The pickup from my apartment and the drive to SeaTac was pretty uneventful. However, showing the boarding pass to security and being immediately ushered into a VIP lounge was less so. And with me in the lounge were around 250 other gamers. It looked like this was the testing group from the PNW. Or at least one of them.

Some of them stood together chatting showing off team colors if they were part of Clans, Guilds or Gaming Teams. There were 20 people from New Gaming Collective who had made a huge splash in the VRFPS genre when the team formed. There was Rising Storm with a group of 8, WolfsClan with a group of 8, some VRRTS clans that I couldn’t peg because that has never been a genre I was particularly good at. There were groups from Dust and Iron Eagles, specialists, high level players and media personalities from a VRMMO called “Aventuria”.

I was surprised to see the amount of players that had gathered here. The PNW had a whole bunch of pro gamers but was one of the smallest groups worldwide. Lirium must have gone and recruited anybody that had any claim to fame. The really big gaming groups and workshops came out of China and Russia, followed by the Eurozone Megaplexes and Brazilian ArchCities. I wondered how many of the 500k players would come from there.

I looked around and saw many groups in animated discussion while others were using smart optics to access the Hub and yet others sitting by themselves. I stopped and smiled when my eyes landed on a late twenties player in a cowboy outfit complete with hat and boots. He was reading an honest to the gods book. Like, not just old-school e-readers but ancient-school actual paper and ink. I made my way over to him.

“Damien, how are things?”

He looked up from the book with a smile of his own. “Kade, nice to see you. Happy to know that you are in this circus with us.”

I smirked at him, “Not liking the rest of the people here?”

“Pff, as if you would have to ask that. Look at all the kids. And this is the hope for the VR pro gaming future.”

“Haha, yeah. I heard that they called you the father of PNW VR racing in that ESPN interview the other day” I chuckled. “Starting to feel old?”

“If they call me the father of something they should call you the grandfather. You have what, 6 years on me?”

Before I could respond to his barb we were interrupted by a commotion from the door. The cause was a 25 year old girl, dressed in a Rockabilly outfit and combat boots, had screaming pink hair and a pair of steampunk goggles on her forehead. She was followed by 2 holo wolves.

I sighed and looked at Damian. “Pink Death?”

“Don’t even.” he replied and then lifted his hat into the air and waved it around. Which led the pink haired girl to focus on us. A bright smile lit up her face as she made her way over to us.

“Save the comment Kade” she started, “It wasn’t funny when I had green, violet or blue hair. Pink is no difference.”

“Oh come on, give me a chance to make a bad joke at least” I mock pouted.

“Pff, just because you play a character named Red Death when you have red hair.”

“You forgot to mention the guy that tried to assault you outside a nightclub and ended up exactly like the latest murder victim in your VRR where you played a red haired assassin.”

She shrugged. “Whatever, still not funny. Besides what should I call you? Ass-kicked-Wilson? Like what-the-actual-fuck? I had money riding on that game. You should have been disqualified and banned from ever touching any VR program ever again after that fight.”

Damien raised his hands to stave off the argument he knew was coming. “Guys…”

Oh, oh. I knew that this was the exactly wrong thing to do and the moment the words left his mouth I saw the look of his face when he realized the same thing.

“Seriously grandfather of racing? What the hell did you think about that fight? I know you are still watching everything Kade that is high profile enough. How much did you lose?”

I actually hadn’t known that Damien actively watched my games. Nor that he was betting. The more you learn…

“Eh, nothing I can’t recuperate by placing one race” he turned to me, “But I have to admit, that the way that went down seemed very strange. Was your security compromised or something?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” I replied. But I have people looking into it. On that note, lets share all the info we have our future employer. Have you heard anything beyond basic info?”

For the next few minutes we discussed the upcoming beta test but it turned out that we all had pretty much the same info. Not even Nicole who had the best contacts of all of us had really heard anything more than we had.

Fortunately, or sadly, depending how you look at it our conversation was cut short when the computer generated voice called boarding for our flight and we went into the plane. Damien, Nicola - or rather Nico as she wanted to be called (don’t ever call her Nicola unless you want to find something sharp and pointy in your kidneys) and me grabbed a row of seats for ourselves. Here we continued our discussion and speculations and shared what had been going on in our life for the last 3 months that we hadn't see each other.