Sometimes they socialize.

Eventually, it's Thursday after class, and they carefully assemble the tripods for calibration, put the NerveGear on, and boot it up.

There's a slightly weird sensation as the headset activates and replaces their normal vision with it's own display. Sounds from around them also take on a muted quality.

Their room is replaced by a wireframe image showing the size and positions of objects but not their colors. Their body is similarly replaced by a wireframe, one less detailed than that of the objects around them.

"Welcome to Nervegear." The words come from no particular direction and are accompanied by a happy musical chord.

Icons pop up in front of them: "Gates of Eternity Calibration", "Connect to your computer as a VR headset", "Guided Workouts," and "Dance Off."

"Wow. This is quite the trippy experience. Feels retrofuturistic like this."

Yeah, Ruby enthuses in their mind, it's so cool!

She reaches out and pokes the calibration icon.

The icons disappear and a rainbow swirl of color appears in front of them.

"Hello, I'm Veria the primary help system for Gates of Eternity. I'm here to guide you through the calibration process. And, since you're doing calibration so early, I assume to help you with the advanced customization system."

Sable nods. "Yep! W—I'm going to start with the inspiration system, but can't rule out wanting to customize things and get used to it and such rather than just rolling with the immediate result."

She gives Veria a thoughtful look for a moment, then smiles. "And good to meet you, Veria. Not to abuse a game reference, but are you a VI or an AI?"

"I can give context sensitive replies to questions I'm asked and I remember past interactions. I'll leave classifications to your judgement."

"Okay, that's at least a VI, goodness. The devs are really going all out."

She stretches, in the middle of her virtualized dorm room. "So where do we start?"

"The team at Otherwhere is very proud of their work on Gates of Eternity. The calibration process is a series of stretches to get a sense for how you move and how your joints are structured. We can begin that now if you're ready. I can also wait while you change if your current clothes wouldn't be comfortable during that kind of activity. For best results, your elbows and knees should be visible either outside of clothes or as outlines through your clothing."

She nods. "Well, in that case, perhaps I should change to a skirt rather than these baggy pants." And she steps over to the closet to pick one out.

"Please take all the time you need. No data from the calibration system will be stored except what's part of the final inputs to the avatar creation system. I can also turn off my sense of sight until you have me turn it back on if that would make you more comfortable."

She shrugs as she picks something out. "I've never in my life really felt like this body was mine. No point in getting fussy about a bit more than is 'appropriate' getting seen."

Off go the pants, and into the hamper. On goes the skirt. She twirls back, knees exposed now, and feeling a tiny bit more comfortable.

"Lay on, MacDuff."

"Alright, please begin by bringing your hands above your head and reaching as high as you can while keeping your feet flat on the ground."

She complies, stretching her hands high. They're not exceptionally flexible, in this body, but better than they could be, and they certainly have heaps of stamina.

The rest of the stretches are pretty similar. They're aimed more at assessing range of motion than anything else.

"Alright, that's the end of the stretching portion. Give me a minute to combine the data from that with the inspiration shots you uploaded."

"Thank you. Feel free to use as little of the body details as you can get away with. Definitely no attachment to the current appearance of the existing body. Aiming for petite, curly black hair."

"Thanks for the clarification, that is what seems to be the focus of your inspiration images."

There's a pause and then a young woman about their height appears in front of them dressed in a dark blue skirt and a pale pink button down blouse with bare feet. She has black hair as per their request and a face that resembles several of their inspiration images a bit like someone who was a cousin a couple times removed to each of them.

The woman breathes like a person but otherwise stands still with her eyes focused on a point a bit to their side.

"Here's what I have for the moment. I did the initial rendering with clothes but I can remove those if you'd prefer."

She paces back and forth, getting a view of the avatar-in-progress from different angles. "This is a pretty great start. I see you're still using our original body's height. How much leeway do we have to make that a bit shorter without compromising either physical effectiveness or immersion?"

"I think that depends on you, there was a range in how well people were able to adapt to larger changes during our testing. In general, I think going down 2-3 inches if it's taken across your whole height is possible for most people and if you're on the more adaptable end you can probably go as far as 6 inches before you're basically guaranteed to have balance issues. You can also potentially shrink over the course of your first month, someone who did that in testing found that it worked better for them. How much shorter are you aiming for?"

"Six should probably work, and we—I'm probably on the more adaptable end, especially if I can practice with it in Dance Off or something. It's..."

She hums thoughtfully.

"Can you tell what's different—"

"—If I do this?"

As Hailey switches in, there are superficial changes, like how she uses their voice differently, but also neurological changes the NerveGear might be able to pick up.

"I think you're talking a little differently? And maybe standing a little differently too? By default, Dance Off runs in the AR mode but, and forgive me if I'm making an incorrect assumption here, there are several trans members of the Otherwhere staff and so we've included an option to run the Dance Off and Guided Workouts applications in full dive for the trans players in our community ahead of the official launch of that headset mode."

"Yep, you guessed right about the trans thing. As for the other, I'm not sure I believe that you can't get a closer look at the neurological data."

She tilts her head a bit and narrows her eyes. It really would ease the job of a helper VI or AI if she had access to the sensors more directly. She will honestly be surprised if it turns out that Veria and the game can't detect switches.

"I can access that data if there's need but there's a lot more data in that than the video and audio channels I usually use. Also, there's privacy implications to that kind of intimate access. As such, most of the time I'm not utilizing that option. I have more processing power free right now than I will on launch day since I'm talking with fewer people but I don't want to get too used to relying on that data when in other circumstances I won't be able to due to resource constraints."

Sable switches back in, and hums and nods. "That makes sense. Do you know anything about plurality?"