After a long night of pondering in his room, looking up for more information and pondering again, Ricardo felt like he had gotten a somewhat workable plan. Yes, it sounded like madness–a lot of it was put together in a semi-conscious, sleep-deprived trance–but it was well-thought madness. At least it seemed like that for him, even now in the morning, after sleeping on it for a few hours.
Was it still morning? It might be noon already.
He went down to the kitchen, rechecking the outline in his tablet while waiting for the coffee. He took his cup as soon as it was ready, getting back to his room in a dash–too excited to bother in preparing breakfast.
Anyway, now he needed to run his plan by a non invested party. It was time to call Sandro.
----------------------------------------
“So the trip is definitely canceled?” asked Sandro, raising his voice over the background noise.
“Yeah, it's hopeless,” answered Ricardo. “We can't force Minerva to go, nor leave her alone in Lima, given her current state.”
Ricardo, still in PJs, kept making notes on his scheduling app, while his avatar talked to Sandro in a prichat room.
It had been almost noon by the time Ricardo called, catching Sandro pulling out of the driveway on his way to the beach. It seemed Sandro was finally free from his holiday family duties.
“It's still surreal,” said Sandro. “Your little sister having a secret VR boyfriend.”
“You tell me.”
“Anyway, since you're not traveling, do you want your class hours back?”
“About that, I would like for you to keep them as planned.”
“It's okay for me, since I had programmed it already,” said Sandro, talking a pause. “Why though?”
“There's something I must do,” said Ricardo. “Actually, that's why I called you. I have a plan.”
“Whoa, that sounds ominous,” said Sandro, laughing.
“I want to meet Johnny,” said Ricardo. “In VC.”
“Just like that?”
“No, I don't know what are you imagining, but it surely isn't it,” said Ricardo. “I do have a plan.”
“Sorry, will it take long to explain?” said Sandro. “I'll be getting into the highway soon.”
“It might.”
“Then I'll call you later, from the beach house,” said Sandro. “Clara might want to join too.”
“That would be helpful,” said Ricardo, before cutting the call.
----------------------------------------
By lunchtime, Ricardo had already gone through the plan's outline multiple times. Virtual Connection, as a game, was fairly simple: three different stats, three basic classes. That might have been part of it's widespread appeal.
He surely could get his preparations done, level-wise, by the first Friday of January. He had almost two weeks at full dedication; it couldn't be that hard. Maybe he was being overconfident; the gaming forums made it sound so easy, though.
If he was to be honest, the role-playing part was way more worrisome. It had been years since the last time he did it. And playing a convincing female character wasn't that easy. At some point he had introduced minor female NPCs as the DM, but he never prepared a full character sheet for one... Did he?
A sudden memory crossed his mind.
Ricardo went up like a spring, rummaging in his desk's drawers. After a couple of minutes, he finally got what he was looking for: an old backup drive. He connected it to his laptop, searching for the character sheet files in his RPG folder.
He slowly scanned the filenames, recalling the adventures his group had lived through each one, bits of a mostly forgotten part of his past. He had been the DM most of the time, but even then he had quite a few recurrent NPCs, with big background histories of their own.
And finally, he found it. It was one of the first characters he created, one that had never been played, that he never intended to use himself.
It was ironically fitting.
----------------------------------------
Lunch was a mostly silent affair, with Minerva still secluded in her room and no Amelia to force them to enjoy themselves. Food was prepared as an afterthought; leftover turkey, and rice with veggies from a frozen bag. Ricardo finished eating in fifteen minutes and went back to his bedroom, waiting for Sandro to enter the prichat room.
He eyed the VR machine from where he was laying on his bed. It was a black, human-sized pod made mostly of plastic, with a tube linking it to the wall. He knew quite a bit about its functioning–he needed to, if he was to make us of it for professional designing.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Ricardo considered calling from the VR machine for a moment–prichat had been designed for VR use in the first place–but changed his mind.
Soon I'll be spending most of the day inside one.
----------------------------------------
“Hey, wait a minute,” said Clara, interrupting Ricardo. “I'm not sure if I follow.”
“Are you saying that your plan is dating your sister's ex-boyfriend?!” asked Clara, raising the pitch of her voice. “'Cause that's like the craziest thing I've heard in the whole year. And I totally approve!”
Ricardo had finally gone through the plan–well, the main points of it–with Sandro and Clara, Sandro's girlfriend. The later was so interested in the gossip that she changed the beach for a prichat room, at least for a couple of hours.
“Okay, leaving out how you would need to gain twenty levels in twelve days, not only as a VC beginner, but as a complete non-gamer,” said Sandro. “Are you going to be a girl? It's madness.”
“It's VR,” said Ricardo. “I can role-play it; I have done it before, in our RPG sessions.”
“Those were cringy as hell,” interrupted Sandro. “And they were just minor NPCs...”
“That was because you could see and hear ME acting,” said Ricardo. “If I had a female VR body, no one would have been the wiser.”
“Do you even know how much it will cost you?” asked Sandro.
“A thousand dollars,” Ricardo immediately answered. Pay to win–more like pay to deceive in this case–the joy of freemium games.
Virtual Connection was advertised as a way to develop authentic, long-lasting relationships between players from all around the world. And, at face value, it delivered. Anyone could get one character for free, it's VR body a reflexion of their real life self. Anything else had a price tag.
VC actually being a dating game, maybe changing your appearance was pay to win after all.
They kept discussing for another while, mostly about the feasibility of the plan. To help make his case, Ricardo showed them the character sheet he had fetched from his old drive, adjusted for the plan's purposes.
“Did we ever have such a scenario?” asked Sandro. “I can't recall anything like this.”
It was a fair question. The RPG they used to play was a classic sword and sorcery one, in a standard fantasy setting. They had played as elves, dwarves, ogres... Even if they had a human character, he would be a hardened adventurer or the magician prodigy of the age. The female character in question didn't belong there, it was made to not belong in there.
She was a transmigrated schoolgirl.
----------------------------------------
After taking a long break for dinner–Sandro saying they needed time to think about it–Ricardo was back in his bedroom for another long prichat session. He was sure Clara wouldn't be joining them back, though. She tuned out whenever Sandro and him would start getting deep into the details.
Ultimately, they hadn't been decidedly against it; the plan might be doable after all.
“I'm back,” said Sandro, as he entered the virtual room. “Clara won't be joining us; she's tired.”
“I figured that would be the case,” said Ricardo. “It doesn't matter. For voting's sake, she agrees with me.”
“She just wants to see the world burn,” said Sandro, laughing. “But I must admit, it will be amusing if you pull it off.”
“Anyway, if you're really serious about this,” said Sandro. “There's one person who could help you more than anyone.”
“Who?”
“Amelia.”
It was surprising to hear that name from Sandro, not that they didn't know each other. Amelia was at Ricardo's house so often that they had crossed each other in a lot of occasions.
Thinking about telling Amelia of his plan, Ricardo felt uncomfortable. And not only because of their last word exchange.
But it was true, Amelia would be perfect for guiding him in VC. Not only she was a real schoolgirl, she was also a member of the 'Torinelo City Workshops' guild.
Most importantly, she knew Johnny.
----------------------------------------
Ricardo thought about it for awhile. Involving Amelia was, objectively, the smartest choice. The risks were too high for not doing so.
The plan would demand a whole month of his time–and it could alienate Minerva further–not even taking into account the monetary cost.
Sandro, and Clara by extension, were his closest friends. Maybe the only people in the world in front of which Ricardo didn't mind looking as a fool.
Amelia, on the other hand, was his sister's best friend. More than that, she was a friend of the family, a girl two years his junior.
I'm such a coward.
After making the decision, calling Amelia was way easier than he had anticipated. She answered right away, joining him in the prichat room without having to persuade her. She was back to her considerate and caring demeanor, as if their last conversation never took place.
Ricardo treaded lightly for a bit, recapping all that he knew about Johnny and his guild. Amelia filled in with any relevant information she could provide, already proving to be a great asset for the team.
She was genuinely surprised, almost as much as Ricardo had been at first, when he showed her the Speed Dating Club's announcement on the guild's homepage.
And doubly so, when Ricardo told her his intentions to participate in it.
“This, I could have never imagined...” said Amelia, after Ricardo finished telling her a condensed outline of the plan.
“Does it seem doable?” asked Ricardo, fidgeting with his fingers. If the plan was approved by Amelia, it would mean it was probably good to go.
“I guess it makes sense in principle,” said Amelia. “And I would like to know the truth about Johnny as much as you do; I never expected things to end up in the way they did.”
“There are a few changes I would suggest, though,” continued Amelia after a short pause.
“Like...”
“For starters, your character should be a university student. There's no way you could make a convincing teenage schoolgirl.”
Amelia, that was savage... And probably true.
----------------------------------------
That night, Ricardo left prichat excited and more than a little worried.
He was going to do it for real.
After selling the idea all day long, he should have been happy that his plan could convince so many people. He was scared instead. A part of him had wanted for Sandro and the rest to tell him he was crazy, that his plan would never work. He would trash it and keep going with his old same life.
On the contrary, the more he talked about it, the more fleshed out it became, and the more viable it seemed in the eyes of other people. By the day's end, Amelia had committed to help him, and even Sandro was enthusiastic with the idea. There was no way out now.
He was going to sleep on it one last time.
Tomorrow would mark the first day of his VC adventure.