The device was golden- well, gold coloured, at least. It resembled a tiara, encircling the hawkish bust and coming together in a V-shaped join beneath a the GSI logo- a falcon’s head in left-facing three-quarter profile with elaborate, curving antlers cradling it, almost coming together just above the head. She had chosen the red and yellow colour scheme, so the background was red and the details in shades of yellow and yellow-orange- a foregone choice, as a certain friend would say, as anything else would clash dreadfully with her hair.
Sunset lifted the Muzzle-Glass headpiece and examined it with trepidation. Though she knew, logically, that it was safe- it wouldn’t be on the market if it wasn’t- but the last time she got a tiara from Twilight, it hadn’t exactly ended well. But the directions for use were simple enough- after initial calibration- taken care of by her tech-savvy friend-, place on head, initiate game on linked PC, lie down in comfortable place, and wait for the pre-set time to run down. Then, she would enter a new world- for the second time- and initiate the final preparations for playing Erebos Online.
She knew of it, of course. The very first VRMMORPG, it had been out for months, and she was an- well, she would like to be an avid gamer, but the salary of her part time job was not conducive to blowing money on $60-a-pop games. One launch title every couple of months was her limit, and this delicate, revolutionary, and ridiculously expensive piece of machinery was not a realistic expense for her.
However, she was nothing if not resourceful, and when that resource happened to allow her access to a device that literally made dreams true, as she understood the mechanics- well, why not take advantage of it?
Taking a deep breath, and trying not to panic, she placed the crown on her head. At that very moment, satanic wings utterly failed to burst from her back. Her fangs, long and sharp, were most noticeable by their total absence. An eldritch feeling of power and malice… well, that did run through her, but that was a normal reaction to touching a nigh-impossible achievement of commercial science, which would also allow her to indulge her most unsatisfied obsession. Forget demonic ascension- the most maniacal laugh she ever uttered to this point was triggered by her initial contact with an SNES.
Relieved by the dearth of diabolical transfiguration, she settled down onto her bed as the echoes faded away. The timer was set to 30 seconds, so she had about 25 to kill before she connected. She fidgeted a bit, and privately found it hard to believe that she was about to enter another world, at least in her mind. Here she was, in her pyjama’s lying on her bed wearing the world’s most ornate and counterproductive sleep cap, trying desperately not to turn to her left, which would put pressure upon the cable connecting her to the bust that functioned as the central processor for the MG before passing the signal through her laptop and Ethernet connector. Normally, she didn’t care about turning one way or another, but the moment she though she shouldn’t, she felt the urge swell, unbidden, within her. Surely it had been 30 seconds already? Curse that minimum time setting, and its tyrannical rule of her-
And then everything was colour.
It wasn’t any one colour, but all of them. Every colour she had ever seen, and some she had only imagined, as bright as the sun. She would later learn that this was the machine intercepting the signals from the optic nerves and pinging the sensory nerves to test the connection. The roaring noise, similarly, was the auditory nerves pinging. At the same time, her body fell still as the motor neurones ceased transmission, but in the split second before the tactile sensations were interrupted, she felt the utter helplessness of paralysis. Almost lost among the sensations was the shutdown of the olfactory nerves, as The Ping temporarily overloaded their capacity and shut down their receptors in the brain in self-preservation.
In short, in the milliseconds of The Ping, there was everything. And then, there was nothing.
Had she been consciously connected to her lungs, she would have been panting like a dog from the experience, but the memory was already fading. Everything was too much to fit in the brain, and all that would remain was an impression of colour and noise. Now, she floated in darkness, as feeling came into her body. Like sensation returning to a sleeping body part, her body came alive from the extremities inward. When finally landed, her feet touching down like she was floating through water, she felt fully herself. Like waking from a deep sleep, her dreamy mind focused on her surroundings. It didn’t take long. She was in a room where the primary characteristic appeared to be blackness. It had black walls and black floors, and the joins between them were only visible as white outlines. The room was octagonal, and each wall had an off-white screen upon it, about 3 meters up, so she had to look up slightly to see it. Written on these screens were the words: “LOADING; EREBOS ONLINE: 56%”. A half-full green progress bar beneath the text reinforced the message. With nothing else to occupy her time, she looked up… and up... and up. There was no ceiling, and the walls of the room continued upwards forever. Quickly averting her eyes, she instead glanced down. She saw that she was standing in a hexagon of white lines at the centre of the room. But what drew her attention was her body. It wasn’t her body.
This, again, wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar experience, but it was disconcerting, nonetheless. Her form was grey. No other way to describe it. It was a blank slate, with no features upon it, and had a hint of blockyness about it, which showed it was made of polygons rather than biological matter. There were no toes on the feet- well, why would there be? To be honest, she wasn’t certain of their purpose in the real world, having both had them and not over the course of her eventful lifetime, so it made sense that they would be deemed unnecessary in the virtual world.
Working up the body, she recognised the contours of her real body, but there was no definition. She wondered if this was normal, or if the lack of detail was a result of the artificial calibration- she would have to ask Twilight about that, possibly at the same time she asked at which point, exactly, she had obtained Sunset’s biometric information for the calibration. The face she couldn’t see, of course, but experimentally pulling a couple of expressions suggested the vitals were all there- mouth, nose, eyes, and a quick touch suggested the presence of ears, but no hair. The hands were surprisingly detailed, likely as they were the most important thing to get right, so more effort would have been put into their accuracy. There were knuckles instead of featureless joints like the elbows, and a facsimile of cuticles and nails. She couldn’t really see the point of this part, but maybe the hand design team had a free day or something, and decided to make them extra accurate.
It occurred to her that this was probably a placeholder body, as the system didn’t have an avatar for her to use yet, and looked up to see how much the bar had progressed. To her surprise, the bar was 75% full, and moving quickly. She tried to take a breath to prepare herself, and realised, just as the hexagon under her feet started to glow, and raise up her body, transporting her to the new world, that this body couldn’t simulate that. Instead, she closed her digital eyelids, and, as the light moved past her arms, squared her shoulders and straightened her back. Then, as the light completed its journey, she opened her eyes…
And witnessed the world rise.