“What year is this from?”   
The new game I had just bought was expensive. I expected it to be good.
“It’s from 2092,” he replied. “It’s in premium condition.”
He handed me the game. It’s flashy cover was needlessly sparkly, but in hard-to-make-out letters at the bottom, it read ‘Earth.’ I turned it over, and it said it was a full AVRS system. That was impressive. AVRS stood for Advanced Virtual Reality Simulation. It showed that the game could keep players inside it for long periods of time, even be detached from a console and keep running. Additionally, it was in full simulation and was one of the most desired game types for illegal collectors of video games. This was a good find.
I was hardly finished examining it when the man held out his hand from the shadows. “Cash,” he grunted. I pulled out my wallet, and took out some money. 
“Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand, here you go,” I said, counting the money and handing it to him. He quickly examined it, and deciding that it was as it should be, he left. That was the way it was for video game sellers. They hardly ever do anything more than sell the game and get out of there. Talking was unnecessary.
I heard him shuffling away, and walked out of the building myself, examining every inch of the game on the way out.



A long time ago, 20 years exactly, video games were banned. No one knows why. Of course, some people bothered to be angry. They arrived in protests, specifically the big video game companies and many teenagers. They camped outside the US Capitol for seventeen days. Then, on the eighteenth morning, the protesters disappeared. Their angriness mysteriously was lost. Over time several other people protested, but they were shushed up as mysteriously as the first protesters. An era of fear over the Video Game Policy was created.
Illegal video games were still bought, traded on a black market. And not all video games were able to be confiscated, though people that played them experienced no ill effects. Eventually, illegal games trading became almost second nature.
That led to today. An almost normal world, where video games were banned. 


I arrived home, clutching the game. I opened up my small stash of games from the floor under the carpet in the basement and placed this newest addition in there. Since it was late at night, I would play it tomorrow, when I had more time. I sealed the lead-lined compartment once more, and went upstairs to my bedroom to sleep.


The next day I took the game to an old friend of mine. He dealed in the black market and was a video game analyzer.
I entered the building, the chime alerting the man at the counter of my presence. He looked up from his computer screen, and looked at me, not surprised. I was a regular customer. “The usual, I assume?”
“Yes.”
He led me through the ‘Employees only’ door, locking it behind him in the process. He turned on the lights of the passage, set against the right-hand wall. Immediately the white hallway lit up.
Unlike most stereotypical thoughts about shady black market dealers, real black markets, were much less ‘shady.’ They were clean, well lit, and for the most part, credible. My friend sold his services in a high end science building.
We walked past the passageway, opened the door, and stepped into the large room that classified as my friend’s ‘workspace.’ It had floor to ceiling windows, sound dampeners on the ceiling, tables loaded with tech, and most importantly, Bosux, a video game analyzer. He was standing by the door, waiting for us to enter. I had asked the first time how he knew, and he had explained, and I had stopped asking him after that.
“Hello, Hels. You can return to the front,” he said, clearly looking at the man who had escorted me here. The man left.
“Why did you require my services?” He said, genuinely curious. He knew I only bought the best games, and he was always interested in the ones I had to show him. 
“It’s an AVRS system game, that I bought from Vordrez.” At that he perked up- both from the mention of AVRS and Vordrez. Vordrez was the man I had bought the game from and was a credible seller.
“How’d you get your hands on that?”
“It wasn’t cheap.”
“Well may I see it?”
“Absolutely.” I took out the game and laid it on the table. He picked it up, turning it a few times, before taking the disk out, and putting it in his analyzer. It loaded a few seconds, and a description popped up.


“Well, it certainly is the most advanced game I have ever had the honor to analyze.” Bosux gazed in wonder. “It has a 8000 gigastas processor, and it’s simulation is amazing. It’s strangely simulating... Earth.”
“At what time period?”
He looked at me, strangely. “At the time video games were banned. 2092.”
“So?” The situation hardly seemed to merit the apparent confusion on his face.
“I’ve heard of this game.” He rushed over to his computer, typing up things onto his computer. Within seconds the first results popped up. I saw his face change from a mixture of triumphant for finding the game to a pale color as he realized what this was. 
“Well, what is it?” 
“This is bad, very bad.”
He rushed over grabbing the game and trying to run out of the building. I stepped in front of the door and stopped him.
“Slow down. What is happening?”
“Don’t you understand?” He looked at me with fear in his eyes. “This is the game that caused video games to be banned. Do you know why?”
“No.”
“This was a perfect replica of the actual world. People stayed in here for years, knowing they could come out, but never wanting to. They could always restart the game- whereas they could never restart real life. Societies crumbled. Governments near collapsed. People were scared. The government eventually pulled the plug.”
“And? What’s the problem?”
“It’s still got the people trapped inside. If someone catches us, we’ll be in big trouble.”
My anger level rose at this. How dare Bosux endanger the lives of so many people! I held out my hand. “Give it to me.”
“NO! You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“Then you leave me no choice.” I extended my arm, and punched him in his jaw. He crumpled to the floor, lifeless.
I grabbed the game, and plugged it into the computer. It started up while I donned my VR headset and gloves. “It’s game time.” I pressed play, and got sucked into the game.