The screen went white.

The loading screen flickered twice, then settled into a warm, golden-hued panorama. A small wooden sign, freshly painted, swayed gently in a digital breeze. It read: .

His avatar, a generic twenty-something with a forgettable name (he’d left it as “Evan”), appeared on the sidewalk outside a diner called The Rusty Mug . The art style was hyperrealistic but soft, like a memory you wanted to have. The first character he met was Eleanor, the diner owner. She had auburn hair pinned in a loose bun, laugh lines at her eyes, and a way of wiping the counter that felt almost hypnotic.

Eleanor burst out of the diner holding a shotgun she’d never had before. Claudia pulled a katana from behind the circulation desk. Margo’s tow truck transformed, grinding and clicking, into a half-truck, half-mech suit. June simply hovered three feet off the ground, glowing.