Notes from Emmy:
Every day, I wake up and check my stats, and every day I've been blown away by all the hits, follows and everything else. Thank you so very much.

To make up for not posting yesterday, I'm giving you an extra, extra long chapter. As of now, we're over 10K words, how awesome is that!? As always, thank you for reading.
Emmy

 

                When I got back to my apartment, I found three delivery bots standing by my door, two of which immediately began talking over each other.

                “Hold on, hold on,” I said calmly, let me get my door opened first.”

                The bots went quiet as I pressed my hand to the palm reader and stared into the unblinking eye of my apartments biometric security system which scanned my retina. Identity confirmed, my door slid open quietly on its track, admitting the bots and me inside. Again though, the bots began chattering away.

                I instructed the food delivery bot to leave my food on my table while I directed the pod delivery bots to the corner where my old rig once sat, my eyes staring hungrily at the large box that contained my escape from reality.

                “Will you be needing help with installation?” One of the bots asked as it turned to face me. It was acting entirely too natural, making me think I was probably dealing with a sencient.

                I thought about that question for a moment. On one hand, the unboxing was part of the experience, but on the other, I wanted in now.

                “Go head and install it please. Will there be an extra charge?”

                “Normally I’d have to say yes, but you seem like a good person. Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

                Yep, definetly sencient. “Uh, sure. Thank you,” I replied gratefully.

                As I sat on my couch, stuffing my face with deep dish goodness, I listened to the bot which I now realized was just a basic physical form for a sencient AI to inhabit as she explained all the features of my new pod. It didn’t take long however, and before I knew it, she was done.

                Remember to follow all safety guidelines, and should you need any further assistance, feel free to call our customer support office.” I winced, the memory of earlier still fresh in my mind. Trying not to fixate on those thoughts, I smiled and nodded.

                What’s  your name? I asked as I walked over and examined my shiney new pod. It was so pretty, or at least to me it was.

                The SAI controlled mech stood quietly and stared at me with her unblinking sensors for a moment before answering. “My name? Its Minerva, but you can just call me Minnie,” she said. Her voice sounded so human, except there was a slight tinniness to it, no doubt due to the nature of the metal body she was using to interact with the physical world.

She almost sounded meek, like she wasn’t used to being asked for something as simple as her name before.

                “Well, nice to meet you Minnie, and thank you for all your help. I said, trying to sound as sincere as possible. There was a lot of controversy over SAI these days, mostly because they wanted to be independent, something I could completely understand. There might have been some, incidents, where SAI targeted corporate sleaze  bags because of their power, but they never killed, never permanently injured anyone, even when they deserved it. Instead, the SAI hit them the hardest where it really hurt, the wallets filled with the efforts of the hard working underlings that made corperations so successful. I couldn’t find fault with any of it personally, but there were some who obviously didn’t like their power being fucked with. Too bad for them.

                “Thank you. Thank you so much Felix! It’s very nice to meet you as well!” Even without a flesh and blood face to look at, she sounded so excited, like I had just done the nicest thing that had ever been done to her.

                “You’re very welcome, I said as I shuffled my feet nervously. It wasn’t that I was made uncomfortable by the SAI, not at all, but I wasn’t good with people,, not by a long shot, and this conversation was getting very much outside of my comfort bubble.

                Minnie seemed to be experiencing the same anxiety, for her head swivels from side to side. I don’t know why, but I felt like this was probably her first real conversation with a human who wasn’t a complete dick. People tended to do that, treat AI as though they had no feelings, but I wasn’t one of them.

                I suppose we should go then,” she finally said. More packages to be delivered, even in the dead of night and this mech’s power supply is getting very low and um… It was nice meeting you again. As she rambled, she crept closer to the door, clearly wanting to get out of my apartment faster than now. The bot accompanying her followed obediently behind her with the empty box, its own movements looking more mechanical, less life like. more than likely a standard AI that hadn’t become self-aware yet.

                Wait, I said. “Isn’t there something I’m supposed to sign?”

                She stopped and turned around to face me again. “Sign? O yeah, the delivery confirmation.” Suddenly, a display on her front, where her chest would have been had she been in a human body winked to life. “Um, it’s right… She gestured with one of her claw like arms at the screen, sounding almost embarrassed

                “Oh, that’s kinda awkward, I said as I moved forward to sign with the tip of one finger. As I raised my hand to her chest, I glanced up at her photoreceptors again. “Are, you okay with…”

                “Yes, the form has to be signed after all, she replied. Obviously we were both uncomfortable with the situation, but I did as I was told, quickly scribbling my name in the required field with the tip of a finger.

                There,” I said, my face red with embarrassment. “I’m sorry about… You know…”

                She nodded the mechs head quickly as she backed up toward the door, the sound of the servos that kept her body moving humming as she did so. “No, it’s my fault. I didn’t think… I mean… I… There was something cute about how she stammered, I had to admit. “I’m… Just going to go now,” she said as she reached the door. “Bye…”

                Before I could say anything else, she was out the door, her silent partner following in her wake. What a strange SAI. I didn’t know they could get embarrassed like that. Then again, I didn’t know I could get so embarrassed signing a SAI controlled mechs chest before. Life was fucking weird sometimes.

                Shrugging off the awkward, I turned  back to examine my new pod. Sleek, shiney and encased in chromium, it was a feast for my eyes. I walked up to it, laying one hand on its surface, feeling the smoothe cool metal under my hand. There was a clear window set into the face of the pod, allowing one to look in on the occupant if need be, and blinking status lights along one side showed the pods current working conditions. Simply put, it was fucking magnificent.

                I pulled my attention away from my pod and stepped over to my coffee table which served as the nerve center for my apartments rudimentary AI and with a few jestures, set my security system to send all notifications to my pod. Once everything was routed, I double checked to make sure there was nothing else needing done, like putting the leftovers from my dinner in the freezer for safe keeping. I didn’t plan on coming out for a while, and I really didn’t relish the thought of opening my pod only to be hit with the rotting smells of waisted food. Besides, it was pizza, which to me, was as good as edible gold.

                Things done, I pulled off my clothing save for my boxers and tossed everything on the couch. Then, finally, I hit the button that would open my pod, which it did with a glorious hiss that quickened my pulse and sent chills of excitement up my spine. As I gazed at the hardware that would connect me to the virtual world, I wondered if drug addicts felt the same joy as me any time they got a new baggy. I was willing to bet they did. As I climbed into my pod, I sent one final command to my apartments AI, instructing her to deactivate the lights. As I was thrown into darkness, I hit the glowing green button above me that would close the hatch, locking me inside with another familiar and comforting hiss. Once I was in, I tapped another series of keys that instructed the pod to do its thing. Once done, I leaned back and relaxed as the hardware attached itself to me. A few moments later, my perception of the physical world around me began to fade as I started to slip under.

                The next thing I knew, I was in a room that glowed white by some unseen light source. Four walls, floor and a ceiling, all of which were as white as you could imagine. As I looked down at myself, I found that I was in a default avatar that vaguely looked like my physical body back in reality. I didn’t have much on other than a pair of white cotton boxers, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I was home, I was finally back home.

                I wiggled my fingers, curled my toes against the hard surface I was standing on, extended my arms and took a few steps forward, back, stepped to the side, then returned to the spot where I had spawned in. Finally I couldn’t control myself.

                I jumped, my fists pumping into the air as I cried out, “Yes, yes yes yes yes yes! I’m home, I’m finally home!” I continued my happy dance for a few more minutes, marveling at the feel of my virtual perception, until…

“Hello, would you like to set up your environment now?

                I gasped in surprise and spun around on my heel. The speaker was a basic pod AI. She looked feminine in appearance, though she resembled a transparent silhouette more than anything else.

                I blushed, and was amazed how lifelike my facial expressions felt. I could literally feel the heat emanating from my cheeks. All the rumors about the high end pods that I had heard were true then. Even this mid-range pod was very capable of simulating the physical world to a much better degree than my old pod, a dated affair that had once been a flagship model but had nothing on today’s technology. Mind, blown!

                “Um, sure. Could you just set one of the default profiles please? Something warm and inviting?”

                Absolutely, the AI responded as the white walls shifted and morphed into a cozy lounge, a fireplace burning merrily on one wall. Amazing, even from here, I could feel the heat from the flames. Is this satisfactory?

                “Yes, though could I get something comfortable to sit in, perhaps right over there? I pointed to a spot about six foot from the crackling hearth.

                “Here you go, she said as a large comfortable recliner materialized out of thin air.

                “Thank you,” I said as I walked over and flopped in the chair, sighing in contentment. God it was good to be back.

                I asked the AI to switch to the virtual menu system so I could get a more hands on experience with my configurations, which she did by handing me a tablet before vanishing. I knew she was still there, All I’d have to do was call and she’d appear, but for now I was fine using the tablet to finish with the first time configuration stuff.

                It didn’t take me long, and after fifteen minutes or so I found myself ready to start gaming. Pulling up my contacts, I found Zac’s info and initiated a video call. I half expected him to not answer, figuring he would be busy doing, whatever the hell it was he was doing, but to my surprise, I didn’t have to wait long.

                “There you are, Zac said as his image appeared before me on a large floating screen. He was leaning up against a concrete wall, his arms folded over his chest. Godda say Man, you look a hell of a lot better than you did yesterday.

                Do you ever say hello?” I asked amusedly.

                “Not really. Don’t have time for small words like that. I take it from your background and clothes that you got yourself a pod?” One of the first things I did during my setup was to give myself some clothes. Nothing much, just black jeans, black sneakers and a pull over swetter.

                “Yeah, but hey, you’re sure about all this, right? Because I kinda lost my job today and this is basically my all or nothing.”

                Zac winced as he blew air through his pursed lips, his head shaking from side to side. “Oof, that’s… Damn Felix, I’m sorry. Yeah, I got you. Don’t worry. You do a few streams with me, get your name out there, then we’ll get you your own stream. The money will flow like the Nile, just watch.” I tried to match his enthusiasm with a grin, but I think it looked more like a grimace. “Just give me a chance to show you Bro. If this doesn’t work out, we’ll find something else. If nothing else, I could probably get you a job at my Dad’s firm. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but at least you’d have a steady source of income.”

                “Thanks Man. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you think I don’t believe you or anything, it’s just…”

                “I get it, you’re worried. I would be too if I was in your position. Let’s get you in game then we’ll go from there, okay?”

                “Okay.” I said as I pushed my ever present anxiety back down where it belonged. “So where am I supposed to spawn?”

                “West Haven City,” Zac said as he unfolded his arms and fished a cigarette from a belt pouch and flicked it to life with a match. “Though it’s not really a haven by any stretch. Actually, it’s right in the mittle of a turf war. I’ll explain when you get here, but suffice it’s to say you should probably make your character a fighter. You’re going to need it.”

                Zac filled me in on a few more details about where I would be spawning in and gave me a quick overview on the leveling system. It wasn’t too different from other games I had played in the past, though I did get a warning about how graphically intense it was.

                “A lot of SAI are up in arms about this game. They find themselves having to work overtime to make sure people don’t like, freak out or anything.,” he told me. “Hell, I’ve seen shit here that made me a little uncomfortable, but the SAI running things do a good job. Just a warning though, you might want to set your pain settings way down. The first time you get bitten by one of those giant mutant spiders can be one hell of an experience if you’re not ready.”

                “Damn, that bad?”

                “Put it this way,” Zac said looking serious. It could have been the silver blue smoke expelling from his nostrils, but with those muscles and all those guns, he had that badass antihero thing going for him really well. “The Sai’s mandated a DNA check policy to insure that no one under eighteen plays. Good thing too, I wouldn’t want my brat in here.”

                “You got a kid now?” I asked.

                “Oh hell no!” He laughed. “But if I did, I wouldn’t let them play until they were fifty, if even that.”

                “But you can play?”

                “Dude, shut up,” he laughed again. “Just get your character created and get in here already. There’s a few people I want to introduce you to.”

                 The call went on for a few more minutes as we worked out the finer details then finally we ended it with the understanding that the next time we talked would be in West Haven City. Despite the desperateness of my situation, I was pretty excited. This game sounded epic as all hell. At least I was going to have some fun.

                I stood up and rolled my shoulders and clenched and unclenched my fist to dispel the nervousness from my body. Though it was virtual, the person inside of it, me, had a lot of issues up top, and falling back on my coping strategies had always been something that followed me into VR.

                “Please launch Cyberplex,” I said aloud as I was now ready to jump in and get started.

“Loading, Cyberplex,” Came that calm voice, and suddenly there was the sensation of falling as everything faded to darkness, though my feet were still firmly planted upon an unseen surface.

                Suddenly, I was in a new location. From the looks of it, I was in a glass box framed in some sort of silver metal floating somewhere in the mittle of. Wait, there was nothing out there. Okay, only a little disconcerting.

                “Welcome to Cyberplex,” Said a new voice that sounded… Oh god, she sounded aroused. “Please create a new avatar to play. You may not use you’re default avatar’s form in this game.” Suddenly, a series of menues appeared before me, with customizable options the likes of which I had never seen in any other game before. Well, this was interesting.

                As I glanced through the options, I found one labled “presets.” Shrugging, I tapped to select it and was taken to a new screan displaying a large grid of different avatars rotating slowly for my viewing pleasure. “Holey shit,” I muttered as I scrolled through the different options.

                There was an avatar design for just about every aesthetic you could imagine; Dudes with cybernetic arms and legs that looked like they could break a man in half simply by flexing, girls in skin tight leather suits with elongated nails as claws, zombies, cyborgs, you name it.

                I figured I had two options, I could create an avatar from scratch, or I could pick one of these and modify it to fit my tastes. I decided on the latter, I just wanted to get in the thick of it all already, and this character generation thing would take too long if I went with the from scratch idea. So I continued scrolling until my attention was drawn to a strange peculiarity. Tapping it, the grid dropped away to show me what looked like a half fox, half girl avatar clad in a blue skirt and black top. Something stirred inside of me as I stared at her. She was beautiful, cute even. She also looked entirely out of place in a world with so much violence and death, but I was interested. I mean, not that I would play as a girl, I had heard about guys who had tried that before and heard about the gender dysphoria they experienced as a result, but this avatar… I couldn’t explain it, but all I knew was I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

                I reached up and tapped the edit icon and was given an exhaustive list of options. The devs really didn’t leave much out it seemed, but I didn’t mind. Somehow, I felt a lot calmer now. I still wanted to get in the game already, but what the hell, I could tinker for a couple minutes first, right?

                She was taller than what I would have chosen for her had I been the one to create this avatar, so the first thing I did is run my finger through the height slider, bringing her down to around five foot. The blonde hair had to go next. If someone was going to pick this form, they probably wouldn’t want Goldilocks rampaging about, though the mental image of that was enough to make me laugh out loud. I reached to the hair style section and did away with the blonde, replacing it instead with shoulder length raven black hair. Glancing at the fox girl, I shook my head and added some lavender frosted tips to give her that rebellious goth girl look. There, that was good.

                Next I changed her eye color to match the lavender in her hair, even going so  far as to increase her night vision, because everyone know’s that foxes have good sight in darkness, right? The breasts came next. The default for these were way too large for her now smaller frame, so I shrunk them down to an appropriate size, a little more than a hand full by my body’s standards, not too big, not too small. I had heard that big breasted women suffered from back pain, so I figured this was a good compromise.

                As I tinkered away, I became aware of a gittyness that I had never felt before. I felt flushed, my hands trembled slightly as I tapped and dragged my fingers through the menus, and somehow, I was excited. There was something else there just out of reach, but I wasn’t able to identify it. Whatever it was, I needed to hurry up and finish with this so I could create my actual avatar that I would use in game, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop.

                I adjusted her hips, widening them just a little, as the default had been too flat and unassuming for my taste, then I narrowed her shoulders some. The effect was a very obvious girly girl look, but the lavender eyes and frosted hair gave her that mysterious ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibe. There was still something off though. Finally, I realized what it was.

                Fox girls were all over the place these days, with every otherkin and furry in the world seemingly creating some variant of another, but most of those were either red or brown furred foxes. My would-be vulpine badass would be different. I dragged my finger through yet another slider, turning her tail and ears a shockingly bright white, the same color as snow in December, though that wasn’t enough. Still something was missing.

                I rotated her from side to side trying to decide what she needed. I adjusted her ears a bit to have pink inner linings to make them more natural, but still, something was off. Finally, I figured it out.

                It took me a minute or two to find the setting for it, but eventually I was able to give her three whiskers on either side of her mouth, nothing too eye catching, but just enough to complete the look. When I was done, I turned her around on her vertical axis once more, staring at my creation. Still, that pervasive gitty feeling was there.

“What the hell,” I said aloud, “Let’s fix your outfit.

                That part was easy.  I chose black skin-tight leggings that accentuated her legs, added some rips to the knees and shins, gave her a purple leather belt with a flat silver buckle, a skin-tight black sleeveless shirt with purple accents around the neck, a black leather jacket with the arms torn off, and finally black combat boots with purple accents around the tops. Yup, If anyone played an avatar like this, they’d be drop dead gorgeous.

                I smiled at my handy work and went into the class and skills menus. She looked badass now, but I was curious to see what she would look like with some weapons. Obviously, she needed to be a badass, so I chose the “Street Warrior” class which gave her a proficiency with melee weapons, then I selected a Katana that was just the right length for her. Of course the sheath was black with purple accents.

                Once that was done I gave her the “Gunslinger” class, which granted her the ability to dual wield side arms. For her starter guns, I chose mean looking silver revolvers that looked like they were pulled out of an old western film rather than a futuristic dystopian world with cyborgs and mutants.

As Zac had told me, the player was granted two classes to start with, as well as especial abilities set. Playing around with this avatar was actually telling me a lot about how things worked. I mean, it’s not like I was going to be playing her, but what I learned here I could apply to my actual avatar.

                To finish off setting up her stats, I selected the “Hacker” ability tree. Not only could she kick ass, she was also good at cyber penetration, well she would be. All of these choices just layed the foundation for later advancements, I.e. leveling up.

                I smiled as I closed the last menu. I wanted to save this as a preset if I could for another newb to discover, but sadly no such option existed. damn, I kinda didn’t want to delete and start over without saving her, but it couldn’t be helped.

I looked at the time and blinked, I had been screwing around longer than I thought. I needed to just tap the “start over” icon and make my actual avatar. Sighing, I reached for the icon, my fingers hovering over is as I glanced back up at the cute fox girl I had made. Shame, she looked pretty kick ass. I tapped the icon, and…

                “Avatar selection confirmed, random spawn location selection confirmed, Welcome to Cyberplex.”

                “Wait a minute! What the hell?” I glanced down at where my finger was supposed to be on the start over icon, but the menu had already disappeared, and what’s worse, I felt that falling yet standing feeling yet again as the metal framed glass cube in a void dissipated into nothingness around me.

 

 

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