Alyssa Summers, better known by her gaming handle Tage, has already decided at the age of 17 that the real world isn't worth all that much. Instead, with the advancements in gaming brought about by the creation of the TITAN Virtual Reality System, she's chosen to devote herself to exploring and enjoying the world of virtual reality games. But her life begins to change when she completes an unexpected quest - a quest that, unknown to her, was the final step TITAN needed to awaken a human-simulacrum AI named Ripley. Together, Tage and Ripley begin to journey through the virtual world, but their journey will also lead Tage to discover that the gaming world and the real world are far more linked than she'd thought.

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Awakening is a heavily edited version of a two-person story, started by myself and my friend several years ago. My former co-author has given me full permission to use our writing, and his character Ripley, for this re-telling.