My eyes casually ran across the screen of my computer.

On it was an overly cheerful Email I had been sent that was asking me to beta test "Star Wars Galaxy ll" expressly describing it as a "bigger, better, and more emersive" experience than anything else on the market right now.

Taking a sip of my Red-Bull I could feel my eyes roll.

"Yeah right" my voice was raspy and strained.

I seriously doubted the legitimacy of the Email for multiple reasons...

Not the least of which was that since the original Star Wars Galaxy had shut its servers down not a single word of a sequal had been made, by the previous or new owners.

There was probably a 99.99% chance that the link attached at the end of the Email was just malware.

So the logical thing to do would be to close the Email, forget about it, and move on with my day.

"Let's see what this is about."

But as my mother could tell anyone logic had never been my strongest point.

With a simple click of the mouse my computer let out a strange noise and the moniter went black.

I stared at my reflection in the moniter for a few moments before letting out a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

Grabbing my phone from the corner of my desktop I quickly opened a tab and looked up how to reach tech support for...

"What's this computers brand again?"

I had forgotten.

After quickly looking over the moniter and not finding any sort of label that would tell me who the producer was I moved under my desk to get a look at the system tower.

Turning on my phones flashlight a gave it a quick once over and found something that looked like it would work.

"TLC, TLC, TLC"

After repeating the label a few times I quickly opened up Google to see if I could reach tech support...

"FWOOOOO!"

Startled by the sudden loud noise I jumped in place causing the back of my head to hit my desk, dropping my phone in the process.

Holding a hand on the back of my head I quickly shuffled out from under my desk I looked at source of the noise.

"What the?!"

A source which happened to be my moniter, my moniter that also now had a title screen reading "Star Wars Galaxy ll" on it.

After giving the back of my head a few rubs I picked myself up with the desks help.

Irge total screen definitely looked Star wars, the big white text on a space-esq background.

There was also a small start button just below the actual total itself glowing golden.

"Guess it was just loading..."

Picking my chair back up I tried to get comfortable in it before clicking the start button.

Instantly the screen transitioned down from the tital to a starry background with a static white figure standing in the middle.

I was confused for a moment before it clicked in my head.

"Character creation!"

And almost as if the game could hear me, just as I said that a black box appeared over the chest of white figure with a male and female sex symbol in either of it.

Just above the symbols there was a small phrase that read "Please note that certain species are locked behind either genders"

So it was a gender selector...

With no hesitation I moved my mouse and clicked on the male symbol.

As soon as I did the white figure became more masculine in nature, it's shoulders wide and and it became a bit taller.

Then what seemed to be the next choice came replacing the box with what I assumed to be a drop-down that stated "Human".

Clicking on it revealed I was right, an entire list of other species names appearing from Twi'lek to Wookie.

It was a species selector.

Realizing that I quickly closed the drop down and kept human selected.

Who would want to play as a fugly alien?

Probably a lot of people honestly but not me...

With that choice though the drop down disappeared with nothing coming to replace it.

So now it's to the perfectly average looking human male ready to be customized.

***

"Done!"

After nearly 3 hours of character creation I could confidently say I was done.

Past the first two parts the character creator had been surprisingly complicated.

More than just building the appearance the character creator asked for, a home planet, what year your character had been born, the environment in which they were born, whether they were forced sensetive or not, and finally it asked for eccentricities and oddities about a character.

Eccentricities referring to positive or at least not bad things about the character that made them stand out.

Oddities referring to the opposite.

"Let's see what this game is about!"

I let out a small smile before pressing the start button that had appeared at the end of the character customization.

***

First it was comolete darkness and silence.

It was like I was suspended in a void, with only my thoughts to keep me company.

There was no air but I didn't need to breath, there was no food but I didn't need to eat, there was no water but I didn't need to drink.

At first I had tried to cry out, fight from the fear, and figure out what happened.

Where was I?

What had happened?

Was it related to the game?

But I eventually just stopped when I exhausted myself, maybe a day or two in, I dont know time felt abstract and foreign in that place.

So I just layed there for what felt like an eternity at the time.

Then one day it was pain, wet, slimy, burning hot, crushing pain.

I tried to scream and fight for the first time in an eternity but there was no space to wiggle, and no air to scream with.