Dome of Protection "Rome"—May 19, 2070
On this day, a boy named Enzo Emmanuel Romano was born. He was the youngest of five brothers and sisters.
One day, he would be known as one of the 7 Gods… the legendary VRMMORPG player, "Ceaser."
At that time, the Earth's population had been forced to live inside huge domes to protect them from the climate they had destroyed. For the most part, these domes had been constructed around the world's largest surviving cities. Rome was one of them.
But, unlike Paris, Rome was a very poor city. Indeed, it was one of the poorest cities remaining in the world.
And the Romano family, a former Italian noble lineage, was even poorer than many of their peers. They had attempted to invest in agriculture in the middle of the climatic crisis, but this had only driven them deeply into debt.
The Romano family was forced to declare bankruptcy, leaving their ancestral estate to live in the immense city slum that was known as the "Dome of Rome."
Enzo and his siblings grew up in total poverty. They lacked even the necessities of life, from food to clothes to medicine.
However, there was one thing his parents could provide for him: an education.
This was no ordinary education. Enzo's parents made sure that he learned all the lost qualities of the aristocracy, qualities which mere poverty could not strip away: righteousness, honor, and discipline. Indeed, even though he was forced by circumstance to dress in rags, Enzo carried himself with the dignity of a true aristocrat.
But the world was more chaotic with every passing day. To be able to feed five children, his parents were forced to toil long hours in small, meaningless jobs which were exhausting but which paid close to nothing.
Enzo's parents tried to rely on the principles of nobility to sustain them. They tried to work virtuously and diligently, hoping to prove to the world that their spirits had not broken.
But these principles did very little to dull the misery. As time passed, Enzo's parents became more and more jaded.
Then they discovered Neo-Crack.
Though this wonder drug could send its victims into blissful unconsciousness at higher doses, it served as a powerful stimulant in tiny doses. Enzo's father was introduced to it as a method to ignore all pain, discomfort, and weariness while on a long shift.
It worked exactly as he had been told, and then he was addicted for the rest of his life.
Not long after, Enzo's mother fell into the same trap.
By the age of eight, Enzo and his four siblings found themselves the neglected children of two hopeless drug addicts.
The Neo-Crack helped Enzo's parents work harder and faster at first, but their bodies quickly grew accustomed to these tiny doses. They craved more. And as they ingested more of the drug, they came closer to approaching the drug's other effect, its all-consuming stupor.
This was, tragically, even more addictive than its stimulant effect.
The Romano guardians lost more and more control of their own lives. As the years passed, more potent and sinister forms of Neo-Crack came directly from government laboratories and into the hands of drug dealers. These new forms kept their slaves in tighter and tighter chains, ensuring they would never be free.
Enzo's parents led their whole family into delinquency to fund their addictions, turning to more reckless forms of robbery in quick succession.
It worked fairly well for them at first. Then they tried to rob a bank.
The once-noble family was wildly out of its depth and was arrested at once. Justice near the end of the twenty-first century was swift and repressive, and so the former nobles were each sentenced to thirty years in prison without the possibility of parole.
To prevent the formation of family gangs rising within prison walls, each family member was sent to a different facility, never to meet again.
At the age of sixteen, Enzo quickly realized that whatever hope there had been in his life was now gone. His family was broken, never to be repaired again.
This was the most bitter loss Enzo had experienced in his short life. Despite the poverty, despite the suffering, despite his parents' addictions, there had never before been a time when the family bond had been irretrievably lost. Even though his parents had failed their children again and again… No matter what, they had always come back together.
But then, sitting in his cell, alone, Enzo was forced to face the truth that his life would never be the same again. It was a shock, a brutal shock. Enzo was overtaken by hopeless despair as one belief consumed him: the world had taken everything from him.
First, his family's heritage and estate as an ancient, noble bloodline. Then their dignity. Then the parents themselves. Finally, the world had shattered Enzo's family, scattering his siblings far and wide.
And Enzo knew that he would never reclaim what he had lost.
He curled up into a ball and wept bitterly in his dingy, two-square-meter cell that smelled of someone else's urine. He cried for a long time, long enough that he lost track of the hours, until the rising moon illuminated his thin bedspread.
Enzo, ever-resourceful, realized that his sheets would be enough to tie a hangman's knot.
So the sixteen-year-old boy fashioned a noose, tied it to the bars of his cell window, and hanged himself.
But perhaps Fate had ordained all of Enzo's former misery, because it was his extreme poverty that saved his life. Being so thin from lack of nutrition, Enzo's body was far too light, and he was far too weak to break his own neck. Though he tried very hard, all Enzo managed to do was render himself unconscious.
Strangely, when Enzo woke up hours later with a pounding headache, he found himself on the floor beside a cleanly cut noose. There was no fraying on the makeshift rope at all—someone must have cut him down on purpose.
Yet, who could it have been? He had no cellmates, and surely if a guard had found him, Enzo would have woken up in the infirmary instead of on his floor with the rope right beside him.
He didn't understand what had happened that night, but he did understand that he must have some purpose remaining in his life.
The very next morning, World of Warcraft II was released.
With this game came a social upheaval like the world had never seen. Unlike books, older games, and films, WoW II brought something completely new: the possibility of immersing oneself completely in a whole new world.
This social shock wave even reached the world's prisons. When it became clear that there was real money to be made from this game, the prisons realized that they could leverage their stock of prisoners for profit.
After all, who could be a better warrior than someone who had been a warrior in the real world to begin with?
Thus, the government's first "VRMMORPG Reinsertion program" came into being, barely one year after the release of the game. For the world government, it was a godsend. They could hand off their prisoners to big guilds as little more than slaves and receive a good profit from their efforts.
And, of course, even under the worst circumstances, most of the prisoners hugely preferred playing WoW II to sitting in their cells.
Moreover, for those who performed well and showed that they were able to work successfully in a larger social structure like a guild, the government was able to claim that these prisoners had proved able to reintegrate into society, and so they were able to empty portions of their prisons. This was a beautiful piece of propaganda, which the prison management system was quite proud of!
Twelve months after this government program was devised, it chose one prison as its experimental prototype. That prison happened to be the one where Enzo was being held.
A certain first-rate guild visited that prison to pick their new recruits, a guild called Renovatio Imperii. They specialized in PvP, and they dreamed of one day becoming a SuperGuild and rising to the top of the world's most elite gaming corporations.
Enzo immediately understood that this was his ticket out, his one chance at a new life! Moreover, it seemed providential that it was this guild which came to his prison. Renovatio Imperii represented the ancient valor and dignity of Rome, the values of his own ancestors which he had been raised to love.
This guild wasn't looking for brainless bastards, but barbarians capable of joining civilization and adopting the customs of Rome.
In short, they were looking exactly for someone like him.
Enzo used the little money he had to buy a suit, then spent hours memorizing his answers to the questions he was sure they'd ask him when his opportunity to interview arrived.
That opportunity was a long time coming, for it was a huge prison with many, many prisoners who wanted a chance to play a video game instead of sitting in their cells. After almost seven days, Renovatio Imperii began to wonder if this plan was a mistake, for they hadn't found a single worthy candidate.
Then it was Enzo's turn to come forward.
The guild representatives were quite surprised when they entered the visiting room and found a young man in a suit with nice hair and speaking in an educated, elegant way!
In fact, the five representatives were quite doubtful that Enzo actually was a prisoner until they read his criminal record.
Finally, one of the men said,
"Hello, young man. I am Edward, the founder of Renovatio Imperii. But you can call me by my pseudonym, Augustus, if you wish. We are here because we are looking for talent for our PvP guild. At Renovatio Imperii, we are not lacking in talent. However, with VR technology as immersive as it is, even our greatest professionals have a hard time dealing with the stress and realism of the game.
"We are looking for a player who will receive training in an excellent fashion and who will perform well on the battlefield. That is, we're looking for someone who is used to dealing with adrenaline and engaging in combat."
Enzo answered calmly and politely, "He sits before you now."
Everyone remained silent for a long moment. Then Edward replied, "Really? What makes you say that?"
Enzo answered, "I have been fighting in the slums of Rome since I was eight years old. Even before that, since I was six years old, I have been under constant pressure, always afraid that a rival gang would come from behind and cut my throat."
Edward replied, "Hmm, I understand. But I also see that your name is 'Romano.' Do you truly belong to the ancient noble family of Florence?"
When Enzo replied, his voice had an edge of bitterness, but his dignity did not slip away. "Yes... My parents lost everything during the great ice age. But they did not neglect my education, even still. They raised me to be as perfect an example of the Italian nobility as had ever stood on the streets of our once-great city."
Edward still seemed skeptical. "But can you do the job? That still remains to be seen!"
Enzo answered, "Send anyone you like to face me. Then you will see that I am made for this job!"
Edward gave a delighted laugh. "Aha, I like that a lot! Your file is interesting, Enzo. We will review it and follow up with you. You can go."
Once Enzo left, the five representatives began to discuss Enzo. One said, "I'm not in favor of Enzo's membership. He's too young. Young men are reckless and unimpressive. I still think we should reconsider that other fellow, the thirty-nine-year-old former professional boxer who killed his wife."
Another representative replied, "It is true that a professional boxer would be a better choice in terms of pure skill, but the problem is that these people often have severe brain damage..."
Edward added, "I agree. The boxer would have incredible advantages, but he is too worn out. I do not want to invest thousands of credits on a man who will have a stroke overnight. Especially since immersive VR technology is extremely energy-consuming for the brain. I have a feeling the elastic brain of a youth, still in development, will be able to adapt much better than that of a grown adult."
Edward looked down at the criminal file again, staring at it thoughtfully. "In addition, I am quite intrigued by this Enzo Romano..."
Another representative asked, "Why don't we make them fight each other? We'll simply take the one who's still standing at the end."
Edward gave a long sigh and looked up. "Good idea. Summon them both for a virtual fight next week. Whoever wins will earn his freedom from this dreadful place."
