Yuno:

For a long time I kept myself apart in Elysium. I analyzed chatrooms, events, watched the players from the side, but avoided close communication. The first months in Elysium were subject to constant updates, so as a location designer, I had to constantly monitor any changes in order to implement them into the creation of new rooms.

It was difficult in the beginning. My main specialization is the design of virtual environments and the development of AI holograms. I'm working with tools, paints and canvases, almost like an artist. In Elysium, everything is much more complicated and interesting - you design the scenery with your own thoughts and visualization. It doesn't happen right away.

Feels very similar to meditation. You are in an empty dark space that you don't even feel, and the main thing here is to focus on the details. You need to imagine as clearly as possible, otherwise the element that you think about will be blurry in the end. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why many of the rooms are hardly used by the players - if the quality is fuzzy, then the realism disappears, and this contradicts the concept of Elysium.

Therefore, at first, all I did was deleting elements that were not fully developed. I experimented a lot, chose different directions, thought carefully about the concept of rooms, but only few things turned out well. Being an absolute perfectionist when it came to work, I couldn't even launch a chat room if even one detail didn't suit me. I saw flaws literally in everything - if the backlight shade is less cold, then the atmosphere of the room is already killed, if the flowers are in the wrong corner, if the air temperature is two degrees cooler, then I completely erased all progress. As a result, I came to the first completed location only after a couple of months of regular practice, working on my own mistakes, searching for my personal style.

People come to Elysium primarily for the special atmosphere, the one that they won't be able to experience in reality.

Despite all the efforts, my locations didn't immediately hit the top of the rankings. I regularly checked it, and later it reached fanaticism: I could update the top chatrooms every three minutes in the hope of seeing mine, but after a while it dawned on me that the competition is huge, because every hour about a hundred rooms are created around the world, and it's almost impossible to reach the top .

At least that's how it seemed to me when I decided to give up on the amount of users in my rooms, and just enjoy the space I created on my own. I could hang out in my chatroom for hours, lying on the floor, smoking a joint, looking at the water in the pool of a small room, while the night city sparkles behind a glass wall. And I was fine, I mean, I felt really good. At that moment, I realized the value of being alone in Elysium. You create your personal world based on the desired images from your head, and just live in it, forgetting about everything around. In those days, I didn't want to talk to anyone. Loneliness is like a drug - once you try it, you get so addicted that it's hard to go back.

I continue to lie on the floor in my imaginary world, which connects me to reality with a thin, barely perceptible choker on my neck, designing and improving what is already there.

They say there are no sounds in Elysium. Everything that we think we hear here, from music to the roar of the wind - all of this is just a competent installation of the metaverse developers, some waves that send us a common association, plunging the users into this collective dream. It's so weird, it's crazy. I have checked this many times. You are in a noisy location of another party, you hear conversations, music, vibrations, but as soon as you think about reality, all sounds subside subtly, plunging you into absolute silence. Elysium is a deafening silence that we cannot comprehend.

Despite this, the virtual world still has some sound. I catch it when I sink to the very bottom of my thoughts. The sound, similar to the beating of my heart, carries me away, leaving the routine of a repetitive day behind me. Like a whisper, that unintelligibly calling me somewhere.

Sometimes life itself reminds me of a game that I played so long ago that I completely forgot who this whisper belongs to. But how can I remember and realize that I am something other than this avatar created by someone? How can I wake up?

"This chatroom is really cool! You don't even need to place tags, it's purely for the elite," an unfamiliar voice snaps me back to consciousness.

I see a guy with childish smile and sly eyes. He looks about eighteen or twenty years old, all in ridiculous jewelry and tattoos, reminiscent of sketches with a gel pen. He looks like he doesn't care what others think of his avatar."What are you doing here?" I ask, as if waking up from a dream against my will."I'm looking for chill vibe, you know..." He grins and ruffles his blond, already tousled hair.'Vibe? Well, and how do you like this chatroom?" I'm interested. This guy is the first one to came into my location while I was here. I've checked a few visits before this, but never got the users online in my rooms.

"I mean, it's very nice. Tastefully done. And this," he pointed to the paper planes floating in the air, "is quite creative,"

The guy flops down on the floor next to me (like we're old friends) and pulls the joint out of my hands, then takes a puff and clears his throat after trying to make smoke rings.

"Are you turned on the physical access?" I ask.

"What's the point of hanging around here without it? If I had the opportunity, I would transfer all of the physical sensations to Elysium. Your entire life resource. And on the contrary, I would turn off the reality, " he smiles.

Then the boy rises slightly, glancing towards the panorama of the night city.

'It's quite sad," I answer.

"What exactly?"

"Just wondering, can this outcome be considered as death? A complete rejection of reality in exchange for existence in some kind of virtual simulation... It's strange, really strange, if you think about it."

He leans back again, staring blissfully at the ceiling.

"But what's the difference? Death... Who even thinks about it? Here, in Elysium, you can die a thousand times and be resurrected. You won't even notice how you get used to it."

"Do you get used to it so much that you stop thinking about it?"

"Exactly," he smiles.

The dark ceiling in the room is gradually covered with stars and clouds. This idea came to me at the right moment.

"Better, yeah?"

"A thousand times," he says, looking at the starry sky that suddenly appeared instead of the room ceiling. "Have you ever wondered what it's like to create locations? This is pure imagination. They say it's harder than writing books or paintings."

"I used to draw a lot. And when I studied creating locations in Elysium, I initially thought that visualization was easier than drawing, but it turned out differently. Here you don't have time to assemble the element in parts, your task is to present it as clearly as possible. And this, in fact, is much more difficult than it seems at first glance," I answer, and then I add, "However, practice helps. The more you practice, the easier the subsequent stages of creation."

We silently look at the artificial starry sky. In the real world, it is rare. You can see a clear sky for a maximum of a couple of days every two years. Pollution prevents this from happening more often.

"How long have you been playing here?" I ask.

"Already more than a year. I almost live in Elysium."

"Always with physical access?"

"No, of course, not. But even if I am presented with a choice - either reality with all its real sensations, or metaverse without physical access, I will still choose the metavarse. At least here the visual is solid, you understand."

"Yes, I got you," I answer.

We spend the rest of the time in silence. And then he gets a notification about the upcoming date.

"Recently, I constantly go on dates through apps, such a thrill. You just write down the parameters according to your mood and choose from a bunch of almost identical girls. Well. See you later, bruh. I sent you a freind request." He says goodbye and disappears.

This was how I met my only close friend in "Elysium" - Jero.