Martin Willis took his VR helmet off and carefully place it on the dresser next to his bed. The red helmet looked like an old-school motor-cycle helmet, Ferrari red, with a couple of cords sticking out at the back. It all looked quite simple, but he knew that it was in no way a piece of simple technology. The inside of the helmet was chucked full of some of the most advanced technology that was currently available and it had cost him all his savings to buy it. Even at 2000 Euro a piece it was not one of the top products on the market. Crazy really if he thought about it, he had worked for it for almost a year, flipping burgers at his local fast food chain. Being looked at like he was an idiot, treated like he was an idiot and made to mob the floor whenever some idiot couldn't hold the ordered food in. He had smelled like fries on multiple social occasions and some of his friends even started calling him deep fried Willie. But now it was all worth it, he had played a couple of games in the last few months and was still working as a burger flipper so he could be more. Since yesterday he had been playing Ethereal Space, and he was sold. This would be the game that was going to be played for a long time. He loved the freedom, the creativity in designing, the realism in moving and the immersion that it offered. The previous games he had played where way less impressive he even started a refund procedure against some extremely disappointing titles. He had worked hard for that cash, no money grabbing lying CEO and his marketing phonies were going to take it away by making something that crappy.

He looked to the side and his sister, Laura Willis, was still in the game. She was one year older than him, and with her 19 years that wasn't saying a lot. They had always done a lot of things together and it was thus not strange to anyone that she had bought a VR helmet to (Pink for some gender stereotyping). What was strange to a lot of their friends was that at the age of eighteen and nineteen they still shared a bedroom. That had let to some nasty and very persistent Lannister jokes that were as old as the legendary series was. Not that my sister cared, she was deaf to social standing and people telling her what to do and thus never even bothered to say it wasn't true, which probably had something to do with the persistency of the rumors. Not that he cared for that matter, he was done with school now and would be applying to college once he had saved enough money to pay the admission test. They had finally made college free as the decline in people going to college over the years had brought the economy dangerously close to collapsing due to extremely high unemployment rates on one hand and a lack of qualified personnel on the other hand. But every piece of good news has some bad. To keep people from just going to college for the hell of it, they had set the admission fee to ten thousand dollars. Which was a lot of money still if you had to scrape it together with only a high school degree and was forced to compete for the flipping burgers jobs with another 500 high-schoolers.

His sister had even given up on the idea of college, and not because she wasn't smart enough. She was in most ways way smarter than him. He had more of a practical mind while she knew how to handle conflicts and how to get along with people. Most of the reason that she didn't bother denying the rumors was because she was one of the most popular people in school even with those rumors. She simply didn't have to do anything about it. She had told him that the best way to make a lot of money these days was to either be extremely good at one thing, be lucky, or go into Virtual reality. E-sports had taken over the amusement landscape just as fast as VR had, and with millions of people playing and many more watching their exploits she had decided that she was going to become rich by either selling off equipment or selling advertisement space in her video's. A good plan he had thought but just in case it didn't work out he had kept his hard fought over place at the burger flip. So now they were here, playing games all day, laying in their room while he had to go out at night and flip burgers. It wasn't a struggle really, more like every young adult’s dream. Their dad had to work a lot as an android maintenance crew member in the local factory which meant he was home for about nine hours a day, eight of which were spent on sleep. His mother was a nurse in the hospital a couple of miles away and had upped her working hours ever since they had become old enough to care for themselves and had about the same schedule as their father. He was glad that they cared so much about them to not kick them out to fend for themselves, rent was steep even in middle of nowhere town they lived and if they had to pay the rent themselves they had to flip burgers for at least twelve hours a day to just keep a little left for food. So even though, he didn't like seeing his parents so little he was glad they did, and it was something that was not very special in the community. You either worked your ass off, or be extremely good at what you do, otherwise there was a life POD waiting for you to escort your consciousness out of society and into one game or another for weeks at a time. This might sound fun and easy but he remembered talking to a guy who had actually tried it and the games they went into where really not that fun and most of them were ancient, only enjoyable if you spent real money in them. Which by definition was not the intention of the people going in.

As he was sitting on the edge of his bed, trying to think of what they had just done in game, Laura also woke up from the game. "Mother-fucking fuck, fuck, fuck. Jesus baby noodles. Why in god's name did we just start in something impossible to survive? I know we choice High risk, High reward, but a crashing escape POD? Really? That's how they wanted to start this! And a twelve-hour death penalty at that! God dammit! And here I thought we could start cashing from today onwards. arrrggh." she almost threw the helmet, but thought the better of it, just in time. Ah yes, we crashed. The pain levels were quite high though... Not very pleasant. He smiled at her and she gave him a smirk back before he said "Well at least we got the aptitude test done around the same time, I thought it was never ending." she through a final punch at her pillow and said "Yeah, that was a hassle, what did you get?" he blushed a little. "Not great, piloting, engineering and spatial awareness around a 4, intelligence and the like around a 3, persistence and the like around 2.5 and it seems I'm a physical invalid with 1.5 for all…" she smirked at that, and said " Ow well nothing new, you have always been a bit of an imbecilely when it comes to sports… Not that I did a lot better, it's about the same… but I suck at piloting and persistence… but my empathy and linguistics are a 4. 8.. I's such a stereotype it even amazes myself." he laughed at that and then stood up and said, "So tonight when I come home we start again? Or you want to sleep?" she looked at him with her long black hair, brown eyes and a bit of a doll face, soft edges galore "Of course flappy, count me in," she smirked and got her phone from her dresser, he felt his ears unconsciously while he left the room to flip burgers.