Swamy woke up the next morning with a feeling of apprehension. It was the first day and he hoped he would get to make a few friends and hopefully even a girl friend in the days to come.

“TV, Wake, Channel 8” He said as the television flickered to life and switched to the channel.

A lot of things had become voice operated making life easier for everyone. Though it still caused a huge argument if two people wanted to watch different things. After all the technology may have improved and become smarter but the people remain the same.

Knock knock!

He opened the door and found his Aunt with some dishes.

“Breakfast!” he smiled.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Orientation was always not interesting. It helped that people talked about stuff you wanted to know about campus and its facilities but it also was a day where people made speeches. And that was boring.

Swamy tried to stay awake to listen to the important bits and also to make a positive impression for himself, but he was fighting a losing battle. The person sitting next to him was already teetering on his chair, eyes closed. A couple of rows down someone had tilted his head back and seemed to have completely dozed off. He thought he heard a light snore from somewhere as well.

Well seeing this did nothing to improve his dedication to hearing the rest of the speech as he was already gone by that point. Swamy tried to look at his surroundings in order to stay awake. Being the guy that he is, he immediately started looking at the good looking girls around.

Somehow the speeches ended. And people starting shaking themselves to wake up.

The guy next to him also woke up, looked around for a bit and then smiled at him and said,

“Hi, I am Rajan. Nice to meet you dude.”

“Oh hi, My name’s Swamy. Nice to meet you too.”

“So are you in the virtual reality program as well?”

“Yeah, you are as well then. You from around here?”

“Nah! I am from Mumbai. I just figured that it would be interesting coming here and ofcourse there is heavy competition for this course in Mumbai. Wasn’t sure of my chances there. Well it isn’t like the University of Bangalore is a cake walk though.”

“Yeah” replied Swamy.

“Well do you stay around here?”

“Well I do stay around here. Although I am not from Bangalore either.”

“Oh, where are you from then?”

“Mysore.”

“Yeah well we should hang out sometime. See you in class dude.”

“See you later”.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day classes started. He searched for his classroom (well it isn’t a small campus). As he walked into the auditorium style classroom, he remarked that the room seemed quite big with many seats. It seemed like it could seat almost a 100 people at a time.

‘I wonder how many people actually joined!’ he thought to himself.

He found a seat in the middle where he thought he wouldn't have trouble listening and also stay out of sight. It is a known fact that people always watched the front and back seats the most so he always preferred the middle seats. Slowly the class started filling up. Soon, Rajan also arrived, greeted him and then sat down in the empty seat next to him. And soon started chatting up the people near him.

When the professor arrived, the chatting suddenly stopped and everyone started looking at him. Swamy also focused his attention towards the professor.

“Hello class, My name is Prof. Samuel D’souza and I am the head of the virtual reality department. I am also one of the teachers who will be taking your classes in the 1st year. Nice to meet you. So to start, would you introduce yourselves? Let’s start on the right there with you.”

“Hi, I am………

……………….

……………..

After the introductions and after almost everyone said that they are a fan of virtual reality games and how excited they were to be joining this course the prof started explaining about the course.

“Well here it is", as he put up a slide showing the courses and the credits information.

"Now as you may know that the program requires you to play one of the VR games and write reports, etc based on your experiences in the game. Ofcourse you would also be learning about virtual reality itself. Now you may already be playing a game already, which is fine by us. You just have to submit a form saying you play this particular game. Please note that if you change the game that you are playing, you will have to submit a form again and that can only happen once a term. So please stick to playing a game atleast for a term. If you are simply trying a new game, please don’t write it in the form.”

Swamy was in a bind. He was not playing any games. Even though a lot of people play VR games today, he only had a character in royal road for that one time he went on vacation. It was not that he was not interested in playing but his parents had always nitpicked on the quality of the VR games coming in the market arguing about the negative effect to human minds, which always seemed to take the fun out of them. Furthermore his one nightmare, writing reports for Royal Road, had made him kinda resistant to playing VR games while in presence of his parents.

‘Never thought it would become this important.’ He decided to look at the various VR games and make a good choice. It might be better to choose one and play it a lot rather than trying different ones to see which one is better.

‘Also I better keep it a secret from my parents. Writing reports aside, if I have to listen one more time about how the VR games are affecting human brains, I might as well never have come to Bangalore.’

Well that decides it. He had to buy the game by earning his own money. He couldn’t even use his savings account; his parents had set up that all transactions are reported to them.

‘I will have to find a cheap game but it also has to be interesting. Wonder how much I would have to earn. And there would be monthly fees as well.’ While he was agonizing over this and that the professor added.

“Oh I forgot to tell you, but you have a 1 month deadline for the form this term.”

Just 1 month!!

Most VR games in the market he knew cost around 8000 – 10000 rupees (Indian currency almost 130 to 170 us dollars) just to buy and then monthly fees which are almost 3000 – 5000 rupees (about 50 to 85 dollars) depending on the game. Over the years the hourly pay in India had improved to almost 170 rupees per hour minimum but that would still require him to work 30 hours per month. Still he could manage that if he could find a suitable job, but what would he do about buying the game. Simple calculation he will have to work 60 hours. Considering the labor laws today which basically limit the hours a student (you still have to be 18 or older) can work to 20 hours a week and no working after 6 pm, he would have to basically work in the day time. Also he would have to attend his classes which would be from 8 am in the morning till evening 6 pm (practicals and homework included) meaning he would have to work all day long on the weekends.

Swamy groaned. So much for enjoying a parent free life.

The professor kept giving information and answering questions till lunch time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After devouring his lunch, he always thought brain work takes up a lot of energy so you need to eat appropriately; he quickly headed to one of the labs where he could get free internet. He had to start searching for the game he wanted to play and also for a job. He opened up various games websites and looked at game reviews sorting through them carefully. Finding a bunch of them which seemed interesting, he quickly made a note of them thinking to look more closely later. He then started looking for part-time jobs.

After careful searching, he finally settled on a movers job. The job seemed simple, requiring a bit of physical work. Well most of the heavy lifting is done by machines anyway with humans giving them commands. But still the lighter loads are left for people to carry as using machines for them would not be economical. He also figured that most people would do their moving over the weekend and he would be able to work full time. He quickly filled in his details and applied online.

After lunch, in the classroom….

Rajan came back to his seat next to Swamy. He nodded.

“Hey Swamy, where did you disappear to?”

“Oh I just went to the lab to access the internet”.

“What! Why? And don’t you have internet on the phone?”

“Well I do, but I wanted to apply to some part-time jobs and some other stuff.”

“Jobs? On the first day itself! Man! You are dedicated!”

“Oh well that’s that. So what did I miss?”

“Ah, we were just discussing which games we are playing and what we will register with.”

“Oh really so which game do you play?”

“Right now I am playing Wild Terrain. It’s got some cool features. Its got like this time travel thing where you are a time traveler and you can go back in time to the dinosaur age. And instead of goblins you get tyrannosaurs. It’s a Royal Road clone on the gameplay however.”

“Wow seems like you know a lot about them.”

“HAHA that’s saying a few. Well I ain’t putting that in my form though. Planning to start a new game coming out next month. Its called Long Island.”

Hearing it again, Swamy remembered the time in the bus and that couple talking. It seems that this could be a worthwhile game, if people seem to be eagerly expecting it. He added it to his list of games.

For the next month, it was a regular routine of going to classes and studying up on various games. On the weekends he would go to his part-time job and work hard moving stuff. He soon found out that he could handle the heavy-lifting machines as well, earning him a bit more than the minimum.

His list of games was slowly becoming smaller as he cut out each one based on the metrics he had drawn up. He was good at this sort of thing as he had been writing reports all his life. He critiqued each factor of a game and came up with what he called the interest rating. The higher the interest rating, the more interesting he would find the game.

And so far he was making lists. First he made the top ten list, then the top five, the top three, till he reached the conclusion.

Long Island.

This game was creating quite a buzz on the scene as the first VR game without classes, common or othervise. Some people were scoffing at the concept while a lot of them were eagerly anticipating, but all of them were eager to play.

It also boasted the ‘character age’ system. The information on this was still limited, but people were saying that it might be equivalent to levels. The game makers, ArcheSoft, still kept the lid on this feature and simply stated that your age would be an important factor in learning and vice versa, your learning in the game would affect your age. Players were eagerly waiting to find out what exactly it entails.

The next day, he placed an order for Long Island.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Long Island was released today. Hopefully his capsule would arrive today too. Swamy had been patiently waiting for it since he ordered it, but due to the high demand, the company was having trouble delivering it to everyone.

Soon however he received the call. It was after 6 pm so he was at home anyway. The technicians installed the capsule and explained some basic security features. He listened attentively to all that was said. Soon after he closed the door behind the technicians who left. He entered the capsule.

**********************************************************************************

*You can also read it at http://japtem.com/fanfic.php?view=428

**********************************************************************************