Twelve: Just leave me a message here if you want any help with that script.

One: Will do. But first priority … get your ass in the Premium Space.

So I did. I ate a protein bar and peed and went back into the Altus Space. First I checked the ranking. I was in forty-first. No doubt, if I didn’t change something, I’d be knocked out by celebrities soon. The top sellers were still all legit object creators, mostly people making super cheap clothes and decor that traded on having tons of sales. But there were enough people making environments that I was just one of many. I might have been one of the top creators, but I only had one product.

I dropped into the Open Access Space and went ahead and did a gimmick. I cloned my Breezy Spring Day and made the sky pink and the grass purple and created low-flying, super-light objects that looked like massive, transparent crystals. It took me a couple hours to get the look right, but at the end, it was an alien world that still felt like a beautiful spring day. I released it under the name Breezy Spring Day: Alpha Centauri ~-[{(One Day Only)}]-~. Here’s what I wrote in the description.

Hey, no offense to anyone who’s cashing in on their celebrity to get into the Premium Altus Space with ~-[{(Limited Edition)}]-~ trinkets … OK, actually … offense. This is dumb. If you want to see someone who has worked to actually create value, you can buy this very cheap, high-quality, slightly modified version of my 500,000+ download Breezy Spring Day for one day only.

With six hours left, I was in the mid-thirties. And I felt secure enough to take a bio-break. Spending hours at a time in the Altus Space wasn’t uncomfortable until you left. You felt fine when you were in there, but the longer you stayed in, the more it sucked to come out. Headaches, body aches, low blood sugar.

The stress of the ranking was real, but I felt like I couldn’t do anything else about it, so I did the healthy thing and went for a walk down to the Subway were Bex worked. Altus didn’t feel like a massive world-destroying entity; it felt more like Etsy at the moment. But that’s the way of these things. One day, an internet company wants to sell books, and then ten years later they’re a threat to nearly every industry on earth.

The city felt a little dead. There just weren’t a lot of people out. I passed a store that said “Altus Headsets!” But then, under that, it said “Sold Out! Restock Thursday!”

“Andy!” Bex called out as I came in. “Are you OK?”

Apparently that’s how bad I looked.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Altus Space,” I answered honestly.

She pursed her lips and pushed them to the side of her face. “You and every other dude in New York. Business was starting to pick up with the recession, but now no one’s out at all.”

“Business was picking up?”

“Yeah, folks stop going to expensive lunch places, but they still need lunch! Now almost all of our orders are delivery apps.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I dropped off the planet.”

“You’re not the first guy who’s ghosted me for a couple days.” But she didn’t have her usual confidence as she said it.

I looked at her gorgeous dark eyes and felt like such a complete turd. But she saved me from having to say something.

“What’s Altus like?”

“You haven’t been in?” I asked stupidly.

She just laughed, though. “No, I’ve heard about it. They say it’s like the Dream. I miss the Dream.”

“You were into it?”

“Not any more than most people. I solved a couple sequences that had already been solved for fun. I mostly just walked around. It was nice to have a place to be alone.”

I barked out a laugh. “That’s the opposite of the problem I have. I can’t find time to be with people.”

“You know our lives are pretty different, right?” she asked.

“I mean, yeah. That’s true of everyone but more …” And then I didn’t know what to say.

“With the immigrant brown girl, yeah, you’re allowed to say we’re not the same, Andy.” I didn’t know if we were having a fight, but apparently we weren’t because then she just said, “Sweet onion chicken teriyaki?”

“Yes, thank you. After tonight, I should have more time. Can you come hang out tomorrow?”

“I’ve got another afternoon shift, so I can come over in the morning or late.”

“Come over in the morning, I’ll either have something to celebrate or something to be miserable about. I’ll explain then.”

“Why don’t you explain now? We’re closing, you can eat your sandwich and tell me what’s going on. If it’s so hard to find time to not be alone, just … stop being alone.”

The urge to leave the Subway and rush back to my apartment to check on the rankings was almost a physical tug. I could feel the nerves on that side of my body light up with sensitivity. I closed my eyes, took a breath, sat down, forcing my brain to settle, and unwrapped my sandwich, took a bite, and probably (knowing me) started talking with my mouth full.

“The Altus Open Access Space is amazing. It’s like the Dream in that you’re completely immersed. It’s as real as this”—I gestured to reality—“but there’s basically nothing there. You have to buy things to fill your world with. But you can also earn in-game money by creating and selling objects for other people …”

As Bex locked up, cleaned up, and mopped the floor, I followed her around, explaining the Premium Space, how I’d been fighting to get into the top fifty for the whole week and somehow had done it, but then found myself getting kicked out by celebrities.

“But you’re a celebrity, why don’t you just join in?”

“That’s not how I want to do it. I want to get in by creating something valuable, not by cheating my way in.”

“No offense”—Bex put her mop back in the bucket—“but that’s some fool shit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, use what you’ve got, Andy. If you want in, get in. Nothing’s fair.”

I thought back to the conversation I’d had with One.

“OK, you’re right,” I said, still thinking. “But there’s more to it than that. I don’t know what it’s going to be like in the Premium Space, but I do know that there are going to be two kinds of people: people who created their way into the top fifty and people who just famoused their way in. I want to be in the first group.”

She thought about this for a while.

“You should’ve said that to start, then.” And then she started mopping again.

“Are you sure I can’t help? It feels weird to just talk while you’re working.”

“Now you’re back with the fool shit again.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t trust you to not fuck up, honestly.”

“That’s probably a good call.”

“So only fifty people in the whole world get to have access to … what?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling a little foolish.

“But you’re probably freaking out right now.”

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t know where you’re at in the standings.”