The sunlight was receding and hiding like an awkward teenager at a beauty pageant, and Mariko was starting to shiver in the sudden mild coolness. It wasn't like she was sensitive or anything. Her immune system was better then most. It had been the one thing keeping her together when she was nothing but STEM cells soup floating in afterbirth. Mariko blinked, and reached a hand up to her eye. A lash had detached itself and was perilously close to sticking itself in her eye. She wiped it away, before wiping it off on her skirt. Seems like the day was nearly over. Even though the sun was still pretty high in the sky, Mariko's day lay open and untouched like an empty box. Time to fill it up. She pushed past the doorway, up the stairs and into her room. Her sanctuary. Kept always just a little warmer then outside, so going in always felt like a warm hug from a room. It felt alive. Perhaps people weren't meant to have such a close relationship with living space, but this one made it work. She sat down in front of her desk, swept aside some of her paper folded mutations, pulled up her keyboard, and began.

A couple of hours later, she pulled herself away, before she really lost her temper. Her breath came thick and fast,like she'd been running. Strategy games always got her temper fuming. She rested her head back on the uncomfortable seats, noting how unfamilliar it felt. She'd been close, this time, but the gods of random chance had been against her.from the start. And there'd been that one archer who fired like he owned an AK-47 in a world of swords and arrows, killing off Mariko's best troops. She though she'd had a chance to salvage it all and continue until the computer's reinforcements had arrived and she'd ended up knee deep in corpses. She quit after that. It had all been a massacre. 

Her heartbeat had calmed down now, and all that the computer was showing was her desktop: Green grass and blue skies. She turned, and looked at the real deal outside her window.