Van stretched out and glanced down at his body. Something was wrong, though. He wasn’t wearing leather armor, and nor did he have a longbow. Instead, he was wearing… a kilt? That didn’t make any sense. He stared at the strange green and red checkered manskirt in disbelief. Why was his character equipped with a kilt? His hands instinctively went to his side and he felt the nice, thick bladder of his bagpipes. How had he become the bard? He spun around to see a ranger standing beside him. She had all of the gear that he had equipped his own character with, except… the character was a woman. She seemed extremely disoriented.
“Hey!” Van said as he saw the name display pop up over her head. The ID number indicated that it was Agent Sang’s character. The name read “Jane.”
“Oooh, ohhh, something’s not right,” Sang said as she rocked back and forth. She was bent over, clutching her stomach.
“Why are you the ranger?” Van asked, completely ignoring her physical status. She was coughing, too. He wondered if Sang would die due to some kind of tube-related complication. He felt a little guilty, as he also began to wonder if he’d be blamed for her death this early.
“Heh…” she wheezed, looking up at him with a smirk. “I…” she paused to cough, “I’m not an idiot, Van. I don’t know what a bard is, but I know bagpipes aren’t a good weapon. But I like this bow. So, I switched it.”
“How?” Van demanded as he stepped forward to help her stand. She really wasn’t handling the transition into the game well.
“I… I said I was hacker, I think my interface is glitching on me,” she wheezed as she collapsed onto the ground. Her health bar was still perfectly full, but she was lying in a heap.
“Aw, great,” Van said. “First ten seconds in here and she gets an aneurysm.” He looked around. With this kind of haptic system, would the food taste real, too?
Chapter Five
Sang felt a cool sensation run down the back of her neck as she slowly roused from her unconscious stupor. Something was weirdly off… she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was happening, but her body felt horrible.
Sang! We’ve injected stabilization chemicals into your system, said a private message. It hovered before her vision as she slowly opened one eye. She glanced at the floating yellow words that seemed to be integrating into the world around her. Only then did she pull her head up off of the ground, realizing that she had been slumped over a table. She glanced around and could see there were dozens of people inside of the tavern, all talking, laughing, and pointing at each other. She could see names hovering above them, as well as some kind of number next to each of them. One patron had a label that said Level 2 Wizard. She frowned. What exactly did level signify?
“You’re alive,” Van commented as he sat down with a plate full of food. He began to hungrily devour it in front of her, making horrible noshing sounds as he chowed down. It was somewhat nauseating to watch.
“Yeah… sorry, I think… wow,” Sang said as she glanced around. She looked down at her hand and flexed it, feeling each finger curl slowly. “This is real?”
“Nah, it’s VR,” Van said in between bites of his chicken wings. He gulped down some beer. She realized that she could smell his meal, too.
“VR? Oh right, right. I just… this is like real life, Van,” Sang said as she curiously tapped the full glass of beer in front of her. It felt real, as well.
“Yeah... what, you’ve really never been in one of these?” Van asked. “Not even the ones at the mall?”
“No, never. Games are for timewasters, pigs and underachievers,” Sang replied as she sat up and tried to straighten herself out. The stabilization chemicals at least seemed to be helping her relax a little bit.
“Which one of those am I?” Van asked.
“Which one aren’t you?” she replied as she watched him continue to stuff his face.
“Here, try one,” he said as he handed her a carrot stick.
She glanced at it with curiosity and a little bit of fear. Would it taste? How was that even possible? She took a gingerish bite and felt the familiar taste of a carrot. “I don’t get it,” she said. “How is this even possible?”
“Everything’s possible when you pump someone up with enough chemicals and trick them with moving lights,” Van said as he hopped up. “Come on; let’s trigger the starting quest.”
“Quest? Look, Van, this is crazy. I feel heat! I can feel my boots, the air, the sounds… this is… this isn’t possible!”
“It’s possible, and you’re living it. So I take it you’ve really never tried any kind of a game?”
“No,” she replied, crossing her arms. This was all getting to be a little bit too much. Her mind was a rational one, and while she had interacted with VR systems for data retrieval, she had never once experienced a physical sensation from one of those. This all seemed impossible.
“Well, take it easy and you’ll be fine. I think I read an article about this; it’s called, uh… the Uncanny Valley. It’s like… sometimes when we confront things that look real but aren’t, it kinda makes some stuff in our heads go all bonkers.”
“I’m not going bonkers. I’m just… just in awe. That’s all. I’m fine. So how do we win?”
“Win?”
“The tutorial. So we can go out on the big adventure,” she replied as she adjusted the bow on her back a little bit. What was interesting was that the clothing was a little bit uncomfortable—it was a little too tight, and the weapons seemed to add some weight to her body. All of this showed that the programmers were hyper-focused on detail.
“Right, right,” Van said. He waved over to a tall man who had the word Barkeep hovering over his head.
“Hark and what ho!” called the barkeep as he approached the two. “Do I see two—”
“Skip!” Van said.
“And there is a great—” the barkeep had continued.
“Skip!” Van repeated.
“And so, you must—”
“Skip!” Van said again.
“What the hell is he saying? He’s just jumping words around and I can’t make sense of him,” Sang complained.
“I’m skipping around, that’s all. I know this stuff by heart. We’re going to go ahead and get to the really good stuff. The opening quests aren’t so bad.”
“And that is why I need you, brave adventurer!” the barkeep finished. Two words hovered over his head: Accept Quest?
“There we go. We take this one, and it will get us out of the starting area and into the mountains or wherever it is that you want to go. I’m still a little bit unclear on what the actual goal and purpose of all this is…” Van said.
Sang shrugged as she pushed the accept button with her hand. A massive screen appeared in front of her, detailing the mission. You must travel to Oirthear, across the Eastern Sea! But behold, the way is perilous and passage is not cheap! Find a way to get across the great ocean so that you may strike your fortune in the New World!
“How do we find passage?” Sang asked.
“Elf guy is usually the fastest way. You can work for a warlord, but he’s kind of a painful quest, and there’s the Dwarf Captain, but that quest is for real newbies. The Elf merchant guy is the fastest way because the tutorial is bare bones and gets us into the open world faster,” Van replied. A flash of blue came over his head. The phrase +200 XP appeared and floated upwards into the air.
“Interesting. Did we gain something just for talking to that guy?” Sang asked as she looked at her own experience bar. Indeed, it had filled up a little bit, now showing 200/1000.
“Yeah—as we do quests, talk to people, and advance the story, we get experience points. Makes us stronger and stuff. Boosts our stats... really simple stuff,” Van replied as he walked over to a pointy-eared man who was standing by a table. The man had a long beard and some kind of yellow aura surrounding him.