Finally, almost two hours after school had ended, I was home. It was a little ridiculous that I had waited an hour and a half for the bus, considering that I would have been able to walk the distance in a little over an hour. When I opened the door, I was greeted by our dear dog, Treya, the best four-legged friend a girl could ever want. Nobody really knew what breed she was, we had gotten her from the shelter two years ago, but whatever she was, it was big. Our current guess was some sort of Great Dane, Shepherd, Leonberger, mix, maybe with some wolf if that was possible. She was a huge dog, her back easily coming up to my hip and the time the family had spent on training her had been wisely spent.

She came running up, making a break right before me, sitting down and making puppy-dog eyes at me, demanding to be loved up. I sank my hands in her fluffy fur, happily going down to my knees when she decided to dust off the floor with her back and tail, wiggling around on the floor as I petted her belly.

“Squirt, that you?” my brother asked from the living room, causing me to grumble under my breath. Why couldn’t he have gotten me at school?

“Don’t call me that!” I shouted back, knowing that it was a pointless endeavour.

“Yes, yes, Miss Christina Maria Blake, I will use your full name from now on.” he shouted back, mockingly.

After loving up our dear dog some more, I rose to find out what my oh, so beloved brother wanted.

“You shouted, your excellency?” I asked, once I was in the living room with him. He was, as he often did, sitting on the couch, his nose in some novel. Oh, well, there were a lot of worse ways to pass the time, a reading passion was one of the few things we shared. Some people claimed it was obvious that we were siblings, but I just didn’t see it. Where he was tall, blonde and handsome, most of the time looking like a mix between someone stumbling out of a commercial where he played the stereotypical surfer-dude and a labrador, I was not like that. I had inherited our mothers smaller size, combined with the solid build of our father, making me look fat, even if I dieted as much as I wanted. No diet would slim my shoulders, no diet would make my hips less wide. Up top, I had my father’s boring brown hair, slightly wavy but I kept it bound as much as I could, otherwise it was just untamable.

“Sit, squirt.” he gestured across the room from him and I obliged. “You know that Jenny, Dave, Linda and I will take off Sunday morning, heading to Prague first, right?” he asked, sounding serious.

“Why, no, that is totally news to me, why haven’t you talked about that before?!” I exclaimed, my voice dripping with enough sarcasm to create a puddle between us. After all, he had talked about his vacation-plans, extensively, to convince the parents to let him have the car.

“Can it, smartass.” he shot back, grinning. “Or I will not tell you the good news, good for you, that is.” he continued and I gestured for him to continue.

“Now, why don’t you tell me how much you love your big brother?” he asked, teasing. I simply kept a bored expression on my face, waiting him out. He was many things, but patient was not amongst them.

“A few months ago, I entered into a give-away for Irminsul, the pre-order version. Luck has it that I won, but the biggest pre-order bonus is that you can start a week early, meaning I could start next week.” he explained and for a second, I wanted to strangle him. Gaming was another thing we shared, sometimes playing together, only that he had been able to full-dive for over a year, with me sitting at the computer, using a mouse and keyboard, like the perph I was. Then it dawned on me, he wouldn’t be able to play, not unless he canned the road-trip with his girlfriend. And I knew who would win, between road-trip with the girlfriend and playing a new game, the girlfriend, and their shared hostel-rooms, would win ten times out of ten.

“There’s also some other stuff, but that’s the biggie. Now, as the bestest brother on the planet, I decided that, I would let you have the code, I might even help you to convince the rents that you should be allowed to go full-dive on it.” he continued and I was glad that I hadn’t decided to strangle him.

“That’s so cool! Thank you.” I said. Well, it might have been a squeal, but there’s no way I would admit that. Treya, on the other hand, must have heard me and came bounding over, barking and romping around happily.

“Well, I might, at some point, expect your first-born as payment, but I’m sure you have no problem with that, right?” he asked, laughing.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, not like you could ever collect.” I grinned back, feeling a little giddy about playing the game earliy. “I’m heading to my room, whose turn is it to cook today?” I asked, his grin answering my question immediately. It was his turn, but I would do the work, in exchange for the pre-order key. Grumbling under my breath, I headed off into my room, dropping off my stuff, changing into shorts and a crop-top, grabbing a book and headed out to grab some sun.

A few hours later, when we had almost finished eating dinner, I brought up the topic to my parents.

“Mom, Dad, there’s a new game coming out and for this, I want to go full-dive.” I began, wanting to gauge their reactions at first. While the game itself was supposed to be suitable for ages thirteen and up, going full-dive required parental consent until eighteen, due to the higher involvement. That, and I needed them to take me to the hospital, to get my chip calibrated, otherwise, installing it would be impossible.

Years ago, right after chips had become available for the general public, a problem had begun to emerge, that there were minute, still not fully understood differences in brain-architecture. It was almost as if some people were allergic to specific impulses used by the chips, so everything might be alright with one application, until a specific stimulation was transmitted and suddenly, things went bad. And bad could, in this case, be everything from a mild itch for a minute or two, to massive strokes.

At first, the software-publishers had a clause in their user agreement, but when someone died due to a chip-allergy and they tried to get out of the lawsuit in court by citing it, urban legend has it that the judge literally threw his gavel at the lawyer. No idea if that is actually true, but it caused the big three publishers to pool some resources and create a privately owned rating agency, independant and modeled after the american FDA, testing and rating games on one hand and, on the other, working with hospitals to administer the calibration, subjecting the prospective gamer to the impulses, just in case something happens.

It was a stroke of genius, at least according to my father, the politicians, quite possibly motivated by hefty donations, were able to jump on a bandwagon of ‘think of the children’ to crusade against unregulated chip-usage, establishing the rating-agency as the arbiter of all chip-using software, hospitals got an easy and unproblematic revenue-stream and the big three publishers had a gatekeeper to the lucrative market, keeping out indie-publishers who were lacking the funds for the expensive testing process.

“Oh? Let’s hear your arguments.” my father challenged, grinning. I had expected that and I knew he was aware that I would. So, my arguments were hopefully different from what he expected.

“Well, I’m a teenager, you know.” I began, grinning. “And, in tradition of teenagers everywhere and throughout history, I will, likely quite soon, experiment with all things adult, meaning I will want to try alcohol without your supervision, I will want to party and maybe fool around with a boy or two.” I directed my shots across his bow, causing him to wince just a little. On the side, I noticed my mother was now grinning widely.

“I’m not hearing an argument, sweetie.” he objected, so I continued.

“Now, to be honest, as far as I know, the positive sensations in full-dive are supposed to be highly realistic, or people wouldn't buy those games. So, I thought, why not experiment in full-dive, where the worst that could happen is the loss of my character? It certainly would be a lot more safe than experimenting in the real world, where god knows what could happen.” I finished, my mother starting to laugh in earnest. My father on the other hand, looked like he was searching for an objection, but we both knew that if he tried to argue that I shouldn’t experiment, it wouldn’t work, it was simply part of growing up.

“Ok, fine. I can take you tomorrow, if that’s okay with you?” he asked, surrendering.