The alarm clock blared and the sleepy hand of Jackson Montgomery, slapped the clock silencing it, as he rolled around for a few more minutes pulling forcing himself out of bed, He didn't, fix his hair or bother to get dressed he drosses crossed out the bedroom door, grabbed himself a quick breakfast, then went to his work room.

The room was dull and uncolorful, there was no light or windows in the room.and Jackson stepped into the inky darkness. He then flicked a series of switches, and the soft hum of motors turning filled the room, he stepped up onto the small section of floor that acted as a all-way treadmill. He then slipped on gloves and boots on his feet, then he reached out above him and his fingers grasped around the cool plastic of the vizor, bringing it down, velcroing the strap around the back of his head. He slowly pressed in the power button on the side of the vizor and then reality started to fade away.

Suddenly has was falling, falling through time and space, to a place hidden amongst all of it, A place for all people to get away from the worsening conditions of earth's surface, This new government created world, was made in response to the worsening problems of global warming and pollution, understanding that they we’re into deep to solve the problem the world’s leaders began to find a way to completely bypass the necessarily of the earth surface, their solution was The Veil. 

The Veil was the safe haven, where all people all across the world, logged on through their VR set ups. Through the VR world people could do anything, people founded cities, explored the endless beauty of the VR world, or established crime rings to grow wealthy and powerful. Lives in the world of the veil passed at a much faster rate than actual lives. As Jackson logged into The Veil, he ( A tall, muscular college-aged man) looked almost nothing like his real life self. Many people would die from old age, two to five times and just five years of being on the Veil, Jackson himself was already on his tenth life. 

You were only ever supposed to have nine chances to make a new life on the veil, but this was easily worked around with the shady businesses for a large sum of gold. Would hack into the games files and reset the life counter. These were always such a risk, because you never knew what all the hackers would do to your account, Jackson always loved to take advantage of this fact. 

He appeared in front of the door to his little shop, so the government wouldn’t close his shop down, it was presented as a bakery but if anyone ever ordered the Pistachio Cupcake with no Pistachio, it was code that needed a favor from him. Seconds after flipping the sign on his door to open, an older man walked into the store. As he spoke Jackson recognized him as a man Samuel and one of his regular customers,  Samuel was seemingly always on The Veil, and thus aged way quicker than most other people. Sam also had a flair to try out ‘get gold quick’ schemes that usually ended with him with one less life, and barely any more gold to his name. 

“Another Pistachio Cupcake with no Pistachio for me” Sam said.

“Another nine already Sam?” Jackson asked as he pulled down on a lever under the countertop lined with sweets, and it was replaced by a state-of-the-art hacking set-up. “How many lives do you need this time?”

“Only Eight this time,” Sam replied, “I'm starting to get low on gold.”

“Get a job then.” Jackson replied, as he quickly typed into his computer, finding Sam’s account information, and reducing his life count down by eight. “All done, that’ll be 80 thousand gold coins.” Jackson pulls out a tip jar, as the sound of gold coins clinking against each other fills his headset, as the jar is filled with coins. 

“Pleasure doing business with you, ” Sam said as he was turning to leave. Only to get nearly run over by Jackson’s girlfriend, business partner, and spy on the inside, Lily Drawner.

“Jax,” Lily pants nearly out of breath. “You need to hide that the government agents are coming to shut down your shop.” With that the walls of the store burst to the ground as an army of government agents pour into the shop, grabbing Jax by the arms and dragging him out into an armored truck. 

“Jackson Mattew Montgomery, You have caused quite the headache for us,” One agent says to him in the back of the truck, “but now you will have your official hearing from the world leaders, and if they find you guilty of hacking.” The man starts to laugh, “You can kiss your veil privileges goodbye, let's see how much you’ll enjoy a veil-less life.” 

Within the remainder of the day, Jackson was put on trail and was found guilty, and in front of his eyes he watched as a man in a black robe, pressed down on a button marked, ‘Block user.’ Then his vizor screen went dark. Jackson lifted the vizor from his eyes and slowly stepped to the front of his house, opening his front door for the first time in years. As the light from the sunrise of the next day covered his face, the severity and finality of his new life dawned on him, nothing would ever be the same.