[ WP ] You close your eyes for the last time on your deathbed and wake up in a white room , 40 years younger , covered in sensors . You were playing this years hottest game , Human Life 3 .

I closed my eyes one last time as my thoughts grew fuzzy. Gone was the pain, gone was the image of my loving family around me. I noticed how my fingers grew numb, slipping out of the hands of my son. Then everything went black. 
 When I opened my eyes again, I sure didn ’ t see what I had expected. Instead of lying on a fluffy cloud with nothing but blue skies above me, there was a very mundane-seeming ceiling above me with blindingly bright lights. There were no little fat angels playing the lyre staring down at me, instead there was a woman who actually seemed pretty normal-looking to me. 
 
 “ God is a woman? ” I was really surprised by that. Of course no one on earth had ever really seen God, but normally people expected him to be a bearded old man. 
 “ I ’ m not God, though I get that a lot, ” the woman replied with a smile on her face. “ But don ’ t worry, some confusion is normal after finishing ‘ Human Life 3 ’. It means you were truly immersed in our 21st century universe. ” 
 
 Now I was really confused. In addition to what the woman had said, strange memories began to stir in my brain. 
 
 “ Can you tell me your name? ”, the woman asked. 
 
 “ I ’ m Martin Sha… Wait. I ’ m not? ” Memories fought in my brain. The life I had just lived seemed fresh and colorful, but something about these images made them seem artificial. “ I ’ m Finn. Finn Reyes. ” 
 
 “ Very good, ” the woman smiled. “ Can you get up and move? I will accompany you to our wake-up lounge. ” 
 
 Slowly, the memories of who I was and what I was doing here returned to me. Video games had really changed a lot from the 21st century – in which I had just lived an entire life while only about three days had passed in the real world – and “ Human Life 3 ” was the greatest release of this year. While most people used to think that when playing a game, you wanted to do anything, just not live a normal, boring life, everyone loved the “ Human Life ” series. After the first two games that were set in ancient Egypt and 18th century France, the third entry had blown all our minds again. Everyone loved how long you lived there – so many opportunities – and it was just way better than history class. 
 Actually, right now, I just wanted to go back. The realistic AI characters in “ Human Life ” really grew on you and I felt just as sad as I would have been if I had suddenly moved away to another country, never seeing my friends and family again. 
 
 Life on the moon was really boring. We had colonized it after Earth had grown really cramped, but even though everyone did his best to make it a home, it was just a piece of grey rock and some dust floating around in space. I would have loved to see Earth, but there was war and hunger down there. Climate change, nuclear war and a huge gap between the rich and poor made life there a living hell. In my game life, I had grown up in a small town in Germany, but just like me, my fictional character had loved to travel. I had seen as much of the world as you could in one life. 
 
 Going back was not an option, though. My vacation ended in two days and I had only today and tomorrow to get used to reality again. Playing the game took something between two and four days plus another one or two for adjusting to the normal world. Besides, it was really expensive. People didn ’ t go on vacation anymore – all there was to see on the moon was some huge craters, anyways. Instead they played games like “ Human Life. ” 
 
 I had saved up all year for this and it had really been worth it. Sometimes, if you made some wrong choices when creating your character, you lived an entire life just sitting in front of a desk and watching TV when you returned home, so I had been fairly lucky. If you had really bad luck, you died early. By placing your character in the right country and family, the chances for dying young were small, especially since NPCs were programmed not to kill, but if you ran in another player who went on a killing spree, there was nothing you could do. And there were so many people playing “ Human Life ” at the same time that running into other players happened a lot. If you were lucky, you made a friend or fell in love in the game and then found yourself in reality. In fact, I hoped to encounter my wife in the wake-up lounge. She had died a few years before me, so just some hours in reality. 
 
 When I opened the door, the doctor announced me as “ Martin Shaw from Germany ” so people who knew me could meet me. An old man with yellow teeth and little, scruffy hair got up as soon as I entered and laughed, at least until that laugh turned into a cough. If I had known him, I hoped he had been a distant relative or acquaintance. 
 
 “ The Martin Shaw who was married to Rebecca Shaw? ”, he asked and I nodded. He started laughing and coughing even harder. 
 
 “ Well, that ’ s me, ” he finally got out between two coughs while laughing so hard that tears had come to his eyes. 
 
 Oh hell, no.
