Aaron ran with all his might through the jungle. Following him were fifteen-foot tall trees with roots for legs. Behind the giant trees followed about a hundred bamboo trees.
So how did a university student, an intern at HHC labs got into this situation with these weird magical beings?
Well, he tried to replicate some survival shows and tried to drink water by cutting a bamboo tree. But this particular bamboo tree was a treasure that woodlings were nurturing. Meek and timid, these sentient floral lifeforms like to hide in deep dark forests. Though they wished to lay low, they weren't particularly fond of getting their treasures snatched. Once disturbed, they are a fearsome entity that could tear up a human limb by limb without any effort. So a nearby Woodling screamed, all the nearby woodlings screamed, and they all started chasing him.
Well, why even was Aaron in the depths of the rainforest in this magical world? That story started when Aaron clocked in for his shift at the HHC- Huge Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator.
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"SALE! SALE! SALE!
Turn your boring day into an awesome game!
WorldAR's new AeR chip, now 50% off,
get your Augmented Reality implant today!"
"Go away." Aaron clicked the skip button on the ad. But even Aaron was unsure what he was angry about. Was it because he was seeing this ad for the hundredth time today? Or was it because he was a broke intern and had no way of buying this costly chip? Aaron very much wanted this chip. While he felt attacked by the words 'your boring day' in the ad, he realized that it was because his day was indeed very boring. Working at a particle accelerator sounded awesome. But for an intern like him whose job was to monitor the functioning of the particle accelerator, it was a mundane job.
Augmented reality - AR and virtual reality - VR had taken the world by storm in the last few years. While virtual reality opened up new avenues in the gaming sector and helped people delve into fantasy worlds of their choice, AR was the storm that shook all the businesses and industries. AR gamified your life. Everyone received a morale boost just by seeing their stats and having hints to advance their job. But WorldAR's AeR chip did much more than that of your regular AR chip. Using your sensory organs to the limit that one couldn't ever before, AeR gave you extrasensory perception and advanced insights about everything things around you.
Aaron rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms, and eyed the coffee maker in the corner of the room. While the half a dozen coffee cups in his computer table told him no more coffee, his droopy eyes, tired from the 16-hour shift, wanted one more cup of the no-sleep-potion.
~ Beep-Beep ~
~ Beep-Beep ~
Aaron's phone rang, interrupting his coffee-or-no-coffee thought-train.
"Dude, it's me, Alex, from the day shift."
Hearing the name Alex, Aaron sighed. For Aaron, Alex was a bittersweet colleague. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Alex was only in this internship program because it was a graduation requirement. The moment he graduated, a high position awaited him in his dad's company. As for the reason he was calling, Aaron was sure that it was to ask him to cover Alex's shift.
Aaron didn't mind it though, Alex was rich, and each time Aaron had covered for him, Alex would bring some cool gadget or something as a thank you gift. Alex even bought him the phone Aaron was currently using. But this time, Aaron was about to finish a double shift and was not in the mood for taking another double-shift.
"Hi, what's up, Alex."
"Oh, hey Aaron, Can you cover for me for the next shift? I have... um... somewhere to go."
"Sorry man. Not this time. I'm hella tired."
"It's important this time Aaron. Pretty please?"
"Dude, I've been here for 16 hours. Taking your shift would mean I'll be here for 32 hours. If the sleeplessness doesn't kill me, I'll die of boredom," Aaron said in a deadpan voice.
"Sleeplessness? Boredom? will you do the shift if I can fix them both?" Alex asked.
"Please don't order any coffee for me, Alex. I'm already 6 cups in."
"Haha. I was not talking about coffee. What do you think about the AeR chip?"
"What about it? don't tell me you are taking the shift off to get it installed?" Aaron feigned ignorance, but he had a knowing grin on his face. Damn, is this guy going to buy me a chip?
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"Why would I do that? I've had that chip in for a year already. I'll order you the newest model and on-site installation, so can you do the shift?"
"Add in a pizza, and we have a deal." Aaron felt rather shameless, asking for a pizza on top of a costly chip. But each penny he could save was another penny towards the student loan payment in the future.
Alex sighed and agreed to the deal before hanging up. While he was rich and spent money like water, he wasn't an ignorant snob who didn't know how hard the lives of the others were.
Aaron was joyful at his fortune. Just like that, he got an AeR chip. Spinning on his computer chair like a kid, Aaron even forgot that he was currently running on caffeine and hadn't slept for a long while.
In an hour, the delivery of the AeR chip reached HHC. Aaron had to go to the front gates due to the restricted entry to the campus. A white van with the WorldAR logo on it waited for Aaron. The installation took less than five minutes. While the needles that would be installing the chip to your brain looked ominous, the procedure was painless and quick.
More than 3 minutes of the procedure was for Aaron to read the user agreement and sign it. It was the usual legal mumbo jumbo, saying that AeR doesn't control your body and only uses the sensory organs. But there was an option for one to give body control to AeR. Aaron chose not to turn this option on for now. That was an option that only military or other jobs that require high body control needed. With this, one would be able to control their body, even fine-tuning their hormone outputs and warding off tiredness.
While Aaron was tired and sleepless, he didn't want to turn on this option yet. It was a habit Aaron picked up from working with costly machinery. Read the entire manual before operating sensitive equipment. And the human body was both sensitive and costly to repair.
Thanking the staff for the installation, Aaron walked out of the van. The moment he stepped out of the van, a screen appeared in his vision.
AeR, Augmented Reality by WorldAR.
Booting.
23%
-
75%
-
100%
Welcome to AeR.
Aaron felt his head spinning for a second before his vision stabilized. His view now had a few different items in it. On the top left, there was a miniature version of himself rotating. Above it were his name and level.
Aaron
Lvl: 8
Physicist Apprentice
HP: 250
"Damn, this is so cool!" Aaron couldn't wait to get back to his workstation to check out all the options.
As he walked by the gate, the security guard had his information displayed on top of him too.
Rex L - Security guard (Ally)
Title: Captain
Level: 43
HP: 8000
Walking into his cubicle, the first thing Aaron did was to click on his status.
--Calculating stats--
--Adding stats related to user's job--
--removing stats not related to user's job--
Aaron - Apprentice physicist
----------------------------------------
Title - none
Job - Physicist
Level - 8
HP - 250
Strength - 1
Agility - 2
Endurance - 3
Intelligence - 10
Vitality - 2
Wisdom - 5
-Stats with less than one points not shown-
-body strength stats not shown as not related to the user's job, you can change this in settings-
Job Mastery
--------------------------
Scientific problem solving +10 (Beginner) (125AP/790)
Machinery repair +2 (Beginner)(15AP/20)
Programming +5 (Hobbyist)(20AP/80)
Black Coffee making +21 (Advanced)(100AP/153810)
Ramen making +20 (Advanced)(5500AP/95060)
Equipment
----------------
[Common shirt] (common)
Level 2
Durability 10/10
[Common Pants] (common)
Level 2
Durability 10/10
[Lab coat]
Level 5
Intelligence +5
Wizdom +2
Status Effects
--------------------
-5 Intelligence
-2 Wisdom
-1 Endurance
+2 Intelligence x3
+2 Endurance x3
10:22 left
0.6% chance of falling asleep as the timer runs out.
(+0.1% for each coffee consumed)
Aaron facepalmed after watching his experience levels in coffee making and ramen making. And it seems like he had to drink another coffee in 10 minutes. As he was about to continue exploring the interface, the monitor of his workstation started spewing error after error.
"Sensor error?"
The Huge hadron collider was an underground tunnel. Aaron's job was monitoring it for any errors in operation. His job consisted of sitting around doing nothing. But now that there were a broken sensor and no one else on site, it was his job to fix it.
NEW QUEST
-----------------
Fix the sensor of HHC
Rewards - 500 exp
Machinery repair - 5 advancement points
Are you brave enough to get into the belly of the beast to swap out a sensor?
Aaron found the cheesy line in the quest cringy. But the fact that he only needed 5 Advancement points for the next level of machinery repair encouraged him to go level up the stats.
Aaron had just swapped the sensor when his phone rang again. This time it was his professor. Aaron knew that his professor had a timeslot booked for running HHC tonight. And if he missed the chance, the next slot would be at least three months away.
"You are doing the monitoring today. Right, Aaron?" The stern voice of the professor sounded from the phone.
"Oh, if you are calling about the sensor error, I fixed it and returned to the monitoring room. I'll greenlight the collider right away." Aaron Didn't want to upset the professor by delaying his experiment. While he was not supposed to, he could turn the collider on from here. After turning it on, he would have about 5 minutes before the HHC booted up to get out of the tunnel.
"It's already fixed? Good, good. I worried for nothing. Also, send me a machinery status log report for the experiment." Aaron sighed. He had averted a disaster, after all his internal credits were in the hands of this guy.
Aaron took out the tab that controlled the HHC and greenlit the tunnel. Now he had 5 minutes to get out of this place. As he took another step forward, two new notifications appeared in the AeR interface.
AeR Notification
----------------------
Effects of [Coffee] has run out
AeR Notification
----------------------
You have fainted due to overexertion
Sleep has been triggered (0.1% x 6 chance [coffee])
"OH F----" Aaron couldn't finish saying the sentence before his body hit the tunnel floor, and his consciousness faded.
HHC was the pinnacle of technology, and it did have a lot of failsafe mechanisms to prevent it from turning on when someone was inside. Like the monitoring station, they would only operate the tunnel after making sure it was clear. And even if the monitoring station greenlit the operation, there was another failsafe mechanism. This was to sense if there was anything inside the tunnel and turn it off. And the sensor that Aaron replaced was part of that mechanism. As fate would have it, the sensor Aaron replaced was faulty, rendering the failsafe mechanism useless.
HHC was turned on.
The breaking news of that morning was the explosion in the HHC tunnel and the missing intern.
Aaron, of course, didn't know or care about any of that commotion happening in his homeworld as he was too busy running away from the Woodlings.