3. [WP]A dead person requested to be laid to rest in a place no one has ever heard ...

[WP]A dead person requested to be laid to rest in a place no one has ever heard of. S/he left you a set of instructions on how to get there and they're quite strange.

Day 1

Cath died. She left me without warning, no ominous signs, no hints, not even a kiss on the cheek. My own wife wouldn't even write me a suicide note. All she left was...this.

"Analuthia. That is where I want to be burried. Seek Roger Ferns."

I don't know what this means. All I know is that she swallowed cyanide and then froze herself cryogenically at AresTech, the company she worked for.

I don't know if I will ever forgive her. What I do know is that I will find this Roger Ferns, and get the truth out of him. Beat it out of him, if I have to.

Day 4

I was too perplexed to keep the journal. Police concluded it was suicide, me, I'm beginning to have my doubts. The writing on the note was gentle and swirly, unmistakebly Cath's. Roger Ferns, as it turns out, was not a man. FERNS was the name for an AI system that Cath designed at AresTech, designed to guide interstellar flight missions, in particular the satellite "Roger".

Did Cath want to be burried in space, among the stars? I do not know, but I will see this through. Her lifeless eyes fill me with guilt whenever I work up the courage to go see her body. Yet when I asked her coworkers if "Analuthia" is by any chance an astronomical location, they denied any such place existed.

Day 7

There is no "Analuthia" in space. After consulting several astronomists, I am certain. Where is Analuthia? How can I fulfill my wife's dying wish? Cath was always so...rational. I cannot believe she lost her mind.

Yet, if she was sane, why did she leave me like this?

Did I ever really know my wife?

Day 8

Progress. Progress that frightens me.

I now know where Analuthia lies.

Roger Ferns is not a man, but not a satellite either. Cath's project at AresTech was merely named after the real Roger Ferns.

The real Roger Ferns is a side character from a VR game, simply called "Quest".

Development for the game came to an indefinite halt in 2085, but Cath was apparently one of the programmers, way back. The lead designer has disappeared after the game was shut down, and no one has heard of him since.

One of the guys who used to work on it has been so kind as to lend me a copy of the unfinished game. I no longer maintain hope that Cath was sane, since she asked to be burried in a place inside a VR game. VR drove a lot of people mad back in the day, that's why it was outlawed six years ago. But there was something about the guy who gave me the copy. Some expectation in his eyes, a glance of mischief that worries me.

I will see this through. Tomorrow, I will dust off the old VirtuSet that I know Cath kept hidden up in the attic, and boot up "Quest".

Day 12

"Quest" is amazing. I was never a gamer, but even I can tell that this would have been a triumph for VR, had it ever been released legally. So many wonders, so many things to do. No depressing dullness or apathy, no true sorrow. Better than the world we live in, in so many ways.

And yet. This world is too perfect. It creeps me out.

And people are still playing it. More illegal gamers than I would've ever thought possible. I met people I know, acquaintances who I would have never suspected of being online VR gamers.

I've met Roger Ferns, a Sage npc who lives in the steampunk realm of "Quest". He told me what I needed to know. Analuthia is the mountain for the Gods of this game, where only the elite go. The people who have given up their otherworldly lives and exchanged it for game immortality.

Oh Cath, what have you done?

Day 46

It's been a while since I wrote. I am addicted.

I've been fired from my real-life work. My friends think Cath's death has sent me spiralling down into depression.

Maybe it has.

But in VR, I have never been happier. "Quest" has given me purpose in life that fills the void that Cath's departure left behind. And in the few hours I spend in the real world, when I sleep, I dream of going to Analuthia, where I will see Cath again.

Day 54

I am nearly there. I have learned so much, since I was initiated in the higher circles of "Quest".

Even the FERNS AI that Cath was working on was part of the plan.

Design for "Quest" never stopped. The satellite at AresTech was covert work to keep things running smoothly in the real world.

Man was never meant to explore the stars himself. Space exploration should serve only one goal: resources to sustain this new world we built, in digital space. Man was born to explore "Quest" instead. Possibilities are limitless here, suited to man, and ever expanding.

I am beginning to suspect that immortality is real here. Cath was working on an AI, and here they speak of Godhood as a fusion into the world of Quest, a merging of organic, biological intelligence with the eternal digital.

Day 61

The organic body decays. The digital does not.

Therefore to achieve Godhood, all biological ties must be left behind.

The answer lies in Analuthia.

Cath, I am coming.

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