Looking at the window I see the sun shining on the yard outside. I wish I could go outside myself but my body groans as I reach my hand out towards the light pouring in.

“There you still there John? Have you finally gone senile?”

I turn myself back to the table and huff as I take my cards.

“Not enough for you to beat me at our game of cards yet Sam.”

He chuckled taking a look at his cards before drawing another.

“So how were the grandkids, John. You told me you rented out a whole room at the local barbeque place just to fit them all.”

“Fitting roughly thirty people into one space is difficult especially when going out to eat. But it was good to see most of them. Reaching 90 is an achievement in itself after everything I’ve done in my life. I’m just thankful for each year I get to see them again.”

“Ah, I say you still got a few years left in you, John. I still need to beat you enough times to even the score, don’t I? Can’t have you dying yet on me now can I”?

I chuckled as we silently played cards for a bit until the nurses came to take us to our next activities. Being stuck at a retirement home wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Not for me anyway. My problem lay in the fact that my body was giving out on me. I was getting more and more dependent on the nurses as the days went by. 

My only solace is that I lived long enough for full dive VR to be a thing. As the nurse wheeled me into my room I lay in my bed as she helps me put on the VR gear.

“Now I’ll be back in a couple of hours to check on you John, and make sure to take your meds.”

She hands me the cup of pills that were laying on my nightstand that I hadn’t taken from this morning. I grunted and turned away from the meds. But I took the cup in one of my hands before reaching my glass of water near my nightstand and taking them. I never liked taking my medicine, but I knew I needed to take them if I wanted the nurses off my back.

She then smiled at me and plugged in my VR equipment and left the room. I lay back and let my consciousness fade into VR.

Waking up I find myself in my hub world and stretch my virtual limbs enjoying the feeling of full mobility returning back to me. 

“BT boot, up the game would you.”

‘Right away’

I then am logged back into Endless Space and feel my consciousness transition back into my game character.

I wake up in my ship’s bed as I look down at my wrist and see my communicator come online. 

“Alright BT, anything I need to know about?”

‘The final shipment of supplies you requested has been stored in the ship and we are ready to set out for our planned exploration expedition.’

“Finally, I've been wanting to start this expedition for a while. Get the ship’s engines warmed up and tell ATC we’ll be departing shortly.”

I walk into the storage compartment of my ship and look over my supplies. A year’s supply of food, surveying equipment, drones, a fabricator, spare parts, and a couple of other miscellaneous supplies. Checking that everything was in order I made my way to the cockpit and waited for BT to tell me we were clear to launch. 

I stared at the artifact I had plugged into the nav computer. Finding a nav artifact was rare and they ran for a fair bit of money on the open market. I’d wager it was more than my entire net worth in the game.

I had picked it up by chance recently and after finally gathering enough supplies I felt it was time to see where it would lead me. I had been lucky so far that no one had found out I owned one and I wanted to use it before I got targeted for it.

‘ATC has cleared us for takeoff.’

“Good, time to get this party started then.”

The ship then undocks as I guide it out of the station. It might be more efficient to have the AI fly the ship but I didn’t become a pilot to just let someone else fly for me.

Leaving the hanger I navigate the ship to the nearby wormhole. With the artifact installed it would take me to wherever it was set to. While it might be dangerous not knowing where I was heading, this was where all the adventure and fun was found in the game. Lining up the ship I let the artifact plot the jump coordinates into the nav computer.  I then begin to accelerate into the wormhole as it jumped me to the great unknown.

Only later would I come to regret this decision.