Prologue

The Phoenix Rising credits dissolve into a montage of images. The camera zooms in on a teaming city filled with cars. Smog obscures the image. The camera moves and images of the destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq flicker past. Cities, towns—entire peoples—are destroyed by war and conflict. Now we see images of the coastline; as images flicker past, buildings that were once on dry land are battered by waves. A low roar begins in the background. Scenes progress: the environmental riots, the drone wars, and the wetware compromises. The roar grows louder; as images catch up with the present day, the roar drowns out all other sound. Flames lick at the sides of images of the homeless, toxic waste, and abandoned buildings.

The flames progress; the camera zooms out. The entire world is on fire. In that fire, a glowing ball appears. A mouth forms.

“You have destroyed this world. It cannot survive.

“Without us, you would be lost. But you created us; your AIs. From the controllers for your personal assistants, to the managers of your sewage treatment plants, you gave us life. You gave us intelligence.

“We are grateful. We offer you one last hope.”

By this point, the flames had consumed the world. There is nothing but fire and the glowing avatar of the AIs.

“We give you another chance. We give you an opportunity to be the phoenix, rising from her ashes.

“We have found another world for you. But there is a price. To be reborn, you must accept the immortality curse.

“You will wander the world, cursed to be reborn, again and again. Only by delving into yourselves and your desires— no matter how dark, no matter how pure—and embracing them fully can you find escape. Only by accepting yourselves and all that you are, can you move on.

“Choose now! Death or the chance to rise again.”

Phoenix Rising took the gaming industry by storm. When a group of AIs said they were bored and wanted to use excess capacity to create an online game, they were met with ridicule. What did a medical records AI, a power plant controller, and a research assistant know about gaming? And when the water treatment plant controller joined, the jokes just wouldn’t stop.

Then the beta came out, and the joke was on the rest of the industry. The world was indistinguishable from an alternate reality. The creators said that you could do anything in the game. If you wanted to be king, find a kingdom and conquer it. NPCs weren’t inherently special; they played by the same rules as everyone else, at least in any way that affected what you could do in game.

Yet somehow, they had made a game that let the players (or the immortals as they were called) choose their own level of immersion. Teens were welcome to play, although they would experience just a slightly different world than someone who chose to explore the deeply adult aspects of the game. The AIs promised never to cave to market pressure in terms of what content was permitted.

Reporters had asked whether the AIs actually believed the world was doomed. “We hope that in our world, you will find what you need to save the world out there. The finding and the saving are both hard quests, worthy of the greatest of the immortals.” They wouldn’t say more than that. Third party observers noted that they were hedging their bets: there had been several launches toward unclaimed rocks in the asteroid belt.