Covering the 25-miles on the freeway in about eleven minutes, I checked the clock again as it ticked over to 10:50. I had 5 miles to go on city streets and had to find parking and walk, I was definitely cutting it close. I pulled off the freeway and came down the slight hill, seeing green I kept my speed just slightly over the limit. There were a lot of cops in this area after all.
But if the speed limit is 45-MPH then 60-MPH was reasonable, right?
I finally reached my destination and quickly pulled into an open parking spot as the clock ticked to 10:57. I pushed my car extremely hard but thankfully I installed a turbo-timer to keep the engine running after I left, to let the turbo cooldown properly before shutting off.
It was a lot of work rebuilding the engine, lowering and altering the suspension, modifying the engine bay and the car's frame to accommodate a much larger turbo on a non-turbo car along with a full roll-cage, all of the custom piping for the intercooler and the exhaust that I had to fabricate and weld.
That do-it-yourself ECU that took me forever to tune so the engine wouldn't explode. Making sure it received the right amount of fuel to air along with a lot of other miscellaneous features.
Yeah, that car was a lot of man hours, a lot of money, and a lot of headaches. But it was all worth it to me, the adrenaline rush from racing on a track was worth every penny and minute. And this time, it paid off with getting me to a meeting on time.
As my watch clocked 11:00am, I walked in through the doors.
Making my way inside the building I noticed a tall brunette at the counter, she was wearing a pair of very dark sunglasses that seemed to cover a third of her face but there was something about her that drew my attention. It wasn't more than a half-second after noticing her that I saw the white cane folded up in her hand, on top of the counter.
So, she was blind.
As I walked by I gave a polite greeting, "Good afternoon," and nodded as I continued on. The blind girl turned her face towards me but didn't say a thing, but in that moment I was able to get a glimpse of her face.
Pretty.
She was a natural beauty.
She wasn't a knockout nor did she exude sex appeal by any means. But she was certainly attractive with what little make-up she had on and the modest attire that she wore complimented her nicely.
Oh well, it had nothing to do with me.
I continued on and went into the meeting room, finding an open chair near the back and by the door. Not long after sitting down I decided to stretch my left leg out and put my right foot above my left knee; these chairs weren't all that comfortable. Soon I was crossing my arms as well, waiting for the meeting to start.
The game had been officially out for two weeks now and we had held meetings every second and fourth Saturday to update our prior opinions, report on bugs or issues, and to express our general interest and happiness in the game.
It wasn't a mandatory meeting but it was appreciated if we showed up and we were compensated with a free meal plus an opportunity to socialize with other gamers. We had been doing this routine for nearly a year now, but it wasn't all bad.
While the minutes ticked down to the start, one of the speakers made her way to the stage. She was one of the researchers that worked specifically on visual reproduction within the mind and how it related to electrical signals that could be sent from an electronic device to the mind and back. Simply put, she was a member of the group of scientists that helped develop one of the most critical aspects of Virtual Reality, the visuals.
Her lectures tended to be the best so I was already encouraged at the sight of her, but then I was distracted by the blind girl making her way to the aisle seat in the back row. The back row that was left solely for me… well, not really, but I was the only one in the row and had occupied the third seat from the aisle.
She touched the chair and asked, "Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?" I instinctively gave a faint smile and looked her in the eyes, "Ah no, no one is sitting there."
She turned her head towards me and it felt as if she was looking right back at me when she courteously replied, "Is that so? Thank you."
At this point I was curious, could she slightly see or was she completely blind? Legal blindness has a range that includes those that have partial vision that is restricted to a certain degree, distance, or could be entirely unfocused and blurry. Then there were those that were entirely blind and couldn't see a thing.
It wasn't something I was familiar with and I didn't know how to interact, honestly.
When I lived in an apartment complex with its own underground gym beneath the club house, I used to run into a young blind girl that would go there every evening around 5 to 6 pm to use the treadmill.
I once held the door open for her while forgetting she was blind, so I didn't say a word and she walked straight through the doorway without pausing once or changing her stride. She knew there was a door there from memory, but how she knew I opened it threw me off.
She could operate all of the equipment in the gym and almost never had an issue. It got to a point where I thought she must be able to see a little bit. But then one night she walked straight into a treadmill machine, startling both her and me. I stopped running to see if she needed help, but she just got right back up and continued on as if nothing had happened.
I didn't even have a chance to open my mouth.
From that day on I realized that she most likely couldn't see anything at all, but her other senses were certainly developed quite well. She could hear which treadmills were occupied and was always able to find the empty one with a little patience.
It was kind of amazing.
She wasn't very confident when I first saw her, but after a year she had grown familiar with the location and you would see her walking with her guide dog or jogging down the side-walk at times.
If you didn't look for the white cane you would never know she was blind. This girl to my left reminded me of her. She had confidence, she moved without issue, spoke well. I admit that when I was younger I had no concept of blindness, it wasn't something I understood. I don't claim to understand it now but I do have a better grasp of some of the difficulties they might face.
But I also learned that even without their eyesight, some blind people weren't really noticeably different than any other person you might run into. I was a little intrigued, but I felt it would be rude to ask questions. I wouldn't enjoy it if someone asked me what it was like to be hobbled with bad legs, though I wouldn't take any exception to it either.
In actuality, I have no problem discussing my problems with people, it's when people belittle my predicament with baseless assumptions like, "You just need to eat better," "You should stretch more," "Just push through the pain," "Just try harder," as if they knew exactly what I was going through. Every individual is different, and not all injuries are the same.
It's impossible to truly know what the other person is going through without living in their body, and even then it still wouldn't be the same due to your own personal experiences and their own.
Comparing pain is futile.
My thought process was suddenly interrupted by multiple claps and as I was brought back to the present I realized that the meeting had started. The speech didn't last long though. As the researcher left the stage, Emily came out next.
Emily was the presenter that typically led these meetings, and had been leading them since the start. It seems she had an interesting topic for today, too. Next was a presentation that provided us with some interesting facts that had been accumulated, mostly population graphs and player levels throughout the continent.
It was a bit startling really.
Less than one-percent of the population had started in the Northwestern "wastelands," roughly ten percent had started in the Northeastern High Elf regions, and around four percent in the North-Central Dwarven kingdom.