The Hub. Ever-present since its inception. Ever-influential, ever-popular, everlasting. It was all that mattered in a post-internet world, this space with no area, this digital realm cherished by many, taken for granted by many more. Social media brands had been absorbed into its breadth, creating one space for all who want to both speak and listen. Tied to an online ID, the anonymity once enjoyed in the online realm, the power to fire and forget bad takes and blind hate became for the most part, a thing of the past. Closer more than ever did people treat their words spewed online as though they said it to the person in real life, now that ostracization and punishment could bleed into the real world.

It was a harsh cost to pay for the dividends, but after a while, as usual with all dramatic change, the norm was accepted until it was embraced. The Hub offered those with differing opinions and axes to grind and arena to spar with both words and combat. As the physical became less important by larger strides with each update, skill was respected and added weight to the words of those who wielded them. Innovations to the clunky virtual-reality headsets of yore made the medium evermore accessible, bringing in hundreds of millions of new users.

Augmented reality came next, allowing those now addicted to the Hub to bring it wherever they go. This made the proactive much more active; spurred on by real-time prompts to take a walk, drink water, count calories and when it would be best to sleep. Those that used these functions found their lives much more stable and focused. For those who didn’t, options could be toggled to warn of fires or police operations in the area, of nearby crisis that allowed those who wanted to help do so while something could be done. This produced a betterment in society, incentivising the indifferent with the promise of praise if they moved when they normally would not.

When the Hub introduced ‘Integrated Reality’, the world saw a change as drastic since, well the 1.0 version came out not so long ago. It allowed the user to manifest truly in the Hub, to see, smell, feel, taste and touch all it had to offer. All it took was a series of strobes fed into the eyes and a signal sent to resonate in the brain delivered through the ears to hijack the mind into believing it was somewhere else. In its most recent form, all the cumbersome hardware of yore was compressed into a thin, plastic headband that covered the eyes and delivered resonance by vibrating the skull. Very few truly appreciated what it did, with even fewer caring about the cons when weighed against the pros.

What was once referred to as a ‘page’ became what was called a ‘space’. In these virtual zones, to which everyone was entitled, the expression of one’s life online was redefined. Creativity bloomed as cathedrals to the self were raised overnight. Imagine now, that instead of seeing a picture of a prized possession, one could interact with an always-mint, unbreakable render. One could live saved moments instead of watching videos, taste attempts made at recipes shared. The options were limitless, as were the expression of these spaces, especially if one were to take the zones into consideration. Three distinct areas with their own parameters, as varied from the other as they were similar, and integrated into the Hub as a whole.

The Nation had absolute majority in terms of users. From one end to the other it was as large as the smaller of the continents and followed most of the rules of the real world. Across a series of literal ‘states’, each a distinct era of mankind’s time on This Earth was expressed in a wheel around a central region known as Capital. Capital expressed every faucet of modern life, with spaces stacked thick and high in servers represented by towering skyscrapers. In the heart of a rural shell, the heart, the city itself hosted most of what social media used to be. The square where people gathered to fight and complain was shunned by anyone in their right mind.

The city bustled with information that affected the Hub regardless of zone. There was gossip here inside safe areas where combat is prohibited, while outside where the parameters were not so kind, war was waged on a scale where death was only the beginning of a new respawn. Advocates for this aspect would always note the plummeting crime statistics, citing all the real-world rivalries put to rest after a violent resolution with all the pain thresholds turned to the max. Aggressions were put in check in the same place one could virtually test cars they could never afford in life.

The borders to the Nation ended where those of the Realm began. In an area nearly as large, millions of users chose to spend their time where things weren’t so real. The Realm teemed with the expression of magic from dragons to faeries with all from in between and then some. With only two-thirds the population of the Nation at any given moment, its userbase logged in far more hours per capita. Role players, hardcore gamers, the obsessive compulsive, the hyper competitive, for these people the Realm was not just another way of life, it was another life.

Some dragons were slain, others tamed and others still colluded with. In the Realm, one truly wrote their own story by invoking an algorithm that crafted an adventure based on data reaped throughout the user’s history on the Hub. Arachnophobes would not encounter the spider dungeon if their settings refused to allow that calibre of scare. Unlike the Nation, there were no subregions with no core either. Power was wielded by legends who wore their deeds through etched enchantments that boosted stats as well as boasted deeds. The community was strong, but also fiercely competitive.

Above it all, so mired in politics, war, resource management and strife, was the Sky Zone. By far the largest, it represented everything from pilots on tours to dogfighting, all the way to interstellar combat so grand it destroyed moons as collateral. Starships and space stations revolved around the Hub’s spherical representation. Three moons hosted a mass of colonies as well as it’s share of wars over conflicted territory. Freighters and warships combed space debris for resources to refine with its own share of strife. In the Sky Zone, politics was an important attribute, since if everyone was fighting, no one was moving. Alliances were as important as they were tentative.

Technology reigned where warp cores were a possibility. Between the mind-chips, nanobots, cybernetic implants and weaponry, it was hard to tell their difference with the Realm at times. Things were tense in the sky since a recent update added an entire new world to be explored. The fans named it ‘New Martia’, after This Earth’s real-life neighbour, and it hung in the sky for all to see ever since. Harsh storms obscured view of the surface and shredded any of the scout ships making the latest attempts to breach. Currently, the entire zone was preoccupied with a race to the surface, to be the first to develop the right tech to touch the surface. Espionage equalled the paranoia, which also added up to conflict. Times were tense.

The rules were simple: One user, three personas, one for each zone. Expression of oneself had to adhere slightly, and there was little crossover for talents. A spell that can see through walls in the Realm could be converted to an optical implant with the same effect from the Sky Zone, with the right items and of course, money. That is, until the Event took place, that fateful day with the appearance of the spire, rocking the Hub from its expanses all the way to the heart, where it stood ever-prominent since. Some considered it a fourth zone, to which very few could contest. The rules were its own in that the restrictions were far less harsh than the predecessors. In the Spire, no talent was nerfed and all were available, resulting in an array of builds stacked already on top of what seemed like infinite diversity.

How the developers could keep such a large update a secret for so long from their rabid userbase spurred rumours that the phenomena as part of a digital assault by a hacker’s collective. Marketing accredited the former over the latter, but email leaks suggested otherwise. Over the five years since its appearance, it mattered less and less and became accepted more and more. Most recently the borders between the realms began to blur, allowing characters from one to cross over to the other, at the expense of debilitating stat penalties depending on how far from a native zone one was.

Continue to Part 2-2