Several hours have gone by as the engineers and slicers worked on the Gree computer recovered from Taral V. My friends were celebrating behind me as I looked out on the rolling clouds of the Maelstrom. A violent mixture of gas and plasma much like a thunder cloud, but colorful from the mixture of different gasses. Hidden in those gasses were tiny grains of sand to planet sized asteroids. If the plasma didn't get you the debris would and if not that the fluctuating gravity would.

I could not wrap my head around what I just read, for the third time, as I closed the back cover of Jan’s journal, for the third time. Jan and I had been partners in Jan’s Portfolio LLC for sixteen years, and I loved the girl dearly. But this…how can this be? Her full name is Janelle Mathew, she and I are the same age. And she is our daughter! But our Janelle Mather is only, five-years-old!

Chapter 1- The Boy Next Door

--- Alexis, December 23rd, 2022. 7:53 AM ---

“Class,” our teacher’s voice somehow managed to break through the chaos and anarchy that is an elementary school classroom the day before Christmas vacation. “Before we begin, I’d like to announce our new transfer student, Gabriel Morris.”

The rest of the room started up in hushed whispers, and even I couldn’t help it.

“Who moves at this time of year?” I had asked the question quietly and rhetorically, only to get an answer back anyway.

“Seriously?”

Prologue- Those 3 Years

Even now, after three long years, her words were still engraved in my memory.

‘I’m gonna be honest with you,’ she had said to me that day. ‘It won’t always be easy. And it won’t always be fun and games. But if this is truly what you want, if this is truly what you believe you need, then it’ll all be worth it. You’ll always have my love and support. You only get one chance at life, you have to live it your way.’

And that’s how the best 3 years of my life began.

I don't know who to blame it on this time, but I couldn't resist doing a 'Staycation' story. So I decided to whip this little ditty out when I should have been sleeping.

This story takes place in my Sweet Sixteen universe.

It all happened when my family went to the annual Blessed Temple training camp.

Chapter 2 Tia's POV

Another three days fun in Lagbit's World and another six elves transformed. I woke up on the air mattress with Vee beside me and started the next part of my routine. “No one take off your headsets until you are told to do so.” I called out. I'm pretty sure everyone knew it was me, but if they didn't actually see me, they could still honestly say that they had no idea where I was. Vee and I removed our headsets and left the tent.

Chapter 1 General Pearson's POV

I watched the recorded press conference and subsequent kidnapping footage from the beginning. This was looking like a clusterfuck and I wanted nothing to do with it. Rule number one, if you are going to make someone disappear, no one must know about it.

Chapter 2

Some time later, I have no idea how much, there are no clocks after all, the high priestess visited me. My room only consisted of a bed with a chest at the end that had my clothes, a small table with a chair. I sat on the bed and the high priestess sat on the chair, but turned around so that she was facing me.

“I have done my research and we should still be on for tonight, there were a couple of things that came up that we need to discuss.”

“OK, priestess.”

The beautiful countryside smelled of fresh grass and wildflowers. The roads this close to Threefold still overflowed with masses of adventurers choosing the easy path to their early quests, though the crowds put the lie to the word “easy.” I walked the fields, confident that the occasional starving wolf or unskilled bandit would offer me little real danger.

Hello, World!

Chapter 1: Getting Classy

The first thing I noticed entering the world was the cool breeze on my skin. For a moment I kept my eyes closed, and took it all in. There was the smell of fresh grass, the birds sang their little hearts out, and the world felt…. Fresh.

I opened my eyes to find myself standing in one of the many little parks that were scattered throughout Threefold. It was such a familiar sight; I’d spent days just wandering the streets of Threefold, and here I was once again. It was exactly as I remembered and yet so much more. The breeze became a bit more pronounced, and I looked down to see if I was dressed right at least.

Prologue:Logging in.

Jiggling the key in the old lock to his apartment door, Nathan could barely contain his excitement as he slipped into his rather drab apartment. He was greeted by the sight of an old used sofa and kitchen table that he had reclaimed from his parent's garage. A mix match of plates, cups, and other odds and ends lay scattered about in piles. It wasn’t much in the way of style but it served his needs; besides the life of tier two IT tech support monkey really couldn’t support much more.

Just thinking about work immediately soured his mood. The day had been an odd mix of boredom and hell. The boredom was due to the IT gods deeming today was the day nothing would go wrong. Which left him in what seemed like perpetual anticipation with nothing but his favorite gaming news websites to keep him entertained. The hellish part was that his boss didn’t quite understand the concept of downtime, and had driven the office crazy by nagging everyone on the floor to keep busy so the metrics looked good. Despite there being very literally nothing to do.

Hello, World!

Prologue: The final countdown

Time it seemed had slowed down. And not in the fun way, not in the Unfolding World Online way. UWO had a time dilation system, time would actually slow down artificially. Ok, so time is not really affected of course, but our perception of time is, which is as good as the real thing. There were whole research papers on the effects of time dilation on the human brain and body, they were publicly available. I had even once given it a shot, to try and learn more about it, but the dryness of the content had me quickly giving up on it. Everyone in the end agreed it was safe for use when the proper safeguards were in place, and that was what mattered for me.

Quality Time
by Ellie Dauber © 2017

A tale of rape, its awful aftermath, and, perhaps, Justice.

Sorry for the delay in writing this second chapter, RL involving my mother-in-law and a dog got in the way, but that's another story :-). Jez falls for Fee some more in this chapter.

Introduction
I wrote this story about personal growth through interaction in a Virtual World largely in response to Dorothy Colleen’s challenge to write something about a 40+ transition. I’m not sure it will get that far, but the characters are the right age at least.

I set it in Second Life, as that’s an environment I am familiar with. I was going to go through afterwards and edit all the references to some generic VR World but I think it gives it a more realistic feel by using the names and jargon from a ‘real’’virtual world that some of you may be familiar with. Of course, I don’t own Second Life ™ , it’s a registered trademark belonging to Linden Lab. I’m not associated with them in any way and the views and people described only bear a passing resemblance to anyone real or virtual.’ All copyrights and trademarks belong to their respective owners and I’m not trying to sell anything. Please don’t sue me, as I don’t have any money. Oh, and if you’re reading this Fee and you recognise yourself, I’m sorry.