Tonight on the roof of a towering building still under construction, a man who had just lost everything was about to jump.

  David Bradkam looked at his once brand-new smart watch, now dirty and cracked. It was bought by his son and daughter, who had gathered their money for his 46th birthday. The wind was blowing at this height, allowing his scalp to feel the wind going through his short, almost fully shaved hairs.

  His dry lips, barely holding a lit cigarette, the smoke entering his lungs and throat should have made him cough, yet his body was apparently already ready to give up. He had sworn many things to his wife, his eternal love, his loyalty, to one day offer her the most beautiful of flowers, and to stop smoking.

  Today, he was allowing himself to break one of those vows.

  Until two years ago, he had a happy life. He still remembered how he would often wake up early in the morning to take care of his personal garden, his flowers and plants. He was a true green heart. Yet now his beloved garden was emptied, every flower sold to gather even just one more dollar.

  A bit of ashes from his cig would fall against his beard. Unkept and clearly not brushed properly in weeks. His cheeks looked slightly gaunt, and his eyes, green and once full of life, were now almost empty, glassy beads full of tears. His mind was constantly replaying back to him the event that led him to the top of his building.

  He hadn’t come with them as the rehearsal offered only two places for the family, and David had said he would be extra busy at the flower shop.

  “A rose bouquet… a fucking rose bouquet decided I would survive instead of them.”

  To this day, David hadn’t forgiven himself; he should have been the one driving that car, or maybe left their son at home. He knew it was stupid to think about that. He couldn’t just choose a member of his family to sacrifice.

  In the end, it was just luck and chance that played in his survival. What happened after that? A call twenty-three minutes later, yes, he still remembered the precise time.

  A call to tell him Lan and his kids had been hit by a truck. Then everything was blurry; he barely had the time to drive to the hospital, a constant ringing in his ears as if he had been flashbanged, entering the white building and staring at three beds in front of him. He couldn’t remember how long he took to drive or how he even reached their room.

  But that scene, that cursed vision, he would remember it forever.

  Their bodies covered in blood, bandages, barely breathing, their faces covered by respirator masks and too many IV tubes pumping medicine into their veins for him to count them all. He spent almost an entire week in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) when he was asked to leave by the doctors who were seeing him lose more and more hope. He would never forget it. His whole life destroyed in twenty-three fucking minutes.

  This kept on for two years; his money, fueled by keeping his family in the ICU, a very expensive hospital unit in his country, soon started to run out. He worked three jobs, his life revolving around keeping his family in the Coma Patient Unit.

  His once rather well-built body was now but a skeletal man who would barely eat. But he was still able to keep his family under proper care. He had never given up on them. He would have never given up on them.

  But today, he had been called by the hospital. At first, he had expected good news; he truly had. That his family had come back to consciousness, that his life was back on track! That he could finally be happy again.

  But now, instead, it was the worst. His family had died during their sleep. He was not a doctor, so he didn’t question what happened. Simply accepting it, maybe if he wasn't as drunk and broken after years of hard work trying to gather enough money to help his family... maybe he would have asked himself how his children and wife dying at the same time was possible without some sort of terrible mistake happening.

  But tonight, after he spent the little money he had to drink himself to unconsciousness, he found himself here. At the top of this building. There was nothing in his eyes. Empty. Those of someone who had finally been shattered.

  The building was going to be the new headquarters of VermillionCorp. The same company that was developing the new game, Project Rebirth. Apparently, only two months remained before its beta release.

  A video game apparently so realistic that its players would feel like they were in a brand new immersive world where the story and lore were written directly by some of the best writers on the planet, and the players' future actions. God, his son, never stopped talking about that game.

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  Apparently, AI technology had been developed to such a degree that the developers claimed its NPCs were as life-like as possible. At least that’s what the hundreds of ads he saw everywhere every day seemed to claim.

  “It seems like we won’t be able to play this game together. I’m sorry, everyone.”

  David pulled out his phone and tried to find someone to talk to. Once again. Nothing. He had no family; he was an orphan with not even the smallest idea of who his real parents could be.

  His adoptive mother had been a loving and caring woman, even if she had fiery temper, who died a few years ago from old age. She treated him like her real son and he would always be thankful for her kindness and how she raised him.

  He took one step, two steps…finished his cigarette, the burning smog clogging his throat before he crushed it under his foot. As he expelled the smoke from his lungs. He took a third step, staring at his ring, a beautiful golden ring with a ruby and emerald shaped into two intertwining roses around it.

  He kissed it one last time, the cold metal almost slicing his lips with how hard he pressed it. The tickling sensation of the last tears his eyes could produce falling down his cheeks as he leaned forward… and allowed himself to drop.

  ***

  As he fell down the side of the building, he felt peace. The wind smacked his clothes and body harshly from his fast accelerating fall. He had nothing else he cared for, his family dead, his parents gone.

  He could go and be at peace knowing he had done everything to save his wife and kids. Now he could only hope he would join them wherever they could be. His body impacted the ground, a massive cloud of sand lifting as he impacted a pile of it left below, he hadn’t seen it as it was dark.

  He had impacted it at such velocity that it broke most of his bones and punctured his organs. It was gonna be slow and painful. He couldn’t even kill himself right.

  “Lan… Jacob… Rose… I’m sorry I couldn’t hold on. I... it… hurt too much.”

  Yet as he tried to close his eyes, trying to handle the pain, he saw a strange light, a weird..color…he couldn’t describe it in words, it seemed like it was coming toward him. It wasn’t bright, yet it was so deep, and he could see it clearly. More clearly than any of his most precious memories.

  All the pain fully went to the back of his mind. This strange color he could barely see or understand seemed to demand all his attention just to be perceived.

  Containing knowledge so great that his human brain instantly started to melt trying to even glimpse at it from watching a fraction of this Color. Green. Yes…The color was green, but…a shade never before seen by mankind. He looked at it. And, feeling David’s gaze, it looked back.

  ***

  Next to David’s body, his phone, its screen cracked, had started to ring. It was the hospital. If only he had waited three more seconds. If only he had listened to what they had to tell him, he would have understood. But they were three seconds too late.

  The Color, however, had arrived right on time. Despite its immense knowledge and understanding, The Color didn’t know everything, but it very much wished to. It could only send a small portion of itself through the cracks, only to watch, of course. It was young compared to many others of the Empty, yet its youth and “small” size allowed him far more freedom to interact with the inside of those funny little bubbles floating in his home.…

  As it stared at David, not even realising that David’s brain and mind were being shattered just from his sight alone. It made a decision. This one could perceive more than the others; he wasn’t the first, but he was the first to seem to be able to understand a small fraction of what he was looking at. Gripping David’s soul, curious about how far this one could understand it. The Color and David’s soul were gone. Leaving a now dead husk on a pile of sand.

  —

  In a white office, a doctor wearing a lab coat and spectacles threw an empty soda can toward his current intern. His face was red from the sheer anger he was feeling. The intern, usually a rather rude and responsive young man, was white from fear and not even trying to dodge the can or answer back. He knew he had fucked up badly this time, so badly that nothing could save him or his internship.

  “You dumb fucking... FUCK!”

  “But -”

  “No fucking but! You just told a depressed man his family died! Couldn’t you check the names!?”

  “I didn’t know we had new arrivals in the service-”

  “GET OUT!”

  The intern ran out the door, the doctor sat back down on his office chair, pulled out a cig, and started to smoke it. Yeah, you didn’t smoke in a hospital, he knew, but he also didn’t care anymore; he knew his licence was gonna be revoked soon. He was responsible for his intern’s actions, no matter how dumb the intern was. He picked up the autopsy of David’s body. He was genuinely shocked that David was even still alive. More skeleton than human at that point. And something bothered him. David’s heart had stopped much too soon. David should have survived longer because the sand took most of the impact. Yet he died soon after. Too soon.

  A knock broke his inner-monologue as he stared at the door, wondering who it was. If it was that intern again, he was gonna murder him, consequences be damned.

  “Enter.”

  “Doctor James…You’re smoking?”

  “Not important.”

  “Y..yes, sorry! I have amazing news! The Bradkam wife and kids! They have woken up.”

  “...”

  James stared at his nurse, his mouth agape, the cig falling on top of his desk, it would leave a small burned mark, no doubt. And he now had to explain to a woman and her kids that the husband who paid for their place in the Coma Patient Care Unit for two years had just jumped off a building after hearing about their “death”, because of his intern’s stupid mistake.

  “Shit…”

  —

  Deep into what seemed to be a scrapyard surrounding a strange steampunk-looking city. The city was surrounded by a deep pit full of scraps, metals, and old robots, functioning or not. Amongst those robots was a seemingly deactivated one, its energy core having run out decades ago. A small light started to surround the core as a strange wisp was pushed into the core, an impossible fusion of soul and steel, a true miracle accomplished not because of some grand schemes or fate but to satisfy a being’s infinite curiosity.

  The robot’s singular eye started to light up, a green light, contrasting with the other functioning robot’s blue light. It tried to take a breath, but to its horror, it couldn’t breathe, only strange robotic groans coming from it. He couldn’t blink, he couldn’t feel his body… If it had a heart, he would have gotten a heart attack.

  David looked around the desolate scrapyard, and the fear started to get lessened and was forcefully diminished by the fusion between his scared and fractured human mind and the calm and collected robotic AI present in this new body. His newly born hybrid mind now only had one question: what the fuck is going on?