Chapter 5 - It's on!

After the awkward conversation with Spoon and his fetish for AIs, Gray had to admit he was curious about this AI, Nadia, at the very least.

"Usually an AI's avatar is set by the human who set it up. As for which one to pick, the most popular avatars are designed by experts" Gray only had a few very basic AI that were completely non-sentient. In fact, calling them AI could be considered a stretch.

In this age, AI handled many useful functions from driving public transportation, public safety, and even personal assistants. AI were forbidden from joining law enforcement and the Military outside of advisory roles. Why? Skynet…

Gray thought to himself "I remember that someone said your AI's avatar was a mirror reflection of your dreams… I don't exactly know what that means but since I don't have an AI with an avatar that could mean I do not have any dreams!"

For some reason thinking about this made Gray a little depressed, he sometimes wished he could go back in time to his past self and change a few things.

Finally coming back to his apartment, Gray notices a conspicuous red button lying on the ground, like the kind you used to be able to get from that office supply chain "Staples" as a joke. In bold letters it had the word "RESET" and Gray's heart skipped a beat thinking this could be what he was just thinking about.

"No way!" Said Gray out loud to himself. Gray picked up the button and looked around to see if anyone may have dropped it or was watching him. Gray closed his eyes and with genuine heartfelt emotion of wanting to fix the past he pressed the Reset button firmly.

"RE-RE-RE-RESSSEETTT!" a loud DJ voiced boomed from the back of the button. Sadly, that was all that happened, this isn't one of those kind of novels.

Gray laughed and almost chucked it but thought it might have been a prank someone was playing so he decided to keep it to prank someone else with it later. "What good are friends if you can't play pranks on them… maybe that's why I don't have many friends?"

Upon entering his apartment Gray could see the new VR bed through the doorway. Gray was positive that it is now the most expensive thing he owned, even more expensive than everything else he owned combined. It's not to say that top of the line VR beds are outrageously expensive, Gray was just that poor to begin with. He could've bought one, but he would've had to go without eating for 3 years.

Gray examined his new VR bed as this was the very first full dive true VR bed model available to the public and specifically released for Alterra Online. As a Diamond tier he got it early, but even so, it was the first of its kind and nobody else (legally) owned one. The VR bed itself looked sleek, it was a box shape with some white fluffy material covering the top that is supposed to mold to your body. At the head of the bed was the neural interface unit which looked like half of a solid white donut that one had to put their head on. All you needed really was the neural interface unit and the board it used to interface with the network, but almost everyone opted for the full bed as if you tried to do it sitting up your body could fall and you'd lose connection to the game. As for full dive, Gray just assumed the bed had became standard since now you'd be unconscious and wouldn't know if you fell.

It has been said that if you suddenly get pulled out of your neural unit during an intense gaming session that your mind will become damaged or your mind could disconnect from your body. Fortunately, that was all proven not true. When you get moved out of your neural interface unit, your in-game character just stops and collapses like a rag doll. As for your body, you will wake up naturally after a minute as if you just had a dream since your body will no longer be forced asleep. Still, full dive VR was new and Gray was sure there were some unknown hazards with it.

Although Gray knew Diamond tier was the highest, he didn't remember exactly what the others were so he browsed to the Alterra Online shop to compare. The site offered 3 tiers for Alterra Online: Iron, Gold, and Diamond.

"Weird, normally they do something like Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, then Chuck Norris, but I guess they can pick whatever they want."

Every tier offered the game for life with a one-time payment. Iron-tier basically was just the game, you needed to buy a VR bed separately or share it with someone else. The Gold tier included a VR bed made for Alterra Online and wasn't much different than a Diamond Tier except that the Diamond Tier was not for sale and included lifetime service on your VR bed. Humans are the hardware with full-dive VR, the VR bed just carries the signal, translates it, and blocks erroneous outside interference.

In Alterra Online, Diamond-tier players also included several in-game mech and avatar customizations, an upgraded starter mech, and the ability to create a faction of your own in game.

Gray thought they were talking about guilds, but Gray noticed this game didn't have a guild function but instead had a team or unit function. It was further explained that teams and factions, while fundamentally the same, were very different. Teams could complete missions together and have a team bonus applied to the reward based upon team rank if you were all from the same team. Team changing was allowed only once every 24 hours, but the rewards scaled the longer you were in the same team. A team's headquarters could only be built in a city and each city was limited to the amount of team headquarters that could be built based upon the player and NPC population of the city. Other than that, the team functions were fairly standard.

Creating a faction was what Gray really was impressed with, but it had some strange functions compared to creating a team. Firstly, you had to submit a request to the system to create a faction along with a banner and emblem. Secondly, you would be given a starting HQ inside of an existing NPC city as the base for your faction. Expansion was handled by purchasing existing buildings within that same city or constructing new buildings over empty lots within the city limits. Lastly, you needed at least 4 squadrons of mech pilots to be able to create your own faction, compared to just one for a team.

"Weird, why can't we build wherever we want?"

As for the strangest rule regarding factions… factions were not allowed to attack another territory or faction of other players unless given specific permission from a NPC that was a political or military leader. Personal grudges and group wars were only allowed to be carried out in a simulated arena battle.

"It sounds like NPCs are going to be able to directly control the players if the players desire war amongst themselves and can't work it out in the arena. A simulated arena in a game that is simulated, makes my head hurt thinking about it"

Finally sitting down on the VR bed, Gray gave it a light bounce. The VR bed was so soft to sit on that it was like he was sitting on a cloud.

"I can't wait to sleep on this thing!" then Gray stopped himself when he realized that a normal bed wouldn't cost more than his college education. "Oh right, time to take this thing for a spin! I've never done full dive VR before so it will be new to me!"

After inspecting the setup and verifying that everything was plugged in correctly, he did notice that Alterra had upgraded his connection to use Alterra Corporation's direct Hyper-optic direct connection to the Internet.

"This… this thing has more bandwidth capacity than my workplace… seems like a good use to me!"

Gray laid down on the bed and pulled the neural link chamber over his head, then said "Start up!"

Nothing happened…

Gray pondered for a minute then said "Activate!"

Nothing happened again…

Gray was getting a little annoyed so he just started saying anything he could think of.

"VR On!"

"Materialize!"

"Transform!"

"Go Go Gadget VR bed!"

"When your powers combine, I am Captain Planet!"

"Big bucks big bucks no whammies!"

Finally, that seemed to do something… is what Gray told himself. In reality, Gray finally looked it up and saw that to actually turn it on you have to squeeze the included remote to sync it with your unique DNA so someone else can't use it or "accidentally" turn it off while you're playing it.

Gray gripped the remote in his hand, a warm sensation passed through his fingers then a pleasant computerized voice said "Welcome! Would you like to begin?"

Gray started to feel giddy as he said with extreme enthusiasm "YES!"