The knock on the door

I admit it; I'm a long time gaming geek. When I started gaming in 1984, I was using a Compaq DeskPro with an 8 MHz 8086 CPU and a brilliant monochrome display adapter... I said I was a geek, remember? During the golden age of computer gaming (also known as the 1990s), every month brought quantum innovations that inspired many creative game designs. For me, the pinnacle was reached with the invention of the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), which lasted from 1999 to 2001, when my wife and I got lost in the world of Endless Quest.

We made friends in the land of Norrath, grew from a pair of pathetic magic users into guild legends, and I saw how the lines between the real and virtual worlds can blur. People often say that computer games are a waste of time. But a lot of good things came out of those days. One of them was fertile ground for an idea I pondered over a decade ago. . . And it still is. This story is the result.