Her mom was indeed going to pick her up, but otherwise she would have taken an Uber. She did not feel comfortable to have other people in her apartment. That had nothing to do with Dei, but just in general. She saw her apartment as her sanctuary. The only place where she could truly be herself. Where she did not find the pressure of the world weighing her down. Where she could sit behind her computer, surf the world and play games.
She loved MMORPGs. Roleplaying, where you could be anybody you wanted to be. A place where she was not small and weak, but a place she was strong. She was Badum the Beserker Orc. The ultimate fighting machine. She played a male character. Green, muscled and strong. In Vale of the Dragons Online better known as VDO she had friends and a guild.
And she was putting her IT skills to work. She used what she learned in her BioTech studies to build mods that would enhance her playing experience. Nothing that would be considered cheating, but enhanced graphics, some scripts that would remove some of the repetition out of the game. etc.
She had also developed a way to better control Badum in the game. Next to her controller, she had developed a neuro cap she wore while she was playing. It was like a fishnet of wires with sensors at every crossing. That cap would capture her brain activity and translate this into data that through scripts she could input into the game as if it came from here controller.
The technology was not new. The first time she had seen somebody use this technology was more than 5 years ago when she was still at high school. It was actually the thing that got her interested in BioTech. Before that she was thinking about a job in IT. She had a knack for it. She had been programming and hacking for fun since she was a freshman. Ever since that moment she had been fascinated about how you could use your brain to actually control technology.
Hers neuro cap was probably pretty basic to what they could do in expensive labs these days, but still she was proud that she build it herself as part of one of her UNI assignments. And even after that she proved it could be used, It had taken her month to translate her brain response data into action that could actually control Badum in a meaningful way. Normal movement, like walking, running and jumping was much easier just using the normal controller.
But anything that had to do with reflexes. That was the strength of the neuro controller, her NC as she was calling it. Dodging, blocking, striking at the speed of thought, instead of the speed of a finger. Of course this was borderline cheating as the other players did not have this advantage, but she kept telling herself this was for her education at Uni.
She would fantasize if one day it would be possible to have a two way interaction with the brain, getting feedback from the computer. Like in some of the movies like the Matrix or Ready Player One. But from what she had read it would be years if not decades before something like that became even somewhat possible. Maybe she would be the one that would develop this when she joined some innovative company after she finished Uni.
It was her dream. Right now the NC was nothing more than a very complex solution that would enhance her reflexes in-game. But basically the it was a very expensive toy compared to the relative simple solution of a controller you can hold in your hand and buy for less than 50 dollar. Though, now she was used to her NC, and all the calibration issues had been tackled, she would not want to play VDO any other way.
A couple of hours after lunch the Doctor came by to tell her all the extra test they ran all turned out fine and except for her blood sugar being fairly low, they could not find anything wrong. They did tell her to eat well with lots of carbs and to take it easy the next days, but there was no need to keep her in the hospital.
Her mother had already arrived an hour earlier with new cloths and after she dressed and put her belongings in a linen bag her mother had brought as well, she signed out and they left for her apartment. The cop at the door had left that morning with the detective, who had told her not to leave town. Not that she was a suspect, but as a material witness, he expected that he would be calling on her after they had digested the information they had gathered for follow up questions. And as she had no plans to go anywhere anyways she had no objections of being available for any follow up conversations.
It was Wednesday afternoon. She had already let Uni know she was sick and would not be joining any of the classes this week, so she could relax all the way through the weekend. She was already looking forward to long days playing VDO tomorrow. The whole ordeal had left her tired. The stress and fear of reliving through those moments again had taken their toll and she felt as she was about to drop.
