“Fired?!” Sasha asked, crying out. It was… not pretty. It took a second for him to get ahold of himself, crying a little and his knee bouncing. After a minute he calmed down a bit, getting his breathing steady, though his fidgeting still made his anxiety obvious. “Why am I fired? Is it because I blew up last week? I… I brought cookies. Everyone likes cookies!”
“First of all, I’m going to need you to calm down.” His boss said, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Look, I understand that you’ve had your job for years but… we’re downsizing.”
“So… how long do I have?” He sighed, his cheeks still red from crying.
“We’re breaking the news as everyone comes in, so I’ve moved the schedule so that everyone gets their last day. The new equipment comes at the end of the week, and since this is an at will state… you will be fired by then. ”
“So… Today's my last day?” Sasha sked, sighing and nodding. “At least that’s a bit less to worry about.”
“Not exactly…” His boss looked a little embarrassed. “We don’t have that many people for your position, so your schedule is normal until the equipment arrives… check the new schedule, and think of it as a bonus, I guess.”
“Okay I… I’m going to settle my mind.” Sasha sighed, walking out the door and going outside. It was at times like this he kind of wished he smoked, but he didn’t go in for that. Neither tobacco or weed, though he sometimes wished he did. Of course, weed did get legalized years ago, and what had happened in states before happened everywhere else, it instantly got corporatised. Weed became just another commodity spoon fed to the population.
For the rest of the day Sasha went to work and worked hard. He listened to his audiobooks and tried to veg out, but it was… difficult. His coworkers didn’t come in early like him, so he had to listen to each of them as many learned that they too were losing their position. Some of them had longer than he did, but it seemed that his little slice of, well, earth was being scooped up into the literal machine.
Sasha couldn’t help them, he didn’t even have his own emotional control, how could he help other people. So instead he just quietly sobbed as he washed dishes. He knew no one cared if tears got in the first sink.
At the end of the day, he went home slowly, and fell into bed. The silence of his room was broken by a notification chime, he was getting mail. It was… for his headset? While the gaming hardware had a mail function, very few people other than the game companies and manufacturer ever used it. With a shrug he put his helmet on and leaned back, allowing himself to fall into the mail that was sent right to his brain.
Hello. You are being offered an opportunity. A glimpse into a new world. Will you accept? (Y/N) By accepting you are accepting an NDA, which means you will not be allowed to discuss the contents of this B-Mail for 1 month.
Of course, what did Sasha have to lose? With a mental press of the button, he accepted, and the contents of the message revealed themselves.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
You are being invited to the special public beta. You can become a member of the first group to enter Plastikos Online, a new gaming experience guaranteed to be unique for every player. We have footage from the closed beta, but you have been chosen to be one of the content creators who will work with the game and help to discover bugs.
Below was a link, and absentmindedly he clicked it, bringing up a youtube video that seemed at first it might be one of the lame ones from a kickstarter. The kind where some boring guy sat there and talked about their journey... Instead, it opened into a full trailer far more amazing than what he could have hoped for..
The view started with something pulled right out of google earth. A sphere that looked like earth rotated, but the continents were completely wrong. “A massive precisely generated world, created only under AI input." As the view panned around the world dozens of continents could be seen, some seeming almost monolithic in biome, while others were far more varied and patchwork. Every type of environment that the planet held, and hundreds that it never had, were spread around the world. Some areas seemed natural while others didn’t.
“Thousands of unique cultures, coming from organic interactions, built from building blocks of our own world.” This voice was different from the first, more flirty. One view seemed like Egypt with massive wetlands fed by a beautiful river between miles of natural desert. Another like China, a massive city built into beautiful mountains with beautiful terraced farming and imperial guards. In one scene massive crowds gathered around a step pyramid in the jungle, watching blood flow down grooves and cheering. In another, Norse style long boats clashed, warriors diving into the sea to fight under gray and stormy skies.
It was incredible he could really smell and taste the environment. In the full immersion VR technology that had been available for years, but never utilized out of vanity projects and porn. “Gods clash, massive battles between magic and mystery. Wars on the edge of beginning between thousands of supernatural factions and thousands of mundane ones at any time.” The view shifted to magic, showing people who seemed larger than life… literally. Some were human, most weren't. These were powerful forces, obviously.
“As many unique ways to play as there are players.” This time the view would cut between pieces of footage. The footage had to have come from Alpha play. One player, it seemed, had a HUD straight out of an MMO, little widgets and buttons activating in a flash with the rest of his screen dominated with various functions even as he fought. Another looked like a puzzle game, using weird arcane Tetrominos to build patterns in the middle of the screen that would disappear as their hands waved and create magical effects. Another was sitting at a desk, playing with something that looked like a city builder game, all of which was hovering magically over a piece of paper and changing in real time as they wrote. Every Ad had a new set of views, each one unique and showing off the personality of the players. Even when the same element was shown, such as spellcasting or city building, there were slight differences that seemed adapted for preferences.
“What will your game look like?” The voice asked as the screen grew black, slowly fading like the Elder Scrolls Oblivion trailer. Slowly an NPC was rendered in perfect realism, who was revealed to be the one speaking. They looked like live action, but as they were shown millions tried to find their faces and they were never found. They would say a single line that would represent them, one unique thing, and slowly fade away into black void. The void would stay blank until the Plastikos logo, bright and monochromatic gray, would slowly appear. No sound, no movement, nothing else would happen for five whole seconds. Finally, after all of that, the video or stream that it was playing in front of would start.
The ad left Sasha shaking. It was a magical experience, and feeling it in VR made it so much more intense. He bet anyone who had his chance would be incredibly happy, and so maybe he could be too. It was a lot of hopes and dreams but with a start in the beta within his grasp he sent a simple response.
“I’m In.”