The Perfect Life

Prologue

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Prologue

Before Divney had even entered the room, he already knew what had happened. He recognised the smell all too well. The stench of urine and faeces drifted out into the hallway and greeted him with familiarity  like an unwanted relative. Divney recoiled at the smell, pinched his nose and gathered the strength to enter the room.

He softly kicked the door open; he wasn’t touching anything in there with his hands.

“So what's the skinny?” he asked as he pointed at the lifeless body on the floor covered in wires and attached to a silver food canister.

“ A boy, approx 15-16 years old, died from malnutrition.”

“Another PL death then!” cursed Divney.

They all shifted uneasily, they knew it was just another death caused by "Perfect Life" but they also knew the consequences of going up against its creators.  Perfect Life. The game where you could be who you wanted and do all that you desired. It was the perfect escape from reality. Maybe a little too perfect. Divney had seen countless bodies like this one; starved to the point of death. He knew this was a waste of time and resources.

    He stared down at the body as one of his comrades tried to chalk an outline of all the wires and sighed. It made him sick to his stomach to see the boy in this state. Skin hung off him like it was frightened of the bone underneath and his eyes bulged out like he had been ogling strippers for three months straight. Wires crisscrossed from the computer to the body like parasitic worms. As the outliner got up to change his position, he accidentally knocked open the food canister.

    Divney’s eyes almost jumped out of his head as he noticed something unusual. The food canister wasn’t empty, it was almost half full. Which meant one thing. This wasn’t any ordinary PL addict death. This was murder.