Fatal Virtual – Heteša Petr (2013)

I survived it. I can tell you that right away, even though I'm not sure if the rest of my life will be worth anything. Earth's energy resources were depleting at a much faster rate than the scientific teams were working on coming up with entirely new ones. It was so easy from the start... To transfer the entire civilized world along with its economy into the virtual realm. Computers generating a virtual world consume a billion times less energy than the real one. Absolutely genius. Yet in reality, there had to be at least someone left to keep it running and to take care of these 'maintainers.' I am one of them. I live on the ninth floor of an abandoned office building, and I have it all to myself. All the buildings in the center are deserted because ninety-nine percent of people are sitting at home in residential neighborhoods on the outskirts, almost non-stop connected to the virtual. And everything was working beautifully until I started to feel that their stupid virtual world was beginning to weirdly overlap with reality. To seep through. There was probably a mistake somewhere. But what can you do about it... I got myself a Glock. But as it turned out, I needed something much more drastic. Like a wagon full of plastic explosives. A standalone novel.