The summer heat filled the school with a boiling anger that could rival a burning star. Everybody except for the honors students had to endure the sweltering heat. Those lucky bastards always got special treatment. “Ah, what am I saying?” I spoke almost silently to myself. I knew fully well that if I put in a bit of effort I could have been there. As it would turn out though I am just an exceedingly lazy person. I chose in the eighth grade to not pursue anything greater than a dead-end job where I didn’t have to do much in life. I knew that if I performed well in school I’d be expected to go to a fancy college and earn a pointless degree like my older brother. That life didn’t appeal to me much.

“Hey, Derek, you there? Earth to Rek. Come in?” my friend Jack spoke behind me, trying to get my attention for the millionth time today. Lacking any energy to respond to him in any viable way I just grunted and shrugged my shoulders.

“You gonna come to the midnight release of ‘Universe: Onset’ with us?” he kept pestering. I had pre-ordered it earlier in the year, but I had just intended on waiting for the day after release to go pick it up from the store. I pondered my answer a moment before asking “Depends, are you going to give me a ride?” knowing that I didn’t have a vehicle or even a license to drive into the city to go to the store. At that moment, the bell rang signaling the end of the last day of my senior year. Our teacher who had been sitting in front of a fan all day stood up to give us some bogus speech about how we were great students and that we should keep following our education. No thanks

Stretching, I stood up and waited for Jack to answer me. “So?” I asked him again breaking his trance. Just how was he not covered in sweat? “Uh… yeah sure. It would be easier if you could just come with me until the release. Think your dad would be alright with that?” I nodded, and we went to his house. Rather, his apartment. At least it has air conditioning. To wait for the release, we gathered a group of friends around from school, each of us with the same aspirations in life. Be lazy, and have fun.

There was only a few of us in the group. Luke, a short person with a brown hair, freshly cut into a bowl cut. Then there was Jack, probably the most athletic of us all. Still wearing a hooded jacket in the heat of summer, and black hair that he haphazardly cuts by himself. Kade, an average looking guy with brown eyes, and brown straight hair. Then there is me, a bit on the heavier side and a bit of muscle… but that might just be me lying to myself. Who knows? My hair currently overgrown and shaggy, hanging in front of my eyes blocking some of my vision with brown strands. As for my eyes, I can’t decide what to call them. Green, blue, gray, I get these answers from a lot of people, and nobody can agree on my eye color. I have gotten an honest answer before though, the best way to describe my eyes would be ‘light colored’.

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Jack provided us with some snacks while we waited, in all honesty I wasn’t too hungry. The heat outside still makes me feel sick even though I’m currently in a cool air conditioned room. We’re all sitting down conversing about what we’re going to be doing when we start playing in Universe: Onset, Jack plans on trying to conquer a galaxy all to himself, killing any players that enter. He made clear to tell us that we would be killed on sight as well if we entered his galaxy without his permission. Luke informed us all that he planned on doing a lot of PVMing. Kade said that he wanted to do the same thing. When they had asked me what I planned on doing, I said that I wasn’t sure. I find that if I have a plan before entering a game, I tend to not have quite as much fun. Although, in the middle of my explanation Luke shouted while looking down at his smartphone. “New gameplay released!” as soon as he said that Jack took Luke’s phone and cast the video onto the television.

The gameplay wasn’t authorized of course, it was a camera recording of a fight that happened between a player and a game dev during the closed beta stages of the game. The speed of the fight was incredible. The player was zooming around the dev’s larger battlecruiser space ship while dodging the sluggish missiles from the battlecruiser. The smaller player’s ship was much weaker, but made up for it in it’s speed. The player couldn’t do much damage at all to the battlecruiser, despite being able to out maneuver the large ship, they couldn’t manage to hit it very much due to the superb control of the turrets by the battlecruiser’s team of pilots. Shortly the battle was finished, with the battlecruiser implementing the use of an EMP. After disabling the systems of the smaller ship, it was destroyed in an instant.

Each of us sat in awe at the speed of the battle and how large the battlecruiser was. Up until now, nobody knew what the scale of the game was going to be like. We only knew that it was an open universe sandbox game that was quickly becoming one of the most anticipated games in the world.

Six P.M. rolled around and we made our way to the store to wait until midnight. As expected there was already a long line of people. We patiently waited and conversed with one another over small things, made bets on who would die first in the game out of our group. My money is on Jack. The hours slowly ticked by, while more and more people showed up behind us. By the time the sun set, there was a group of people out front of the store that resembled a bit of an angry mob. The noise was loud, and tensions were high. Typical game release stuff. An employee came down the line handing out stickers with numbers on them, explaining that when the game was released they’d call in a range of numbers to enter the store to get their copy of the game. I was assigned the number 99, while the rest of my group had the numbers 98, 97, and 96.

A few more hours of waiting and we were called into the store in groups of 20 each. I got my copy of the game, and we went home. Jack drove us around, delivering us to our houses. My dad was already asleep by the time I got home, and I was a bit tired myself. Rather than just going to bed, I put the game into my computer, and donned my VR headset, grabbed my controllers and got ready to play Universe: Onset.