The PMMORPG

I moved through a photorealistic massive multiplayer online roleplaying game. And I discovered, with considerable wonder and exultation, that I could levitate myself high into the air, pulling my way up, as if climbing the gaseous atmosphere itself. A woman I found down there on the ground had--it turned out--been studying the identical phenomenon, though she was not able to fly. My sad duty came to pass, that I had to tell her the hidden truth, that I was a designer trying to become a game, and she was in essence a pixel wisp, something others had programmed to exist. Yet she had answers for me, pointing out with scientific zeal the barely perceptible motes in the air, some soft polygons and organic bubbles, but others squared, rectangular, geometric in nature. It was these angular scales, reminiscent of salt crystals on a table (but in the air, and hardly there) which my seeking hands pushed into invisible stacks, building the tower that took me into the sky. I... woke up before I could thank her, but not before I reached the edge of that world, and had to turn back.