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.
She was still mostly in the same room but now it was rendered as a wireframe, a bit like the renderings of how computer vision systems worked. The objects were there and distinct they just weren't colored or lit like she was used to.
A swirl of light spun into existence beside her. "Hello, I'm Veria. I'm the virtual help system for Gates of Eternity and I'm here to help guide you through the setup process. Before we begin, would you prefer to be rendered as a wireframe or based on camera data during the calibration process?"
Claire cringed, she wasn't really fond of her current outfit, she was only wearing it because it was supposed to help get the best results during calibration. She hadn't quite noticed that she couldn't see herself before it was mentioned now that it was pointed out it was a weird feeling. "Wireframe please." With her words a kind of ghostly image appeared. She could see rough proportions but it was pretty undetailed just giving her a sense of the positions of her torso and limbs.
"Of course. If you're ready we can now start the calibration process. If you have questions feel free to interrupt at any time."
Claire followed that instruction and then continued through the sequence. There were something like forty stretches in all. The hardest thing had been touching her toes, everything else was more about bending various joints one way or another.
"Calibration is complete. Please lay down and verbally confirm when you're ready for full immersion."
Claire took the needed couple steps to her bed and did her best to get into a comfortable position before she said "I'm ready."
She felt something like a chill or maybe a brief sense of numbness run down her body. The wireframe representation of her bedroom faded, replaced by a new room rendered in photorealistic detail. She was lying on an exam table like from a doctor's office. She bent her neck to look at her body and saw the wireframe had been replaced by a transparent bubble of skin containing a glowing green skeleton. She flexed her fingers in front of her face and marveled at the way all the small little bones floated around each other to make the motions work. She sat up and looked around. There were mirrors around the edge of the room and racks of clothing.
Slightly distractingly there was also a pink diamond floating at one corner of her vision no matter which way she was facing. According to the marketing material, the pink diamond was supposed to be a reminder that you were in a game world. Looking at her glowing bones that felt unnecessary but the game was supposed to be a lot more immersive once you'd finished setup.
"I see you've uploaded inspiration images to your Gates of Eternity account. These images all appear to be consistent. Would you like me to use them as the basis for your avatar?"
She felt a rippling sensation as tendons and muscles appeared to wrap around her bones. The strange meaty version of her didn’t last long, the translucent bubbly skin reshaped itself to fit tightly around her body and then shifted into the lightly tanned color she had chosen dotted with freckles in a way she thought was cute.
A moment after that her clothes appeared. She waited a moment for more changes but none came so she sat up and looked at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t help but break into a wide smile. The changes might be small objectively but they were ever so important.
She had more padding in a few places, a bit less definition in a couple others. The biggest differences were to her face and her boobs. She had more than the little bumps of early hormone treatment now. Nothing absurd, she'd heard enough girls complain, but enough to really feel like a woman. Enough that nobody would make the mistake.
And she was wearing the sort of dress she had never felt confident enough to wear for real. It was bright red with a bit of lace around her chest and the hem. Everything important was still decorously covered but it clung to her curves and it showed off her bare knees. She had curves now. She pushed herself off the table and onto her feet. Then she spun around to flare the skirt.
Well she tried to. Her balance was a bit off so she actually started to fall before something invisible caught her and helped her back to her feet.
"While you're adjusting to changes in weight distribution, I recommend keeping your movements slower." There was a smooth quality to Veria's voice that took any possible sting out of the words.
Despite the averted fall, she was still smiling. "Thanks. I kinda figured that out." She laughed a little. With a bit more deliberation she took a few more steps and then did a couple slower turns before speeding up bit by bit. After she reached the needed speed her skirt twirled up revealing the built in shorts and the silvery material of her skirt's inner layer. Her smile stretched out as wide as it ever had.
With the twirl test complete, she gently patted herself down. Everything felt right. She twitched her face from side to side for a moment. "Veria, can you give me a bit of privacy?"
"Certainly." A green button appeared on the mirror in front of her. "When you're ready for me to come back you can press that green button." Veria’s swirl of light shrunk into itself and vanished.
With Veria gone, Claire felt for the hidden zipper at the front of her dress and pulled it down. The split in the front revealed a bit of her plain white bra and she smiled a little before pulling the straps off her shoulders and letting the whole top of the dress fall onto the skirt. She turned back and forth a couple times, watching herself in the mirror. Then she cupped her left breast through the bra; it was nice. There was a tiny discordant note at the sudden growth, her skin wasn't quite expecting the pressure as soon as it came. She'd get used to it though. She was looking forward to getting used to it. And already dreading having to go back to the real world.
She repeated the caress with her right breast and just took her time. She had most of the day before the special speech from the lead designer, Daisy Decker, was scheduled; there was no need to rush.
After getting used to the sensations of touching herself through her bra she undid the clasp between her breasts and pulled it off. She dropped it onto a small side table. Tentatively she touched her skin to the bare skin of one breast, then cupped the handful of flesh and felt the weight. Then she repeated that on the other side, carefully teaching her mind what to expect from this new body. She made small circles with her fingers (first on the edges and then gradually moving to circle her nipples directly), grasped more firmly with her hands, pinched herself gently and more. She caught her breath a number of times and let herself give more than one soft moan.
From there she expanded her tentative touches outwards. Feeling her sides, her stomach, her neck, her face, her arms, her hands, what she could reach on her back. She was definitely feeling that slight mismatch in expectations but it wasn't too hard to ignore. Nothing had changed too radically.
Having finished her examinations of her upper body she took a deep bracing breath and shimmied the dress built-in shorts and all down her legs and onto the floor, leaving her standing naked except for some white panties. She took another breath and fiddled with the waistband before deciding to wait. Instead, she sat back on the exam table and examined her legs with the same thoroughness she had applied elsewhere. Starting from the tips of her toes and moving upwards and inwards steadily closer to the area covered by her panties. She ended with caresses of her inner thighs and stood back up to get a couple squeezes of her butt.
She considered trying to do the same thing she had done with her breasts, touching herself through the garment first, but no she had to see, she had to know, to make it real. She took another deep breath and yanked her panties down. Blessedly they fell on their own after that first yank. And she looked at herself in the mirror. Looked at her vulva in the mirror. She had a vulva. It was almost too much. She sat back down on the table and just cried for a bit. She didn't need to touch yet, just looking was enough.
She did want to touch though. After collecting herself a bit, though still feeling very emotional, she reached down and touched her vulva for the first time. Then pulled back as if she had been touching a hot stove. The mismatch was a lot worse here than it had been elsewhere. She paused for a moment to think. She had actually heard about this before. The girls she had talked to said that mirrors could help so she stood up and gathered the sheet off the table and moved it to cover the carpet just in front of the mirror.
She sat down and spread her legs making sure she had a good view. She maneuvered her hand to block her view as little as possible even if that did make the positioning a little awkward and slowly, as if it was a soap bubble she was afraid of popping, touched her vulva again. The disconnect was still there but she was fully expecting it now and the mirror really did help. Maybe she was just imagining it but it felt like the disconnect was a little less even from just that small touch.
She could do this, she would get used to this. And she could see the light at the end of the tunnel she would get there. She firmed her mind and nodded with determination. Then she reached down to touch herself some more.
A while later, having cleaned up a little and with her clothes back on she pushed the button to resummon Veria.
Veria reappeared in a gentle swirl and bobbed up and down a little. "Hello again, are you ready to continue? Do you want to make any changes to your avatar?"
She laughed a little. "I think I'm happy with it as is. If there's something small I decide I'm unhappy with, I can always change it later."
“I’m glad, if you want to tweak it some more you can always summon me through the interface and we can tweak things some more as long as you’re in a safe area. You can also summon me if you ever need help for another reason. That’s what I’m here for.”
Claire nodded. It was a good thing to know even if she probably would have figured it out without being directly told.
"In that case there’s nothing left but to send you on your way to Sanctuary." The mirror rippled, the metal surface transmuting into something that looked a bit like the surface of a rippling pool only vertical instead of horizontal. "You can step through whenever you're ready."
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.”
“Claire.” She paused, not sure what else to say. “Were you in the beta?”
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.
Having had a little bit to catch her breath, Claire gingerly sat up. “Ow.”
“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.
"I love intense experiences. So I'm all for it; how often do you get to feel like that in real life without permanent consequences?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never passed out from pain, but I also can’t say I ever wanted to.”
“I turn the filter on for important fights or missions, it’d be a little rude to risk messing things up for the people I’m with, but one of the best things about this game is that I get to do things I never could have done otherwise, and sometimes pain is a part of that.”
Claire thought about that for a moment. “I can’t say I entirely understand but I do like how immersive everything is. It’s nice that it all feels real, even if in reality there’d never be a ropes course with so few safety measures. Of course, in reality I don’t think they could make netting that worked like this either.”
“Probably not. Sanctuary compromises a bunch on realism to enable safety features. Honestly, everywhere on Foundation does, not as much though.”
“Were you in the Beta then? Also, thanks for coming to check on me. I’m Claire.”
“The best part of this game is that you can just try things. So that’s my advice: don't worry too much about the consequences and just follow your curiosity and your dreams and try things.”
“Isn’t that just something people say about life?” Not that it was really good advice for life. There were big consequences for making some choices.
“Sure, but in real life there’s a lot more limits, from finances if nothing else, and if you hurt yourself it takes longer to recover. Here in the game, the worst that can happen is you need to ignite and wait in the between until you’re resurrected. That’s supposed to take longer than in the beta but it’s not like there’s nothing to do there.”
Claire considers asking about what that's like but decides it would be better to ask someone a bit more normal that question. “Okay. Any more specific suggestions?”
Emily pauses a moment and assumes a slightly more guarded expression. “Treat the NPCs like they’re people. They will change their behavior based on how you treat them and they’ll be more willing to bend the rules or help you find secrets if you engage with respect.” In her experience, a lot of people aren't receptive to the idea.
"I guess I ended up treating the help system a bit like a person during setup. I wasn't really focusing on it though, everything just went smoothly. I guess that's something of a sign in and of itself."
“Veria's great! She's better for people who treat her like a person, even if she does have limits. She'll be happy to explain them if you ask though. They all have pretty respectable reasons."
Emily smiled. “Anyway, ready to get going again?” Emily reached down with a hand.
"You're welcome. Hopefully we'll run into each other again." Emily gave a wave before walking off.
A few seconds later there was a chime from her interface and a notification symbol hovering next to the pink diamond.
It took her a couple tries but she managed to open up the interface and find a friend request from Emily waiting for her.
After a little more time on the ropes course, just to avoid letting the shock turn to some sort of long-term avoidance, Claire spent the rest of the day exploring. The scale of Sanctuary was incredible.
It was a city and sized appropriately. Perhaps not to the extent of something like New York or London but more than enough to support the initial player base. It broke down into three rough layers: The canopy, the surface and the underground.
The canopy was effectively every child’s dream of a treehouse city. There were some trees out on the outskirts but as you got into the core of the city the obstacles tended to get tamer and it connected to the roofs of the buildings that made up the city proper. There were still a lot of little nooks and crannies to explore and a network of ziplines she wasn’t ashamed to admit she screamed on when she first tried them out.
The surface was a fairly mundane city, though one without any cars. Paths for bikes and other small vehicles wove between the massive hexagonal towers that hosted a lot of the city’s housing and a variety of businesses, mostly restaurants and stores where you could buy basic essentials.
The underground was enormous. Most of the city’s shops and other businesses could be found in that warren along with the fully functional subway system. If not for the signs and the map in her interface she could easily see herself getting lost down there.
As her first day drew to a close Claire found herself with another group of players in one of the many courtyards on the surface awaiting the kickoff event. With a couple minutes left a musical theme started to play and the sides of the nearby buildings lit up with numbers.
A few people took a chant as they reached the last ten seconds and Claire joined in. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
And then the countdown was replaced with enormous renderings of a woman from all directions. She had shoulder length blonde hair and a somewhat round face graced with a broad if somewhat mischievous smile. This was Daisy Decker, the lead designer for Gates of Eternity and the founder of the Otherwhere Inc.
“Welcome to The Gates of Eternity. My team and I have poured our time, our creativity, and our ingenuity into making something incredible; and if I may say so myself, I think we’ve succeeded.” Daisy’s smile was bright as she spoke of her team’s efforts. Claire smiled with her.
“This game is something special, but there is one small catch. You’ll only get to play it once. Your accounts here are locked not to your headset or a credit card. They’re locked to you.” There were a few murmurs of disquiet at that, and one louder call of “Why?”
“So please, take care with your choices. Speaking of which I have a few choices for you to make; for being here at launch, each of you have now been granted five free perk points to allocate how you choose. I hope you all choose wisely.” With that Daisy disappeared leaving a slowly building clamor of conversation in her wake.
Claire thought for a moment. So that was Daisy Decker. Not quite what she was expecting. The speech was pretty short too. The whole you can only play once thing was a bit strange but... honestly, she doesn't care. The ability to feel like this, to feel comfortable in her own skin without having to avoid any sharp edges of dysphoria, without having to worry about how people read her gender. That’s priceless. Everything else on top of that is just a bonus.
Still, five free points. She knew how to open her interface now so it wasn't hard to open the perks screen.
She was greeted by a field of interconnected sparkling stars that unfolded across her vision. At the center there was a heptagon of 7 with little labels floating around them: Strength, Endurance, Quickness, Control, Acuity, Focus and Retention. Immediately beyond that she could see things like Melee Weapon Handling, Ranged Weapon Handling, First Aid, Research, and so many more. The stars stretched out past the edges of her vision there had to be hundreds of them or more.
Given that Daisy had just said to choose carefully and that she wasn’t sure what the implications of picking any of them were she decided to close the interface for now.
The thought occurred to her that she had been in game for a while and should maybe log out; but she didn’t really want to do that just yet.
On a whim she walked up to one of the many hexagonal apartment buildings. The lowest floor was mostly occupied by a restaurant but there was a small lobby for access to the apartments above.
As she walked in, there was a small chime and a notification bubble appeared near the interface diamond.
She stepped to the side to hopefully be out of the way as she looked at what it said. ‘Welcome, if you’d like to tour the building alone please press here. If you’d instead like a tour guided by the help system please press here. If you don’t want notifications like this you can disable them by pressing here.’
Well, Emily had recommended that she interact more with NPCs. She pressed the button for the guided tour.
Veria swirled into existence next to her. “Hello Claire. Are you thinking about renting an apartment?”
"Hi, Veria. I'm not really sure. I thought it at least wouldn't hurt to look around. Can you tell me about why I would want to?"
"Is there a difference? Also can anyone else hear us? That sounds like it could get... personal."
"I'll make sure we're not overheard. At least here in Sanctuary, my abilities extend that far. Doing that outside safe areas requires a perk."
"Speaking of perks, can you explain what's going on with that? Oh and which perk?"
"Oh course. Every perk is at least a little different but the basics are the same. When you spend a point on it you get an immediate benefit called the foundation. If you do things aligned with the perk you can earn progress towards mastery and once you achieve it you earn a new point you can spend on another perk. Some perks have foundations as a pre-requisite and others have mastery."
"Strength here in Gates of Eternity is about how much force you can apply with your body. Perhaps a different name for it would be peak force.
"The foundation benefit from Strength helps you figure out how to apply your strength and how to train it. It also makes strength training work better and easier. That's a general thing about perks they'll always make it easier to advance towards mastery than if you didn't have the perk. As for Mastery, achieving mastery of Strength means you're on par with professional athletes in that domain. Think power lifters but also the way rock climbers can hold their entire body weight with just their finger tips and their toes.
"Control is probably the most complicated one but it's about being precise with your movement. It helps you know where your body is and move it exactly how you want to. The foundation benefit for control makes it easier to move slowly. Mastery for control means you always know where every part of your body is and you can move with again the precision of an professional athlete. Think of how Gymnasts can land jumps after flipping several times or how swimmers maintain really consistent strokes even as they're racing ahead."
"Those are starter perks though. Is mastery that hard or do we just become that far beyond human as things go on?"
"Do you think superpowers make you something other than human? To answer your literal question, there are levels of strength a good ways beyond the first strength perk. Exactly how far would be a spoiler but certainly into the realm of minor superpowers if not beyond."
"For strength, probably not. But if you always remember everything? Or you can focus on anything for unlimited amounts of time? That's starting to change a lot about how you think. Though I don't really know how the game could implement something like focus."
"The game can control all your senses. That goes a long way. If you're uncomfortable though, you can freeze your progress towards Mastery in a perk or intentionally go backwards. It won't give you the point back unless you got all the way to zero but you can earn more points with time."
"Do you think people will do that? That sounds like my worries have a good basis."