Ajay was restless ever since he had that thought in the bathtub. Yes, he wanted to earn money, and he could see his future dimming as every second ticked by. But he had a hard time accepting that this was the best way to do so.


    Of course, Ajay did not want to adopt this life of mindless gaming for a career, slaving away for someone else to enjoy. So, Ajay had something slightly different in mind. He would play Samsara to earn money from his gameplay. Ajay would get popular enough in the game so that Vishwāmitra placed a high value on his gameplay to use it as part of the streams. Otherwise, he would become an influential enough player to earn a regular income per month from the Vishwāmitra itself.


    Though this was an attractive idea, there was an incredible amount of competition because millions upon millions of gamers aimed for the exact same thing. There was everything from various live-streamed combat and wars to porn manufactured in the game environment and fantasy stories being enacted as content for the pleasure of an ever-hungry audience.


    It would make anyone jaded very quickly, but contrary to popular belief, there were a few content providers that everyone revered. Of course, they did not know it when they were immersed, but outside Samsāra, they were superstars in their own right.


    Ajay had not been interested in this simulated world till now. But now that the germ of the idea had sprouted in his mind, he would not rest till he at least considered it seriously.


    Just to prove himself wrong about the feasibility of his plans, Ajay took the next two days off from his chauffeur job and did research on the game and its related content. Most of it was an insipid and predictable drama that he almost fell asleep watching. But there were moments of thrill when Ajay saw battles, assassinations and betrayals that were as lifelike as real life. He saw friendships form and break, trust gained and betrayed. He saw ‘epic’ battles and ‘legendary quests’ and then suddenly he had an epiphany.


    He knew what was prevalent in all of this, he knew what he had to do.


    He noticed that all the significant characters in Samsara were people that everyone, including him, could relate to. Either due to being close to a stereotype, or embodying the characteristics that people loathed or loved. This was the insight he had into human nature, and this was what he would now try to exploit.


    Ajay took two more days to think about his decision. It was the last two days of commuting around the city, ferrying other people. These two days were the hardest of his life. He had never wrestled with himself to this degree before.


    Then, on Friday, he gritted his teeth and stared at the mirror for a full minute before using his SmartWear to make the call.


    He had always been meticulous in whatever he did. It had served him well till now. He had always attributed it his middle-class upbringing in small-town India but as the days passed and it had irrevocably moulded his way of thinking. Ajay had taken minimal risk in his life till now. Every moment of his life was spent in training himself to get better at something.


    Doing reasonably well in school to go to a good university, doing well there to get a place in an advanced university in the US, prioritising his performance there to land a job and once he had a job, he had done everything in his power to rise up the ladder.


    All of this, without risking anything concrete, without stepping off the well-beaten path that thousands of others like him had taken. Without daring to think that there would be another option in life.


    And when circumstance had turned his world upside down, it was then that Ajay had taken his first real gamble. He had changed his career because he liked to live in the US. He had hidden this from his family because he was afraid of the outcome.


    And when they found out, things went south, and Ajay was alone, adrift in the world for the very first time. Ajay could not comprehend why he had done it, but a few days later, he had realised he valued his independence. Ajay enjoyed being the master of his own life, free of expectations. Now, he was not answerable to anyone else but himself.


    So Ajay sold his most prized possession, his Tesla model 9X. Since it was so well maintained, he got the price he had asked for. This was one point that he had stuck to, he refused to decrease the price even by one dollar.


    He was going to use this money as a backup if he failed. He had opted for a “Perma” option immersion contract, but for this one, he had to pay a fee upfront. If he were made a Perma, this fee would be refunded. If he failed, he would forfeit it. This was not a way for Vishwāmitra to milk money of its clients. It took resources to prepare immersion pods that maintained the health of a human body almost indefinitely.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.Ajay could barely afford the fee, but now that he had taken the dive, it would be with all he had.


    He had always skimped and saved where he could for some ‘future’ endeavour. His lifetime habit of being practical when it came to everyday things had also, in a sense constrained him.


    Since childhood, he had always gone for things that lasted longer, were cheaper or a combination of both. Always sacrificing his comfort, or his desire just to save that extra little bit of money.


    Even when he was a relatively affluent market analyst, he had always lived frugally except for a few small changes to his lifestyle. He had always had some vision of the ‘future’ in mind where he would need money, but that way of life had not paid off. He was still having trouble making ends meet, and all it left him with was half a lifetime of regrets. Regrets, for things that he wanted to enjoy when he had the means but had not done so.


    In fact, if he looked at his life so far, then the only thing that he had splurged on, his Tesla had been his lifeline in these days of reduced circumstance. So, he had to accept that his entire attitude of going for second best to save for ‘the future’ was probably hampering him.


    It is not easy to fight against so much conditioning in the brain. But Ajay realised that he had never ever taken any sort of risk like this. More than half his mind was screaming at his decisions, but Ajay had heard enough!


    He urged himself to do this, he had to break these shackles that he had placed on himself through a lifetime of giving in to ‘practical’ decisions.


    Sighing, he decided to take a break. He looked into the mirror and what started back was an unremarkable face. He was relatively fit since he liked to run and exercise, but apart from that, he was utterly unremarkable physically and mentally, just another bubble in the frothing river of humanity.


    Ajay was trying to become someone famous, he was planning to be something that ‘Samsara’ would rarely see and his future depended on it. This was not the time to be hesitant.


    The Samsara technicians who visited took a look at his apartment in what Ajay decided was somewhere between pity and condescension when they came to install him with the necessary sensors Vishwāmitra had developed. These would be injected all over his body so that interfacing with the game universe would be facilitated. They smiled at him, but it seemed like a smile without any warmth, and to Ajay, it felt that he was being judged for what he was. Another failure in real life who wanted to have another shot at getting famous.


    The number of sensors they had put into him was quite a large number. He felt sore all over as if he had been tattooed all over his body. He was told that the sensors would move around a little bit till they were equidistant from each other. Nanotechnology had advanced to the point where individual haptic sensors and pain receptor mimics could be bundled together and connected with filaments that were as thin as actual neutrons.


    The sensors came with a packaging module, another trick of molecular engineering that caused all of them to wriggle their way through the connective tissue of his body till they were a fixed distance apart.


    Ajay had about 10 million sensors placed within his skin to give detailed coverage of his entire body. It would take the sensors 24 hours to get into position, and he was advised to not enter the game till then. These would then interface with the immersion module systems and then together, they would succeed in fooling his brain to go offline from the real world.


    While in-game, his motor neurons would be fooled into thinking that their impulses were being passed on to muscles and the embedded skin sensors would provide feedback that fooled his brain into thinking that he was actually moving. Things like Walking, Running, Jumping etc. would happen in his mind, and his real body would not move a millimetre. This was the beauty of this immersion technology.


    Ajay spent the next day loafing around his apartment watching some popular Samsara related content and reading about player experiences. What precious few he could find anyway.


    There was precious little known about how players gained skills and occupations. All everyone said was that if you did something over and over, you would learn it as a skill. Just like when one was a child.


    It was the day of reckoning. As Ajay lay in the cold liquid the sloshed against his ears, they buzzed. Then as he was instructed, he closed his eyes and allowed them to place the last two sensors on his body. One set for the visual input and the other for the smell and taste. The liquid around him was a nanoparticle gel which would simulate the sense of touch by enveloping his body. It would provide him with a resistance equal to air while the sensor modules under his skin would send instructions to the liquid to change in viscosity, to simulate various sensations.


    The room around him disappeared, and for a second he was suspended in infinite blackness.


    Then, in from of him, hung a line of words. Ajay had no idea that these words would change the lives of so many people.


    *‘Would you like to be born into Samsara?’*