A recently fired police officer gets a job offer to play the Proxima Universe's new game, Eternity Online. He's been hired to find out if the son of a CEO is trapped inside one of the numerous proxima World's that have emerged after the "useless class", people like him who have no useful job skills, are wiped out by growing robot and artificial intelligence gains.
The game creators give him special abilities, but the NPCs in the Universe are suspicious of him, as some parts of his origin backstory do not add up. He spends most of his time goofing off, until he discovers a secret in the game that has devastating real World consequences. He needs to use the game to find out the answers to what's going on in the real World, but there's a problem. He has to become the hero that he's been pretending to be.
* Based on the Proxima Universe by Harmon Cooper, with permission.