I woke up to an alert on my phone from Bioinformatic. I ignored the alert and went to the kitchen to make coffee before looking at it. I figured it was some type of letter saying that my account had been suspended again because I had offended some on one of my live streams. As I opened it my screen filled with an announcement.
Congratulations
You are 1 of 1000 that have been chosen to participate in the early access of Fates Realm Online.
I stared at my phone not believing what I was looking at. Below the banner, there was a phone number to call to claim the prize. I quickly finished my coffee and dialed the number to claim it before someone else got it. I sat there nervously breathing as the phone rang. After about ten rings someone answered on the other side.
“This Bioinformatic Contest Claims. You have been selected for early access to Fates Realm Online. Please hold for the next available representative.” Said a pre-recorded message.
I put the phone on speaker as soon as the wait music started to play on grabbed a bowl of cereal. After about a five-minute wait the call was answered.
“Hello, This Elisia may I have your username and verification code?” Said the childlike voice coming from my phone.
“My Biostream username is Sageri and verification code is 938261,” I said back nervously wondering if I would be kicked out of the running due to the complaints against me.
“Here we are Mr. Hilard. Bear with me for a second while your account details load.” Said Elisia giddily as I could hear what sound like someone typing on a keyboard.
“I’ll give you a heads up I do have some complaints and a couple of my live stream videos are under review for being offensive,” I said hastily wanting to just get it out there, so it’s known.
I can hear her chuckle at my comments. “Your account just popped up and while there some flags for offensive or vulgar language during a streaming your content is marked for eighteen plus so there are not going to be any repercussions on those,” Elisia said matter-of-factly before she continued. “Now let’s get on with registering you for early access. I have a couple of quick questions for you. One: Would you be able to come to the Bioinformatic Headquarters to participate in the early access? Two: Have you had any detrimental effect from full immersion pods? If so, please explain.” She finished in a grave voice.
“The answer to the first one would depend on me finding an affordable place to stay and the second one is more complicated I have had bad experiences with it when going through a rehabilitation program but have used them for gaming just fine,” I said hoping the last bit wasn’t going to disqualify me from the early access.
“Ok, I’m sending that last bit up to my boss to see if that will be an issue. Would you mind if we continued with the registration while he looks it over?” She asked me in an oddly excited tone.
“Ya, we can continue if you think that it would be fine?” I said getting an odd feeling there something she’s not telling me.
“Ok, I sent an access authorization to your phone. After accepting the authorization please go over the details and let me know if everything is correct or if I need to change something?” She said excitedly as I heard a male voice in the background.
I scanned the information on my account it was just basic name, date of birth, address, and phone number. “This all looks correct to me, Ma’am,” I said hoping that the man on the other end was her boss letting her know I was good to go for the game.
“Good, just heard back from my boss they reviewed your files to see what caused the incident and it seems like it was the program that was being used. I’m excited to tell you that you have been chosen to not only participate in the early access but you will be getting an all expensed paid trip to are headquarter to use are newly developed full immersion pod with the chance of getting when installed at no cost to you after the early access period.” She was extremely excited. “Now all I need you to do is to fill out the NDA that I just sent to your phone and we can set up your itinerary for early access.” She finished calming herself down.
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I quickly scanned the NDA and sent it back to her. “Alright, all finished with that what’s the time frame we're looking at for the early access?” I asked her, trying to keep my cool and come off as nonchalant as possible. It didn’t work I sound like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Alright then to answer your question depends on what wave of early access we can get you into. The first one starts in a week, second to one in two weeks, the third one in three and the final wave will start in a month.” She said sounding like she was reading off a script. “We have a spot available in the first wave as well as the final wave. Which would you be able to do?” She asked sounding kind of sad.
“The first week would be amazing. I have no prior commitments, so the short notice isn’t going to be an issue.” I said hastily letting my nerves get the best of me.
“Ok, I have entered you into the first wave and you should be receiving a confirmation on your device. The details of your travel arrangements should be arriving shortly as well as some basic information on the game itself to get you familiarized with it beforehand. Is there anything else that I can help you with today?’ She said finishing in a very professional voice.
“I can’t think of anything else that I need help with. Thank you and Have a good day.” I said before hanging up the phone.
I quickly got on to check the NDA to see if I could tell my friends that I got into the early access and quickly found that I could tell them I got in and would be going to the headquarters to participate but noting about the pod or anything that I learned from the game information.
I quickly typed up a group chat to let all my friends know that I had won one of the spots and then checked my email for the travel itinerary and game information. The game information was a nine-hundred-page document broken down into sections like lore, backstory, basic character creation, and lastly a list of basic skills and magic.
My phone went off a couple of times as I was checking my email one was from Bioinformatic confirming my week 1 entry and the rest were from my friend congratulating me and calling me a lucky bastard for getting in. One of my friends ends up being a runner up so he tried to convince me to drop out so that he could participate.
After bullshitting with my friend for a bit I sat down and at my computer and opened up the game document and began to read the character creation section. The game information was very enlightening I skipped over the Lore only skimming bits and pieces. The backstory caught my attention because it wasn’t your every day, you’re a legendary hero here to save them. You are just a refugee from another realm seeking asylum after your realm was destroyed by the fates. The character creation section as bare-bones as they wanted you to experience it personally. It did go over that skills and classes had to be discovered they weren’t just handed to you and this didn’t include any racial skills you might have. The skills and magic section just covered the basic info on what types of skills and magic there was and basic info on them. I flipped back to the beginning and decided to take a deep dive into the lore of the game.
After about two hours of reading, I was done with most of the lore and had learned a lot more about the races and classes than I did in the character creation section. The classes were basic with better classes being rarer and some classes only being given to the champions of god or deities depending on the race.
After I finished reading, I downloaded the itinerary and linked it to my calendar I had less the five days before I was going to be gone. I sat there and made a list of all the things I needed to get done before I left. I needed to set my bills to auto-pay and set for someone to check up on my house while I was gone. I also needed to make sure that my subscribers knew that I wouldn’t be on for a bit. I looked back at the NDA about streaming the game since I used the companies streaming account if I would be able to stream. Not seeing anything I looked for a contact number at the bottom of the page. Not finding one I looked for one on my itinerary there it was.
I quickly called the number, and it was answered after just three things. “I was wondering if I would be able to stream the early access since I sued Bioinformatics streaming service Biostream?” I asked nervously before the person could introduce themselves.
“Hello, Mr. Hilard it will not be possible to stream in this game because we feel it will break the immersion that we are trying to create but there will be a record feature which will allow you to record in both first-person and third-person and upload it to your Biostream account.” Said their male voice on the other side of the phone.
“Oh, ok that’s kind of a bummer but I appreciate the realism you trying to create and how did you know my name I dint introduce myself sorry about that. My mouth gets ahead of my brain sometimes.” I said nervously because someone knowing your name is never a good thing.
“Sorry about that I didn’t introduce myself either I’m Johun and I have been assigned to be your assistant while you are participating in the early access.” He said in a stoic tone.
“Oh wow. I didn’t think I would get my own assistant.” I said dumbfounded by the idea that they would do this.
“Bioinformatic has given a personal assistant to the 20 people that were chosen to test out the new FIVR pod.” He said with a chuckle.
“Oh, ok that makes more sense. I guess ill be meeting you when I come to the headquarters then?” I asked him curious about what he looked like. He sounded like he was a big burly bodyguard type rather than a personal assistant.
“Yes, I will be picking you up from the airport when you land. Is there anything else that you need help with right now?” He asked with a snort.
“That was all I needed. It was nice talking to you Johun and I can’t wait to see you in person.” I said and quickly hung up with embarrassment as that sounded like a come on.
After getting off the phone I quickly typed up a quick post saying that I wouldn’t be streaming live in the foreseeable future but to keep checking back as I would be posting videos of my endeavors in the early access of Fates Realm Online. I read it over and quickly fixed some minor spelling errors and submitted it.
I got up from my computer and stretched before grabbing my phone and sending another message to my friends about getting together before I took off. I would also use this get together to check on my house every once in a while.
With those two things done that only left the tedious of them getting my build put on autopay. It just over an hour and a half to get my bill all sorted half of which was spent on the phone because their website didn’t work properly.