After the awkward conversation with Spoon and his fetish for AIs, Gray had to admit he was curious about this AI, Nadia, at the very least.
Usually, an AI's avatar is set by the human who sets it up. As for which one to pick, the most popular avatars are designed by experts. Gray only had a few very rudimentary AIs that were completely non-sentient. In fact, calling them AI could be considered a stretch.
AIs handled many valuable functions from driving public transportation, public safety, and even personal assistants in this age. AIs were forbidden from joining law enforcement and the Military outside of advisory roles. Why? Skynet…
Gray thought, "I remember that someone said your AI's avatar was a mirror reflection of your dreams… I don't exactly know what that means, but since I don't have an AI with an avatar, that could mean I do not have any dreams!"
For some reason, thinking about this made Gray a little depressed. He sometimes wished he could go back to his past self and change a few things.
Finally coming back to his apartment, Gray notices a conspicuous red button lying on the ground in front of his building. It looked like the kind you used to be able to get from that office supply chain "Staples" as a joke. It had the word 'RESET' in bold letters, and Gray's heart skipped a beat, thinking this could be what he was just thinking about.
"No way!" Said Gray out loud to himself. He picked up the button and looked around to see if anyone may have dropped it or was watching him. Gray closed his eyes, and with genuine heartfelt emotion of wanting to fix the past, he pressed the Reset button firmly.
"RE-RE-RE-RESSSEETTT!" a loud DJ voice boomed from the back of the button. Sadly, that was all that happened. This isn't one of those kinds of novels.
Gray laughed and almost chucked it but thought it might have been a prank someone was playing, so he decided to keep it to prank someone else with it later. "What good are friends if you can't play pranks on them… maybe that's why I don't have many friends?"
Gray could see the new VR bed through the doorway upon entering his apartment. Gray was confident that it was now the most expensive thing he owned, even more expensive than everything else he owned combined. It's not to say that top-of-the-line VR beds are outrageously expensive; Gray was just that poor to begin with. He could've bought one, but he would've had to go without eating for 3 years.
Gray examined his new VR bed. This was the first full dive true VR bed model available to the public and released exclusively for Alterra Online. As a Diamond tier, he got it early, but it was the first of its kind, and nobody else (legally) owned one. The VR bed itself looked sleek. It was a box shape with some white fluffy material covering the top that is supposed to mold to your body. The neural interface unit was at the head of the bed, which looked like half of a solid white donut that one had to put their head upon. All you really needed really was the neural interface unit and the board it used to interface with the network. Almost everyone opted for the whole bed because if you tried to do it sitting up, your body could fall, and you'd lose connection to the game. As for full dive, Gray just assumed the bed had become standard since now you'd be unconscious and wouldn't know if you fell.
It was rumored that your mind will become damaged or disconnected from your body if you suddenly pull out of your neural unit during an intense gaming session. Fortunately, that was all proven not true. When you get moved out of your neural interface unit, your in-game character stops and collapses like a rag doll. As for your body, you will wake up naturally after a minute as if you just had a dream since your body will no longer be forced asleep. Still, full dive VR was new, and Gray was sure some unknown hazards were associated with it.
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Although Gray knew Diamond tier was the highest, he didn't remember exactly what the others were, so he browsed the Alterra Online shop to compare. The site offered 3 levels for Alterra Online: Iron, Gold, and Diamond.
"Weird, normally they do something like Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, then Chuck Norris, but I guess they can pick whatever they want."
Every tier offered the game for life with a one-time payment. Iron-tier basically was just the game. You needed to buy a VR bed separately or share it with someone else. The Gold tier included a VR bed made for Alterra Online. It didn't seem much different than a Diamond Tier except that the Diamond Tier was not for sale and had lifetime service on your VR bed. Humans are the hardware with full-dive VR. The VR bed just carries the signal, translates it, and blocks erroneous outside interference.
In Alterra Online, Diamond-tier players also included several in-game mech and avatar customizations, an upgraded starter mech, and the ability to create a faction of your own in-game.
Gray thought they were talking about guilds, but he noticed this game didn't have a guild function but instead had a team or unit function. It was further explained that teams and factions were very different while fundamentally the same. Teams could complete missions together and have a team bonus applied to the reward scaled with your team's rank if you were all from the same team. Team changing was allowed only once every 24 hours, but the rewards increased the longer you were in the same team. A team's headquarters could only be built in a city. Each city was limited to the number of team headquarters that could be created based on the player and NPC population of the city. Other than that, the team functions were pretty standard.
Creating a faction was what Gray really was impressed with, but it had some strange functions compared to creating a team. Firstly, you had to submit a request to the system to create a faction, including a banner and emblem. Secondly, you would be given a starting HQ inside an existing NPC city as the base for your faction. Expansions were handled by purchasing existing buildings within that city or constructing new buildings over empty lots within the city limits. You needed at least 4 squadrons of mech pilots to be able to create your own faction, compared to just one for a team.
"Weird, why can't we build wherever we want?"
As for the strangest rule regarding factions… factions were not allowed to attack another territory or faction unless given specific permission from an NPC that was a political or military leader. This rule applied to NPC and player-created factions. Personal grudges and group wars were only allowed to be carried out in a simulated arena battle.
"It sounds like NPCs will be able to directly control the players if the players desire war amongst themselves and can't work it out in the arena. A simulated arena in a simulated game makes my head hurt thinking about it."
Finally sitting down on the VR bed, Gray gave it a light bounce. The VR bed was so soft to sit on that it felt like he was sitting on a cloud.
"I can't wait to sleep on this thing!" Gray stopped himself when he realized that a regular bed wouldn't cost more than his college education. "Oh right, time to take this thing for a spin! I've never done full dive VR before, so it will be new to me!"
After inspecting the setup and verifying that everything was plugged in correctly, he noticed that Alterra had upgraded his network connection. A black box with the Alterra Corporation logo sat where his old modem used to be. This box would allow him to use Alterra Corporation's direct Hyper-optic connection to the Internet.
"This… this thing has more bandwidth capacity than my workplace… seems like a good use to me!"
Gray laid down on the bed, pulled the neural link chamber over his head, then said, "Start!"
Nothing happened…
Gray pondered for a minute, then said, "Activate!"
Nothing happened again…
Gray was getting a little annoyed, so he just started saying anything he could think of.
"VR On!"
"Materialize!"
"Transform!"
"Go Go Gadget VR bed!"
"When your powers combine, I am Captain Planet!"
"Big bucks big bucks no whammies!"
Finally, that seemed to do something… is what Gray told himself. In reality, Gray finally looked up how to turn it on. He saw that you had to squeeze the included remote to sync it with your unique DNA so someone else can't use it or "accidentally" turn it off while you're playing it. Once the sync is completed, the bed would turn on by pushing the power button while lying in it.
Gray gripped the remote in his hand, and a warm sensation passed through his fingers. A pleasant computerized voice said, "Sync completed!"
Gray pressed the power button with his thumb and then heard the same voice say, "Welcome! Would you like to begin?"
Gray started to feel giddy as he said with extreme enthusiasm, "YES!"