A boutique Italian restaurant about two car lengths across, with only four tables served by a single waiter, the air heavy with the scent of pasta sauce and scheming.

“...Don’t just say you’ll take them. You need to take them regularly, and, don’t forget, only after a meal. Your gastric juices need to be released to dissolve the capsule; otherwise, you’ll experience indigestion. I’ll show you how to take them after dinner. How was your drive over here? Did the auto drive at a safe speed? These Kiwi autos are—if you’ll excuse my harsh language—awful in comparison to what they have over in Canberra. Isn’t that unsafe? Don’t you think that’s unsafe, Abby?”

“Mhm.”

“I felt like I was strapped down to a rusty rollercoaster. The state of this country, I can’t say...”

As Henry, seated with his school friends, flicked through the menu, he mentally filtered out Cathy’s nagging as one might tune the dial of an old analogue radio until the signal became an indistinctive hiss of white noise. Handled this way, her nagging could be almost soothing.

“...Henry, don’t refuse right away. There's nothing embarrassing about prioritising your health. Say the word, and I’ll call up your boss for you to discuss relaxing your hours...”

When the waiter took their orders, Henry, unable to find any non-alcoholic drinks, made do with a glass of water.

Anderson was mildly offended by the tasteless choice. “Don’t fret about the price, H. We’re the ones who invited you out here.”

"The price?" Henry replied in confusion.

The price wasn’t the issue. The drinks in this restaurant were on the expensive side, but they were still only around the 20 trillion dollar range. (Author's note: The AI revolution had tanked New Zealand’s economy for a few years.)

Before he could explain that he wasn’t poor anymore—in fact, thanks to Saana, he was now disgustingly rich—a voice spoke up from behind.

“Little Henry is wanting to avoid jail.”

The group turned to see a speaker who was wearing...who resembled a...well...their late friend Brian looked like a regular dude.

Henry took the non-descript hand being offered to him and immediately felt a sharp sensation in his palm.

He was being stung by one of those tacky electric-shock gag devices.

Brian frowned at the total lack of visible reaction. “A hilarious prank and nothing? Have you died inside since we last saw you?”

Cathy, already alarmed by the jail remark, became distraught. “But why's he dying? Henry, what haven't you—”

“My health’s perfect.” Henry cut her off. “I’m just underage.”

He was still 17. Many, discovering that fact, would have been astounded.

His friends were also surprised, experiencing a simultaneous flash of remembrance. In the time apart they’d forgotten that, despite being in the same school grade, Henry was a few years their junior, having skipped a couple.

Cathy reached across the table, took his hand, and patted it with a grandmotherly condescension. “And of course you shouldn’t drink either. The last thing a developing brain needs is to be fed this kind of poison.”

The drinks came and went, and then they ordered their appetisers. Henry got a platter of locally-procured cheeses and coldcuts. Having eaten the chef's catering at a private event, he was especially fond of their Caprino-style cheese, which the chef’s family fermented from the milk of goats raised in the highlands of the southern island of his country.

Much to Henry's delight, by the time they were nibbling away at their food, the unwanted attention had been drawn away from himself and onto his friends and their lives over in Australia.

They were attending the same university in Canberra, which had broken for the summer holidays. As they came from wealth and none of them were concerned about the bleak job market, the studying aspect of their stories was minimal. Instead, their days were occupied by petty campus dramas, parties, clubs, etc.

At one point, the topic of Saana returned, the game appearing to be the staging ground for the next saga in his schoolfriends' whimsical escapades. As before, Henry carefully avoided mentioning that he’d also been playing, and he diverted the conversation back to their college drama.

Their chatter was interesting enough to him. There was a certain quality in their tales, at times infuriatingly naive and at others infectiously joyous. No matter where his friends went, it seemed that the world was waiting to wrap itself snugly around them like a well-worn winter coat. Never had they entertained the possibility it might treat them otherwise.

This quality, the unspoiled optimism of youth, Henry did his best to stay absorbed in it, to allow himself to be contaminated by the positivity.

“...I’m telling you, H., you’ve got to check him out. Growing up in the Tanami Desert, untainted by the corrupting influences of Western culture, his only education in the form of the narrative being the word of mouth tales handed down by his ancestors...”

As Anderson was wafting on about this obscure novelist, the table beside the group was noisy with the clatter of dishes being cleared in a hurry.

This talk of books, which may have been a sleeping pill for most of the youths of 2050, was a rare delight for Henry. If it weren’t for something else constantly interfering in his life, he would have happily spent the rest of it doing nothing but reading and talking books.

“I’ll check him out, but I’m a little sceptical,” Henry replied.

“Sceptical? What’s there to be sceptical about?”

Henry’s drowsy pupils suddenly ignited with the flame of excitement. “Well, the question is not of the artist himself, Anderson, but of his origins. A core insight from the Post-Maximalist school, with its devotion to the More Principle, has been into the neglected accumulative facet of creative expression. To summarise: within each artistic tradition and sub-tradition, each new generation of genius can be thought of as cutting off a piece of themselves and glueing it to a collective body of inherited knowledge, which in turn becomes, through the contribution of each luminary, more rich, more vibrant, more weighty, more satisfying, more More. In this respect, oral arts, which lack the memory aid of physical writing, tend to be limited in the maximum scope of what—“

Lucky for the reader, this mind-numbing monologue was suddenly obliterated by a thunderous clap.

Thwack!

Henry, a painful jolt shooting from his shoulder to his lower back, turned to the assailant who’d slapped him, and, within a few milliseconds, the flame that’d been growing in his eye was snuffed out, his tired expression returning.

From the deepest, most exasperated part of his body, he sighed.

Henry knew it…nothing in his life was ever allowed to just be a boring coincidence…

A young man who'd slapped his shoulder grinned arrogantly. “Well, well, well, WELL! Wifey, look who we’ve run into here. What a surprising coincidence!”’

This newcomer was a tall Chinese fellow in his early twenties with a long face and small eyes. He wore a Mafioso-like pinstripe suit. His head was topped by a meticulously-sculpted mullet, gelled thickly and dyed with streaks of brown and blonde, resembling a wet beaver humping his skull.

Behind this beaver-head was a dainty woman wearing a qipao that fell softly over a pregnant belly. She gave Henry an apologetic wave.

“Henry, mon ami,” continued the beaver-head, “why aren’t you introducing us to your little buddies?”

Henry sighed. "Everyone, this is Alex, my...uh..."

How was he supposed to introduce this moron? Torturer? Antagonist? Leech? Puppet?

Objectively, they were best friends, but that description wouldn't capture a tenth of their complicated relationship.

Cathy leapt out of her chair. “Oh, we already know Alex!"

Henry, watching the girl shake the couple's hands, gave a shrug.

If played Saana, they’d, of course, be familiar with Alex Wong a.k.a. Mayonnaise. Alex, the public face of their guild, was so arrogant that he didn’t alter the appearance of his in-game avatar, claiming it could not be improved upon. As such, Saana had made him an international celebrity, even outside of the game.

Henry'd luckily reached the end of his career without being exposed and facing those problems.

“Aha!" Anderson recognised the beaver-head as well. “Alex Wong, wasn’t it? You ran the school club our H. was in for that year, correct?"

"It had that funny name," said Brian. "What was it again?"

Henry did a double-take at his friends focusing on such a small detail and not Alex's supposed identity as The Tyrant of Saana.

Reviewing parts of their earlier dinner conversation, like the mention of such low-level monsters, he quickly realised what was happening. His friends were turbonoobs...social gamers, ignorant of absolutely everything at the pinnacle of Saana.

Nice, he thought, although social gamers repulsed him slightly.

While Henry was assessing his friends, one of them was side-eyeing him, having recognised Alex in a different light and therefore the remarkability of their acquaintance.

“The Digital Justice Club!” Alex laughed, playing along. “Boy, that sure brings back fond memories. How long ago was that, Henry?”

The Digital Justice Club had been the first form of their guild. After some guy had been mean to Alex on the internet, he'd set up a club at their school to recruit impressionable juniors into a stupidly elaborate plan for revenge. Henry had been one of those roped into the scheme.

The story of how this school club had transformed into the behemoth that was their guild today was dull and not worth elaborating on. Suffice it to say, it'd been your typical case of lucky timing and a leader who'd refused to listen to all doubt or logic in his mad ascension to the top.

“About five years,” Henry answered.

It'd been five miserable, exhausting years...

“Five years!" Alex clapped with joy. "Five years of beautiful, sumptuous memories, a perfect accompaniment to a sumptuous feast, don’t you think? You kids ordered yet?”

Henry gave him a stern glare. "We have."

“But it looks like you’re only finishing your appetisers. Vicky and I can compensate with dessert later. Why don’t we link tables, make it a group date?”

Henry wasn't interested in the slightest, having seen enough of this dude's smug mug to content him for a thousand years.

Thinking he should probably pretend to be somewhat normal around his school friends, he searched for a socially-appropriate way to tell this guy to get lost.

Such a high-class restaurant might be annoyed with them scraping up the floors? Alex would probably call the head chef over to ask. Unfortunately, they both had partial ownership stakes in this place.

The alcohol fumes might warp the development of the fetus in Alex's wife’s stomach? His friend was a negligent father who didn't care much about children.

Henry raised his hands with exasperation. "Alex, can you just go away? I’m trying to enjoy my retirement here. A relaxing, uneventful dinner with my schoolmates, that's my single ambition for the evening. Is that too much to ask for?"

His school-friends were puzzled by the word 'retirement', Henry being, again, only 17.

But it was true. Despite his tender age, he'd already retired, had already exited the ranks of those who sweat and labour, had transitioned to the comforts of his twilight years. The remainder of his life would be like tonight, a series of unremarkable episodes in which he ate pretentious cheeses while chatting about avant-garde literature.

Alex puckered his face in disgust at this nonsense. “No, guys like us never retire. Best we can do is change career."

"I did." Henry tapped a book on the table, the one he'd been reading in the taxi earlier.

These days, he was writing masturbatory novels. He'd yet to have any commercial or critical success. But soon, no doubt, his literary enemies, those vile Neo-Neo-Minimalists, would be bowing before him in adoration, praising him according to his most towering title yet: HL, Unrivalled Even in The Heavens, The Galaxy's Greatest Wordsmith!

Alex masked a grin rising from a point of secret knowledge. "We'll see how that works out."

The beaver-head snapped his fingers at a waiter, who—afraid of offending their tyrannical boss—quickly rushed to cram the groups' tables together.