“I’m home,” I called, pushing open the door and wincing as it made a painful creeeeak. 

There was no response to my call, but that made sense, considering that — as I kicked off my shoes haphazardly onto the floor — his weren’t tucked neatly into the corner, as they usually were. That meant I was the first one home; Russ wasn’t home yet. Maybe his train was running late? 

After a moment, I realised there also wasn’t a massive box in the entryway, which was a little bit disappointing. So then it wasn’t here yet, either.

I sighed, padding into the apartment in search of some consumable stress relief. Some chips or soda — maybe both? — would serve that purpose nicely. I had some leftover anxiety from college, as I always did, and given my years of experience, I had become an expert on all the unhealthiest ways to cope.

Returning to the living room with the chips and soda, I fell onto the couch, groaning. Barely lifting my face off the pillow, I stuffed some chips into my mouth. “Mehhhhhh,” I said aloud.

Yeah, it felt good to lay around and gorge myself with unhealthy food. I didn’t have to think about how I still had years of college left. I didn’t have to think about the fact that I had no real plans for my future. I didn’t have to think about the fact that I was overweight and ugly and so very unhappy. I could just lay here awkwardly and eat the worst stuff.

A minute later I heard the painful creeeeeeeak again, followed by the sounds of shuffling and a loud thump. “Orr, do you have to take off your shoes like that?” Russ complained.

“Sorry, sorry,” I smirked, not sorry in the slightest.

My friend came into my vision, an eyebrow raised. “...Right.” He looked towards the hall. “The pod’s not here yet, then?”

I shook my head, shoving a couple more chips into my mouth without taking my head off the armrest. He rolled his eyes at me, smiling. “Fatso.”

“Jerk,” I replied, mouth full and probably spraying some crumbs. Not as if I cared. The mice would deal with them.

My friend walked away, and I heard shuffling from the other room as he dealt with the contents of his backpack. “Did you check the delivery tracker?”

“Not yet.”

“Jewel, how far out is our delivery?” he asked.

After a short moment, a pleasant woman’s voice answered. “Your package is out for delivery!” Both Russ and I began to ignore her, sharing a look of excitement, but she continued. The meaningful response was over, everything past this point would be an advertisement. “Would you like to know its exact location? You can get that information in a snap with ExactTracker™. Start a yearly subscription for $1999.99, and get your first three months for free!”

“No, screw you,” Russ replied.

After the stupid thing had finally shut up, he came back into the living room and sat on the edge of the couch. “I was going to do homework, but if it’s out for delivery I won’t be able to focus,” he chuckled.

“Yeerp,” I said, still inhaling chips but now for excitement rather than anxiety. I finally stopped and rolled up the bag, then groaned, pushing myself to a sitting position. “How long d’you think it’ll be?”

“I don’t know. Out for delivery sounds like it’s close, right?”

I shrugged.

As if to answer our question, the doorbell buzzed. Our package had arrived.

 

---

 

Standing in front of our pod, having put on skin-tight clothing, we shared a look. The excitement on his face was so easy to read; likely as easy to read as the excitement on my own. 

Our pod wasn’t actually that exciting. It was definitely a cheap one, the EconoPod Dual — not only was EconoPod generally considered the main “economy” brand for pods, but we’d also gotten a dual pod, so it was cheaper than two individual pods, and the Dual wasn’t even the latest iteration (they were up to EconoPod Dual Three now). On the other hand, we didn’t really need anything fancier than the first iteration of this cheap pod — full-immersion was really the only requirement we’d decided on. Good thing, too, because having to save up even longer would probably have driven us both insane. We’d been starved of VR for so long, pining away for it the entire time! 

So, yeah, we were less excited about the pod and more excited about what it represented. We were finally going to be able to play a game in VR. With full immersion. Neither of us had experienced full-immersion before — we’d both grown up in households that didn’t have pods at all, even — but we’d managed to each try your basic partial-immersion VR a few times when at get-togethers with friends. I’d been keeping count of who had tried it the most, because I had a suspicion and the suspicion was true — Russ was consistently on top. I think he had more luck with that kind of thing ‘cause girls thought he was cute, whereas I was... well, like he called me (with permission), a fatso. 

Anyway, now we had our own pod, after years of saving up, and that meant we didn’t have to keep count anymore. From now on, we’d be able to play full-immersion games whenever we wanted to. That was the most exciting thing for us, two losers who wanted nothing more than to escape our realities.

“Okay,” Russ said. “I know this is suuuper exciting, but... we still have things to do. We have... the rest of today to play, and then tomorrow, and then the first half of the day after. But that’s it! So we can’t get too side-tracked.”

“Wait... what’re we doing after that again?”

“My... uhh, appointment?”

Riiight. Russ had already told me about that, I’d just forgotten in my miserable-life-induced-daze. “Right, right, right. You telling me what it’s for yet?”

“I... uhh... no. I just want you along. You have my back no matter what, right?”

“...Yeah, ‘course? Why wouldn’t I?”

“Thanks,” he smiled. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll be okay. I just want to make sure we get out in time for it. It’s important.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway... are we ready?” he asked.

“Uhh... I think so?”

He began to count off on his fingers as I continued to stare intently at the pod. “We read through the manual and set the pod up right — I think, anyway — so that we don’t die. We signed up for Cora on the website. We told people we wouldn’t be around this week because we have a pod now. We... I guess that’s it, right? We’re good?”

I nodded, swallowing. I glanced up at him, and then he shrugged.

“Aw, screw it I can’t wait any longer.” I got into my half of the pod.

Chuckling, he got into his as well. “See you inside,” he said, before I pressed the button and the dark hatch closed, leaving me in a silent blackness. 

Russ had claustrophobia, I suddenly remembered. I wondered if he was doing okay. If we had gotten the EconoPod Dual Two or better, it would have been translucent, and maybe it would have helped, but... well, that would have been another year of saving up, probably. I didn’t mind it, at least. I had always liked cosy little spaces.

I felt the VR link crown and the mask being pressed against my head and face, and it wasn’t long at all before I stopped feeling them — along with everything else. I had entered VR.

 

---

 

One thing that I had always heard, but never experienced personally, was that our minds do some strange things when they feel absolutely nothing. Our thoughts go to some odd places — places we don’t want to go. Scary places. Panicked ones. It’s odd, in a way, though — for me, that initial few seconds in VR before I found myself with the replacement senses? Those seconds gave me a sense of peace I’d never found anywhere else.

And, no, even though I was familiar with the feeling, because of the few times I had experienced VR in the past, I had never told anybody else about it. Why would I? It’s weird to be at peace when you can’t feel your body, right? Or, well... Maybe that’s more normal when you’re as overweight as me.

I suddenly found myself in my home — that is, my virtual home, but... well, you couldn’t really call these disconcertingly fake green hills, a blue sky, and puffy white clouds a home. For a moment I felt it was a little regretful that we moved onto the term “home” from “desktop.” I’d always thought it fit better. Maybe that was just ‘cause I was a big nerd, though. 

Speaking of being a big nerd, I noticed that my body was actually a little less overweight than I was outside, courtesy of the scan being from a few months prior. I was rather pleased with that, but, well, even when I’d been thin I hadn’t really liked my body, so going back to a thinner time was a pretty minor boon. 

God, getting in the game and messing with the character creator couldn’t come soon enough. Please fix this mess.

Russ appeared next to me a moment later — dual pods usually have shared homes and this one was no different. But my friend, on the other hand... he looked surprisingly different. Like a kid, still.

“My scan’s from when I was sixteen,” he smiled, noticing my confusion.

“Aha,” I nodded. “Ready?”

“Are we really doing this again?” He rolled his eyes. “Play Cora.”

I laughed, and said the same, and soon we were whisked away to an intro cutscene. It was rather wordy, even if it was being read to me, so I wasn’t really paying much attention — wouldn’t have remembered it anyway. I ended up just watching the pretty visuals, still extremely impressed by how clear everything looked and felt. Towards the end of the cutscene, I saw the part that interested me the most — the world map. It was massive! I was so excited... I would definitely be exploring every nook and cranny with my friend.

At the end of the cutscene, I was given a prompt:

Would you like to begin character creation? It should be—

“Continue,” I interrupted the voice. They always talked at a quarter the speed I could read, and it wasn’t even information I needed. I already knew all about the character creator, after all. We both did.

After a moment of the scene changing — large slabs of stone and bits of testing equipment and furniture sliding into existence piece by piece — I found myself in a rather large room. After a moment, I realised that Russ was standing next to me, looking around in awe. “Wow, Orr, this is so cool...”

I grinned. “Worth the wait already?”

“Well, no, not quite. Let’s get in the game first,” he winked.

For a minute we played with the series of options and sliders, trying to make each other laugh at what we were doing to our poor clay mannequins, and then ourselves, when we enabled the option to assume the guises of our characters. We had a blast just messing around with them, becoming all kinds of people, even ones shaped... strangely. And there were so many races! Russ was even more into it than I was, because he kept trying both the male and female options, and sometimes even making it do a combination. That was way more involved than what I was doing, just playing around with the races and size sliders trying to be funny.

In the end, though, we needed to move on and actually play the game. We already knew exactly what we were doing, and it was none of this — no, instead we would be using the the randomiser button.

See, in the first few months of Cora’s existence, it hadn’t really become clear yet that the randomiser was a good idea. Sure, it came with unique stuff, but the randomiser also meant that it’d lock you in with random ability trees and stats — physical, magical, and elemental affinities — permanently. If what it gave you didn’t play out nicely, and you wanted to re-roll, or play a different character, there was a steep cost. $5000, I think? As a result of that, it took a while for there to be enough randomised players before people knew for sure that using the randomiser was a good idea.

It wouldn’t screw you over. No, it was smarter than that. And at the same time, you’d get the chance to play as a rare race, with its own unique abilities, items, and quests that players of normal races would never get to see. If not a rare race, you’d get a different ‘unique trait’, which could be all sorts of things — a special item, maybe a special backstory, maybe a special ability that your race wouldn’t normally get... 

A random character might not be what everybody wanted, but for Russ and me, it was perfect. We didn’t have a plan for our characters, really — neither of us was incredibly interested in spending lots of time designing something we were happy with. Been there, done that. 

It was strange; both of us were the type to get super engrossed in creating characters, but the vast majority of the time ended up unsatisfied. This had been the case in other games we had played, and, given the sheer number of of those experiences, for our very first VR game, we knew that not worrying if it was perfect and just playing with what the randomiser gave us would be much more fun.

And then, on top of that, there was the assurance that the majority of people ended up happy with what the randomiser gave them. As people who were never satisfied with what we’d choose for ourselves, letting an AI choose for us felt like our best bet... as sad as that probably sounded.

“You ready?” he winked, holding his finger over the randomise button.

“‘Course,” I replied.

We pressed the buttons at the same time, and very quickly my body was completely different. While playing with the sliders I had messed around with height, but never to this extreme. I’d mostly increased my height, rather than decreased it... so I had never experienced what it was like to be this much shorter — I had lost a foot of height or more! And let me tell you, losing over a foot of height in a matter of moments? It was incredibly disorienting. 

I turned to look at Russ, seeing a... kinda hot girl standing in his place. The kind of hot that only happens naturally... like, unintentionally hot? I guess? Like you know how when celebrities get shaped they’re trying to look hot and then they end up looking like aliens, sorta? This girl didn’t look like that. She looked as though she’d entered the world this way, and it was... Like... my brain was having a hard time processing it completely, because it was honestly so cute. The girl had blue hair, and long, elf-like ears. Her facial features were rather sharp, all except for her small, soft nose, and her body was rather curvy. She had what looked like dragonfly wings on her back, and she wore a simple, blue, thin dress that matched her hair colour.

My mind finally fell back into gear a moment later, and I overcame all the weird feelings I was feeling. Mostly. “You’re a—” I started to laugh, but stopped when I realised my voice was so much... tinier than normal. It was... it was actually adorable. I looked down at my own body as my friend did the same, finding a bit of a chest that was definitely not there before, along with slender arms, a brown, fraying skirt, and tiny feet. I wriggled my little toes. 

“We’re both girls,” I snorted, finally looking back up at my friend.

He chuckled nervously, blushing slightly. His eyes glinted... were they wet? “What... what do you think?” he asked, quietly. His voice — feminine, with quite a bit of vocal fry — sounded far different than normal, and not just in a girly way... It was almost as if his layer of confidence was stripped away. The wetness I’d thought I’d seen in his eyes was already gone, though, so he honestly just was acting like a shy, hot girl, and it was really attractive. “Do you... still want to just go with what it gave us...? Or should we tweak the appearances?”

“Well, let’s mess with it in here for a li’l bit at least,” I winked. Oh, goodness, I was feeling rather flirty after seeing how hot Russ was and hearing my own voice. Already slipping into playing the part of some flirty girl. I was going to have fun with this, I already could tell. “Us guys both playing as girls sounds like quite the kicks, don’t you think?”

“I mean...” he smiled weakly. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Funny, though,” I said, looking at and around my arms and then twisting around to look at my backside, where I saw a very fluffy grey tail that I was subconsciously swishing back and forth. “I feel pretty good right now. Better than when we were just playing around, even? Maybe the trick was the height; I should have tried playing with a character this short.”

“I... I see,” Russ said, tilting his head. I wished I understood the look on his face. It was almost as if I was seeing a completely different side of him, one I’d never seen before, in the multiple years we’d lived together. Why was he being so serious when he was playing a girl character? “Come on, Russy, just be flirty like me, it’ll be fun,” I winked.

He couldn’t help but snort, shaking his head. “Sure... if you say so... I never took you for someone to get all into playing a girl character, though...” Russ stared at me, those pretty, thin eyebrows furrowed into a look of worry. Was that my heart fluttering just now? “Orr, what if you get that... you know, the dysphoria?”

Ah. Right. The dysphoria. 

Apparently, when VR goes full-immersion, some things start to happen to people... when they’re in a body that doesn’t match their brain’s expectations — especially if it’s a body of the other sex — they begin to feel uncomfortable, sometimes even nauseated or worse.

Luckily, we still could use randomised characters even if we edited our appearance a bit. The parts of the randomised character that were set in stone were the race, stats, and abilities. I was free to change my character’s gender or make tweaks to their appearance, if need be. Maybe it was worth doing, if I was going to get that dysphoria?

I sighed. “Maybe you’re right...” 

My eyes drifted towards the editor panel, and the mannequin to the side — the mannequin which mirrored my current form. She was cute. Cute in a similar way to Russ’s randomly generated appearance... Like, I could still see flaws, and I could still see myself in there... but... well, cute. She was short and thin in an almost waifish way, with long, thick, multicolour hair — it was mostly silver, but also with grey strands, a few dark grey, and even a few light brown. At the top of her head were two big, fluffy ears; inside the ears the fluff was the light brown colour, whereas on the back the fur seemed to match the silvers and greys. I really liked the colours — they might have been muted, earthy tones, but they were interesting and still very pretty. I also liked the style — that it was parted to the side right next to an ear; that the long, thick locks curved as they flowed down her head into wavy curls. It was kinda crazy and unkempt, but at the same time it was really, really cute, and it only accentuated her face. And that was another thing... she had the tiniest little nose, and her cheeks looked so puffy and cherubic, with big, green eyes and long eyelashes.

She was really pretty. Or... well, I was really pretty, as this character. That was weird. But, well, I liked being her... err, pretending. It was fun. 

But... the dysphoria... 

I was hesitating a lot, but in the end, it probably wasn’t worth the potential hurt. I looked towards the editor panel again, finding the gender option, and my finger hovered over it. 

Sighing again, I pressed the button. Immediately, I felt... normal again. Gone was the giddiness, gone was the warm feeling, gone was that hot, lightning-fast rush of exhilaration... Instead, I just felt like I usually did. Normal. Normal, but not necessarily good or bad... The same, lifeless feeling I always had.

“Okay, back to normal now,” I murmured, finding my voice lower again and not particularly fun. I didn’t think I could be flirty with this.

After a moment, I looked back up at my friend. His pretty eyes were lingering on me, as if he was trying to figure out a rather complex math problem. Shifting uncomfortably under his gaze, I asked, “What about you? Aren’t you worried about the dysphoria?”

“I... ummm...” he whispered. “I... I kinda wanna give it a try. I’ll work through the dysphoria if it comes, okay?”

I frowned. “Well, screw it, if you’re doing it then I am too.” I switched back to female, and my frown instantly became a smirk. Oh goodness, it was so easy to feel flirty like this. “See? It’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

My friend rolled his eyes, rubbing his forehead. “So you’re going to just deal with the dysphoria as well, then?”

I shook my head. “Nah. If either of us get the dysphoria, we’ll just try a different game.”