---

More Real Than Real

by Greta Hayer

The marketing team’s representative met us at a tavern in-game. Or his avatar did, wearing a drab grey suit that stuck out in the high fantasy virtual world. He held a laptop and typed furiously as he walked toward KeeperX, Ovid, and me.

“Our team has put together your first promo video as sponsored players,” he said and set the laptop on the bar table. Without ceremony, he pressed a key, and it began.

In the promo video, KeeperX was wearing his best armor, all glint and gold in the sunlight. He’d been filmed for the advertisement at that perfect golden hour, and he looked like a hero.

I couldn’t help but laugh, elbowing the KeeperX standing by my side.

“What? Should I not have dressed up?” He shook his head at the screen. “Now I’m embarrassed.”

“I’m sure we’re going to look weird to us,” Ovid said.

He was right. It was weird to be in-game and yet watching our avatars jump around fighting monsters and answering interview questions.

The KeeperX on the screen smiled awkwardly at the camera. “What can I say? Becoming a sponsored player is a dream come true.”

The camera cut to a clip of KeeperX fighting a minotaur, raising his huge sword to block an attack. It was hero vibes all over again. Blonde and muscled in a way that might actually have been impossible in the real world, KeeperX looked the part, though almost one hundred percent of my experience with him proved to me that he was less hero, more lovable doofus.

The camera jumped again and showed a green eye, narrowed, as it focused down the shaft of an arrow, aiming. It took me a second to realize it was my eye, my arrow. Or my avatar’s. The line between the game and the real world was getting harder to define, now that I was a sponsored player. Three weeks of living solely in-game had begun to twist the corners of my mind. I wasn’t Caroline Everett anymore. My consciousness had been transferred to my avatar, Vera. I felt Vera’s pain and glory and had no awareness at all of my flesh body, kept alive in a hospital somewhere. I’d never have to be flesh again; I’d signed a contract.

On screen, Vera released the arrow, and it sunk deep into the minotaur’s left eye. It howled in pain. Vera surveyed the scene thoughtfully, a coolness in her gaze that I never thought I could achieve.

“Damn, that looks badass.” The KeeperX beside me whistled low.

The camera jumped again. Ovid, our wizard, stood on a cliff and called lightning with his fingertips.

“That’s badass,” I said.

Ovid blushed. “It’s really a simple spell,” he said.

On screen, Ovid no longer stood by the cliff but in front of the stone wall where they’d interviewed all of us separately. “It’s really a simple spell,” the Ovid in the video said. “But I suppose when you get to a high level, most spells do feel simple.”

I nudged the Ovid next to me. “Very modest.”

“Hey, they practically fed me that answer.”

On screen, Vera replaced Ovid. “New Magika, it’s like, in-game, I can be whoever or whatever I want to be.” She smiled, and I was struck by her beauty, something sharp and fierce and powerful about her. “It’s more real than real.”

The advertisement ended, and the marketing guy closed the laptop, which then disappeared. That kind of technology didn’t match the aesthetic of New Magika, and was only useful for admins, NPCs, and sponsored parties like us. Now the bar felt quaint and vaguely medieval again.

“Approve?” The marketing guy asked. “Technically, your approval is unnecessary, but your feedback is important to us.”

“Approve,” I said with little hesitation, and Ovid and KeeperX agreed.

The marketing guy nodded, shook our hands, and disappeared. He’d logged off.

“More drinks?” KeeperX asked.

“Please,” Ovid said, handing him his empty glass. “Who knew this was going to be so weird.”

“I think seeing myself was the worst part,” I said. I just didn’t feel like Vera.

“You looked great.” Ovid caught my eyes. “Really, that’s the last thing you have to worry about.”

My heart pounded in my chest. Ovid was classically handsome, which was an easy in-game upgrade. I remembered him before he had “leveled up” his nose, but honestly, he was still pretty cute back then too. His eyes were dark blue, like the sky just after sunset, when the evening light still clung to the air.

I tried not to look at him too obviously.

KeeperX returned with our drinks. I took a sip of the wine, which was good and undoubtedly wine-flavored, but it was not quite as complex as wine in the physical world. The game designers were close, very close, but something was still missing.

I swirled the wine in my mouth.

---

We fought the spider queen, one of the boss monsters in the new expansion, but it wasn’t dramatic enough according to the marketing people.

“So, we have to do it again?” KeeperX asked, incredulous.

The marketing representative’s avatar, still dressed in his business suit, shrugged. “The notes I have are: more blood, ideally Vera’s blood, and ‘more drama.’” He spoke to us outside the Blighted Woods, where the spider queen’s lair loomed, deep in the trees.

“Are we being paid to play the game or to be actors?” Ovid asked.

“Both.” The marketing guy seemed bored. “You guys are some of the best players, right? Just, like, play it up.”

We went back into the woods. It was getting dark, and the trees looked spookier in the growing dim. I didn’t like the dripping ivy, which reminded me of fingers. It swayed just a little too much in the still air. A fog had rolled in since we first attempted the quest.

We knew the way, but I pretended I was tracking the spider for the first time. The marketing team could grab footage from anything in game, and they might want to use this. I tried not to think about how we were being watched.

We reached the cave, and Ovid summoned light to the tip of his staff with a few words. It amazed me how casters had to learn nearly an entire other language for their spells. All I had to do was learn to shoot a bow. The spell washed everything in blue light, and we entered.
Just as it had the last time, a spider the size of my hand dropped from the stalactites and landed with a tinny sound on Keeper’s armored shoulder.

I had my bow out in a second, and before the spider could attempt to bite him, I released an arrow. The spider clattered to the floor of the cave, bleeding green blood, very certainly dead.

“It’s poisonous,” I warned. It was poisonous last time, but I was doing it for the viewers.

KeeperX unsheathed his sword, the delicious sound echoing in the cave.

We killed more spiders as we went deeper into the cave. Ovid fried them with blue magic, and KeeperX hacked and slashed at them, making a splatter of the green blood which glowed in the dark, but I had to admit that we probably looked pretty cool doing it.

We arrived at the spider queen’s chamber, an opening in the stone hung so heavily with cobwebs that I couldn’t see inside. The game had remade the webs since KeeperX bust through them, just hours ago.

“How are we going to do this? Charge on in?” he asked.

“That’s silly. We’ll get bit.” Ovid shook his head. “I’ll give you buffs out here, then maybe Vera hides, and you act as bait to lure it out?”

“That’s how we killed it last time,” I said. “I’m supposed to get hurt, remember, for views.”

“You can be bait then!” KeeperX sounded all too excited.

Ovid looked worried. “Vera can’t take the hits. She might die.”

“It would be pretty drama if she died, though.”

“I don’t want to die,” I said. “It hurts like a bitch.” The more annoying part was the loss of a level and the abilities that came with that level. Your avatar just woke up in a reincarnation center, weaker than before.

“I won’t let you die.” Ovid put a hand on my shoulder. I could feel his body’s warmth. No, his avatar’s body’s code that read as heat.

KeeperX snorted. “Off you go.”

I approached the webs and put an arrow on the string of my bow.

I felt my back tingling as Ovid laid his buffs on me. I’d be faster, stronger, harder to hit. It felt good, a little like getting high, but my mind was clear and sharp. Ready.

I pushed through the webs.

The room was dark, but a weird, glowing light came from a mound of eggs, which shifted as the spiders inside moved. The ceiling soared above me, the stalactites emerging from the darkness and silvery webs. I couldn’t see the queen. How could I be bait if I couldn’t even find the boss? I wondered if she had even respawned yet.

I turned around to tell my party members. “Guys–”

My heightened awareness picked up something from above. Just a shift, darkness scratching against darkness. Then the spider queen dropped down.

I shifted, my body reacting before my mind, and I got out of the way, just inches between us. She was big, the size of a pony, covered with eyes in terrible places and bearing a huge pair of pincers.

I was fast, and I had three arrows in her before she could even make an attack. She lashed out with a leg, and I rolled out of the way. Then I remembered I was supposed to bleed. I let her cut me across my bicep, then my cheek. It hurt, but I could heal myself after the battle. I stepped on an egg, then it broke, less of a shell than a membrane. The glow in the dark blood splashed up my leg.

The queen howled, a screeching sound. She pressed forward, pincers clicking wildly.

“Where are you guys?” I called, trying to look for them in my periferaries, stepped back, and tripped.

I was mostly incredulous. I hadn’t tripped in years, not since I was some low-level noob with shit dexterity. I landed in the eggs, breaking, or more popping, half a dozen of them.

“Vera, lure her out!” Ovid called from the entrance.

“A little busy,” I yelled back.

The queen scuttled over me, trapping me in a cage of her legs. I felt a surge of panic. Where were Ovid and Keeper? I wondered if I might die here.

I grabbed an arrow and began to stab at the body of the spider queen. Her sticky, glowing blood streamed down on me. I kept stabbing. The queen’s legs shook, then buckled. She collapsed onto me, dead.

I squirmed out from under her body, breathing hard, sweaty, and drenched in green blood, but I felt good, even as the buffs burned out from my system. I loved this part of New Magika, right after the fight. We’d won. We’ve accomplished something.

“I fucking got her!” I called out. “I got her!”

KeeperX whooped, and Ovid rushed in to congratulate me. We all felt giddy and good as we left the cavern and walked out of the woods.

The marketing guy was waiting for us outside again. I wondered if he’d even moved or if he’d just been waiting there the whole time.

“Better,” he said, barely looking up from a tech pad. “But our focus group is saying that maybe Vera should die.”

---

If I had been in my real body, I would have been sleeping. KeeperX had gone off in search of treasure, and Ovid went to the library to study new spells. I watched the latest promo video by myself, using a special item tablet the marketing representative had given us. I sat in the corner of a dark bar, drinking, though the in-game algorithms could only give avatars a strong buzz, and real drunkenness was impossible.

It was the video of the spider queen fight, our dozen attempts spliced together seamlessly. There was Ovid, casting a complicated spell. Then Vera, trapped under the spider queen’s body. They kept the moment where KeeperX unsheathed his sword, and the marketing team even added personal cut-aways, where they asked us questions.

“I never liked spiders,” Vera said in the promo. They had told me to say that.

Cut to Vera, shooting a spider the size of a small cat.

Then was the fight. I watched as Vera took a hit to her cheek, saw the blood. I watched distantly as the queen pierced her through the gut. Vera’s eyes rolled back in pain, her mouth open, and I knew she was screaming because I remembered screaming, but the marketing team muted her sound. I watched KeeperX and Ovid storm the queen’s chambers, watched them kill her. Of course, I knew that my party eventually defeated her, but, at the moment, I had been too busy dying.

Ovid stepped over the spider queen’s body and rushed to Vera’s body. He slid her off the pincers of the monster, gathered her into his arms. I was shocked by his tenderness, the careful way he brushed her hair out of her eyes.

Close up on his face. He was crying. Not a lot, not like they gave him eyedrops, but his perfect eyes, welling and wet.

He pressed his head to Vera’s chest, tightening his hold on her, but a moment later, her body poofed into dust. Dead.

Ovid stayed kneeling.

KeeperX touched his shoulder.

The video cut to Ovid being interviewed. “I care about her a lot.”

I paused the video and skipped back a few seconds.

“I care about her a lot.”

“I care about her a lot.”

I smiled at the screen. Ovid’s emotion seemed legitimate, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the marketing people told him to say that? I watched it again and again. It seemed real. It had to be real.

---

We fought an owlbear the next day, but my heart wasn’t in it. The marketing guy made us redo it three times before he said they weren’t getting anything useful. We were too awkward. I wondered if Ovid had seen the video yet. Was he embarrassed?

The video nagged at me. Even if I was right, and it was all real and Ovid really did care, I wondered if he liked Vera, or if he liked me. Vera was gorgeous, fit, and one of the best shots in game. In real life, I looked nothing like her. I acted nothing like her. I was shy and scared and strange. We’d never met in real life, but now we would spend the rest of our lives together, in-game.

We teleported to the Bizarre Bazaar, a bustling marketplace where you could get anything you wanted for a price. It was crowded with other gamers and NPCs selling wares.

Ovid took out a list on a scrap of parchment. “For our party, we should pick up some healing potions. I need a couple spell components. Unicorn tail-hair, a rowan sprig, some sage. Vera, do you need arrows?”

“I always need arrows.”

KeeperX stopped in his tracks. “That armor.” He pointed.

A shiny set of full plate stood on a mannequin at a nearby booth. It shimmered with magic, probably a spell of protection. In the center of the breastplate was a big red stone.

“Buff me. I want it.”

“Well, go buy it. You have money.” Ovid gave him a playful push, and KeeperX bounded off.

Without Keeper, I felt uneasy. Even worse, I couldn’t help but remember that anything we did in game could be used as footage in the next promo.

“You need any armor?” he asked.

I looked down at myself. I wore leather armor and tight pants. It was light and easy to move in, and it was a hundred times less clanky than Keeper’s metal on metal. I’d been wearing this armor for the last dozen levels or so, getting it magically updated. It was comfortable, and I knew Vera–I–looked good in it.

“I’m happy with this,” I said. “You want a new robe?” I pointed at a skimpy outfit clearly meant for a woman or a very curvy man, and Ovid laughed.

“Perfect if I want to show off my breasts.”

I laughed. This was good. This was normal. Joking and having fun with friends, whether that meant shopping or killing monsters. That’s what the game was about.

---

In the next promo, Vera sprawled in the grass, which was rich and green in a way that grass in the real world never was, sprinkled with wildflowers. The sky above was brilliant with colors, lavender, and pink, and orange. The sun was setting with great flair.

Ovid was next to her, on his side, propped up on his side.

“Have you ever just lain in the grass here? No bugs, no itch. It’s perfect,” Vera said, looking at the sky.

“No bugs in the real world either,” Ovid said.

“Thanks, climate change,” KeeperX said, and the camera followed him for a moment as he tried to chase down a jackalope in his new armor.

“You know what I mean,” Vera said to Ovid, turning to face him. “No bugs in a good way.”

They looked at each other, and there was so much meaning in their gazes. I tried to recall what I was thinking during that moment, but I could only remember the coolness of the grass, the primal rightness of resting after a battle—the primal rightness of being next to Ovid.

---

“KeeperX’s new look has us thinking,” the marketing guy began. “Vera, we have something for you.” He handed me a cedar box.

It was nailed shut, but I was strong in game. I ripped the lid off easily.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. A little fabric, a little chain mail, tall boots. Hardly much material at all.

“It’s enchanted, so your armor class will be the same, but it’s much more appealing, don’t you think?” The marketing guy poked at the bikini armor. It jingled. “We’ll get tons of views with this.”

I looked at the armor uneasily. Would it even cover me? I thought of the body I left behind, how it could never fit into something as tiny as this. How I would never have considered it.

I dressed in a bathroom—literally a bathroom, with just a bath and a sink. Since there were no real bodies, no one needed a toilet. I looked at the way the outfit revealed my breasts, my stomach. I touched my bared abdomen. In my real body, I would have been holding a soft, fleshy mound. Vera’s body was sleek and strong, rock hard under my touch.

KeeperX whistled as I emerged.

I shifted back and forth on my feet. How would I be able to fight when I was so aware of my body?

“Much better,” the marketing guy said.

“Can I wear my other armor, like, when we do mundane stuff?” I asked.

The marketing guy looked offended. “Do you know how much money we’ve invested in you to stay in-game? Keeping your real body hooked to I.V.s and food bags and all that? You know we pay a nurse to exercise your limbs every few hours so you don’t waste away. We need to keep upping the views or we’ll hemorrhage cash.”

I nodded and looked at my feet, now covered with tall, high heeled boots that reached halfway up my thighs. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to fight in an outfit like this. I thought about bringing that up, about telling the marketing asshole that I couldn’t possibly live like this, but I held myself back. I’d rather be in-game wearing whatever they wanted than out-of-game in thrift store sweaters and khaki pants. I would survive.

---

When they released the next video, I felt more disconnected than ever from the Vera who fought dragons and goblins, the Vera who was dressed like medieval history met fantasy erotica. That wasn’t me shooting the bad guy. That couldn’t possibly be me, confidently walking around, flirting, tossing her dark hair in the wind.

Vera from the promo blew a kiss at Ovid. Had I really done that? I thought back. Yes, but it was a joke. In the promo, it seemed weighted with intense romanticism. The clip they showed next was of Vera in an interview. “I mean, we’ve been together for a long time.”

I frowned. The question they’d asked me had been about our party, about the three of us. They’d made it sound like I was with Ovid. Not that I was against it, but it felt icky, dishonest.

“I don’t want to watch this anymore,” I said, and I walked out of the tavern. The cobblestone alley had a few gamers, sipping big flagons of ale and chatting. I leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths.

“Oh my god, do you know who that is?” I heard a girl in barbarian furs say, nudging the half-orc by her side. “That’s Vera. She’s a promoted player.”

I pretended I couldn’t hear them. I’d upgraded my sensory perception to max many levels ago and didn’t regret it until now.

“Isn’t that the dream? She gets to live in New Magika.”

The door to the tavern opened, and Ovid came out.

“That’s her boyfriend. He’s like, probably the cutest mage I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey,” Ovid said.

“Hey,” I said to him.

“That’s weird in there, right? Or is it just me?”

“It’s like they crafted a fake relationship between us.” I kept my voice down, aware that the barbarian girl was watching.

“Right, I know!” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s just so…fake.”

“Right, fake,” I said, even though my heart hurt when I said it.

“Who’d have thought that living in a virtual world would be less authentic than reality?” He laughed.

I tried to laugh too. “I thought this was a dream come true when they asked to sponsor us.”

“Turns out it’s a lot more complicated and a lot worse.” He sighed and leaned against the wall next to me, looking at the slip of blue sky between rooftops. Our hands were almost touching on the stone wall. I was very aware of the half-hidden glances the barbarian girl kept making at us.

We were quiet for a long time. I crawled my fingers a little closer to his.

I wanted to say something about the promo with Vera’s death. I wanted to tell him that I cared about him a lot too, that I wish that the fake romance they’d made was real, but I knew the girl was watching across the alley. I knew that someone on the marketing team would be going over this footage for usable clips. If I confessed to Ovid, it would be plastered over billboards in the real world.

I felt a tap of warmth on my hand. Ovid had inched his closer to mine. Our littlest fingers brushed, ever so slightly, so we could have both claimed not to have noticed, but I was sure we both did.

Maybe it wasn’t a big enough gesture for the marketing team to care about. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.

“I miss the way things used to be,” I said.

“Old Magika,” Ovid chucked. “More real than real.”

I elbowed him in the side.

“Seriously, though, I don’t know if I would take this offer if I could go back.” Ovid was staring at the stone wall across the alley. There was nothing to see there.

“I don’t think I would have either.”

“Too late now. We get to stay in for the rest of our lives, or, you know, permaban and never get to game again.” He heaved himself up from the wall. “Come on, Vera, let’s go kill some stuff.”

---

The marketing guy showed us a clip of KeeperX helping me onto the back of a white horse. “This is our highest rated moment,” he explained. “Part is the aesthetic, very knight in shining armor, but also it’s polling higher because people respond better to Vera-KeeperX romantic tension than Vera-Ovid.”

I blinked. “But that wasn’t a romantic moment. I just needed to get on the horse.”

The marketing guy replayed it, this time with volume. The music swelled emotively. It did seem romantic, if you didn’t know either of us. KeeperX was attractive, sure, but he was not my type.

“Just try to get some moments like this we can use.” The marketing guy seemed excited. “You guys are bringing in great numbers. We have millions of new players in just a few months, I think because of this.” He gestured vaguely at the three of us.

“Anything else we can do for you?” Ovid asked with scathing sarcasm.

“Actually, Vera, if you could get hurt again today, that’d be great.”

“Cool,” I said flatly.

We began to scale the White Cliffs, with plans to fight the gorgon at the top. Climbing was hard but much easier with Vera’s enhanced strength, and Ovid cast a fly spell on himself, so he floated next to us as KeeperX and I climbed. Over a particularly big gape in the stone, KeeperX reached down and lent me a hand.

“Think this is romantic enough for them?” he asked, winking.

“It’s ridiculous,” I said. I tried to keep my mind on the climb, but I was growing angrier as we got higher. I used to love New Magika. I used to have fun.

Just before the top, we tied blindfolds around our eyes.

“I prepared a disenchantment spell, just in case anyone gets turned to stone, but better safe than sorry,” Ovid said. “Plus if I get turned, you guys have to go back to the Bizarre Bazaar and get a potion.”

“Can do,” I said, and I felt along the stone wall and pulled myself over the lip.

I heard the gorgon, the hissing of her snake hair, her terrible roars. I aimed my bow by the sound and fired. Her shriek told me I had hit my mark. I had another arrow on the string in less than a breath, and I listened. Her hair hissed, her clothes rustled, and my ears picked up a rushing sound that had to be the blood in her veins. This is what I loved about New Magika. The sheer ability, the god-like senses. I released the arrow.

Another shriek.

I smiled.

KeeperX clanged in her direction.

Within a few minutes, her shrieking stopped, and the hiss of her hair fell silent. I pulled the blindfold up tentatively. The gorgon sprawled in death, her hair reaching out in all directions like a halo. She was very beautiful, and her toga had slipped to reveal the top curve of a hefty breast.

When we climbed back down the cliff, the marketing guy was waiting for us. “New idea from the team outside. Vera, if you and the gorgon could kiss?”

“That’s pretty messed up,” Ovid said. “You can’t just ask that.”

“Fuck it,” I said. “I quit.”

The marketing guy hesitated. “I can get legal on this, but I’m pretty sure you can’t quit Not without serious consequences.”

“How can you keep me here?” I tried not to yell.

“Well, if you log off, you won’t ever be able to log back on. At least, that’s my understanding. You’d be breaching contract. You’d get a permaban. Besides, you know, considerable legal fees and possible physical and psychological ramifications for being rigged to the game so long. ”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

I stormed away. Ovid followed.

“Vera, please, this game won’t be the same without you.”

“It’s Caroline.”

“What?”

I turned around to face him, and I felt tears gather in my eyes. I didn’t want to leave him. “My real name. Caroline.” I’d never told anyone in the game my real name before.

“Caroline.” Ovid mulled it over.

“Come find me,” I said, and, before I lost the nerve, I leaned over and kissed him.

Then, before he could say or do anything, I logged off.

---

In the hospital, I raised my arms, not without effort, and removed the VR headset. My hair fell out onto my shoulders, lank and smelly. My body was plugged into a dozen I.V.s, monitors, and recording devices. An electronic beep matched my racing heart. I tried to sit up, but months of bedrest had weakened me. Or maybe it was that Vera’s strength had abandoned me.

I looked around the room. I wasn’t alone. Maybe twenty other people lay in beds like mine, headsets obscuring their faces, cords and tubes keeping them alive—other sponsored players.

I wondered if any of the people were Ovid.

I tried again to sit.

Outside the single window, the city looked dismal and smoggy, glass and concrete, and grey with filth. Above the spires of buildings stood a bright electric billboard, showing an advertisement for a robot butler. Then it flashed to an air filter ad. Then a VR headset.

I almost lay back down, but a familiar face replaced the headsets on the billboard. Ovid, standing on a cliff and calling lightning from the sky. Then, a beautiful young woman. Me. Vera. Whatever.

“New Magika,” she said, her voice silky and seductive even over speakers. “More real than real.”

---

Host Commentary

This is a chillingly plausible story, isn’t it? The online worlds we inhabit are growing richer and more developed every year, and the communities we find there are as valid as those in the real world. But the interplay between technology, ethics, individuals and companies wishing to turn a profit is not straightforward, either, especially when the pace of change is so fast. Today, I have chatted with an AI and marveled at its competency communicating in a human-like fashion…but I’ve also had to think about academic assessments and integrity, about creatives being sidelined for computers, and how the systemic biases of our technology don’t actually create the same opportunities for everyone. Our technology is a tool – a powerful one – but the corporations that produce and engage with them don’t always have everyone’s – or even anyone’s – best interests at heart. Here, we have a fantasy world turned into an entertainment spectacle, where players become products and products become marketised. We can escape to another world, but we don’t always get to escape the worst of what we leave behind. How to deal with that? Here, when the market forces start to shape and restrict her freedom, Caroline has to sacrifice her life as Vera. That’s a heavy cost, but definitely the right choice for her. And yet, you don’t see her teammates being forced away from what and who they loved. I wonder why?