Chapter 8 - Keeping up Appearances

Upon exiting the changing room, Gray walked over to the huge door that led to the game world. Reaching out he pushed with his hand.

"It's as heavy as it looks…" Gray said to himself.

Gathering his strength, he gave it a much harder push, but still nothing happened.

"What gives?"

Gray looked up and saw the clock above the door, it still had a little over an hour left on the timer.

"Oh yeah, it's not time yet, whoops…" said Gray sheepishly while hoping nobody else was around to notice.

Gray didn't feel quite like logging out yet so he decided instead to actually read the electronic copy of the user's manual that he received. As a veteran gamer he felt like he was committing a taboo by reading it, but he told himself it was just out of boredom.

The manual itself was very concise with the instructions and merely explained that one should treat this game as if they were living in the real world. NPCs remember you and your actions, you may be a player but your stats are the same as NPCs. Raising stats is done through gene therapy and training. Players also must return to their incubation chambers in game to log out.

"This game has another weird rule… I understand not being able to log out immediately, but I can only log out from my incubation chamber?" Gray imagined this was done to prevent people from abusing the game by suddenly logging out in the middle of combat to prevent a loss as other games used forms of this as well. Being anchored to the incubation chamber seemed annoying but Gray was hoping maybe enough players would complain about it and this would be patched out.

As for stats, Gene therapy lets you adjust your stats after you return to your incubation chamber. Depending upon the amount of adjustments, the waiting period would vary, but even the highest level only had a waiting period of half a day. This was fairly normal as the wait was there for balance Gray imagined. While waiting, you were unable to move your character from the incubation chamber. You would not be able to log in to your character during this time, but you could still return to the game lobby and wait if you didn't feel like completely logging out.

Training your stats was slow and arduous, but it was free. The other advantage of training over Gene therapy was that taking difficult missions would often add training naturally. Much like in real life, the results of training couldn't be calculated prior to training, only show you the result of such training. The weakness of training was that if you didn't maintain it, the manual said your stats would slowly degrade.

One of the more interesting features Gray read was that your characters physical appearance would change with training. For example, if you slacked off on physical training your character would get fat and if you trained to much your character would become so toned that they'd look almost sickly thin.

"That really is a lot like real life… so basically I can't be a couch potato like I am in real life if I want to keep this six pack." Gray said as he admired his own six pack which he hadn't seen in real life since his early college days.

As Gray continued to read, more players started to log in to the game as the timer got closer to the end. Most players had already created their characters already, but he still enjoyed watching how some people REALLY adjusted their appearance. It seemed tedious that only a few people could use the changing rooms at once, but this was one of many lobbies and only the Diamond-Tier players used this one.

Gray tried talking to some of the other players but everyone seemed to have formed their own cliques and he never felt like he fit in with any one group. Looking at his clothes, Gray realized that people may have been avoiding him as the game would use whatever clothes you were wearing upon diving in to the game for your initial clothes prior to launch.

"What's the big deal, a lot of people wear pajamas when they game!" Gray realized he was wearing one of his older pairs so it probably so it was probably one of them with a hole in the butt or crotch that he should've thrown away a long time ago. Still, not important anyways as this was the only time the game would use your real life clothes.

Only a few minutes left until launch and Gray was enjoying watching how people would adjust their appearance. While he couldn't watch them do it, he could still see the before and after. Surprisingly, it was the girls that did the least amount of modification to their appearances. Most of the players seemed to have the same idea as Gray and would just give their natural appearance a slight touch up. Of course, he couldn't help notice that many of the female players chose to enhance certain "assets" that most men would heartily approve of.

As for the men, a few didn't even change their appearance, but some couldn't seem to get enough of it. "I'm glad I'm not that insecure" said Gray to himself after watching one guy walk in to the changing room as skinny as a rail and walk out looking like a professional body-builder, another man walked in looking like Donny Devito and came out looking like Ryan Feynolds.

The only thing that surprised Gray was that nobody seemed older than 40, but then again with today's cosmetic surgery it is possible that people were much older than they appeared. Regardless, it still seemed odd.

A short Asian man walked in to one of the changing rooms and apparently was giving himself a thorough make over as Gray noticed that he was in there very long. A cute girl with long blonde hair tied up in twin tails and buns with long legs wearing a female sailor outfit and a moon-shaped tattoo on her forehead came out of the same room that the Asian man had walked in to.

"Huh, he must've came out before and I just missed him" said Gray while thinking the girl in the sailor outfit looked oddly familiar.

She noticed Gray staring at her and walked up to him.

"Hey cutie! Please be nice to me in game or in the name of the moon I shall punish you!" said the girl with a cute wink.

Gray blushed slightly as he wasn't used to girls taking the initiative to talk to him and smiled bashfully at her. "Of course miss, I'll look for you in game!" Gray said enthusiastically.

The girl smiled back at him "I hope so too!" then scampered off, probably to look for her other cute friends, girls like to travel in packs.

Still Gray felt something was off about her… the girl's shoulders were slightly broader than normal, her chin was a little more defined and he wasn't sure but he may have seen an Adam's apple on her. As she scampered away he couldn't help but glance at her short red skirt and Gray's face suddenly went white as he saw a "pouch" bouncing between her thighs in the panties that she... errr… HE was wearing…

"It's a trap!" Gray suddenly exclaimed to himself as he felt a piece of himself die a little bit.