To My Readers

At the time of the making of this novel, Scott Gallagher is serving a twenty-five-year sentence for his crimes. While the people involved in his game may have wanted more, it was considered the most that the judge was willing to give considering everything that had happened. If some of the more unruly players got their way, he’d have gotten the death penalty, but justice prevailed in at least that respect, particularly because of one little detail he failed to mention during our confrontation.

He had been recording the entire thing and Fontaine’s final action before disappearing was to release the footage for the world to see. It not only made him seem like a more positive figure in the eyes of the public, but also it helped with my own reputation. In the end, it only made me happier that I made the choice I did in the end. As it had turned out, his original intent was for me to kill him so that he could go out as a tragic figure. Had I not killed him, he would’ve done the job himself, but our debate ended up distracting him from that plan. Instead, people now saw him as tragic in a different sense and saw me as the person who heroically chose to refrain from taking the life of an ambitious idealist from this world.

No deaths were caused by Gallagher’s game. In the end, the majority of the players ended up being arrested by police, no longer able to protect themselves from the justice system. Many are serving harsher sentences than the one responsible for leaking their data. The remaining players either were able to hide away safely or fell victim to bad accounts of assault, which Gallagher was seen at least partially responsible for. The worst victim was Lee Adams Sr., who suffered a concussion and a pair of broken legs. Most of the damage to him, thankfully, came in the form of property damage. Reports say that a smile could be seen on the face of his son when the news broke of his father’s fate and the heaping helping of humble pie that he was forced to finally digest after all of this time.

Abel LeMasson thankfully had gotten away more safely than I’d assumed. He had suffered some bruises and cuts, but it was nothing that couldn’t be treated. Our friendship took longer to fix than his injuries, but when he saw what I did to change my life and the world, he came around. In the end, he saw it as a heat of the moment decision. It certainly didn’t hurt that every interaction of ours began with a profuse apology from me.

The ARTs were broken down and dissected. The patents were scrutinized down to the most minor detail. It was found that Gallagher used similar methods to my own for the sake of finding players he was satisfied with before using DNA verification to make sure he had the right people. The supposed “teleportation” technology was actually an illusion; it used a roundabout form of hypnosis to make every player believe that they were being dissolved and teleported to another location. In reality, they were being placed into a trance and told to go back home, at which point the trance would end. It was a simple yet elegant solution to making people believe that the devices were centuries more advanced than they actually were. It certainly scared the living daylights out of all of us.

Before I move on and begin discussing my work, I believe it’s important to give an update on my family. My relationship with my in-laws is about the same, though my father-in-law does have a greater deal of respect for me than he had before. We live in a nicer house and have been able to take in Lee Adams Jr. for ourselves, though I still try to encourage him to patch things up with his father at some point. Matthew continues to grow and amaze us, remaining the brightest spot in any of our lives. Rebecca, thankfully, did forgive me for keeping secrets from her and I have since learned my lesson. In her eyes, what happened was punishment enough for my sins. I try to be more open with her and she was instrumental in keeping me honest about my less flattering moments.

Finally, there’s the part I’m certain most of you are interested in. In addition to Gallagher’s mansion, I quickly learned that I’d inherited an additional property. When I went to investigate, it turned out that the very same mall which had been built over his childhood home. It had long since been abandoned and I was able to work with both Abel and a repentant Lee Adams Sr. to demolish the building, constructing a larger and much nicer set of homes in its place. Our hope is that they’ll do the memory of Gallagher’s mother justice. In a way, it might’ve been what she’d preferred her son did over the game of death he had created in her memory.

I sold the Gallagher mansion and my family’s own home, which helped us afford the house we live in now. There were just too many bad memories there. It was high time we had gotten a new one regardless, especially with a family like ours which seemed to grow larger by the day. A month after the game had ended, Rebecca found out she was pregnant and later in the year she gave birth to a baby girl, who we named Mary. It’s almost crazy for me to think that she’s in the first grade now.

From there, I did, in fact, quit my journalism career, even if I might’ve been able to find work. It didn’t matter if I could or couldn’t, I had been dissatisfied with what I’d been writing long before this whole ordeal and it was high time I found a different field entirely. I began by writing short stories, which were collected in a volume called Tales of the Unknown World. It was surprisingly easy for me to secure a publisher for the collection and I’m quite certain that many of you have read it by now. When I received word that it had become a New York Times Best Seller, I took it as a sign that I was on the right path. The write path, even. I took a break, then, to work on other material related to philanthropy.

I advocated for various causes related to making sure technology companies like Gallagher’s weren’t collecting data from users, using personal interviews as a tool as part of my campaign. I’d like to believe they were successful at least in part, as months after my campaign began, Congress ratified the Digital Surveillance Restriction Act (DSRA), which prevented non-governmental entities from creating devices which could collect any sort of information on their users. This included the usage of DNA and a variety of other forms of technology which people had become accustomed to, meaning life had to change very quickly. However, as an act of goodwill, the government also became more transparent about its own actions and attempted to work with me on making sure that nothing like Gallagher’s game could happen again.

Once that was said and done, it became time for me to write that second novel, the one which people had been asking about even before I’d written the first. It was difficult to even think back on that time, let alone get access to some of the resources I needed. I had to get in contact with an official who worked on the Gallagher case (the same who had exonerated me of any blackmail charges) in order to access the journal again, and even then, I wasn’t allowed to read it for longer than a few hours, hence a lack of any detailed description of my notes. Accessing the old Gallagher mansion was equally difficult, but a friend of a friend was able to help me with that.

Lee Adams Sr. still lives in the same home as he did back then and he was more than happy to let me walk through his home again, especially when it meant we could talk about the son he misses dearly. He understands why his son doesn’t talk to him, but he wishes they could make amends, even after all of this time. Accessing my own house was more difficult, but I had more than enough memories to help with that side of the equation.

It was the internet posts, the part people could most easily trace, that were the most difficult to look up. On the social media sites where posts most easily disappeared, I knew I couldn’t hope to find a post from back then or remember what any of them said. 2Kun was surprisingly easy, thankfully, even if it took me hours upon hours in order to find the exact posts I had seen back then. It certainly helped that the people who had broken into my house had been arrested for breaking and entering. Securing an interview while they were still in prison was easier than finding an old internet post.

Writing took me longer than it should have for something that I had experienced myself, but I wanted people to feel as I had felt. This wasn’t the biography of Scott Gallagher that I had referenced – that would come later, and even then, I’d return to fiction afterwards – but this still needed to be just right. Certain details and events would need to be left out for brevity, but they’d better help readers understand the mindset and emotions I felt back then, which was what I felt was most important in the end. Abel helped proofread every chapter, pointing out countless mistakes that I’d missed. As I’ve already mentioned, my wife was an invaluable resource, too, in keeping me honest.

Even those of you who aren’t particularly astute are no doubt able to tell that you’ve been reading that book. I felt it was best if, after telling you so much about me, I let you know how things have been going since Gallagher’s game ended. I suppose with all of that said, even after all of this time, I still don’t know what life holds.

I just hope that whatever it has in store is good.

Yours truly,
John Matsumoto