“Hello again and welcome back to reality.” Doctor Steiner began. Yes, the same Steiner that had initially welcomed us before the first immersion.

“Let’s start with first things first. It is now Saturday and the current local time is 20... “ he checked his watch, “26… 20:26. That means you had an immersion of more or less five days. In game terms that means about twenty days.

“We hope that you had an enjoyable experience. While you are already out of immersion, we will continue bringing people back to reality until Sunday around noon. At least that is the current estimate barring anything unforeseen. So if you are unable to reach friends, fellow clan members or testers you want to check in with, please remember that 500.000 testers is a huge number and we have to stagger the login and logout procedures. As we are testing the long term immersion along with the game itself, we need to run each tester through a series of medical tests to ensure everything is as it is supposed to be.

“Before I hand over to Miss Winters to give you more details about the following two days, let me give you some preliminary statistics. As of 18:00 today, a total of 84 million skill points have been gained between all of our testers. In only five days! That is on average 168 points per person. The highest skill level of any player recorded in the game was 74. A truly astonishing accomplishment. On top of that among all of you, a total of 74.5 billion ICU were generated. That is 149.000 ICU on average.”

“More than that, two relic ships were discovered, four ancient outposts have been discovered and a total of 153 legacy items were discovered. Let me tell you, when we invited so many pro players for the testing phase we were expecting extraordinary results within a wide variety of gameplay but you have exceeded our expectations. Oh, and before I forget: Over 3.6 million reports were generated. That number also exceeded our expectations and our engineers are already very busy looking into them and making adjustments.”

I let these numbers sink in for a moment. I was way behind on skill points and skill levels. However, I was at nearly double the ICU generation. And even though the average was low, the actual number was huge. Convert that into YC and you come away with 74 and a half million. Sure, half a million people had contributed to that. But this was the first week of the game. And that meant that it would only grow in the future.

Other than that, I personally had discovered what I think is a relic ship but I could not be sure about that. I might not be classified as such and I had not gotten a tooltip about it either, so there was not really a way to know. I had not heard about outposts or legacy items so I seemed to be way behind the curve on those. But then again, I assumed it had a lot to do with starting scenarios and areas of space you spawned in.

“However, while we can access the statistics and see the generated error reports, we can not follow the individual gameplay. Which means that we will be relying on your feedback.” He stepped back from the microphone and waved at Ms. Winters, who stepped forward to take her turn.

“Thank you doctor Steiner, and thank all of you. Like you just heard, you have very much exceeded our expectations. We appreciate the dedication you have put into playing the game to its fullest. But like you just heard, we can’t access the game play or watch streams of you playing due to the time compression in the game. The filed reports give us some idea about which game aspects you engaged with but we require more details. What did you enjoy most, where did you run into problems?

“To that end, we require your group to submit written testing summaries by tomorrow noon. After that you will go through a round of extensive medical testing. And then towards the evening you will have a mandatory meeting with a mental health professional. While this might not seem necessary to you, there is no skipping this. If you don’t get the all clear from said professional, you will not participate in the second or third round of testing.

“Let me clarify that a bit further. While we have seen amazing results in the testing, we have also seen first symptoms of depression, anxiety, low level psychosis, dissociation and PTSD. To be clear, these are expected as you are well aware that all full immersion protocols carry a risk of any of these issues. Due to the deeper immersion and higher realism of the game world we are seeing a slightly higher number of these issues.

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“That means, again, no clean bill of mental health, no further testing. There is a two-fold need behind this requirement. Obviously we are concerned for you as you are currently, although temporarily, employed by this company and we take your health and mental health as seriously as any other employees’. Additionally, we want to understand at which point these issues started manifesting so we can further adapt the game and in the immersion technology to make the game even more safe for launch date.

“You will also receive the number for one of the mental health professionals assigned to your testing group. If at any point you feel like you need to talk to them, please contact them directly.”

“Haha, what kind of whack job has mental health issues from the game?” one of the players to my right whispered to the rest of the group. I could not be sure which clan they were from as they did not wear any identification on their white jumpsuits but I could only roll my eyes.

“Yeah, no shit. I mean it's a game for fucks sake. No fucking mental resilience.”

“Hope none of ours get cut. We need to get together so we can work towards the common goal.” a third guy said which was acknowledged with a bunch of nods.

I just sighed. Mental health issues had been going hand in hand with full immersion games from the start. Some people already had them and tried using the game to escape just to find out that the issues got worse in certain environments simulated by the game. Others were not prepared for the level of immersion. And others ended up with PTSD issues like soldiers that had been to wars, which was not really a surprise if you jacked your brain directly into scenarios where either people around you or you yourself got killed repeatedly.

But then again, whenever these topics came up, some ‘hard’ people always sneered at it. It was funny that we as humanity had mainly overcome stigmas around sexuality, identity, race and nationality but the stigma around mental health was in place strong and immovable as it has ever been.

“You will receive your personal schedule for all appointments via quantum ping in a moment. Also, we understand that you have all had experiences in the game. Feel free to share them with your fellow testers but let me remind you that you all signed extensive NDAs. You are not allowed to share any information about the game, the testing or any other aspect with the public at this point. This includes but is not limited to friends, family, clan and workshop members, agents, press or media outlets, etc. Please take this as your one and only reminder regarding this topic.”

At this point doctor Steiner took over again. “Now, eat, drink, relax for a bit. Enjoy being back in the real world. Then please start on documenting your game play approach and experience so far.”

After the last words the screen didn’t switch off but instead played a rendering of the trailer we had seen initially when we arrived. Gods, it seemed ages ago but it had only been five days. I felt so much longer. Honestly my brain had some trouble keeping these things straight. So to distract myself, I got myself another coffee and donut - ah, coffee, how I missed you - and enjoyed the moment while watching the trailer.

Then I pulled up my messages on my quantum watch and started checking through the list. The last one was the one Ms. Winters had spoken of and it held the schedule for my medical and psych evaluation. There were also the same NDA reminders, although in more detail and some slides with numbers including the ones that doctor steiner had spoken of.

Other messages I had received were from my agent, my favorite bartender and some other IRL friends. While the latter were asking why I had fallen from the face of the earth and wanted to know what was going on, Rachel was asking when I’d take her shopping and Ben was mainly asking how things were going, how the game was and if I’d see a future for it. And while I was happy with all of these messages, I loved Rach’s the most as she had attached a pic of her sexy self in a dressing room wearing a bikini. Yes, I am easy to please and I know it.

I composed a quick reply to her letting her know that I was out of town on business and that I would get back to her once I was back. Ben I sent three sentences: Yes. Yes. Can’t talk about it. And my friends messages I ignored. They had already gotten a canned ‘out of reach’ message back and they also knew that I would randomly disappear on gaming stints. Sure, not often for a whole month but if they really had a need to get a hold of me, they all had Ben’s number and he would filter it through to me if I really needed to get back to people. It was a system we had established in the past and it was working well. Finally I left a message for both Nicola and Damian to give me a buzz when they were out and had some time.

After all that was done I contemplated briefly heading to my room. However, I missed being around people and the noise and energy it brought with it. So I found a set of music on the net, pressed play on my watch and the sound was directly piped into my brain via n-link while I could still hear the muted conversations going on around me. Then I refilled my coffee once more, pulled up a mental notes app and started dictating my gaming history.