His game character's wife was a real prize in every sense, and he'd found her by chance, which was yet another difference from his real wife. She was an adorable, playful, thousand-year-old sand cat who could maintain a human form. The form she preferred was straight out of an anime though, a cute cat-girl. He loved it.

Rumor had it that a big expansion was coming that was going to expand the fringe of the western desert, so he'd been exploring what already existed there. He'd managed to get a spot in one of the older guilds, and one of their beta players had pointed out that when an area was changed any existing treasures tended to get overwritten, so even if the current contents of the desert weren't amazing they might still become exclusive items in the future.

He wasn't the only character wandering the desert recently of course, but he thought that he might be the luckiest. He'd found the injured sand cat and healed it up without putting a lot of thought into it. She'd begun following him, which got him a little excited, thinking that maybe he was going to obtain a cute pet. He started offering her different foods and even bowls of milk or cream occasionally, but she hadn't become his pet.

He was about ready to give up anyway when a terrible run of luck decided him. He'd seen as much desert as he needed to. The scorpion nest, the cactus, the cursed skeleton, he'd had enough. He was almost back to the dwarven mountains when the injured drake attacked. He was certain that he was going to die until she appeared in front of him, a cute little cat girl who slapped the drake around like it was a common fence lizard.

"Mine!" she'd said fiercely to the drake.

--

When he logged in that weekend and read about the new memory quest, a new temptation took hold of him. Everyone else seemed to see the new option to mess with your characters "memories", the game's records of your adventures, as a way to remember an old friend or forget an old lover. Mr. Fields saw it as a way to remove evidence.

He'd never really been tempted to cheat on his wife before. He was too ordinary to attract the kind of stunning women that other men were rumored to play around with. He wasn't even certain that what he was contemplating even counted as cheating, it was just a game after all.

But… Living Jade Empire could be played with full VR, and he had the most adorable wife there, and now there was a way to delete the record of the naughty behavior. He spent the most exciting week of his life planning it out.

He emptied their emergency fund and sent his wife to see the concert she'd mentioned a few weeks ago. She'd never have insisted on going of course, her outlook was always realistic and careful, and part of what kept their daily lives comfortably boring. She was so happy when he suddenly insisted that they'd only live once, and they'd only get older, so if it would make her happy, she should go.

He took the extra day off, and used the rest of their emergency fund to rent a full VR console for the two days that she was gone. And then he logged in to the game and experienced his ordinary character in the fairly standard fantasy RPG that he'd been playing for months in a whole new way.

His little sand cat-girl acted surprised by his suddenly amorous approach, but his stunning digital wife didn't resist him, and even seemed pleased by the change. It might have been the only time in his life that he'd ever completely dedicated himself to absorbing every moment of "now". He didn't think about the future, he didn't think about the past, he sank into this temporary dream with his whole heart.

He used his carefully saved game coin as recklessly as he had used his real savings. He ate the best virtual foods, drank the best honeyed wines, and rolled around on the most luxurious bed with the most adorable cat girl in two worlds. It was bliss. It was every vacation he'd never taken. Every romance he'd never started.

It couldn't last of course. Time stops for no man. Money only stretches so far. And Mr. Fields was ordinarily very realistic. His heart didn't break when it was time to return to reality, but he didn't waste any of his precious VR time on the memory quest. He did the memory quest from home, on the device that he usually played on, and didn't hesitate when it was time to tell the G.o.ddess, "I wish to forget the days I spent here with my wife."

It did annoy him a little that the Twins, who were the G.o.ddesses of memory in the pantheon of this game, insisted that he answer three times. But he calmed himself easily with the thought that it was just a safeguard against people accidently deleting their records. His character was a little battered by the monsters made of sand that he'd had to fight to reach the G.o.ddesses, and completely broke from his wild spending spree, but it would heal on its own before he had time to play again, and coin wasn't all that hard to come by.

He greeted his real wife with real fondness, and didn't begrudge a moment of her excited chatter and excessively detailed descriptions of the concert, and her outfits, and her friends outfits, and the food, and the hotel. It washed over him like an echo of his own hours of delight, and he smiled and repeated that he was glad that she'd gone.

--

Mr. Fields floated through the next morning at work, but gradually reality worked its ordinary grit back into him and his ordinary life fully resumed. He thought that nothing had changed until he logged in again. His sand cat wife was gone. There was no trace that she'd ever existed.

A few long empty days pa.s.sed before he decided that he couldn't give up that easily. He worked harder on completing quests than he ever had before, and then he hired people with the skills to track her by name.

He ventured back into the desert to meet her again. He begged her to remember him, and offered her food and milk and cream again. She ignored him at first. But finally she became annoyed enough to speak.

"I don't know you, I've never seen you before, there is nothing to remember," the thousand-year-old sand cat growled.

"You were my wife," he insisted.

"You are crazy," she hissed.

And when she stood and glared at him, he was afraid. Even though he was staring at her through a flat screen, holding her image in his hands, and she was still as small and cute as she ever been. He knew how powerful she really was, he knew she could kill his ordinary human character with ease. She didn't strike him though, she just walked away, indifferent to the emptiness that suffused him.

He finally understood the real price he had paid by choosing to erase those hours of illicit pleasure in order to keep his ordinary life safe. In order to keep everything the same. Everything was the same.

--

Almost everything was the same…

Mrs. Fields noticed that her husband seemed to be feeling down lately. She tried the usual little things that generally cheered him a bit first, but he didn't respond. She'd really appreciated the trip he'd encouraged her to take, but she worried that the expense had added too much pressure.

He'd always liked to keep things safe and ordinary. He was always very good about doing enough to maintain a comfortable existence, but once he reached that he tended to slack off and coast. He was playing games again that evening with an increasingly depressed expression.

She frowned and suggested, "Maybe you should take a break from that game if it isn't relaxing anymore?"

"The game hasn't changed," he muttered. He sighed and turned off his device a few minutes later though. "I just spoiled it for myself by trying it in VR while you were gone," he admitted.

"Was it that much fun?" she asked curiously.

Her husband was usually very practical and she'd never seen him admit to being spoiled by a pleasure before. She was the one who sometimes had to rein herself in after some exciting event and remind herself that being comfortable was not a bad way to live. The wavering smile that was his only reply at first alarmed her.

Eventually he summoned up the courage to admit, "Even if I had VR, it wouldn't be the same. I… erased my character's wife."

She didn't misunderstand his meaning, they'd been together for a long time, but she still misunderstood him in the kindest way. Those few simple words told her that he'd played with his digital wife in VR while she'd been gone, and then he'd erased her to remove the temptation to do it again.

"What if I played your wife in that game? Would it be as fun?" she questioned.

"I don't think you'd really enjoy playing as a cute cat-girl would you?" he asked wryly. "You've always refused to go to cosplay events with your friends."

"Well," she sniffed, "that's because in real life I'm stuck with my real body. But in those VR games you can look like anything right? If I could be small and cute I guess I wouldn't hate wearing ears and a tail and clinging to your arm?"

"VR for two would be more expensive than a fancy new car," he pointed out after a moment.

"Other people manage to buy fancy new cars. Don't you think that if we try we could manage it?" she asked.

--

Mr. Fields started a new quest in the real world with his real wife. The quest to buy two very expensive gaming systems. His days began to feel quite busy.

He wasn't even too disappointed when they eventually discovered that there wasn't a cat-girl race that she could choose. There were plenty of enchanted outfits. His ordinary human wife was surprisingly cute in them.