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Claire took a deep breath and looked around her room, Clinton had helped her set up according to the recommendations. They'd moved her furniture around enough to clear a space for the stretches needed during the calibration process and her bed was also there so she could lie down when she was in full-dive. She steeled herself and fiddled with the interface necklace it was a bit uncomfortable so tight around her neck. With another deep breathe she slid the interface headband (she refused to call it a crown) onto her forehead and tapped the button for startup. There was a brief moment of double vision as her real vision contested with what the headband was sending her before she let her eyes fall closed and the projected image properly took primacy.
Claire trailed her fingers through the surface of the mirror. There was a small amount of resistance like dragging her fingers through lukewarm bathwater. "Thanks for your help." She took a deep breath to steal herself and then stepped as confidently as she could through the surface.
There was a whirl of colors, a sound a bit like wind rushing by and a feeling she's moving really fast.
By the time she came to grips with it the sensation ended and she stumbled a bit as she stepped out the portal at the other end. "Well that was something."
"I know, they really did a good job of capturing the feeling of being flung into the unknown.”
She turned to look at the person the voice belonged to and found a lanky man, maybe a couple years older than her, wearing khaki shorts, a small backpack and a T-Shirt with the letters CERN printed over a circular blue and red geometric pattern. “They did. Well, it certainly has that vibe at least. It’s not like I’ve experienced anything like that outside.”
Something odd flickered across his face for a moment, then he laughed and she dismissed it., “Of course. I’m Alex by the way.”
There was another small pause, and the repetition made Claire more sure that there was something there. “No, I did some contracting work for the company though, so this isn’t my first time seeing everything.”
She nodded. That would certainly explain things. “Oh wow, does that mean you have all sorts of secret knowledge?”
He shook his head. “Nothing that dramatic. I might know a thing or two but I helped out more on the hardware side so I don’t have any cheat codes or anything.”
“Alright, Mr Hardware Guy. I believe you. Given that you don’t have super secret knowledge, I’ll just have to find things out the normal way. Maybe I’ll see you around."
“Yeah, we’ll see.” He waved and then jogged over to a vertical net like you might find at some playgrounds and started climbing.
With that friendly conversation concluded she turned her attention to the environment. It’s a lot to take in.
The net Alex had just started climbing went up over a full story and led into an enormous ropes course. One mostly without the sort of safety equipment she had seen when she visited them out in reality. There were some nets to catch people before they fell all the way down, but no harnesses or safety tethers.
Below the ropes course there was an enormous pond or perhaps a particularly natural looking pool. As she looked she saw one person dive down into it from high above and a few other people were swimming around. It’s a striking scene. Everyone seems to be excited and smiling. Today is a good day. She could really get used to this.
As she watched she heard a whoosh from behind and turned to see someone emerging from the portal. She briefly considered striking up another conversation, but she wasn’t here to talk to people; she was here to immerse herself in all of this. She walked forward with a bit of a string in her step and started to make her own way up the netting.
It was remarkably easy, before long and having climbed a ladder subsequent to the netting, she found herself at least three stories up. The ground was… a bit further down than was entirely comfortable, but the experience was the fun kind of scary; like riding a roller coaster. She looked around, even as high as she had climbed, most of the bridges and routes seemed more focused on enabling movement than presenting a challenge, but there were plenty of challenges to be had.
She set her eyes on a small balance beam and walked towards it. She swallowed nervously for just a second, peering at the rescue netting below, before taking first one step and then another. She wobbled a little as she crossed but got to the end without any issues. Looking around, she chose a set of dangling logs with small footholds around the bottom as her next challenge.
And so her journey continued, one obstacle at a time until she finally made a mistake she couldn’t recover from. It was a set of wooden disks suspended by thin ropes connecting to their middles. With the current rope in one hand and as she leaned out to grab for the next she felt herself tilting she found her grip wasn’t quite tight enough. She felt herself slipping and tried to correct but all that did was make her less stable. The rope slipped through her fingers and her feet weren’t enough to keep her from overbalancing and falling in a wild uncontrolled jumble.
She hit the netting below with a jerk, mercifully she didn’t feel anything snap, apparently the netting had enough elasticity to cushion her fall. She just lay there for a few moments stunned and winded.
“You okay there?” It was a woman’s voice. She couldn’t quite muster an immediate response. “Hold on a sec, I’ll be right there. Claire tilted her head towards the voice and saw a tall Asian woman wearing a striped tank top and shorts with her hair cut a little above her shoulders. The woman, seemingly effortlessly, made her way across a bridge made from spinning cylinders before grabbing onto a rope and wrapping her legs around it as she quickly climbed down and then bounced across the net to Claire’s side.
“The first one is usually the hardest. It isn’t quite the same but just jumping into the netting can help you get used to it. Doesn’t stop it from hurting though. I guess you could turn off the pain, but I don’t recommend it. Even the normal dampening takes away a lot from the experience.”
Claire slowly pushed herself up to a seated position and frowned. “I'm not sure I want to get used to it. That wasn't fun." She paused for a moment. "Wait, you mean you’re playing without any pain reduction? Isn’t there a warning attached to that setting about passing out from it being too intense?” It was one of the few settings she was able to configure in advance.