Sorp has the honor of testing the device first. This is how things went, Sorp has priority. He has the money. And he is the de facto leader of the group, due to his strength.

He had been the leader since they were budding teens. And the position only stabilized once his fighting money rolled in.

The process didn’t need a detail scan or probing of his body. This was because the test device was an extremely well contained and controlled environment.

There were many limitations and anyone could drop in and out at will. Perpetual Power had spent astronomical amounts of resources on developing this device.

This device only use was this small, limited simulation. But it was still far more expensive than any other one device they had created, due its requirements.

The attendant stood a small distance away while two women strapped Sorp in. The final touch was connecting a small device that would transfer information to and from his mind.

Before the device was ready, Sorp had to be fed a few precautionary responses from the device, making sure it was working right.

Sorp was exceptional in his sensory capabilities. This wasn’t something that he himself knew about. After all he was just one person, uneducated and poor. Not so poor anymore.

To have exceptional sensory capabilities, it meant you could feel pain in a more transcendent way. It was still pain, but it meant more than just, this hurts.

Sorp didn’t really like or dislike pain. But he was clear that this is what they were doing. They were inflicting pain on him at varying intensity.

With his in depth relationship with pain, he realized on the first response what they were doing. At the intensity they were sending it, it was like a tiny prick of a straw.

It never went beyond pinching, but Sorp felt it in more depth. Being hurt meant he was under attack.

His eyes began to constrict. If he hadn’t already fought that day, he might feel like leaping at the attendants. He gave the woman holding a small device a look.

Sorps eyes were exceptional. When she saw him turning towards her she looked up. But she froze when she made eye contact with him.

It was hard to maintain your calm when Sorp intentionally made eye contact with you. She froze. She wasn’t sure what to do. But she on reflex continued the responses.

Everytime she sent something to Sorp, she would see it his eyes. What she didn’t expect was that she liked it. She felt an unknown sensation of control. Over this towering human.

And Sorp was beast of a man. He had a coarse shaven beard that looked like it could never be shaved clean.

Because of this distraction she kept increasing the tests. It wasn’t until another attendant saw something was wrong and whispered in her ears that she came to a stop.

She felt embarrassed but still was incredibly excited. This was a new high for her. She had to excuse herself. This was unheard for a Perpetual Power employe.

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Everyone watched her leave before confirming if Sorp was ready to be connected. Which he was. He didn’t understand anything that was going on. He remained because he trusted his friends.

he was asked to close his eyes and try and calm down. This wasn’t actually required to connect but they would always ask it of people.

Sorp never felt nervous at any point of this experiment. He was confused why a tiny woman was capable of attacking from a device as small as phone.

He had only been connected to a device that was behind his ears, yet his entire body had been assaulted. It was too weak to merit a real response from him, but he still felt confused.

Once his eyes closed and the device connected him, he was standing in a dark room. A normal person wouldn’t see a thing, but Sorp felt like he could sense where the four walls were.

This room was meant to acclimate people to the new world. Instead of just throwing them in a bright fantasy.

In small increments the lighting increased. He was still in a white room. Four walls, a floor and a ceiling.

When the light stabilized, a crack appeared on one of the walls. It was a straight line that split into two directions and stretched to form a door.

The door opened slowly into a small garden with a pond. Butterflies could be seen a small distance away. Somewhere birds were chirping in a tree.

Sorp was more confused than ever. What is this? He didn’t like this surrounding. It might feel real, but it was too fake for him. He even breathed heavily out of his nose in indignation.

Outside, where his friends and attendants were. Two of the three women were watching with calm expressions. They were looking at various statistics.

This was just a precautionary thing. Sometimes people panicked and had to be pulled out of the device. Some people couldn’t handle virtual reality.

It was almost a certainty that people’s heart rate would spike, this was excitement and wonder. But Sorp’s data never changed. It was as if he hadn’t been sent in at all.

They weren’t sure what to make of it, they double and triple checked. He was in the world, there was no mistake. They even went so far as to pull up a screen.

Just as they did they saw Sorp reach out and crush a butterfly. Then he frowned. He looked around. Stopping when he saw a bird jumping on the grass poking its beak into the ground.

Sorp’s friends felt this was expected and already realized what was happening. But the attendants were confused. It was one thing to crush a butterfly, it wasn’t unheard of.

The bird felt Sorp close in, he was in full sprint. It took to fly into the air. But how could it outrun Sorp?

It had gained some air when a hairy hand grabbed it. Sorp was two meters in the air. An absurd height to jump, for a human.

He crashed into ground with a small tremor. The bird tweeted in a frenzy. Sorp had a small smile. Like a tender giant holding a friend.

But his friends saw it in another way. Kom could only shake his head. The rest didn’t really care. They had known Sorp since he was a toddler. This was who he was.

The crunching sound from the bird reached them and the attendants couldn’t help but grimace. What is this? They felt odd.

It wasn’t that Sorp gave of the feeling of a gentle person, but his eyes and his smile. It was a strong contrast to the brutality. The blood dripped from his hands.

Sorp smiled a bright smile before bursting into laughter.

‘It’s real.’

He could play something like this. It just needed more than little birds. Something bigger preferably. Humans would be good. This was what he thought.

Soon Sorp was pulled out. He came out with his usual smile. He looked at Kom in a knowing way. Kom beamed with pride.

The next person went in and they all tried to mimic Sorp, but to catch a bird like that wasn’t easy and they just made fool of themselves.

It was only Dart that just casually wandered about, he even went so far as to taste the water. At that point his eyes widened. It really did taste like water.

After that he went to a rock and broke the skin on his finger. Tasting the blood. It was exactly the iron taste of blood. This was unimaginable. It really was like blood.

Kom had gone inside right after Sorp. They were now getting ready to purchase the required equipment.

They even went with the procedure of directly linking their minds. These were people that didn’t really care about the grand scheme of things. They felt like the more real the world was, the better.

Sorp was maybe the most enthusiastic about the whole thing. He might seem like a pure brute that longed only to fight. And he was. But it was different from being mindless.

He was very aware that he couldn’t attack people on the street at whim. He had learned that the hard way. Numerous times he had only escaped because of his friends and their families.

Perhaps now he could act more brazenly, but he didn’t want to implicate his friends. This was the protective instinct in him. One of his most powerful instincts.

The devices to lie down in were like futuristic beds. Any doctor or nurse would identify them as designer hospital beds.

It would make sure your body’s posture was right, to mitigate any discomfort when ejecting from the Virtual environment.

By the time they drove back home, a van from the Perpetual Power company were outside and a dozen of them had broken through the concrete and opened up the ground.

They were connecting this old, rundown house to a data grid. An overwhelmingly powerful data grid. Something no normal person would be able to making full use of.

With the crew there were guards holding automatic rifles. This was standard practice. This area is too dangerous. The Ring was too large to maintain without military presence.

Sorp just glanced at them and walked towards his apartment. He wasn’t very interested in guns. They all owned guns but they took out all the fun. This is how Sorp felt.