“All I want you to do Seamus,” Vicky’s voice said from all around him, “is save the kitten from the hornets. You have ten minutes to figure out your plan. The hornets are extremely aggressive and the kitten’s pitiful meows are upsetting them more. In ten minutes they will swarm the kitten unless you can stop them. Also, if you approach they will attack you and the kitten, and the pain sensors for the pod are set to max. Good luck.”
A small red clock appeared in the lower right of his peripheral vision, counting down. The sound kicked on as the scene came to life with the kitten meowing piteously as it clung to its branch. Seamus went to the garage and started looking through all the stuff piled up inside of it. He noted the hose with an obvious hole in it and set it aside for the moment. Water alone wouldn’t ground the hornets fast enough to save him or the kitten.
The time ticked away as he went through the stuff as quickly as he could. He smiled when he found a garden feeder attachment for the hose and set it next to the hose. He found some heavy duty tape and tossed it next to the hose. No fucking bug spray in the whole pile of junk, but he did find a bottle of liquid soap. Taking the hose, he patched the hole thoroughly with the tape. It wouldn’t last long, but it would hold for the time he needed it for. He placed soap into the garden feeder attachment and hooked up to the hose before hooking the hose to the spigot one the side of the house. Seamus faced away from the hornets and turned the water on to test if he was getting enough suds. Sure enough the water going through the feeder picked up enough soap and agitation to create suds.
Seamus turned the water off, pulling the feeder off to top up the soap off before hooking everything back up. Getting the hose pointed above the nest slightly, Seamus nodded as he turned the water on full blast. Soapy water came out in a wide spray, knocking the hornets in the air around the kitten down first. The soap coating their wings dropped them from the air. The nest exploded with activity as hornets came pouring out, only to also get soaped and collapse to the ground. The kitten, getting wet, meowed loudly and climbed further out onto the branch. Seamus didn’t turn the hose off until no more hornets came out. Once they had stopped he cocked the hose so the stream continued to arc over the mass of them on the ground. He got the small ladder from the garage and carried it to the tree. A minute later he had a very upset, soapy kitten out of the tree along with a few deep scratches on his arms for his trouble.
The scene paused, the kitten vanished and Seamus was dry again, after getting wet when he grabbed the kitten. “Very well done, Seamus. Very creative use of the items in the pile. Did you spot any other options?”
“A few, but none of them would have been as effective or as quick to really reduce the threat to me and the kitten. This scenario was actually a little fun, I love problem solving. How do you guys make it all seem so real?”
“We feed your brain the stimuli needed for you to be able to smell, feel, taste, hear, and otherwise perceive sensation. You know how a cat sounds or how hornets buzz, so we give you the raw input and let your brain filter it for you to experience. That is a very rough and crude way of explaining a complicated process. Are you okay with doing another one?” Vicky asked, to which Seamus consented.
The rest of the day flew by in a blur as best Seamus could recall it. The scenarios were all over the board, testing his determination to break through a door to help a screaming child on the other side or jumping into a freezing pond to save a puppy. It also touched on how he dealt with different aggressors, from women who wanted him in bed to three guys who wanted to kill him. All Seamus could clearly remember was Victoria’s smile as each scenario concluded with her sitting across from him.
Eventually, she shook her head, “Time certainly does fly, as the saying goes. You should rest for a bit. You’ll find that you still need to do things like sleep and eat. The designers decided that most biological functions did not need representation, so for most players food simply provides buffs. Anyone logged in for more than twelve hours at a time though, will find a starvation debuff waiting for them, so remember to eat and stay hydrated. Did you have any other questions before you rest?”
“We’re doing this again tomorrow, right?” Seamus asked.
Shaking her head as if sad, Victoria replied, ‘We’ve already spent twenty four hours together, Seamus.” Seamus blinked at her statement but she continued on, “After you rest you will be given the chance to make your avatar and then just wait for early access to launch. It has been a pleasure meeting and speaking with you. I will see you again in a year to do this all over again to see how you have changed, or not. Sleep well and good luck.”
She started to fade and Seamus called out quickly, “Wait.” She came back into focus, a questioning smile on her lips with her head cocked to one side. “Um, just curious. Do you have any contact with the game itself?”
Her eyes sparkled briefly and her lips twitched up very slightly, “Of course not.” It seemed like an obvious lie to Seamus. “Was that all, Seamus?”
“Do you ever speak to Alvin Brouch at Mindblown Entertainment?”
“I do speak with Alvin at times,” she replied.
“Next time you do, tell him thanks for this chance please. I know he had a hand in making sure I was the one selected.”
Victoria’s smile could have lit the sky, “How sweet of you, Seamus. I shall indeed pass along your words to him. I am going, but I will leave you with one last question of my own. Who else at Mindblown could have heard about you and helped tip the scales in your favor?” With that cryptic question, she vanished as did the study.
Seamus sat in still blackness considering her words, trying to think if he had met any friend of Alvin’s who could have helped him. His mind chugged along for a bit before sleep claimed him, dragging him off to dreams of Victoria’s smile as he completed each scenario.
Character Creation
Seamus found himself floating in blackness, well floating was wrong as he didn’t feel weightless, but with nothing to give perspective and no feeling on any of his limbs he couldn’t find another way to describe it. The blackness flashed white for a second all but blinding him, then he was spiraling down towards a green-blue world. It wasn’t earth, not with the continents shaped as they were, but it seemed to be earth like. He smiled as a title image appeared over the planet, ‘Alpha World’. He felt anticipation grow as the world faded away leaving him in a blank room looking at an avatar of the average human male.
“Okay character creation time,” Seamus whispered to himself as he walked around the nude character. “Let's see what the other races look like as well.”
Seamus switched the race option to dwarf and did a walk around the small fireplug, adjusting the height to the maximum five foot and shook his head. “Too short, good shoulders though. Not for me this time.”
Going to elf next Seamus laughed out loud at the pointedly thin figure. “Hell I could attack with the cheek and chin of this character.” Seamus played with the face creation for a time before shaking his head as each face still seemed too feminine to him.
Finally he ended up with the Lunari, cat-people, to find them mostly human looking. The difference was the tail, the coating of downy fur, cat ears on top of the head and the retractable razor sharp claws on their hands. “Feisty kitty,” Seamus muttered before switching back to human. “Let's go with the basic human.”
“Average, just like me. Let’s get the features a little more in line with how I looked when I passed the academy all those years ago.” He left the height alone at the five foot seven inch mark, he toned the muscles and slimmed them down to that of a martial artist, rather than the more heavily muscled form it had been. He shifted the hair to a light brown and made it a buzz cut as was his preferred style. He gave the avatar a neatly trimmed beard and mustache along with a small scar on the right side of his forehead going from hairline to temple. A pair of misty grey eyes that were unnerving to look at, he had always wanted those over the blue eyes he had been born with, so why not take them here? He did another walk around, approving of what he saw. He paused as he considered the mature rating of the game. Shaking his head, he left the more adult parts alone figuring since he was born average he might as well keep the game avatar the same, at least he knew how to use what he had.