“Dude, c’mon, play the game, it’s so much fun. It might even help you get out of that weird cocoon you’re in.”

This is my best friend, Jims. He hates his original name, he still has no idea why, so he goes by Jims.

“I told you, I never find those games fun. VR stuff confuses the hell outta me.”

He sighs and laughs a little, he then turns to me and says “It’s scaring me how you’ve been in a funk for nearly 4 years now. I can help you set it up and configure your character. I’m pulling the best-friend card and forcing you to play with me since I’m lonely as hell in there.”

He pulls out a card from his wallet. It’s laminated and says ‘best friend card, when used, forces the person given to do one action. However once the card is given away, it can be used by the other person.’ It’s shaped like a card collection game card.

“Urgh. Fine, ya dork.” I take the card from him “You’re gonna regret this if I don’t like the game. I will have my revenge.” I slide the card into my wallet and put it back in my pocket.

“Can you really call me a dork while spouting lines like that, fellow dork?”

“Fair enough. So, when do you want to do this? Wanna come over to my place and talk ‘bout it, or will your family be a bag of dicks today?”

“I moved out, remember?” He raises an eyebrow at me

“Riiight. Sorry, old habits.” We’re still in highschool so it’s still strange to me that he’s already living on his own and working.

“No worries. Yeah, I’ll come over” He places his hand on my shoulder.

Me and him have always done this, walked home from school, just keeping each other company until one had to face something they hated. I don’t know what I disliked about going home, but something kinda feels bad. Jims had it the worst, he had to deal with abuse, drunk rambling, and dumbasses who don’t realize that we’re in GE times. It’s not even AD anymore. 

I don’t know how the hell he got out as good a person he did, but he did. I had always walked to his house, then turned around to go to mine. Despite his protests that I shouldn’t go near his place.

“What do you do to pay for your place, anyways?”

“I work with programmers and basically act as a psychological assistant. They bounce something off me, and I tell them what I think as someone without the kind of experience they have. Basically put I give them a fresh perspective.”

“Huh, sounds interesting.” I raise an eyebrow.

“You really don’t have to force that.” He scratches behind his head.

“No, seriously. It’s a job that makes sense and stuff, but describing it definitely makes it sound like you’re really doing porn and are trying to hide it.” I smirk at him.

“Pff. Alright, we’re here, unlock your door so I can yell at you for calling me a pornstar in your room.” He gestures in an 'after you' sorta way.

I unlock the door to my family’s house and my sister greets us.

“Yo, oh, you brought him this time. Been a while, Jims.” She waves at him.

“Hello, Tiny’s sis, we’re gonna go up to this one’s room. They’re being forced to play a VR game with me.” He places a hand on my head after saying 'this one.'

My sister’s eyes lit up. “Which one!?”

“New Start Online.” He smirks slightly.

“Yay! I play it too. Tiny’s been in a funk for years now so I never brought it up.” She smiles widely.

“Oh, right, I think I remember seeing your standard username pop up in a raid vid or something.” he places a thumb on his jawline.

“Yep. Raids are fun, and so is being a healer, even if some people can be total cunts about it.” she squints slightly.

“Language!” My mother yells from the other room.

“It’s true though. I stream from time to time and people constantly tell me that I’m doing it wrong. None of my party dies though so those people can shove it.” She does a hand waving motion.

“You don’t have the kind of personality type that suits being a healer,” I interrupt their banter.

“It’s what the AI chose for me.”

“The AI?” I raise an eyebrow and tilt my head.

“They don’t know anything about the game yet. Wanna come up and talk with us?” Jims intervenes.

“Sure, if that’s fine with Tiny.” She gestures towards me.

“Yep, sounds good.” It doesn’t matter to me, honestly. I don’t mind talking to her, one way or another.

No, Tiny is not my real name. They both just call me that because my real name has a weird effect on me. My sister told me I’m gonna have to sort this out myself a long time ago because having others tell you what's happening can cement ideas and she didn’t want to do that. She does sometimes sigh and say something about me being the same amount of dense as a black hole, though. Jims still has to refer to me by my normal name on occasion because of school, so he fucks up at times. I forgive him every time though, mostly because he looks about ready to cry every time he realizes it.

We moved up to my room for my two informants on the game to start the info-dump.

“So what was that about an AI?” I sit down on my floor Jims is sitting across from me and my sister is to my left.

“NSO, or New Start Online scans brain waves constantly to ensure that you are safe to continue playing.” Jims pokes the holographic power button on my table in the center of my room, we’re all sitting on cushions around said table. “They found that they have to scan the entirety of the brain to make sure at all times, so they also decided to make a function that helped players find what they most want. An AI reads the brain waves and makes a character based on those waves. All things about the avatar are decided by the AI. You can make two characters,One made by the AI and one made by you yourself. But the one the AI makes is proven 9/10 times to make a character that the player will enjoy. Plus the AI also has races and classes coded in that created characters aren’t allowed to be.” 

He pulls up several articles about NSO and flicks them over to my side of the table. “It was originally meant to be some kind of apology for reading our brains, but everyone is generally fine with it because they were full disclosure constantly and were adamant in notifying us that we were being read. So people with problems like that never really got on to the game.” Jims stops to let me process a little.

“Also since it’s somewhere where a lot of people have discovered themselves, so it’s quite full of those who have extreme appreciation for NSO and the escape, brain waves being read or not.” Saryn chimes in. Saryn is my sister’s name, by the way, forgot to mention.

“Definitely sounds interesting. Okay, I’ll give the AI approved character a try.” I nodded.

“Yay! They expressed interest in something!” Saryn stated quite happily.

“Shaddup. Okay, what do I need to run it?” I point my question at Jims.

“They figured out how to get a full-immersion setup that doesn’t require the ‘capsule human’ style stuff, so it’s actually rather cheap to play this game. The full rig costs less than your own allowance.” He pulls up a site and flicks it to me. On it is a VR-AR rig mash-up thing. I remembered hearing about it going into testing phases a while back.

“‘They?’” I question him.

“Oh, I work with these people on a regular basis, and they’re the ones who make the VR rigs most of the time, Integra is what they’re called, I think.” He states, remembering from his job.

“Man, that sounds evil,” Saryn laughs wryly. “I use the capsule, but Tiny doesn’t have any setup due to having no interest. The couple times they played with you they used mine. Or when they really enjoyed a game.”

“Got it. I’ll order one, since I’m in the company a lot I might be able to get a discount. And using the friendship card also means I have to provide the means to do it.”

This is an unspoken rule among us. You have to provide the means if possible when the best friend card is used. He probably is using that to keep me from telling him I’ll do it myself. Frustrating kindness goes both ways pal, I’ll be annoying the shit out of you to play when you get sad.

Wait, I don’t even know if I’ll like it.

“All right, the rig should be here soon. About an hour.” Jims puts his phone away.

“So, what if it doesn’t create a character that’s to my liking?”

“Well we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But it’s 9: 1 in favor of you liking it.”

We talk for a little while waiting for it to arrive. My sister pulled up a raid vid with her in it, doing the healer thing of… well, healing. I don’t play these things normally, leave me alone.

A drone hand knocks on my window and I open it. A package is slid through and the drone’s voice says “Thank you for shopping with us,” then it flies off.

The rig looks like it’s just a pair of glasses and necktie earbuds from the picture on the side.

“I’ll show you how to wear it.” Jims picks up the box and opens it, retrieving it’s contents. He places the earbuds around my neck and puts the glasses on my face, tightening them to my face so that they won’t slide off. Technically I’ve used these earbud looking things before they’re actually AR stuff, and normally the reason they look like a headset is due to designers not wanting them to constrain or some shit, I dunno.

“Now you just find a comfortable position on your bed that you think you’ll be able to spend hours in, hit the button on the AR set, and say what game you want started. This one comes with NSO pre-installed.”

“Right, they were doing a promo for it in-game at one point. Anyways, Tiny, there’s something I want you to do for me.” Saryn, who has been mostly silent while in her traditional thinking pose, speaks up again. “I want you to try not to look at your generated character and just hit sign in. If you’re placed in the traditional starter zone, I’ll see you there. Also, wait for Jims to text you before logging in. My name is StarChilde, like normal. The AI tends to pick pretty crazy names, so there’s a system in the church that allows you to change it. It’s free the first time.”

I’ve played a couple games with my sister as well, granted none of them were in VR, but her users on everything are spelled StarChilde.

“Okay?”

“Okay. I need to log in as well, since I’m far from the starter zone.” She laughs again, standing up to go to her capsule.