The coffee cup felt warm and comforting in my hands, but my feeling was anything but comfortable. I’m not a morning person. Swishing around my coffee, I nodded as I inattentively listened to Mr. Armand talk about the VR unit that they were installing in my condominium unit.

The coffee still hasn’t kicked in…I think. What was I supposed to feel from coffee? I only had coffee because I received it as a gift during my last birthday. It was supposed to be a very expensive brand from some exotic sounding country. Coffee beans from some cat’s butt or something.

“We will just set everything in auto so you could just lie down and it will activate,” Mr. Armand said. “And here’s the instruction manual…”

The manual looked more like a book. I nodded again. It wasn’t like I was going to play the game. Had lots of work to do, right after I drink this cat’s butt coffee. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, although I couldn’t tell if it was good coffee because I normally don’t drink coffee.

I took another sip as Mr. Armand continued droning on, explaining things about the game itself. Yep, definitely okay coffee given that it came out of a cat’s butt. I mean, I also eat eggs which came out of a chicken’s butt. Wait. “Do eggs come out of a chicken’s butt or there is another hole there?”

“And it’s fine to pick any char…,” Mr. Armand was beginning to say. Then he paused and looked at me with a brow raised. “Excuse me? An egg?”

“I’m sorry for asking such a weird question. I was just thinking how the VR unit looks like an egg,” I replied. “A sleek and silver egg.”

“Yes, our designer said we should go for a minimalistic design. Ah, so as to, um, you know, differentiate us from that other famous VR company.”

My eyes darted to the small stretch of wall that was actually hidden closet. “Understandable. Understandable.” I downed the contents of my coffee immediately and grimaced. Given that other company was a porn company, very understandable they wanted to differentiate themselves.

“Is something wrong?” Mr. Armand said.

“Nothing. I’m just not used to coffee.” And I wanted to change the topic without changing it myself. I set the cup on the table and drank some water. “You see, I normally don’t drink coffee.”

Then it clicked in Mr. Armand’s head. “Oh, I apologize. You are used to working from midday until late in the night, right? We should have come at a later hour.”

“It’s fine, fine. I’m merely used to working until the early hours of the morning and then sleeping and waking up by lunchtime.” My internal clock has been messed up since I was in law school. When I was a new lawyer, I worked until 2 a.m. in the morning, went home and slept until 7 a.m. and went immediately back to work. As I become more experienced, I was able to better manage my hours. They were still horrible, though.

“A nocturnal being, I see,” Mr. Armand said. “I used to work late into the night, as well. But I don’t think my age will allow me that luxury now.” He turned to his men. “I see that they’re about finished. Let’s go over so that I can show the inside to you. Then we’ll be out of here so that you can go back to your rest.”

“I’m well rested,” I assured Mr. Armand. “No need to worry about me.” I gathered all my strength to stop my face from smirking. Now, Mr. Armand thinks that he bothered me so he will try to make it up to me someday. Of course, the fault was on me because I agreed to his offer to come and install the VR unit in the morning, but now, he would think that I only agreed because I was too courteous to refuse.

Half a dozen men from JYE were all over the VR unit, putting the said panels back on. A sleek chrome pod that, with a push of a button from one of them, opened up and revealed foam cushions where the user was supposed to lie down when using the machine. There were lights, wirings, and scanners and all sorts of techie looking things stuff along the inside linings. “Very nice design,” I said. “Looks very modern and polished. “

“Ah. You see we wanted to get as far away as possible from the…let’s say, image, of the more famous VR units.”

I turned around to hide my smile. Indeed, the JYE VR unit was very far from the VR unit of Passion Inc. The JYE unit encapsulated the whole body. The Passion version covered the…essential parts of the body for the experience they offered.

“We’re done, Mr. Stone,” Mr. Armand said. “I know you’re a busy person but I hope you can give our game a try.”

“I will,” I said.

“Here,” he said, pulling out a card from his pocket. “A promo card. We gave some of these to the people who attended our event last month in Leighfalls. I have a few of these on me.”

“A special item?”

“Just some high quality potions. Very useful for levelling your character. We don’t sell or giveaway powerful in-game items.”

“But your game does have premium game currency?”

“Yes. But it’s mostly for modified character models, skins, accessories, things like that. Actually, originality and individualism by virtue of accessories are more demanded than cash items,” he said. “It sounds like you have played an RPG game before?”

“A long time ago,” I said. “How about making a special model for me? Since I’m the corporate counsel?”

He laughed. “I’ll see what I can do about that.” He glanced at his men who has stowed away their things. “Well then, we’ll get going. Have a nice day. Do tell me your impression of the game.”

After they left, I opened my secret cabinet. It was where I stowed away my other VR unit. The one from the porn company. I bought one before when I was trying to forget something. No one knew about it, although Eclairs probably suspected that I have one because the majority of the people getting spinal ports were also buying Passion VR unit. 

Their company became very powerful and influential, because well, VR porn. And it wasn’t simply virtual reality. You could actually experience…things, because of the spinal port.

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I rubbed the back of my neck where I have my spinal port. The spinal port had many uses, like attaching to an exoskeleton for paralyzed persons, virtual reality learning, express information download, many others. Of course, it would be used for porn, there was nothing surprising about that.

Chuckling as I remembered the crisis a few years back, I dusted the VR unit. The country’s birth rate sharply plummeted when the VR porn was released. It was actually a worldwide problem. The government implemented tax cuts for people to make babies and all that.

Such a scary thing, this VR. I wonder what this new VRMMORPG would do to the world.

As I checked if there was space to stow away my new VR unit beside the old one, I saw a small notebook on the upper shelf. “So this was here all this time,” I said as I picked up the notebook. It has yellowed pages, the ink of some of the pages has faded, and it was full of writing.

It was the old notebook I used back when I played games. Strategies, builds, tips and tricks, I noted all of them down. All the shit I learned while playing various games throughout my childhood, all of them were inside the notebook. Nostalgia flooded inside me as I flipped the pages. 

Then I turned to the last page and read backward.

The reason I kept it was because I used the last few blank pages to write my list of things that I would do. And I do it. Because I am Herald Stone.

Get a paid internship, was the first one on the list, not easy to do because people don’t want to pay slaves, I mean interns. But I was able to land an internship with good pay because of one of my scholarship sponsors, a nice old lady, a retired politician, who helped out the less fortunate students of her alma mater to lessen the temperature of the flames of hell that would burn her soul, referred me to her friends in the Congress.

Another item I listed was Treat my family to a buffet. It was more to the benefit of my mother and sisters that I included that. We were struggling financially back then and couldn’t do nights out with the family or eat in nice places. I also was able to do it easily as well, because I am Herald Stone. Joining writing competitions, debates, all sorts of contests with cash, I crushed my trash competition and was able to save money. With my savings, I opened the minimum account to invest in the stock market. I also opened accounts for my mother and sisters. Then I bought stocks and paid for them to be recorded in our name in the books of the company.

Every year, we went as a family to stockholders meeting of the various blue chip companies. Even though the money we spent buying stocks was probably less than the cost of the food per person in those gatherings, it’s not like they could kick us out because we were stockholders. And we own the stocks too so, technically, we didn’t pay for anything.

I couldn’t help but smile because of my awesomeness. I’m such an awesome son. I could remember the first stockholders meeting we attended. My mother wept when she saw the buffet because she only heard of those fancy food names and never even dreamt of eating them.

The items I have listed down have tiny checks beside them. Write a law book for those reviewing for the bar—this one I did because many people were asking for my notes for the bar, might as well make a money for it.

The last item I wrote was Add a zero to my income every seven years. “Now I remember why I put away this notebook,” I said. I was already ahead of this goal of adding decimal places to my income. I started at below minimum wage working part-time during college so it was quite easy to add zeroes every seven years and I’m ahead by a like two, maybe three zeroes so might as well cross it out.

The next few pages were blank. All the items I have previously written have been checked off. Looks like I have everything I wanted, I thought with a smile. When I make promises to myself, it will be done. Because I am Herald Stone.

I keep on turning the blank pages in reverse to reach the end of my notes about gaming. Let’s see what sort of childish shit my young self was writing back then. I’m sure I’ll cringe at my own stupidity.

The last page of my game notes was about my plans for the boss fight we had on the day my mother told me my father had cancer. I blinked and exhaled slowly. Twenty years and I could still remember that day. Scrunching my nose, I was about to close the notebook and stow away the memories for a long time when I saw something scribbled along the lines of the last page.

“What the?” I said as I brought the notebook closer. The page was full of calculation, times for using the skill, the health points of monsters, all that crap. I was very meticulous in planning something that I wanted to happen, even as a kid. But, below the bottom margin of the page, a small line was scribbled, squeezed in the small space with rushed handwriting.

When I get successful someday, I will play games again, become the best tank, and crush everyone.

My hands shook a bit. Memories rushed back. I wrote this the day my father died and I resolved to stop playing games and focus everything I had in helping my family and getting rich as fuck.

This was a promise to myself. My left cheek twitched. A twenty-year-old promise that still wasn’t fulfilled. My face contorted as I said, “Well then, looks like I have to fulfill this one as well, for I am Herald Stone.” It may sound like something childish and naïve to most people, but not to me. When I set out to do something, I do it. When I wanted a thing done, it will be done.

I walked briskly to my bedroom and placed the notebook on my bedside table. It’s going to stay there until that one last promise to myself was fulfilled.

Going back to my new VR unit, I said to myself, “I wouldn’t be so busy these days because of my new work, so might as well get on with it and crush these little shits inside this game.”

I placed my hand on the VR. It beeped and opened up. I aligned myself with the plug to my spinal port. The foam adjusted itself and took my shape. Comfy.

Closing my eyes, I pressed the button to connect my body to the VR pod.