The first thing I noticed was my body, or rather my character’s body, sitting in some kind of chair. A slight vibration running through it. I slowly opened my eyes and blinked a few times. 

I was sitting in the cockpit of a spaceship alright. But it had nothing in common with what I had seen in the introduction holo during my visit to Lirium. The space was cramped, I was literally wedged between consoles. Luckily the chair swiveled or I would have climbed over the backrest to get out of it. Half the space above the consoles was taken up by a large screen with all kinds of status reports on them and the other half was a window into space. 

The view took my breath away and not in a good way. I expected to see colors, nebulas, galaxies swirling. But I got none of that. What I had here were huge rocks as far as I could see. They were illuminated by a blue sun that cast everything in some kind of dreary light. What a disappointment. I was in space alright but this did not live up to the hype I felt before. 

I glanced at the screen with the status reports. The top showed the ship status, life support, modules installed and active, shields, hull, energy consumption and other things that didn’t mean anything to me right now. Ship status was sitting at 88% and life support at 95%. That seemed alright for now.

I decided to have a look around. Swiveling my chair around a little fast I promptly banged my knee on a console that stuck out a little further.

“Motherf…” I stopped myself from swearing. It hurt. Have you ever banged your little toe on a coffee table and wanted to throw it out of the window because it hurt so badly? Yeah, that was about how I felt. 

At the same time I noticed a red bar pop up in the upper left corner of my vision. If blinked a few times and a number next to it showed 99%. Ah yes, the obligatory health bar. Neat implementation but if banging your knee for 1% health loss hurt that much… I vowed to myself to never find out what losing 25% or, gods forbid, half your health would feel like. 

I had been stabbed, shot, beaten up, blown up and about any kind of other violent injury you can think of, both ingame and IRL. This was way too close to IRL memories for my comfort. Why the hell did it hurt so much? 

I knew that the neural link could transfer sensations that the player should feel in the game but not like that. It felt like 100% transfer. No neural link was ever configured like that. Early studies had shown that a hundred percent setting led to all kinds of problems. In some cases gamers had died when their character had died because their brains and bodies shut down believing the sensations. In other cases it had led to severe PTSD and a whole slew of other problems. Even the guys at Lirium had talked about that and told us the link would be set to 70%.

Yeah, I was totally going to yell at my Lirium VIP coordinator when this immersion was over. 

I finally got up and left the cockpit. A narrow corridor led to a wall panel showing engine stats. On the left side of the corridor was a door marked “Airlock”. Yeah, let’s not open that right now. On the right was another, unmarked door. I opened it and stepped into a small cabin. A tiny desk, a bunk on top of it, a locker on the wall and barely enough space to turn around. Next to the locker was what looked like a fridge door including a water dispenser and a drawer. And finally in the corner something that resembled a wide pipe with an oval shaped board around labeled ‘waste disposal’. I assumed that was my toilet.

That was it? That was the extent of my ship? How was I supposed to earn fame and glory in the universe in this tiny ass rust-bucket? It felt more like a prison cell than a spaceship. I sighed and then remembered that I had picked the hard start. 

“I’ll show you, you damn game. Just watch me!” I mumbled, venting my frustration which, to be honest, was mainly directed at my own stupidity.

I noticed that my health bar had faded out of my vision again. I assumed that meant I was back to 100% health. However I wasn’t sure when that had happened. Guess we have to go on a working assumption here that 1% health is restored on a tick happening somewhere between 1 and 15 minutes.

“New incoming message from system command.” A digitized voice pulled me out of my mood.

I walked back to the cockpit and the screen above the consoles was flashing an incoming message icon. 

“Display message.” 

The screen flashed and the image of a blue humanoid shaped armor filled the screen. The faceplate was modeled short and wide, the golden visor split in the middle and an assortment of tubes ran downward from the bottom of the mask. 

“Quirt System Command Blue Belt, Foreman Len-dren. I am speaking to contract miner WA12ZL96?” The voice sounded a little muffled and gravelly.

“Uhm… Malcolm Solo.” After a moment’s hesitation I added “Sir” to the end of my statement. For some reason that seemed the right thing to do.

“Yes, miner… Solo… I have been notified by command that your employ with us is getting cut short. Your new contract goal is 10k Endrite. After this has been mined successfully you are to report to Belt Station.”

It seemed like this was part of my integration into the world. I desperately wanted to pull up some wiki site to tell me about Endrite or how mining in this game worked or how much 10k was. But no wiki for Black Space. Otherwise I would have started looking this rust bucket and its functions up.

“Did you hear me, miner?” I guess I had been silent for too long. 

“Yes Sir. Contract change, 10k Endrite then Belt Station.”

“Get to it!”

The screen switched back to the status reports. 

“Mission Log updated with new contract conditions” the digitized voice informed me.

Okay, so I had a mission log and apparently it was auto updating. At least something here is similar to the VRMMOs that I had played in the past. Question was how could I access it. I flopped into my “Captain’s Chair” and stared at the wall straining my eyes to see any hud buttons that I might have missed. But there were none. For that matter there was no game interface anywhere in my vision. 

How was I going to check my missions or stats? And for that matter how was I supposed to logout of this game? Did that need to be done from the outside? Was I trapped here? Then a thought struck me.

“Interface” I commanded. 

Promptly my vision filled with an amber glow. Several Icons glowed on the left side. As I focused my eyes on them, context menus popped out and informed me of the icon’s purpose. Character, Inventory, Ship, Log and several more spaces that were marked empty. I assume I could use them to customize the interface. I breathed a sigh of relief as I noticed the big red button labeled “Logout” on the bottom right of the interface. While I didn’t believe that Lirium would force us to finish each immersion, it was good to see the button. 

“Character!”

The character sheet I had seen during the creation process was displayed next to a full body image of myself. Next I checked inventory and noticed that I was wearing an outfit titled “Contract Miner Uniform” and that I was the proud owner of 896 ICU. No clue how much that was but I assumed that was what passed for money here. 

Checking the Ship tab finally got me some more information. The screen was structured similarly to my character profile. An image of the ship and its stats side by side. Apparently it was a civilian vessel of type “Digger”, had two active hardpoints, one static and one internal component hardpoint. It had 175 HP shield, 150 HP armor and another 150 HP structure.

The active hardpoints had a mining laser and a tractor beam mounted on them, the static component was empty and the internal hardpoint was used by a prospecting processor. The screen also showed me as owner and operator of the vessel.

Finally I got to the log portion of the interface. It was split into Personal Log, Mission Log and Standings. 

I opened the Personal Log first.

Automated entry: 2.5 years ago you were pressed into the service of the Quirm and 

assigned to your current post as a miner in the Blue Belt system. You were given a civilian 

vessel fitted for low-level mining. At the same time the ship was charged to your account 

(15000 ICU) and you have been mining the belt ever since to even your account and leave 

the service. You can repay your debt by mining Endrite and exchange any production greater 

than 800 units at 1.5 units for 1 ICU. Your current account balance is 896 ICU.

My head spun. How was that for a background story. At the same time I was able to save less than 1/15th of the required sum in 2.5 years. If I wouldn’t have gotten the updated mission I would spend the rest of my life in this belt. Holy cow!

I checked the Mission Log

Automated entry: Quirt Sector command has changed the requirements for your contract 

termination. Mine 10000 units of Endrite to finish your repayment then return to Belt Station and report to system command. 

I quickly did the math in my head. 800 units was the daily requirement so I must have been able to do that in the past and maybe a little more. Which meant I should be done in this belt in about 12 days time. While that still seemed terribly long, there was an end in sight. It didn’t do anything for the feeling of having voluntarily signed up for a labor camp though. 

To hell with my stubbornness. I should have signed on with the Circle of Lords and fly elaborate attacks against some random enemy or keep the peace or whatever. But no, I had to make it difficult on myself. 

After messing with some settings on my interface I managed to make everything but the left icon bar and the logout button completely transparent which meant I could keep it open. For some reason this reassured me that this was indeed a game and that I am not really stuck in some tiny ass spaceship in the middle of an asteroid belt. 

I turned my seat towards the consoles. Let’s get to work then. The faster I got this ore together, the faster I was going to see the rest of this game.