Emily Rae

TTYL
A science fiction thriller about grief, nostalgia, and the danger of refusing to let go.

Ashley and her sister, Brianna, were an inseparable gaming duo: always player one and player two. As kids, they had grand plans to create video games together, but it all crashed down when Brianna died. Now, twenty years later, Ashley’s life is stuck on a loading screen.

The closest Ashley gets to her dreams is fixing retro video game systems. That is, until she finds an old virtual reality console coded by her tech-genius sister. But it’s not a typical system, it houses a lifelike, fully immersive world—a ‘90s wonderland where her sister’s avatar resides with her real-life memories and personality intact. In this artificial paradise, Ashley can rebuild the life she always imagined, pixel by pixel.

But it’s game over when a hacker threatens Ashley for the advanced tech. Her nostalgic utopia becomes her personal hell as he infiltrates the system, altering Ashley’s mind and blurring the lines between reality and the virtual world. When Ashley finds that he’ll do the same to others when he mass produces the tech, she realizes the only way to stop him is to delete the code. In other words, destroy her dreams and lose her sister—again.