste that the previous him had filled the apartment with.
Toggling his hiPhone XXS on, he searched for the memo with the address he was supposed to go to. 'It's lucky that even when I was depressed, I was this organized.' he thought to himself, as he slowly walked through the long-forgotten winding little streets and made his way to an inconspicuous building.
It was a three-story office building, nestled a hundred meters off Main Street. On the side of its entrance there was a small window, behind which an old security guard was happily dozing off, a TV crackling in the background. Raphael stood there for a few seconds or so, before he finally decided to gently knock against the window sill.
With a groggy look, the security guard woke up.
"Where to?" he asked, stifling a yawn.
"FSM Headquarters, please." Raphael answered.
The security guard looked at the boy with a glint of curiosity, as he rang up to the third floor. "Didn't expect somebody as young as you to be a member."
"Raphael Simon. And yes, I am, but I'm actually here to pick up a final package." Raphael said, as he glanced to the main door. The security guard mumbled vague condolences and, after receiving an answer, unlocked the door for him.
Shoulders drooping, Raphael made his way up the stairs, choosing to forego the elevator ride, as climbing stairs was a very easy way to keep one's heart in good shape. A few minutes later, winded, he finally arrived at the last floor.
'I need to start working out. It can't be good for me if even at twenty-one I'm this much out of shape…' he thought, as he glanced at the plaque next to the only door on the floor, lightly chuckling.
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Mon-Sun
7AM-4PM
All Are Welcome,
Colanders Included.