The silence in the penthouse was heavy, the kind of silence that money bought but couldn't fill. Fifty stories up, the city noise was a distant abstraction of things that Alex watched from behind triple-paned, bulletproof glass.
He sat in a designer chair that cost more than most people's cars, rocking back and forth. Creak. Pause. Creak. Pause.
It was a maddening rhythm, but it was the only thing happening.
Alex was bored. Plain and simple.
He was twenty-two, and he had already won the world at an early age. His family's wealth was so vast it felt less like a bank account and more like a cheat code for reality. He could go anywhere, buy anything, and say whatever he wanted as long as he had money to pay for any consequences.
He had spent his youth crushing competitions such as academics, fencing, debate, and underground racing. Every hobby had its rules, and he knew how to exploit them until he stood atop the podium.
But the view from the top was always the same: empty.
Creak. Pause.
A chime of the doorbell was soon heard. Alex stopped rocking. When he tapped the tablet on the side table, bringing up the security feed, he saw her unmistakable figure.
"Her again..." Getting up, he took his time strolling to the door. When he pulled it open, he leaned against the frame, crossing his arms over his silk loungewear. "Sup, doc."
'Doc' was Dr. Kapoor. She was a brilliant woman and the head scientist at Elysium, which was his mother's tech conglomerate.
Usually, she was buried in a sub-basement lab inventing things that would increase the stock price by a decimal point. Seeing her here, personally, was an anomaly.
"Alex, may I come in?"
"You're already halfway," he noted, stepping aside. "What brings ya here anyway? Mom finally decide to replace me with a robot?"
"Your mother's busy," Kapoor said, walking past him into the living room. She didn't bother sitting down. "I'm here because I know you've been… stagnant."
Alex let out a dry laugh. "What in the world makes you say that?"
Dr. Kapoor smiled with a strange glint in her eyes. "For one, you went skydiving without a parachute. Then you crashed a sports car that our insurance won't cover. You must have a death wish, Alex."
"I'd rather be at a boardroom in Elysium than be scolded."
"That is precisely why I am here. Elysium's completed the Enclave Mark I prototype."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "The VR pod?"
"Yes. We wanted to know if you would be willing to be the first subject for the full-dive integration before its release."
"Why me?"
"Because you have a high tolerance for mental strain," she said, "and quite frankly, you're the only one reckless enough to agree to the terms."
Alex narrowed his eyes, wondering what she meant by 'terms.'
"When you enter the Enclave," Kapoor said, "the neuro-synaptic bridge intercepts your sensory input entirely. Then it overrides your nervous system. To your brain, the simulation's indistinguishable from reality. Pain is real. Fatigue is real." She paused, letting him absorb the facts. "And should your heart stop in the simulation, you might actually die."
Alex froze. For the first time all day—perhaps the first time all his life—his heart rate spiked. Thump. Thump.
"Die?" he repeated. "Like… actually die?"
"Yes."
"That's insane..."
"It's science," she corrected. "The brain's a powerful organ. If it truly believes it is dying, it'll shut down the body. That's why we need a test subject who can handle the experience."
Alex finally understood why she had come. The boredom that had been suffocating him evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. It was the ultimate wager, and he absolutely loved the high stakes.
"I'll do it," he said. "I don't care about the risk. I'm bored enough to flip a coin on my life just to see which side lands face up."
✟
The next morning, the air in the private elevator to the top floor of the Elysium building felt different.
Alex had visited the headquarters countless times as a child while running through the lobby as his mother barked orders at assistants. But he had never been to the apex.
The doors slid open to reveal a room that looked less like an office and more like a vault. The walls were lined with servers and cooling fans. In the center of the room sat the Enclave Mark I. It was sleek, white, and vaguely predatory.
Dr. Kapoor was tapping away at a holographic console. She didn't look up as he entered. "You're on time."
"I take my potential death seriously," he quipped, walking a circle around the pod. "Ya said this thing adapts, right?"
"Yes. The AI can generate any environment," Kapoor explained, stepping away from the console. "For this test, however, we need a controlled narrative. A fictional setting with established rules of physics and magic, to see how the Enclave interprets 'supernatural' stimuli."
"Magic," Alex mused. "If I wanted to play DnD, I would have gone back to college."
"You seem to misunderstand, my dear Alex. We loaded the database with the lore of the Avatar universe."
"Avatar? The blue cat people?"
"No," she sighed, pulling up a display. "The animated series. Avatar: The Last Airbender. Created by DiMartino and Konietzko."
Images floated on the screen of people moving water with their hands, rocks flying through the air, massive airships, and a bald kid with glowing eyes.
"Never saw it," Alex admitted, looking at the footage with a critical eye.
"We expected as much. That's why you'll need to learn as much about this world as possible before entering it. If you don't, it'll punish ignorance."
Alex found this pleasing.
For the next hour, he sat on a stool while Dr. Kapoor gave him a crash course on the Four Nations. She explained the bending arts—Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. She also explained the war that had lasted a hundred years, the genocide of the Air Nomads, and the totalitarian ambition of the Fire Nation.
Alex absorbed the information like he was prepping for a board meeting. He didn't care much for the spiritual mumbo-jumbo about "balance" and "chakras." To him, it was a resource management game.
"So," he interrupted, pointing at a map of the Fire Nation. "The fire lord basically runs a military-industrial complex. Logically, he should have won decades ago."
"That's because the Avatar's the equalizer," Kapoor corrected.
"Right, the glowing kid," Alex dismissed. "But if I'm understanding this magic system correctly, the Avatar's just one person. Hit him hard enough, and he'll break like anyone else."
"That's quite the… ruthless interpretation," Kapoor noted.
After the debriefing, Alex stood up and stretched. He then turned to the pod. "So, do I get to start off with any bending I want?"
Dr. Kapoor shook her head. "Not exactly. As I said yesterday, this is just a prototype. We haven't integrated the user interface for custom characters yet. So we'll be inserting your consciousness into a pre-existing one."
Alex let out a small chuckle. "Ya mean I have to play as one of the casts?" He then considered this. It made sense, in a twisted, scientific way. It was like driving a rental car; you didn't have to build the engine to know how to floor the gas pedal.
The only thing he cared about was that for the first time in years, he wasn't going to be bored.