A Life Lost

Saraj is a programmer who needs to clean up some mistakes in her new game. While she and her friends have created a living world, she once put something which in she never should have. Now, she must face the largest obstacle to her clear mind. It was something she put into the game's programming while she was going through one of the darkest moments in her life.

What does it mean to create virtual life? What responsibilities does a programmer have for a life she created, even if it is just strings of code? How much could the loss of someone important haunt one person?

This short story takes place in the Digital Arcana series by Sean Roney.