He was adrift in an unfamiliar world.  He panted heavily, short and quick.   Sweat rolled down his arms and beaded at the wrists as anxious thoughts echoed throughout his mind.  

Calm down, calm down.

He tried to steady his thoughts, he knew panic was never a friend.

His fingers tightly gripped the Universe 20 in his hand and he began to roll it slowly in his palm.  It was a bad habit, but he could not help it.  He was nervous and this ritual gave him calm.  

Obaachan would definitely chastise me for sure, “Kai-chan da-me!”  

He recalled his grandmother’s Japanese accent and smirked.  He was not a little kid anymore, but her reminiscent voice always found a way to reassure him.  However, Kai’s gentle smile failed to mask the unease he felt.  Though several minutes had passed since he was Onboarded, he still held onto the fleeting belief that it was all a bad dream.  He knew it was wishful thinking, but given the situation it was human nature to grasp onto any sign of hope.  His senses were still in disorder and pain, too much pain in fact. 

This feels nothing like ALPHA. It feels too real.

He knew the game integrated the latest and greatest sensory gaming technologies which made the gaming experience seem very life-like.  Regardless, life-like and real life were always worlds apart.  The game world’s aesthetics were the usual giveaways that separated the virtual world from reality.  Also, the game world did not allow a true sense of pain, at most it would be a slight touch or tingling sensation a player felt as feedback from interaction with the game world.  The Player Sensory Safety law required all sensory systems to use limiters to disable or numb pain.  As an additional precaution, limiters automatically ejected players from the system if too much sensory stimulus was absorbed.  But right now the game seemed to violate that law as the pain he felt was real.  

Kai started to curse at the developers in his mind.

Who left bugs in the game’s sensory limiters?  Did the safeties fail?  Someone should fire the game’s entire System Integration and Test team!  There should be limits to bringing reality into games!  

Kai did not see any error indicator in his visual field, so the game may be operating normally. An awful thought dawned on him, perhaps the pain he was feeling was a feature and not a bug.

What kind of sadist puts real life pain in a video game!  Pain should be for people who play contact sports like football or hockey and not gamers.

By the time Kai finished his rant, his mind was numb to some of the pain.  He breathed deeply and tried to calm himself.   Slowly his eyes opened and his sight was filled by an assortment of strange dull-colored shapes.  Rows and clusters of shapes, many larger than him.  He awoke in a Monet painting and stood in a hazy garden of the unfamiliar.  Amazingly he could feel life energy.  The shapes were unrecognizable, but they felt alive.

Suddenly a shrieking sound crescendoed and an unbearable pain flooded his mind, it peaked then silenced.  He gripped his ears, hugged his head and fell to one knee.  Then he threw up.  His throat burned as a liquidy green and yellow mass hit the floor.  It smelled rancid, but he recognized the remnants of his dinner from a few hours earlier.  Taco Cabana’s Fire Nachos were considered a risque delicacy as it would always burn you twice.  He was willing to endure the consequences since they tasted amazing.  Eating it was usually worth the trouble.  This time however, it burned him coming out a different way.  Oddly it was less painful.

I wonder if that’s a plus?  

He chuckled to himself.  The pain subsided and his senses started to uncover the world around him.  The world vibrated lightly and the clanking of metal adjoined with the sounds of breathing could be heard.  He felt a slight jolt and the world creaked.  His vision came into focus and he felt alive once again.  Sanity smiled wryly and so did he.

I still feel like shit, but I am starting to feel a little better.

He resolved himself, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stood up.  Kai finally looked around and tried to make sense of things, but the world around him did not make sense at all.  The game’s usual visual graphical user interface was gone.  He had no status messages or control indicators in the visual field of his Heads Up Display.  His HUD was down.  He wiggled his fingers to activate a buff shortcut, but there was no reaction.  

In the game an activated buff empowered a user with more attack damage, stronger defense, increased agility and other enhancements that improved the player’s impact on the game world.  The buffs were applied to properties of their bodies, weapons, equipment and surroundings.   Buffs were also known as skills, power-ups, boosts and even spells in many other games.  In literature it was considered magic.  

Debuffs on the other hand were a set of buffs that did the opposite by negatively impacting a player’s ability in the game.  As such, debuffs reduced armor, immobilized players, slowed monsters and applied a variety of degenerative effects.   

In order to activate some buffs players were required to perform specific motions, create diagrams and chant phrases.  Some buffs required channeling to activate as well.  Channeling was the non-instantaneous period of time where verbal phrases and physical motions were performed and required for buff activation.  Casting was synonymous to buff activation as some gamers were accustomed to using that term instead; however, non-instantaneous casting was always called channeling.  However, the time period required to channel was known as both casting time and channeling time.

The more powerful buffs usually required a much longer channeling time.  However, there was always a risk with long channeling times.  If the caster was disrupted and the buff activation was cancelled during the cast, the caster would face a backlash that would negatively impact their state which may result in player death, immobilization, loss of health and mana points and other unyet discovered effects.  For the more experienced players, a combination of buffs could be sequenced together to create an ultimate attack.  And in ALPHA creating an ultimate attack was equivalent to adventuring into the great unknown since there were no specific rules to the selection of buffs or the order of the activation sequences.  Many players loved this aspect of ALPHA since creating an ultimate attack was customizable.

Next he tried to use an audible buff activation since his buff activation shortcut failed, but no sound came out.  He had been muted.  Then he realized that no health or mana bars were present on the players around him.   He considered it very odd since that feature was a default aspect in Arcane Hunters Battle Royale and ALPHA.

Is my game system broken?

His thoughts made him uncomfortable.  He hoped he didn’t break the system since he wanted to continue to BETA.  An improved TESS unit was provided to all players in ALPHA.  ALPHA was the codename for the alpha testing phase of the yet to be titled sequel to Arcane Hunters Battle Royale.  It was slated for release in two years.  Kai lucked out and was randomly selected to participate in ALPHA.  He got the last spot.  

TESS used the latest innovations in neuromorphic hardware and allowed the highest level of coupling with a player’s nervous system.  All one had to do was lie on the TESS mat, close their eyes and relax their mind to drift into the game system.  When one played a game using TESS it felt akin to dreaming while awake, however unlike dreams the player vividly recalled the encounter.  Using it was simple yet the experience was wondrous.  TESS made a player feel like they lived in the game.  Four of the five senses felt and acted the same as they would in the real world.  Only vision still felt video-game-like since common HUD elements were in the player’s visual field.  Additionally the players’ avatars and the game world did not use the natural colors of the real world since the developers wanted to keep the virtual world discernible as a fundamental aesthetic.  The team followed the Bugs Bunny design principle and clearly separated the real world and the virtual one.  They stopped the players from an uncomfortable trip to Uncanny Valley.

Kai came out of his thoughts and inspected the environment.  He stood in a bright hall surrounded by avatars of all kinds.  Many didn’t look human.  That was to be expected though, since most gamers were vain when it came to the beauty of the game world.  Gamers liked to personalize their avatars and commonly changed their size, shape, color, equipment, and race.   Even in-app purchase paywalls did not hold them back.  It was a widespread belief that the more expensive and unique a customization became, the more it was desired.  And it was generally considered by the zealots of the gaming community as money well spent.  The game developers knew that in-app purchases made more money than the original sales of the game, so they were more than happy to oblige.  Avatar personalization was easy money.   

Though the hall was filled with seemingly random players, some level of organization could be seen.  Some players gathered in bunches, while others organized in formation.  The scene initially seemed calm, but Kai felt tension in the air.  Anxiety followed shortly afterwards as he sensed that they were all waiting for something.  For him, the sensation felt similar to fighting against the last couple of players in a 100 man battle royale.  

When he closely examined the world again he was shocked.  The game world’s colors were missing, the world seemed very real.  The world looked and felt real.  He was so focused on the missing HUD and visual user interface elements that he did not pay attention to this aspect of the game world.  TESS had impressed him once again.

But what shocked him the most were the things that the other players wore and carried.  The weapons looked very real and very dangerous.  Many bladed weapons could be seen and as light glinted off the blade’s edges their sharpness could be felt, further reinforcing the unusual feeling.   

If I touch it, I would bleed.  

Oddly he felt a little fearful of his surroundings.  His body responded instinctively with caution as sweat started to run down the back of his neck.  The plethora of swords, axes and spears around him did not help at all.  Many glowed in various colors and hummed as if filled with energy.  Some of the metal armor looked worn down, cloth uniforms seemed flacid and the tiniest hairs on the fur coats swayed gently with movements in the air.  Everything looked too real.

Kai then noticed a ball of metal with four arms off to his left.  He was not sure if it was a weapon or alive.  Towards the back there were a handful of huge armored beings in what seemed like powered battle suits.  They even had rifles.

Are those Space Marines?  Wow they look tight! 

Kai’s instinctive fear suddenly gave way to excitement.  As a Starcraft fanboy, seeing an eight foot tall weaponized armored suit in this life-like world felt amazing.  He could see traces of power streaking through the veins that ran along the surface of the armor while small pockets of a steam-like essence leaked out here and there.   Upon closer examination he saw the marks of battle, scratched paint and decals, dents, puncture marks and gashes that ran throughout the armor’s surface.  He felt the game’s developers and artists did an amazing job.  If it wasn’t for the tension, he would swear he was at Comic-Con.  

But something was wrong.  He felt empty handed.

Wait a second, where are my weapons?   

He was in the game and in ALPHA he always carried his Mark XIII sniper rifle, Cerberus Toothed sword, and a slightly modified X77 equipment loadout.  At the moment he had none of it, just his Universe 20 smartphone.  So aside from throwing it at someone for an ill fated attack, he was pretty sure it could not be considered a weapon.  Kai looked around at most of the weapons and armor surrounding him.  Then he compared it to his supposed armor, a Snoopy T-shirt and Kirkland branded dark blue athletic sweatpants, an outfit that his mom picked up for him at COSTCO.

WTF!  This is so unfair.

He began to wonder if the developers had screwed him over or if he was experiencing a bug.  He definitely planned to file a bug report on this situation.  

This is a serious bug.  Who would want their avatar to look like they just went shopping at COSTCO.   

Kai had another problem.  Reporting bugs required listing the steps taken to produce the bug, and Kai did not remember how he got to this point.  He tried to recall anything before the pain and struggled.  But slowly, like recollecting a fleeting dream, he began to recall some kind of dialog or interaction while he had been in pain, but not much else.  He started to dwell on it and became stressed once more.  No one likes to blackout.  As a reflexive response, he put strength in his fingers and gripped his smartphone tightly.  Buzz.  Buzz.  He looked down and noticed that the virtual assistant feature of the smartphone accidentally activated.  The smartphone began to glow.  

Wow.  My smartphone actually works in the game world?  

He was stunned.  He looked closely at his smartphone and noticed that it displayed the No Cell Coverage signal and showed zero Wi-Fi bars.  He realized that he could not contact anyone.  Suddenly, he had a deja vu moment and he recalled trying to contact someone recently, but could not remember who.  He let it pass and decided to unlock his smartphone.  

Nice!  I wonder if that app still works.  

If he could use that app, maybe he could figure out how he got here.  He searched for it and found the infamous relationship-ending OH NO YOU DIDN’T app.  He launched the app and smiled.  The app continuously recorded any discernible audio from the surroundings for the last 20 minutes.  The James-Bond-like app recorded audio automatically so once it was installed it just worked. 

The developer, Oleg, created it to resolve arguments with his girlfriend in a factual and orderly way.  He thought it could help to resolve relationship conflicts by replaying what was said in order to state facts clearly, clarifying the misunderstandings that often occurred during the emotional tirades of a heated argument.  Obviously it failed.  Facts and emotions mix like oil and water.  His relationship was doomed.  His girlfriend left him on the first day he used the app.  Oleg later died of a heart attack due to his grief, but ironically he was posthumously recognized for his sacrifice.  The app would get a 5 star rating and stayed in the top 50 apps in the app store for nearly a decade.

Oleg, I salute you.

He tapped on the smartphone’s screen and started the playback.  As he listened to the familiar sounds, his mind began to unlock his lost memories.