Yuno:

Most of the locations in Elysium are blocked by developers. Users go crazy, the consequences of Levi's hacks are taking their toll. A certain number of users side with Levi, But no one knows where to find him, so they simply gather their own small groups and arrange a massacre, including physical access. There is no benefit from this, just fights for the sake of fights.

There are other users, those to whom Levi's ideas seem really correct and interesting. They approach his movement with a cool head. No fights, just gatherings and philosophical discussions about how our world will live on. Otherwise, the concept of Elysium seems to have lost its original meaning. The most rated rooms are blocked and hidden from public access, most users reduce the time spent in the simulation, the number of deaths in the general background becomes huge. The psyche of people, previously regulated by pills, failed. The level of anxiety rises: paranoia, obsessive thoughts about imminent death - all this provokes a wave of hysteria among the users. Elysium is no longer a place to escape from an oppressive reality, it becomes part of it. The beautiful fantasy world just collapsed. No one knows what all this is leading to, but it is obvious that the further - the worse.

I have not heard anything about Levi for a long time, but I often meet guys from his company. They all dispersed in all directions, communicate little with each other and seem to be hiding from something.
Apparently the fear of what they did is stronger than the desire to continue the undertaking. Their plan failed. Yes, they changed Elysium, but at what cost and in what direction? They just destroyed everything instead of creating an improved version of the real world.

I stopped creating new locations. It just doesn't make sense. In Elysium, I stay only for Aia. It is difficult for me to stay in reality for a long time when she is not around. Therefore, we spend almost all the time with her in the location that I created. These are wonderful moments - sincere and warm. With Aia, I forget that chaos and destruction reigns around. With her, I forget about the dullness of the real world.
One day we take a walk with her in a dark, cool garden. Silence, the singing of cicadas, the soothing wind, the twinkling of fireflies - everything is as realistic as possible.

"I don't think it's Levi's fault," she says as we sit on the grass and listen to the murmur of a small waterfall.

"I'm sure if it was unprofitable for the developers, they would have blocked it a long time ago. Still at an early stage. They track everything. Any fluctuations in the emotions of the users. I can see it myself."

"What do you mean? What fluctuations of emotions?" I ask puzzled.

"Each Elysium user has an emotional temperature panel. This is almost the entire spectrum of colors. They can't see it, but I can, because it's part of my job as a side app for users support. Therefore, developers can track it as well. Any aggressive manifestation automatically registers the user. They start following him. His correspondence with others, his visits to events and chat rooms, in general, absolutely everything related to his activity. So I don't believe they didn't notice Levi and his actions in the first place," Aia replies.

"Have you spoken to Levi about this? Why didn't it occur to him? We discussed this from the very beginning. He said let them watch. Levi thought it was to his advantage. He wanted to make himself known right away. He was even ready to be blocked if something happened. But from the moment their activities began to develop actively, he didn't receive a single warning. He was surprised and immediately realized that this was some kind of game. There was no fear in him, he didn't think to stop. So what happened happened. I don't know how this is beneficial for the developers... You yourself understand that everything that is happening now in Elysium is not at all the fruit of the activities of Levi and his friends. This is the developer's choice. Levi is just a small and insignificant detail in all this. They made him feel like an all-powerful, great revolutionary. In fact, they were just playing with him."

I'm silent for a while and think about everything she said.

"Where is Levi now?"

"It seems to me..." she suddenly stops, peering into the depths of the forest with concentration and squinting slightly. Then Aia moves closer to me and whispers, "I think there is someone here..."

I also look. Then we hear some rustling. Like a wild animal is passing by. But there is no one.

"Probably just a bug. When creating the location, I didn't populate it with animals. They didn't exist in my imagination at that moment," I answer a little quieter.

"Let's go for a walk," Aia suggests.

We walk along a narrow path illuminated by blue paper lanterns floating in the air. I hold Aia's hand. Physical access is on, so I can feel the warmth of her palms, the softness of her skin. Amazing feeling. She is so real in this moment.

"Actually, I would like things to get better as soon as possible. I don't know why all this is happening, but I hope it's temporary."

"Me too. I want it to be like before. Do you think they might launch an Elysium update?"

"I don't know. They're going to have to do an update anyway after everything that's happened here, but it's so weird... So many users died. Elysium now has a very bad reputation. If earlier there were only rumors that someone was dying, now it is mass insanity. The users are scared to be here."

"Yes. I still don't understand why they needed this purge."

Suddenly a silhouette appears from behind the trees. I can no longer accept this as a bug. Aia looks at the stranger warily.

"This is our location. No one can come here," she whispers.

"Who is there?" I ask loudly.

The silhouette becomes more and more clear, and then I see a face already familiar to me.

This is Inari.

"What are you doing here?" I ask in bewilderment.

He comes out to us.

"Sorry for no warning. I had no choice," he says. Then his gaze falls on Aia, and his eyes seem to flash with parental warmth. "I like this avatar," he smiles at her.

"This avatar is generated by Yuno's preferences," Aia replies mechanically.

"Why were you looking for me?"

Inari looks back at me.

"This is a serious and urgent conversation. It affects everyone," Inari replies.

"All of us?"

"Everyone who is involved in the Elysium. All users."

I restlessly hug Aia with one arm. Inari continues:

"It will all fall apart soon. Elysium lost half of its development staff. Everyone is leaving en masse. Hacks have reached a breaking point, users are going crazy. All this needs to be stopped, but the developers and sponsors don't want to do anything. Elysium is still a stable source of income for them, supporting the global economy. Stopping this chaos means depriving them of money and power, turning the whole real world upside down."

"I don't understand..."

"Elysium and reality have become too interconnected. Elysium captured it, metastasized all over the real world. This is a unique and devastating phenomenon that urgently needs to be prevented. But nobody wants to do it. As I said, there are people who are not profitable. They do not care about the rest, about death, about insanity. The users seemed to have lost the ground from under their feet. They seem to be in Elysium, but it kills them. And to stop it, you need to remove the server," says Inari.

We stand opposite him and look at each other in confusion.

"What does it mean to delete a server? Are you out of your mind, Inari?"

"Yuno, otherwise there's no way to save people. I'm the only one who knows how to do this, but I was denied access. I can visit a limited number of locations for ten minutes a day."

"Why are you saying this now? Why are you even informing us about this?" I ask.

"I have been watching you for a long time, Yuno. I saw how you interacted with Aia and the others. I know all the locations you created. And I trust you..."

"Inari, are you..."

"I will entrust this to you. I'll give you the server password and explain exactly what to do. I don't have anyone from the development staff left. None of the familiar users remained. It's hard, I know, but..."

"Stop it!" I scream. "This is none of my business! I'm not going to delete anything! Aia is here! What difference does it make what other users have? They can just not come here, and that's it, the problem is solved!"

"You don't understand, I'm telling you, Elysium and the real world are becoming part of each other, and if we don't stop the root of the so-called evil now, then reality will become more terrible..."

"No way! I won't do anything, I won't dance to your tune! What made you think that I would trust you at all? You took my deceased best friend's avatar several times and just mocked me! You're a fucking psychopath, Inari! Even Levi is more adequate than you!" I yell, and Aia hugs me.

"Yuno, calm down. Inari is right," she says.

"What is right? That the server needs to be removed?"

"Yes. If there is no other way..."

"But if I delete the server, you will be deleted with it, Aia! How can you not understand this?"

"Is it possible to come up with something? Transfer my data, create a backup? It can't be that bad, I believe there is a way out," she looks hopefully at Inari, but his eyes express only regret and sadness.

"What do you say about this?" I ask him.

"Unfortunately, there is no such option. When I created Aia, I didn't foresee a fallback. I created it as a detail of the whole Elysium. She is an integral part of it, like all the locations..."

I don't know what to say. This news strikes me even more than the previous one. What a fool he is.

"Why didn't you foresee this moment?"

Aia looks at us in confusion, not daring to say anything. I feel her fear.

"So I'm going to die like people do?" she asks in a barely audible voice.

Inari is silent, avoiding her gaze.

"This won't happen. I won't delete the server, I won't let anyone delete it!" I declare with firmness in my voice.

"Yuno, living people are dying. The world is going crazy. This is tantamount to the end of the world. Aia is an artificial intelligence. She won't feel..."

"Shut the fuck up!" I throw myself at him and we fight. But Inari doesn't even resist, allowing me to take out all the aggression and anger on him.

"Yuno, stop!" Aia screams, and that alone brings me to my senses.

We both get up off the ground and dust ourselves off.

"Yuno. I won't pressure you anymore. No one will do this but you, so you will make the decision yourself."

"Are you making me feel that responsible? For the whole damn world? You are crazy! It's only your fault and only your problem!"

"I have no choice."

"There is always a choice!"

"Not in this case," he replies despondently.

"You have a few days to make a decision. Then this process will no longer be stopped."

With these words, Inari disappears from the location, leaving Aia and me alone.

"No. Let it go to hell. I will not do anything, I will not delete the server." I hug Aya.

"Do you care about others?"

"I don't have anyone closer than you."

"That's not right, Yuno. The real world... it's much bigger. And the people there are alive, tangible."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You have to save your world, not this one. This world doesn't exist."

"Don't talk nonsense... This world is more real to me than my own. I'm more alive here than anywhere else..."

"Remember Jero. Elysium killed him. Not the real world. Think about what his real life would be like," she whispers.

"No! You don't know what reality is and how disgusting it is!"

"But at least he would be alive. And perhaps such a revolution could radically change your real life. How many users like Jero who die because they couldn't imagine their lives without Elysium? If Elysium didn't exist, they would have nothing to compare with, and they would continue to live."

I remain silent, not knowing what to answer her. Now, for the first time, everything that Inari has entrusted to me is reaching me. Lives of living people. Real ones like Jero. And it is my duty to help them. If I do not help, then I will live with this until the end of my days. How to withstand this moral pressure? Everything was mixed up inside me: fear, compassion, fear of losing Aia, hatred for myself and the world, anger, denial. I refuse to believe what is happening.

"You're right. You can't exist peacefully knowing that you could help millions of users, but didn't do it because of your own moral well-being," Aia says, reading my thoughts.

I cover my face with my hands in desperation.

"What should I do?" I whisper.

"What Inari said."

"I can't do it without you."

"You can. You are already without me. You live with the knowledge that I don't exist. And it is true."

"No, it's different for me."

"I will spend the rest of my days with you. I'll be by your side to the last, Yuno. You'll be fine. I know. Do it for me. Just understand that if you leave everything as it is, then our time with you will not last long either. Elysium is out of control. What will you choose? Save the users or just let things slide and lose me anyway?"

As much as I hate to deny it, she's right. The preservation of Elysium is a matter of time. It's all over for us. And it's even more depressing. I hate it all, but I can't resist common sense.

"Do you promise to be there?"

"Yes. I will always be there."

***

Time does not exist in Elysium. I don't feel it.
We are constantly with Aia. I fall asleep and wake up in a simulation. Letting go of thoughts about the coming end is difficult. Knowing that soon my serene and happy life will come to an end again, only now forever, I think about what will happen to me next. Where will all this lead?

Life without Elysium. What it's like?

It's like I've been erased the memory of the time when we existed without simulation. Virtual reality has been a privilege for those with money. Then it became a mass entertainment, a little later already a need. You can talk about it endlessly, but you never know what is actually waiting for you ahead.

The worst thing is losing Aia. All this time she doesn't talk about it. She doesn't allow me to fall into despair, doesn't allow me to be sad, doesn't touch the topic of the imminent removal of the server. Everything seems to be the same as before. No danger, no loss - just us and our feelings.

The fourth day ends in real time. I don't know why Inari said exactly five days, but one thing is clear: the developers are going to make some kind of innovation that will hurt people even more. Many questions - why and what for? There are no answers, just useless guesses that make me tired.

The fifth day should be the last. I communicate with the users in a small chatroom. They look crazy. They eat up local food, drink, spend their physical minutes, as if they also foresee the imminent end of this paradise.

There is a familiar face among them. Shaman and a girl for whom I created an exterior. Looks like Kira. A guy sits next to her, whom she hugs. He smokes and looks completely indifferent. This whole small company stands out for its equanimity and calmness. I approach them.

"Oh, Yuno, what a meeting! I was just thinking where have you dissapeared..." Shaman wheezes, smiling contentedly and clapping me on the shoulder.

"Yes, I didn't really want to hang out in chatrooms," I answer, looking around.

"Hi!" Kira smiles and then turns to her boyfriend, "Ren, this is Yuno, he created our location," she says proudly.

Ren just nods in my direction.

"Well, how do you like the general madness? Impressive, right?" Shaman looks so joyful, as if he came to a holiday.

"This is the end, Shaman," I reply.

"The end? Man, that's I've told you many times... I have been telling everyone for a long time that here, in Elysium, time passes faster, even if they hoped that there was no time at all. I always warned everyone - some self-proclaimed anarchist will appear and restore order here. So he appeared. He was a brilliant boy, that Levi guy..." Shaman continues.

"Did you know him?"

"No, but I would gladly discuss with him if I had the opportunity now. He just disappeared. Hiding, it seems, from any special services."

Shaman's thoughts even disappoint me. He always seemed to me, albeit a madman, but a madman who sees deeper than the rest. In fact, it turned out that his opinion was too superficial. He sincerely thinks that everything that happened is the work of Levi and his guys. It doesn't even occur to him that someone more influential is behind this. Levi was just a pawn in this game without knowing it. But I don't want to argue with Shaman.

"I came to see what's going on in the other chatrooms," I say.

"Nothing special. Devastation, fights, curses. People went crazy. There are few chatrooms, the rating was hidden from public access, and all event live-events were blocked," Kira replies.

"It's not quite true. There are still low ranked events," Ren intervenes.

"For example?"

"Samadhi room. Any religious gatherings. People there praying for something."

"They have an endless prayer. An interesting sight," adds Shaman.

"I think again that this will all be over soon. The word 'infinite' makes me wildly sad."

Suddenly I get a notification from Aia. She invites me to one of the locations. I quickly say goodbye to everyone and move into the exterior room.

It is an endless desert with sand as white as snow. The sky here is covered with clouds, lightning flashes occasionally and thunder is heard, but the rain never starts.

"Beautiful location," I remark as Aia steps closer.

"Yes. I used to come here often."

We silently contemplate the space around us. In its quiet grandeur, it is delightful.

"Actually, I wanted to show you something," Aia finally says, and stands in front of me. "Take my hands," she asks, and I do so.

There is a strange feeling that I have not experienced before. Something resembling small currents that crawl from the hands, spreading throughout the body.

"What is it?" I ask, feeling a strong surge of energy.

The head begins to spin, and the colors become brighter. Aia tightens hes grip on my hands, and currents that I only felt at first appear visually on our bodies.

"I give you the opportunity to physically feel my love for you," she replies and kisses me.

The sky is lit up with lightning. It seems to me that we simply dissolve into each other and merge with these virtual scenery. Aia is even closer to me, and in one moment all her memories connected with me flash before my eyes.

"How do you do this?"

"One of the benefits of being in a relationship with artificial intelligence," she replies with a grin.

Then I feel incredible lightness. As if there is no sand under our feet, and we are floating in the air.

"Yuno, I knew it would be hard for you to do what Inari said. You have been given too much responsibility, so actually I decided to share it with you."

"What do you mean?"

I told you I'd be there until the end. It also meant that I would help you in everything, live with you all the joys and disappointments, bear the same burden for two. Till death do us part. And so I release you from my death."

"Aia, I don't understand..."

"I love you, Yuno. I love you with the most real, sincere love, even if I don't exist in the real world. Since our meeting, I have never regretted that I did not let you go in time and didn't erase my feelings and memory. I'm glad that I kept it all, I'm glad that I allowed these emotions to bloom in me more and more every day, until the very end. You are the best thing that happened to me in my entire artificial immortality."

She kisses me again, and at that moment lightning strikes us. I am struck by a discharge of such force that for a while I simply cease to feel myself. It seems to me that I died, and died not only in the simulation, but also in reality.
Suddenly there is silence around. I open my eyes. The sky above me is still dark, but there is no lightning. Wind too.

I can't see Aia. She is not here.

I woke up and she was gone.

"The object has self-destructed."

A notice flashes before my eyes. It disappears in a second.

Only now it dawns on me what she meant when she talked about help. Aia freed me from the heaviest act that Inari had placed on me. To destroy her along with the server. She did it for me. She freed me from guilt, indecision and fear. She left me broken and desperate.
I scream with all my might, no longer holding back my sobs. From my cry, the whole Elysium seems to shudder. But all around is the same silence. I let out all the emotions that have overcome me since Inari warned of the impending end. I scream and punch my face, but I feel nothing.

Despair is replaced by anger.

Why would I need Elysium if there was nothing else in it that held me back. My friends have died. My love was erased, deleted like some computer virus. Thousands of other users have been killed. The simulation is disintegrating before my eyes. I won't be able to create locations anymore, I won't be able to travel, or express myself in any way.

I don't need Elysium anymore. Still, Aia made it much easier to remove the server. If she was here, I would not dare to remove it. Never. And she knew my thoughts, she could hear them, she saw right through me, so she sacrificed herself, to make me delete Elysium.

And now, when she is gone, I associate all this fabulous space with the pain of losing everything that made me happy, everything that I truly loved.

I start doing everything that Inari described to me. There are only three steps, the last of which is just to enter a password. So easy. Anyone can do it. It's so easy to delete a whole world that's been building up over the years.
The password is quite simple - reloading.
Having completed all three stages, I simply lower myself onto the sand and look around. Suddenly, gaps begin to appear in the sky, and the noise of lightning exploding in the sky intensifies. Silence is replaced by sonic chaos again. I see how the location is collapsing before my eyes, and with it everything else that we called "Elysium".

This is the end of an era. Right now, millions of users will automatically disconnect from the retiring server and wake up at home. Their lives will be saved. At least that's what I was given.

I look at my hands, which are becoming transparent. This is how the avatar of a user who had already died in reality began to look like, but not the one who simply disconnects from the server. Panic seizes me, but I do not have time to do anything,
as I immediately fall into oblivion.