CHAPTER 1 Not Your Typical Gamer

I am not your typical full time VR gamer. Life just kind of led me in this direction through a few fortuitous events.

First let me tell you a little about me. I grew up in a small town in Vermont. I was three when my mother left us for a professional athlete. She sometimes remembered to send me a birthday card which I never reed and ended in the trash. If you ever had the opportunity to psychoanalyze me you would think this is the reason I have trouble in relationships.

Growing up I was an only child. My father was good to me but really never expressed too much ‘love’. He worked hard for a timber company and provided for us. We never really had many luxuries but never suffered. My father really encouraged me to do sports. Growing up playing sports was my father’s passion and he still kept in touch with the guys he played ice hockey with and he wanted me to have the same ‘team’ experience. For me, I swam until I was twelve and then added football. In high school I played football in the fall, swam in the winter and then worked in the spring and summer. My spring was spent working with my dad after school at the local mill and during the summer I spent with my uncle in North Carolina building houses.

My uncle owned two lumber yards in North Carolina and built custom houses on the side. The summer when I was thirteen, dad and me had travelled to visit my uncle for a week to start the summer vacation. My uncle was the opposite of my dad, extremely charismatic and outgoing. He never married and was a bit of a playboy. He offered to host me for the rest of the summer and let me work under the table. My father agreed.

My uncle offered to pay me as an adult if I worked as hard as an adult. This motivated me to work extremely hard and the first summer I worked 70 hour weeks and squirreled away a large sum working at my uncle's lumber yards. The next four summers I helped my uncle building houses and managed to save most of my money as my uncle housed and fed me. I spent half of my savings to buy a new truck when I got my license. This made me extremely popular with my classmates and especially the girls. I never dated the same girl for more than a month and before the end of my senior year I had dated all the girls I found interesting at my school. Once again I say my lack of commitment is probably tied to some mother issues and trust.

My body was strengthened by all the hard labor over the summer. My junior and senior year in high school I had the fastest swim times in three events for the state and was ranked in the top 50 in country. I was also considered a four star prospect for football at the tight end position. I had many scholarship offers but really didn’t see the need for college.

I choose to go work for my uncle after I graduated high school instead. He recently purchased a large plot of land that was six square miles and included a small mountain. The mountain included two camp grounds on either side of the mountain. There was also a large log cabin near one of them. My uncle allowed me to manage the property while I was in trade school getting my HVAC, electrical and plumbing licensees. I had a plan to make the property a profitable investment for my uncle.

Over the next three years I changed one of the campgrounds into a mini-house park. The other campground remained a seasonal family place and was located on a small lake. I had purchased 24-foot trailers and framed up small houses on the trailers, buying into the tiny house on wheels revolution. I also built a small general store at the family campground, 20' x 30', which was run by one of renters at the mini-house park in exchange for free housing. I priced the goods in the store almost at cost which made everyone happy and the both campgrounds popular. I purchased a T5 internet connection for the MHP, mini house park. The T5 was the best available consumer internet connection available. The campground was 30 minutes away from Duke and UNC and as I predicted students would jump at the cheaper housing. I managed to build 30 units in three years and easily booked each one. The students loved the simple living and cheaper housing and I tended to rent the units to mostly to female students. I know what you are thinking, and yes, it was deliberate. The town police was only five minutes down the road and I formed a strong relationship with the officers during the time I developed the property. They would drive by the campground at the start and each of their shifts for me. My guess would be in part due to our friendship and partly because of the 40 coeds living there. I also paid to have a private security firm patrol both campgrounds at night. The family campground was situated on a small lake and I built a small prefab log cabins and updated the common facilities and every camp site, including adding two wind turbines at the top of the mountain to power both sites. I had 42 camp sites on the second property and hired a student to manage it and live one of the cabins for free. The site was family friendly and I got rave reviews after the first year. It soon had a long waiting list for vacationing families. I also modernized the log cabin that was now my home. My place was 200 yards past the MHP campground. At 22 years old I was financially secure. I dated a lot of the coeds who rented from me but never let it develop into anything. I was successful, active, happy and surrounded by beautiful college women. What more could a guy ask for?

So now you ask where does me being a VR player come in? Well this once again comes back to my uncle. My uncle was obsessed with VR. He always purchased the newest tech on the market. When I first started working for my uncle during the summer he had the full sensory bodysuit and helmet. Over the next seven years my uncle kept getting the best equipment. He even had the sensory integration implant surgery. The Cocoon, the most sophisticated VR device ever built was coming out in soon from Crystal Horizons. Crystal Horizons was planning to release its signature game, Fantasy Realms, in conjunction with the Cocoon. Fantasy Realms was the most anticipated game release of the century. It was a massive world constructed in the last five years by an advanced A.I.. It was touted as an evolving and highly interactive world. The Cocoon device cost more than a new top of the line BMW. Of course my uncle ordered one. As its release approached it dominated the news and internet forums.

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Sixty days from release a huge announcement came out. One thousand randomly selected persons who purchased the Fantasy Realms Promo Cocoon would have game access two weeks early. They called it a ‘soft’ release. Everyone else who purchased the FRPC would get game access a week early. The promotion worked and over four hundred thousand units were sold. This caused the soft release to be pushed back four days in order to make sure everyone had their Cocoon installed and ready. Now, not only did you have to buy this ridiculously priced Cocoon but you had to purchase the game for a grand and then pay a monthly subscription fee of two hundred dollars. You could also play the game without a Cocoon and use a PC with a less sophisticated VR unit but the game hype was the immersion factor. The Cocoon was also specially designed to take advantage of the sensory integration implant. I didn’t see the appeal with the real world being right in front of me. I had tried my uncle’s VR stuff at his insistence and it was fun. Playing a commando, a space fighter pilot, a sultan... but I preferred to be grounded and these were just distractions.

My uncle won the ‘raffle’ and got his golden ticket and came flying up the road to the log cabin. I heard his truck rush into the driveway which sent Flicka, my Australian Shepard, off barking. I was meeting with Amanda and Lucy in my cabin. Amanda ran the general store and Lucy ran the campground. Both were students at UNC. My uncle didn’t even knock and came flying through the door into the common room waving his letter. My uncle stopped in his tracks when he noted the company I had. We were at the table going over propane sales and deliveries.

“Uh, Ben. Sorry to interrupt. I won the lottery.” He stated more subdued.

Amanda eyes lit up, “How much did you win!”

“Well it wasn’t a dollar amount, just a new game.” Ed said as he thought. “Although it is quite valuable, some people are offering a hundred grand for an early access code on the FR forums.”

Amanda’s eyes got hungry. She was a little bit of a gold digger and I had a brief fling with her when she first started working for me. She was still overtly flirtatious but I was not interested. I got up to end the conversation, “Amanda and Lucy we can talk Wednesday about everything else. I think my uncle wants to celebrate with me.” I smiled at the women as I ushered them out.

My two employees got up to leave with Amanda sizing up Uncle Ed like a piece of meat. If Ed was so excited about the game he would probably take Amanda up on any offer I thought. I headed over to my black walnut liquor cabinet and got the Crown Royal Maple bottle. I am not really a whisky drinker but I grew partial to this brand and flavor. I spent the next three hours polishing off the bottle with Ed and listening to his excitement about his golden ticket and the game. Eventually Ed left and I am was able to crash. I had a big day tomorrow as I was seeking a permit from the town to build eight more house trailers at this site and a large pavilion at the family campground. The trailers were a great investment as they paid for themselves in three years!

My cell phone rang at 3:00am. It was deputy Carl from the town sheriff. It took me a while to clear the fog and lingering buzz to make out what he is saying. Ed hit a deer last night and it came though the windshield causing him to loose control of the vehicle. He didn’t survive. I hung up speechless. I was in a daze. Ed was a second father to me. The next week passed and my father and aunt came down for the funeral. There were over two hundred people at the funeral as my uncle was popular. I was in a daze the entire time and I really have trouble recalling any details of the affair.

The reading of the will had just me, my dad and my aunt mentioned. Ed had a good amount of life insurance. My aunt gets half, a little over a million dollars. The other half went Ed’s old high school as a gift. My dad is willed both lumber yards, Ed’s six acre estate, and half his bank assets. This bank assets were close to 700 grand. I was willed the mountain, all assets on the mountain, his luxury house construction company and the other half of the bank assets. As the lawyer reads along I have a caveat, I have to get sensory integration implant surgery and take over his character in the Fantasy Realms game. Apparently Ed had updated his will four months ago when he ordered the Cocoon. I have two weeks to fulfill the guidelines in the will or I would lose the mountain and only get the three hundred grand from Ed’s bank account.

I spent the next week grieving the loss of my uncle while the Cocoon was delivered and installed in my log cabin and the account information was transferred to me. I had decided to follow through and get the surgery. It was an outpatient procedure and the doctors said it was very safe. It basically tapped into the bodies senses in the brain. A plug in port right above the right ear accesses the implant. The only issue was an EMP would cause a major crippling headache until the hardware could be replaced.

My dad dropped off the special early release of Fantasy Realms since it had been delivered to Ed’s house and he also had a whole bunch of notes my uncle had prepared to play the game. I had fifteen days till the games soft launch date..

I did get the permits approved from the town so I was preparing to build the pavilion and eight new trailers as the days ticked by. My uncle's construction company was really just five guys. They built three houses a year and the group had all the skills necessary to complete a build after a foundation was in. I checked the books and Ed paid them all extremely well and he usually took home $60,000 to $100,000 on each build. It helped a lot that he got materials at a lower cost through his two lumber yards. Ed had four projects lined up so I just let things stand status quo.

The launch day finally came and I reluctantly uncovered the Cocoon. It was a glossy black coffin on a raised platform. At least coffin is how I would describe it. The device was plugged into my T5 line and the platform below the device had numerous screens and ports. I grabbed the game cassette and slide it into drive in the base. The machine came to life and one of the screens came alive. Progress said it would take 45 minutes to bring the Cocoon completely online and I just waited. When it finished the screen changed to “Global Game Launch: 54 minutes”.

I opened the black Cocoon, my uncle had selected the black color, and as I moved a step extended from the base to make entry easy. I had read through my uncle’s research and notes and had a good idea on a character to create. It built off of one of the many builds my uncle had worked on. My uncle had planned to build a charismatic guild leader with a focus on melee but I thought I would do a solo build focused on enchanting. It was way down on his preferred character build list but I only planned to log in a few hours a week to satisfy the will requirements.

I climbed into the coffin and plugged the cord into the socket behind my ear. An icon entered my vision, “Log in? Yes/No.” I settled into the easy clean memory foam lining. It was actually more comfortable than my bed. The coffin had the new car smell. I mentally selected “Yes” and drifted off.