Young Writers Society

The buildings were being eaten again. This time, by an obnoxiously pink dragon plastered with signs saying, "Focus on the real world," "Vitri only wants your money," and "This world is fake." It wound its way through the gilded mansions of Lucidity, biting off corners and walls and chewing the bits of data into oblivion.

Chelsea sighed as her avatar materialized over the affluent neighborhood. This was the third time this month. She was well aware that Lucidity was a virtual reality world—after all, she'd seen the code behind it—but it was reality for her, the other employees of Vitri, and the millions of people who logged in each day to escape their outside lives.

"You know the drill." Chelsea's glance flicked left and right to where the rest of her team was floating. They were currently invisible to the regular denizens of Lucidity, who had been ordered to evacuate while the dragon was dealt with. "Hyacinth, Zaida, Emile: fight off the dragon for publicity. Dimas and I will track down its code and delete it." Three, four nods. Good. The first three Chelsea had named turned off their invisibility, turned on their body cams, and zipped off to film themselves fighting the dragon.

Chelsea held back another sigh as she pulled up a virtual keyboard, still hovering next to Dimas. "Alright, Dimas. What do you want to bet that it's that same hacker again? V3r1ty?" She pronounced it "Verity," ignoring the leetspeak.

Dimas's avatar shrugged. "Oh, maybe just a couple million dollars. That shade of pink and those signs are unmistakable."

Chelsea grimaced. "Indeed." She opened up a few screens and scrolled through the list of objects currently in their area. The mansion... trees... their avatars... "Ah, there we go. The one whose name attribute is 'Vitrevil.'"

"Points for creativity, I suppose." Dimas shook his black curls out of the way as he tapped away on his virtual keyboard.

"Created by... Ben Woods. Isn't he a developer at Vitri? Ugh, we'll need to have that phishing presentation again." Carefully-crafted spear phishing emails were apparently a common tactic used by V3r1ty. The hacker, who'd started causing mischief a few months ago, targeted developers at Vitri by figuring out their interests and social circle, then sending an email from a seemingly-trusted sender. Unfortunately, those emails had a link that, when clicked, allowed the hacker to gain access to the developer's credentials. "Let's start by deactivating Ben's account."

"Got it." Dimas deactivated the account with a few practiced movements, ensuring V3r1ty couldn't cause more chaos using that account.

Below Chelsea and Dimas, the other three were waging a battle with the dragon that seemed like it could have come straight out of a video game. Hyacinth blasted ice-blue beams at the dragon's wings until they sagged under the weight of hundreds of icicles. The pink dragon shook its head in irritation and perched on the roof of the nearest mansion. The rooftop pool started to freeze over as Hyacinth continued his attack.

Behind them, Zaida aimed spears made of light at the dragon's head. They whizzed towards the dragon and exploded upon impact, throwing silver sparks into the air. Unfortunately, the dragon appeared unharmed as it emerged from the flurry of sparks. It only snapped at the air with even more fury. Emile darted here and there through the battle scene, taking action shots with his body cam and shouting warnings to the other two as the dragon thrashed its tail around.

"Alright, so we need the battle to last long enough to prove that Vitri is capable of defending Lucidity, but not long enough to cause excessive damage. How about I half the HP? Let's reduce the defensive capabilities of those scales, too." Chelsea spoke aloud as she worked.

Next to her, there was a sharp intake of breath. "Wait." Dimas pointed at a line of code. "Did you change that?"

"No." Chelsea narrowed her eyes. "The default description is now... 'Look up'?" Simultaneously, Chelsea and Dimas looked up. A shower of rose petals greeted them, and as Dimas was obscured by the whirl of pink, Chelsea felt a tug on her avatar's wrist pulling her downwards.

"Why do you even do this?" Quietly, Chelsea turned on her body cam and started recording.

V3r1ty raised an eyebrow. "Have you not, like, read the twenty-foot-high signs?"

Then V3r1ty went supernova. Chelsea threw up a hand. When the glare faded, she was alone in a room on fire.

Her boss was sitting in a swivel chair behind his desk, tapping his fingertips together thoughtfully as he stared at a potted plant.

Chelsea suppressed her thousandth sigh of the day and recounted her encounter with V3r1ty.

The chair creaked as Raphael leaned back. "Clearly V3r1ty is a larger problem than we thought. I'll have to bring this up to the higher-ups." He stared at the potted plant again, a frown creasing his tanned face. Suddenly he looked back up again, as if just remembering that Chelsea was still here. "Thank you for the detailed report, Chelsea. I'll email you if we need more information."

Chelsea had wanted to ask whether Raphael had any ideas on V3r1ty's motives, but that was a clear dismissal. She gave a brisk nod and left the room.


Chapter 2
Alyx

Honestly, Alyx wasn't really feeling the name "V3r1ty" anymore. It had looked fine on-screen for months, but the second she'd heard Chelsea saying it out loud, it didn't feel right anymore. Well. It was about time for a pseudonym change, anyways.

Alyx swept a curl of blue hair behind her ear as she swiveled to another monitor. She muttered to herself, "Chelsea's probably reported our little convo by now. Now to see what Vitri does about it…"

questions:

1. What does your character do when they think no one’s looking?
2. What’s the one thing your character would save in a fire (beyond the necessities)?
3. Who’s on speed dial?
4. Your character gets turned down for their dream job. What’s their second choice?
5. What would they tell their ten-year-old self?
6. Where would they want to go on a first date?
7. What’s the best advice they’ve ever received?
8. What’s the worst advice they’ve ever received?
9. What’s one physical detail they’d change about themselves?
10. When was the last time they were held? By who?
11. What’s their favorite thing about their favorite season?
12. Their wallet gets stolen. What do they do?
13. Prioritize: Love, money, power, knowledge?
14. What’s something nobody knows about them?
15. What’s in their fridge?
16. What (creature, object, substance) are they most disgusted by?
17. What’s their second worst habit?
18. What are the victory conditions for their life?
19. In the end, your character fails to save the day. Assuming they survive, what do they do?
20. Your character is charged with a crime they didn’t commit. What do they do?
21. Your character is charged with a crime they did commit. What was the crime?
22. How would you describe your character’s life in one sentence?
23. What important statistic would they want displayed above them?
24. What’s the first thing they would buy if they won the lottery?
25. What profession do they most respect?
26. What childhood injustice did they never get over?
27. How would they handle having a panic attack?
28. Your character is burdened with an inconvenient superpower. What is it?
29. If they died and could come back as any person, animal, or object, what would they be?
30. What’s the best meal they’ve ever had?
31. Where would they stand at a dinner party?
32. Who would they invite to the dinner party?
33. What makes a perfect day for your character?
34. If given the opportunity, would they want to know how and when they died?
35. What’s the one thing they’ve always wanted to do? Why haven’t they done it yet?
36. What do they tend to joke about?
37. What’s off limits?
38. Whose wedding would they cross the world to attend? Whose funeral?
39. What impossible choice did they make that turned out to be the right one? The wrong one?
40. Your character has someone to hype them up. What would they say to get everyone excited about your character?
41. What recurring dream does your character have?
42. What is the meaning of life to your character?
43. If your character wrote a NaNo novel, would they be a planner, pantser, or plantser?
44. What book does your character pretend to have read?
45. Someone takes undeserved credit for your character’s work. What do they do?
46. What controversial belief or view does your character hold? Why? Do they hide it?
47. Your character is at a theme park. Where do they go first?
48. What’s your character’s favorite name?
49. What’s the biggest compliment they’d give themselves?
50. How does your character feel about bugs?
51. If your character could hit a reset button on their life, would they?


answers:

Chelsea | Alyx | Miles
1. sleep | leave a backdoor in the nsa | cry while watching kdramas
2. her umbrella | her VR headset | his potted plant
3. Miles (gotta look out for her li'l bro. or yell at him not to finish all the ice cream before she gets home) | no one | Chelsea
4. freelance programmer | model | starving artist
5. cherish the time you have left with your parents | girl, yellow is so not a good color for you | be nicer to Chelsea
6. something cheap and practical, like maybe grocery shopping | a new trendy cafe | stay at home and play video games
7. determination will get you far | coolness and intelligence aren't mutually exclusive | there is beauty in the mundane
8. smile more | maybe stick to what you're good at, hon | stop being lazy and make something of yourself
9. get rid of her serious eyebags | nothing! she's fabulous as she is | maybe slouch less
10. ...probably like seven years ago, by her parents | yesterday, by a friend | a few weeks ago, by Chelsea (Chelsea doesn't usually do hugs, but Miles was having a particularly bad day so she made the effort)
11. the quiet of winter | flowers~ spring | watching clouds in summer
12. go hunting through Vitri's database to track the person down | go "oh, sweetie, you chose the wrong person to steal from" and hack into their computer and make their desktop background a blinding pink | shrug and go "meh"
13. money | love | love