Dinner, dessert, and doing the dishes were all done by a bit before eight. Even though the indoor chores were mine, my twin assisted by drying and putting away the dishes. I suppose that meant I’ll need to help her rake or bag leaves when autumn rolls around. There wasn’t much to do, but our chatting actually made it take longer than normal, mostly because of the gesturing that accompanied the chatting. She was perhaps even more excited for the game than I, but then again, it’ll be a whole new world for her to explore. Lots of new outdoors—even if there probably wouldn’t be any bicycles. Still, she enjoyed hiking, too.

As the last of the silverware was being put away and the sinks were set to drain, I was actually able to answer one of her questions with hard fact instead of just speculation, “Actually, Lex, it’s not going to be just the rich or the savers who’ll be playing regularly. Sure, some of the people near game centers might be able to spend some hours each night or on the weekend, but there are fifty thousand free pods that were shipped out to winners around the globe, about twenty thousand here in the US and the rest wherever. We didn’t win, no. But there will be more people playing than just the idle rich like we are now. I don’t think their pods get delivered until tomorrow, though.”

With that, we walked upstairs—side by side, so neither of us had to look at the other’s butt—and I showed her to the pod in her room. While she was oohing and aahing over it, I fed the fish and continued with another explanation from information I had learned from browsing the company’s website earlier. “For the first use, it’ll take about an hour for the FIVR pod to synchronize, so since there’s a bit more than an hour until launch, we probably should get to it. And no, you don’t have to get undressed to use it. I don’t know how it works, but it doesn’t work by that sort of touchy-feely feedback.”

As she laid herself down in the pod, I gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead, “You had a long day, so don’t stay up all night playing, but have fun!”

“I won’t and I will, now you do the same, Lexy.” She smiled at me as the top of the pod swung closed on its hinges, and I headed off to my room and my own pod.

I changed first, to my own usual sleepwear: a loose pair of seafoam green, soft cotton pajamas with coral-colored piping, drawstring, and buttons. Since the pants lacked a fly and the top lacked a pocket, I guess they may have come from the girls’ side of the store, but they were roomy, comfortable, and a gift from my sister, so I didn’t mind. And I had five pairs exactly the same; I was easy to shop for.

“Properly” dressed, I laid myself in the pod, sinking a little into the strange, squishy grey material it was coated in. It was a bit like, but mostly unlike, a memory foam mattress: a little cool to the touch, but rapidly warming to body temperature. I tucked Luna under my arm. Then, I reached up and pulled the pod closed, and a blackness more profound than just the absence of light surrounded me.

What followed next was about five minutes of total sensory deprivation which seems long, but I spent it contemplating the choices ahead of me. Despite the lack of initial classes—and indeed, a lack of information about most of the ones named—I was leaning toward an Agility- or Reflexes-based build. I haven’t played an archer-type in any game lately, and the mobility and reflexes should carry over to a fallback dagger if I ended up forced into melee range. Moreover, it seemed like it may be useful for a lot of crafting-type skills, should I want to give any a try. I may be a bit lazy in the real world here, but in games, crafting high-end armor and trinkets has always had a strong appeal. I wonder which impulse will win out…?

Then, a series of faint chimes like a hearing test began to surround me. Concurrent with the sounds, white text flickered in and out of my vision, too quickly for me to read. Then “C a l i b r a t i n g . . .” appeared, pulsing between white and a pale seafoam green that matched my pajamas. A few seconds later, a progress bar appeared below the text, showing exactly “2.7182818...%span>” before flickering to 3% and slowly, oh so slowly, ticking up by increments of a tenth of a percent.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

At around ten percent, a reverb effect was added to the faint chimes of sound, and I felt a crawling sensation across my skin, as if millions of butterflies were dancing on my body. Five percent further into the calibration and the crawling was replaced with other sensations: waves of hot and cold, tickling, pin pricks, and so on. This continued to around twenty-five percent, when scents were added to the mix.

Unlike the sensations, many of the scents were pleasant: flowers of all sorts, evergreen needles, citrus fruits, or the crisp salt air of an ocean breeze. Others, however, were much less pleasant: wet dog, composting leaves, skunk, burnt popcorn, or rotten eggs. Suddenly, I was very much not looking forward to when calibration got to the sense of taste.

This continued full on through fifty percent before various wire-frame shapes began to flicker around me. That’s when I noticed something rather odd. I hadn’t thought about it for the sounds or scents (or really even for the tactile feelings), but the sources were from all around: left and right, up and down, front and back. This became much more noticeable when the shapes for the visual calibration began to flicker around, and I wasn’t limited to just the normal cone of vision. It was very disconcerting to see something that was directly behind “me.”

This, though, wasn’t as bad as it could have been. All of this, even the various feelings of the tactile calibration, was still taking place in the formless blackness where my consciousness floated without an actual body. I could feel some things, but I couldn’t move, nor could I see myself. I guess, without a body to be in the way, there was no reason to not be able to see in all directions.

At eighty-five percent, the surroundings changed. The background noises, scents, sights, and feelings faded, but I suddenly became aware of sensations I had been missing: weight and gravity and the location and positioning of my limbs and body. I had a body again, and it was my own and wearing the same pajamas I crawled into the pod with. I was lying on a cot in a rather unfinished room; Luna, however, was absent. The room was roughly ten feet by ten feet with a floor of packed dirt and with three of the four walls rough-hewn wood. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness, but the fourth wall (what of it that could be seen) was smooth, black, and faintly glowing, like a gigantic computer monitor. The progress bar filled the screen from left to right, but as I swung my body off the cot and stood up, the progress bar shrunk and moved diagonally up toward the upper left corner of the “screen.”

Then, lines of text filled the screen, stretching nearly wall to wall and shadowy ceiling to dirt floor. It was a bunch of legalese, followed by a brief summary:

* This is not the real world. This is better.

* This is a multiplayer game. You may meet people you don’t like or who don’t like you.

* The majority of the world is for adults only. Players who are minors are restricted to certain protected areas of the world and contact with non-minors is strictly regulated.

* While players must be adults, characters are not required to be so.

* One account per calibrated player. One character per account.

* Questlines to change a character’s race will be added if new playable races are added in future updates.

* RMT through official channels has some protections. RMT outside those channels has no protection.

* Offensive names will be changed. Offensive, harassing behavior may result in punitive measures up to and including termination of the account.

* Respect others; respect yourself; respect the world; have fun.

And a few other things along those lines. The legalese went into a lot more detail, of course, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to peruse through it. Whoever reads the full EULA, anyways?

When the progress bar hit ninety percent, I was assaulted by a virtual legion of different tastes, all classifying as various degrees of the five main tastes: sweet, salty, savory, bitter, and sour. They ranged from mildly so to excessively so, and the “too sweet” was just as horrid as the “too bitter” and “too sour.” Many of the assorted spicies weren’t too fun, either.

Finally, the sensory calibration completed and both the progress bar and the legalese disappeared from the screen. Instead, it was replaced by the silhouette of a small, winged humanoid and the text “Generating A.I. Assistant. Standby for Character Creation.”