4

Synchronize

By the time Rian unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer of his mom’s house, he’d been wracking his brain for so long that he almost didn’t see the package sitting in the living room.

He froze. No way that’s what I think it is.

As he stepped forward, he recognized it, exactly as he remembered: the box for a MIRROR-XF4 headset.

He flipped on the lights. There was a note taped to the box. Tugging it free, he held it up and read.

Rian, I’m so sorry about what happened. Those bastards ought to get what they deserve for hurting you like that. When I heard about what they did, I bought another headset for you. I hope when you wake up, you’ll get to have as much fun as you were meant to have that day.

This might sound confusing, but something very, very strange just happened, and I want to make sure that it was real. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you what’s going on or where I am right now. I want to hope that you’ll wake up in time, but all I can tell you is this—

No matter what happens, I’ll be waiting for you in the game. Come find me, and I’ll explain everything. I already secured the name, so you’ll know who to look for. :)

Don’t ever give up hope.

Love, Mom.

Rian stood there for a moment longer, then sat down on the floor with the note as he attempted to process everything. He stared at the box.

Another headset.

It was obviously meant to be delivered to his apartment. There was no date on the note or the box’s address tag, but it couldn’t have been here in the days between his injury and his mom’s disappearance.

This had to’ve come recently—after she’d gone missing.

That meant someone else had brought this note and the headset here after the police had finished their investigation. Otherwise, it would’ve been confiscated as evidence. At first, he wasn’t sure if he could even trust the note—that it wasn’t some kind of coded message sent by whoever had abducted her, which was what he assumed had happened.

The note did sound like her, though. And all he had to do, according to it, was do a character search for “Azure” while inside the game to find her. But why the hell was the note being obtuse about what had happened or where she was? Were her kidnappers keeping her from revealing her location? Why would someone want to kidnap a terminally ill woman in the first place?

Rian sighed, setting down the note. There was so much that didn’t make sense.

So she was playing Mirage. From somewhere in the world. Or at least she had been, at the time of the note.

He took a deep breath. The house still smelled faintly of vanilla and cinnamon candles, as he always remembered it.

All right. He was going to do this. All he had to do was log into Mirage, look up his mom’s character, and brace himself for whatever came next.

In a way, he guessed, he was getting what he’d wanted after all. But he sure hadn’t expected his first experience with Mirage to be like this.

He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and opened the box.

***

The headset, a sleek green-gray plastic helmet, fit snugly on Rian’s head. He plugged the incredibly long cable from the back of the headset into the router at the corner of the living room, then plugged in the power cable. Thankfully, since the payment for utilities was automatic, everything in the house was still working. It was just a matter of time until those funds ran out, but he could worry about that later.

Sitting on the couch, he pulled out the manual from the box to read it over. As worried as he was about Mom, taking a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t about to botch his entry into the game would do some good in the long run, he supposed.

There was no visor on the headset, as Mirage was streamed directly into the players’ brains via powerful electromagnetic waves. Somewhere around here he still had his old headset for his first VRMMORPG, ElmSaga—which he’d probably have to sell off soon to keep things running. But that headset was nothing compared to this. He flipped through the manual again, in awe at how insane the technology was.

Upon entering Mirage at full synchronization, the player’s body would become paralyzed as if they were dreaming. It was recommended that he lay down in a comfortable position before hitting the ON switch.

Nothing that could go critically wrong, from the look of it. The headset was at least idiot-proof, but he was always a bit paranoid when jumping into full-immersion games that involved momentary loss of consciousness. He set the manual aside.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Lying on the couch, he took a deep breath and hit the switch on the headset. Nothing happened for a moment. Then a mechanism inside began to whir, spinning faster until it hummed.

Bright blue text appeared on his ceiling.

If you can read this, congratulations on your purchase!

His jaw dropped. It was working. The headset was projecting images into his brain while awake. That was a first. His old headset couldn’t even do anything until the user was conked out.

When he glanced down, the text followed his line of sight and remained in the center of his vision. The message faded, and another took its place.

Please review the End-User License Agreement.

Ugh. Okay, he probably should’ve seen this coming. He considered skipping it, but he had a bad feeling: how many times had he read stories about people ignoring this thing only to discover later that it was hiding some kind of horrific clause that would completely screw them over later?

A wall of text followed, and Rian focused on the lower edge, forcing it to scroll down. He skimmed it, only finding information about not being able to sue Mirage’s development company, Reflect Systems, if anything went wrong—including how they’re not liable for injuries sustained while playing; had to be 18 to play, and so on. Standard stuff.

He focused on the AGREE button and, as he looked, a loading circle appeared around the option and began to fill up. He stared and let the circle fill to completion.

Immediately, the headset began to download and install a patch for Project Mirage Online. Rian sighed. All these hoops to jump through. All he wanted to do was check if Azure was online.

The patch completed in two seconds.

He stared at the PATCH COMPLETE message. There hadn’t even been a loading bar, but it made sense. The game was hosted on Reflect Systems’ quantum server, so the headset was just a connection device. Most of its storage and CPU power was for processing brain signals.

The server, however, was supposedly capable of simulating infinite variations of the game world at once, calculating and accounting for every possible outcome simultaneously. How it all worked was a trade secret, of course, but the demos had made it clear that it worked.

There’d been a rumor before release day that the server was capable of predicting the future via quantum mechanical shenanigans, and that was how they were able to stream data for the game to the headsets. It made everything nigh-instantaneous. They hadn’t just abolished lag by establishing zero latency between the players and the server; there was negative latency.

Rian glanced at the notes for version 1.0.40, the latest patch, as they appeared in his vision. There were some slight balancing changes for certain classes, a new “Temporal Rift” area—whatever that was—and some new cosmetic options available. It seemed not much had changed in over a year.

The patch notes fell away, and the central VR hub opened across his ceiling. There were a few options for other immersive experiences, like movies and online shopping: the usual stuff his old headset had. He scrolled past them and found the box he was looking for.

Bright blue, with stylized text, there was the icon for Project Mirage Online.

Here we go.

As he selected it, the box faded to black and expanded to fill up most of his vision, spreading like a night sky inside the living room. White text wrote itself onto the dark.

Welcome.

This game utilizes a system referred to as half- and full-synchronization, allowing players to remain in the game world during breaks from play. As you will not be conscious of your physical body while playing in full synchronization, it is recommended that players take one (1) five-minute break for every hour of game time.

A break every hour? Rian nearly chuckled. Who would actually do that?

To avoid injury to players, there is a mandatory limit of consecutive game time. This limit is 4 hours. When this limit has been reached, the game will automatically switch to half-synchronization and the player will be penalized. You can check your remaining time by using the in-game menu; please use half-synchronization before the time limit. A minimum of five minutes spent in half-sync will accrue 4 more hours of game time in full-sync.

Okay, that made sense. There was something similar in ElmSaga—a kick-out mechanism, booting people from the game to prevent blood clots due to staying in one position for so long. Except, for Mirage, the player could technically remain in the game. Or at least “halfway” in the game. Even though the EULA thoroughly protected Reflect Systems, thanks to the half-sync mechanism no one could even attempt to blame the game for injuring them due to anyone’s negligence other than their own. Lots of rules for this technology, but he supposed it was worth it.

Beginning setup.

A wave of electricity, slightly uncomfortable, spread over his scalp. Was that normal, he wondered? His old headset hadn’t done that.

Cognitive Mirror 99.04% operational; minimum benchmark achieved.

Key-and-lock sequence complete.

Beginning half-sync test.

Whoa, what? Cognitive Mirror? What the hell was that? Some kind of new proprietary tech? He didn’t remember seeing that in the manual.

Light pierced the ambient dark behind the text, merging with the walls of the living room. Where before there had been soft blue wallpaper, the wooden planks of an inn appeared.

Rian gently tilted his head to look around. Everything in the room was still there—the TV, the coffee tables, the couch, and the kitchen—but the materials had changed. The tables were of lacquered wood, and the lamps atop them were candles instead. The walls shimmered as if a hologram had appeared over top of everything.

Half-synchronization achieved.

To avoid injury, it is recommended that you play Project Mirage Online while lying down on a comfortable surface. Please adjust yourself now.

He was kind of nervous, as he always was, jumping into a new full-body VR game for the first time. Even in ElmSaga, the feeling of falling asleep against your will was a little frightening, like being anesthetized.

Beginning full-synchronization in 10… 9…

Rian’s body sank into the couch. A pleasant, encompassing warmth soothed his fear as the countdown ticked its way to zero.