Grandma Jennifer was a lady who was approaching eighty years old and who, unlike Xia, was still able to cross a pedestrian crossing before the traffic light turned red again. She owned a spacious house that she had built together with her husband in her youth in what at the time was a space in nature and which over time became part of a large inhabited neighborhood as the city continued to expand; the house was on two floors and had a basement garage spacious enough for two cars, on the first floor there were three rooms and a bathroom while on the second floor there was a spacious kitchen with a dining room and a large French window that led to a large balcony, so spacious that it can be used for outdoor lunches and dinners during the summer.
The house still had various pieces of oriental furniture which harked back a bit to the Chinese cultural roots of Jennifer's now deceased husband, who died of a heart attack seven years before Xia's mother returned to her mother's nest, and Jennifer had welcomed them reluctantly under her roof. When they returned home they found her sitting under an umbrella on the balcony, busy observing the horizon, where thanks to the strategic position of the house it was possible to glimpse the ocean. She sat leaning with her elbows on the table, a cigarette – she was among the small minority of people still smoking cigarettes in Canada, approximately two million in 2040 – still lit between two fingers.
“Welcome back girls,” she said, bringing her brown eyes to them, “how did it go to the psychologist?”
It was Maylin who responded first, “well, it seems like it was the right choice for Xia, they already get along really well!” She exclaimed with a wide smile.
Instead of correcting her, Xia simply nodded, “I also received a gift. A virtual reality set.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes and brought the cigarette to her lips to take a deep drag of tobacco. “yeah, I know that filth. They say that the electromagnetic waves of the NexNet cause brain cancer, lowers the IQ and makes you susceptible to subliminal messages in the media.”
“They also said that the moon landing was a hoax and that the Earth is flat, today we can open YouPipe and watch live broadcasts from the American, Chinese and Indian moon bases at any time,” Xia replied, shrugging.
“Whatever, wasting time playing seems stupid anyway,” Jennifer said, sighing a thick gray cloud out of her lungs. She put out her cigarette, “remember that I'm giving you half of the money for the college, so I expect you to get good grades and not grow up a disgrace like your mother.”
"Mom!" Meylin exclaimed, opening her eyes wide and covering her mouth with her hand, "please! Not in front of my daughter!"
"What? Your father was right: I shouldn't have been so permissive with you, you could have become an excellent lawyer or maybe a university professor..." Jennifer wrinkled her nose in disappointment, "instead to get by you do pedicures, hair removal and paint nails!"
“If I'm not needed here, I'd like to go to my room,” Xia said, more than happy to sacrifice her mother in favor of avoiding a long debate about virtual reality technology and its applications.
“Do you really have to act like this, Mom? Isn't the situation complicated enough without you helping to make it worse?” Maylin urged.
“Remember what I said, Xia: excellent grades, or that contraption ends up in the trash,” she turned to Maylin, “you could have at least gotten married when you got pregnant, at least now you would have something more besides your low-paying job and allowances of my niece's social assistance.”
Xia pursed her lips, “quantify 'good grades', if possible,” she didn't bother to defend her mother, after all, what could have she said? Maybe that grandma was being a bit too harsh, but then, she was seventeen, and that was her grandma's house.
“Nothing below an A-,” Jennifer waved a hand at her niece to indicate that she had told her everything there was to say, at least, for that moment.
“A- at least, okay,” Xia said, moving her crutches in anticipation of the movement of the body that would come soon after. She carefully went down the stairs and entered her room, which was little more than a closet in which there was just a single bed, a wardrobe with two doors and a desk with a wooden chair without wheels. It wasn't exactly the gamer station you expect from popular YouPipers like Mikeplier or JoeAsepticNose, but it was more than enough for her.
By listening carefully Xia could still hear her mother and grandmother arguing, so she sat down in the chair, retrieved her futuristic-looking headphones - they even had LEDs - and turned on the computer. After less than twenty minutes of research and reviews she found what according to F2P regulars and experts was the best free video game in terms of graphics, mechanics, story and balance; the game was called 'Legacy of the Ancestors' and required... four and a half hours of download just to install?? Xia clicked on 'download' without further hesitation and started the music at a low volume after opening a few eBooks, just to do something while waiting…
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Dinner time arrived, Xia ate her meal and headed back to her room - after her mother had placed the box with the NexNetVR on her bed - and once Xia turned the computer screen back on she saw that the installation had been completed: the game main screen was full of bright colors and the faces of the adventurers – with hair and eye colors impossible for a human being and with canine characteristics such as large pointed ears with a triangular shape and tails – expressed joy and light-heartedness as well as a great sense of curiosity. Blue, green, and yellow fairy lights swirled through the air and over the verdant countryside as clouds rose behind distant mountains.
Welcome to Legacy of the Ancestors. Please sync your VR set with your computer to get started.
She quickly took the NexNet out of the box and pressed the power button… damn it! She forgot to charge it! As a fallback, she connected it to a power socket, synchronized it with her WiFi line and after selecting it on the computer she laid down on the bed. Xia was as excited as she hadn't been since the accident, and a smile escaped her lips as she put the helmet on the head and secured it.
The NexNetVR 1 was an archaeological finding when compared to modern systems, the immersion it offered was rather limited to the point that the only sensory feedback coming from virtual reality with one of these devices was visual and auditory feedback, touch was absent, and so also taste and smell; to move through the game as if it were reality, the helmet 'tampered' with the electrical impulses of the brain at shoulder height, blocking them and retransmitting them to the game avatar that she would have soon created. It must also be said that the visual feedbacks don't correspond to what could be called 'full dive' in more modern systems, for example the game world was not transmitted directly to the player's brain while they were in a comatose state but appeared on a screen of the helmet that completely covered the face, simulating normal human vision, the helmet blocked the brain signals at shoulder height because with the NexNetVR 1 if the player wanted to look around they had to physically move their head instead of simply moving it in the game as happened with the most modern models.
In short, Xia was excited for the experience, even with the knowledge that it would not be a complete immersion as the latest NexNet models guaranteed. Technology had advanced so much in that decade and a half that the last thing missing before those devices were identical to the ones that could appear is some anime was the ability to implement smell, taste and the option of getting laid... as well as some hidden tech inside the helmets whose purpose would have been to fry the player's brain if killed in the game... but that, honestly, Xia thought would have remained forever in the imagination of some Japanese light novel writer in the 2010's.
In front of her eyes there was a large wooden door whose edge was made of large blocks of stone covered for half their height by vines whose leaves looked like those of ivies but whose flowers resembled roses and tulips. She looked down at herself and realized that her body was a translucent ghost, which was obvious given that she hadn't yet gotten to the avatar editor.
[To access, please will the door open]
The writing appeared right in the center of Xia's field of vision, since she had nothing else to do in front of that door, she decided to obey. The door opened and instead of sending her directly to the editor the game decided to introduce her to the basis of its game lore through a cinematic sequence.
“Once upon a time, a long time ago, a fairy and happy world, full of lights, colors and smiles existed. The Elvreths were the favorite creatures of the gods and had been blessed by them with the flame of knowledge and the gift of magic. It was a time of joy, serenity and harmony in which everyone lived in peace with each other.”
As the voice spoke, images of prosperous kingdoms flashed before her eyes, smiles and rather slender and elegant humanoid creatures with furry pointed ears and dog-like tails, people singing, laughing and dancing. On Hearable there were entire sections of fantasy stories that had an incipit like the one in LotA, for this reason, Xia was already ready to hear what happened after the Fire Nation attacked.
“But among the rulers of the many kingdoms of the Elvreths were those who began to feel that their thrones were too small and the boundaries of their kingdoms too limiting; they began to desire the riches of the kingdoms around them, and in their desire to expand their power, they began to turn to the Forgotten beyond the Dark, ancient gods who revealed to them the mysteries of secret magic and dark knowledge.”
The idyllic landscapes changed and the colors went from the brightness of yellow, red and green to the cooler ones of blue, purple and black. Dark silhouettes of kings and queens with almost angelic shapes smiled evily as they used their new powers and knowledge to raise unstoppable armies, the kingdoms of the elvreths turned against each other while above them, from the sky, the gods watched in horror what was happening.
“The magic they were using to fight each other, however, was something they could not control, and soon it began to contaminate the blessed land: large and small monsters appeared from the ground and dark ravines, the animals themselves were distorted and altered into magical creatures by the wars between the elvreths. By the time the rulers and their fairy courts realized what was happening it was too late, and a fratricidal war that lasted three hundred years turned into a battle against the monstrous creatures generated by secret magic.”
As Xia had seen from the reviews, the game was rather 'clean', the violence was minimal, so much so that there was no blood and it was not possible to see the faces of the fallen in any scene of the cinematic sequence, however, the sense of arrogance followed by surprise, tragedy and loss were nevertheless palpable in the highly stylized faces of the various characters. From the scene of ruined battlefields with banners torn in the wind the scene changed to a mysterious figure whose forms were obscured and impossible to discern, the creature had a sword and a shield and was facing a monstrous being of a black and violet color, a sort of a gigantic three-headed worm whose jaws had enormous, sharp teeth like a crocodile or a shark. Yes, in practice they had reached the main scene of the valiant hero who saves the day at the last second.
“When all seemed lost, a mysterious hero blessed by the gods opposed the greatest threat to the world of the elvreths, preventing their victory but being defeated in turn. Legends say that the hero would return when the evil forces they had defeated in the past will return to threaten the world again, and you have just woken up on a quiet beach, with no memory of what your life was before that moment but with the feeling of having to do something extremely important and urgent..."
Xia was the chosen one, her and the other two hundred and thirty million users who played this game.