########################################### Chapter 1 ##################################################

Hi guys,

I was trying to write this one a little fast. Hope there aren't any mistakes. Please let me know if there needs to be any corrections.

Let me know your thoughts on the further progression.

Thanks and Enjoy.

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CHAPTER 1 : UNO

"Alex, have you found something?"

"Dan, you just assigned this task to me an hour ago. I will need more time."

"Alex, I got a meeting with this guy in another hour. I need something to tell him"

"Tell him 'we are still analyzing the issue'. I have no idea what is causing this and so far it looks fine with the logic. I will update you tomorrow in detail cause I want to leave early today."

"Why? you always leave late"

"Just cause I want to leave early. Please Dan, I'm running in circles with this issue, I will take a look with a fresh mind tomorrow. Ok?"

"mm... ok. You already decided you won't finish it today, so what can I say. So what you gonna do leaving early? a date?"

"Thanks Boss, mm... No.... I've got... things to do..."

-"Don't want to let him know I'm leaving early for a game", thought Alex.

"hmm... something's up. You're pulling your words. Tell me!!!"

"It's nothing Dan, I will let you know later. I will leave for the day."

"Ok. Bye... I'll find out you know."

"Hehe.. we'll see. Bye"

The call was disconnected and at quarter past seven in the evening Alex exited his office, which isn't actually leaving early, but since he always left after nine this was very early by habit. On his way towards the elevator, he put on his MR( MiRRoR) goggles and switched on his display while also jabbing at 'G' on the control panel. The goggles booted up in a few seconds on his way toward the ground floor, but it took almost five minutes since his office was at the 20th floor and it stopping at other floors along the way.

Welcome to MiRRoR, Krimson.

"MR Command, Start Road Rage." He said while at the ground floor.

Road Rage started. Please set route.

"Select custom Evening Flash route."

Are you sure you want to select 'Evening Flash' custom Route. You previous selections for the past month was the default dungeon route.

"Affirmative, Start 'Evening Flash' and set as default route."

Evening Flash is set to default route and has been initiated.

As the goggle AI had initiated the simulation. The goggles which covered most of his face lit up from inside and he was able to see the world around him appended with image which were not actually present. This was called the MiRRoR world. Any person can summon up objects and place it here and anyone who were logged into the MiRRoR world could see them or alter them if given permission to do so.

The simulation Alex initiated, Road Rage is a running/jogging simulator which was used as a way for people to be entertained during their walks or jogging. It ran in sync with MiRRoR world, but changes done during Road Rage would not be visible to all since it was a sub simulation. On initiating Road Rage, a person is capable of setting a route to a target destination and how he would like to reach it. There are multiple types of route modes. A few common examples are,

• Rally mode - where a person can set up points in between where they can hunt or meet up with friends. This is usually the default mode.

• Berserker mode - A mode to pass time. This sets up a random route to your destination which includes all hunting ground and dungeons in the vicinity of your route.

• Flash mode - A mode where it provided the shortest distance coverage. Also in this mode even if you pass through dungeons and instances on the way, you will appear as a blur since as the name suggests, you are moving with almost the speed of light in this mode. ( in this mode, you just disappear to others in MiRRoR, but to keep this mode up you need to be running/jogging continuously to your destination. )

The mode which Alex selected was a custom mode which he had created long time back where his destination was to his room, which was almost 1.5 miles from his office. Custom modes can be created earlier on if your destination is already known. In custom mode, you can mix and match the different modes and use them at a later time. Alex usually made a custom route which was a combination of Rally mode and the Berserker mode. He had set up a rally point at a snack bar on his way from office to break and selected alleyways with berserker mode in those paths, so that any MR entities in that vicinity would engage him.

After MiRRoR was incorporated into every nook and corner of the world. Dungeons and monster spawning locations were set up based on user requests. Later a patch latter MiRRoR world v.2.0.10 made a significant change that where there were alleyways with different lengths, MR entities , i.e. monsters, thieves, ghosts and even demons were summoned at these places. In order to pass these places without having to confront these MR entities, you just need to switch the MR goggles to Standby mode where the Dungeons and Fantasy aspect of MiRRoR world would not be activated. But some large scale events, such as boss battles and wars cannot be avoided. So, the only way to avoid these would be to get killed and not get revived soon after the event has completed.

Getting back to the current day, Alex had started jogging towards the exit of his premises, while greeting a causal 'Hey' and nods at people on the way. His view from the MR goggles were showing a green path which turned red at regular signal stops, but he still had to do jogs in place to not disable the 'Flash mode'. Other than the illuminated path in front of his, all the objects in the MR world were a blur to him in the MR world like a car moving at 60kmps but faster , this was because in the simulation he was moving at close to light speed. He had reached halfway after ten minutes and his custom route took him into an alleyway which was a dungeon instance which spawned ghosts and demons. The alleyway was around 30 metres in length and 3 meters wide and it hosted a lot of different level MR entities. As Alex made his way through the alleyway, he saw a bunch of people already engaged in a battle and as he could guess, it was mini boss - the wraith, Sheeya. It was quite difficult to solo since it could summon all spirit related minion around. The wraith was at a towering height of seven and half feet tall where it was floating a feet above the ground. It was wearing all black and was clawing at the party around it. The amount of detail the wraith had could entice fear into a rookie in this area.

He recognised the party and they were a known group in the vicinity as the 'Group 7' or 'G7' as they called themselves. He slowed down on seeing them, but still jogging in place and looked at their Cleric, Ken if they required a hand.

"Hey!... Hey Ken!!" He said

"Wait... " said the cleric and chanted a large scale buff and also healed their Agro multiple times before he turned his glance at the person interrupting their hunt.

"Ah Alex, as you can see we are busy at the moment. What is it?" He blurted out, while turning his head suddenly towards the battle side and healing his comrades.

"Well nothing, I just wanted to know if you guys need any help. I don't see you guys having endowed you blades except for your critter who I think is using a holy blade."

"mm.. you are.. " he said and suddenly turned around and cast a debuff on the wraith and it's minion and also multiple heals towards his team.

"mm..yea, you are jogging. So aren't you in a hurry?" he said while keeping an eye on his team.

"Well, I was just gonna offer you guys a holy endow if you had holy water."

"Ah...yea.. splendid. Wait let me get you the holy water." Ken said while pulling out something and handing it to Alex. If anyone not looking at this scene without the MR goggles would see a group of four people swinging at the air, while two others were doing dance stances that always ended with them pointing towards the centre where the other four were swinging at. Beside them were two others where one would turn at frequent intervals and wave his hands like a musical conductor and the other is jogging in place for no reason.

"MR command, Pause current route."

Route has been paused, say 'continue active route' to resume with route.

As he disabled his Flash route and was made suddenly visible to the entities in the dungeon, all the surrounding entities started to move towards him. Alex looked at the ghosts approaching him and he smiled at them.

"MR Command, Battle mode ON" he said and the AI responded to its activation.

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

If anyone without the MR gear would only see something like this,

After his actions of continuous finger snaps, the area towards him were covered with fire traps; the ghosts were bombarded with fire missiles and fire traps which were triggered as they moved toward their target and after a while they disappeared one by one due to the accumulated damage leaving transparent cloths and other loots behind where they stood.

He moved towards the four who were engaged with blocking and swinging their arms with a baton and shield or a baton in each arm. These batons and shield act as the equipment in MR world and they are accessories which can be bought separately. Alex approached the melee group from behind such that he didn't gain the attention of the wraith and showed an action of pouring something in his arms and rubbing them he placed it on the back of the party's critter.

"Weapons Endow."

The critter was a dual swordsman who was lashing out at the wraith with different skills. With this action the weapons were endowed with holy property for a duration of an hour. On seeing the difference in the damage, the wraith was looking around for the reason for this change.

"ARGH!!! You are soon join the dead Elementalist!!"

Saying this the wraith tried to leap towards Alex, but the tank had already cast his skills to gain back the Agro of the wraith. The tank has used a skill, Entice which made him look like the most desirable object to the wraith. The pros of the skill was that it had almost 80% chance of gaining the agro of a monster, it doesn't work on monsters which have very high intelligence. But the cons of this skill was the monster goes into a frenzy and lunges towards the tanks.

On having noticed that he no longer had the agro of the wraith, Alex closed up towards the melee bunch to endow the rest of the team with the help of the tank taking the agro after each endow.

The endow skill requires a related catalyst for different elements and he is only capable of doing this because of his skill 'Elementalism' which was at Grade 4 now. Alex chose to become an Elementalist because he could use a melee skill whenever required. But the choice of getting something that doesn't exist in the real world, Magic was more entertaining. He was almost at level 4 Grade 4 which means he could control all 7 elements ( fire, water, wind, earth, gravity, light and dark) and also since reaching Grade 4 he could endow properties into weapons for an hour. Later after he reaches Grade 5, he could made weapons solely out of elements.

After having endowed all the members of G7 he bid them goodbye and left the dungeon while on the way he had to incinerate a couple of Ghosts and demons until he could exit the alleyway and start his route again. If he had wanted, Alex could have finished the battle with the wraith in five minutes, he had a skill which was an AOE spell which did over 30x damage continuously and by spamming that he could have taken care of the wraith in minutes. But he had other plans for the day and he needed to re-activate Road Rage to avoid unwanted battles, case when disabling Road Rage in a dungeon, it can only be re-activated after exiting the dungeon or when not being targeted by monsters for more than ten minutes. As one of his battle skills being Elementalist all the evil spirits and ghosts were attacking him to gain his soul points which was a lot larger than other players. The soul points are like experience point but for MR entities. With sufficient soul points monsters in MR world could evolve to a stronger state for example, like in Pokémon and yes, you can take up Pokémon master as a skill set and catch and breed Pokémon in the MR world. Pokémon monsters were one of the various monster race in the MiRRoR world. Even this alleyway had a couple of Gastley which were easier to kill with fire. The Pokémon race was quite popular among all players and many had Pikachu as a companion in the MR world. With regards to evolution, a walking dead could kill a player and get his soul points, after sufficient soul points it would evolve into a ghoul, later into a Wight , then Draugr and finally a Lich.

Alex after having re-activated his Route, jogging he sped through the streets and crossed roads to reach his room by 8PM where he deactivated Road Rage. He rushed towards his room and guessing if his other roommate was present. On trying to push open, he found it was locked and he knocked to make sure before checking the lock. After a few second, the door was opened by his other roommate, Madhan. Alex was sharing his room with two roommates, Salim and Madhan, they worked later and night shifts. Salim leaves for office around 6 PM and returns only around 2 AM, while Madhan leaves for office around 8:30PM everyday and returns around 6AM the next day.

"Hey Alex bro. You're early today. What happened?"

"Hey Madhan, What? Can't I come early?"

"Well you are usually late, so I asked. Well any particular reason why you're early?"

"Nothing much, I heard my delivery has come, so I left a little early. "

"Ah ok, the VR, I was sleeping when it came. I'll leave then. I still haven't taken a bite since breakfast. "

Madhan comes in early morning 6AM, he only has his breakfast and sleeps through lunch only to wake up to get ready for office.

"Ok Madhan. See you later. Bye" Alex said to his roommate as he walked out the door with his hand raised to wave goodbye.

Alex rushed towards Salim's cupboard while taking the key from the usual spot and found his package lying on a pile of Salim's clothes. He started unwrapping the package which was at a size of 60 cm x 60 cm . It was a square box which said 'Fragile' outside. He unwrapped it carefully and removed its contents. The cardboard box was covered securely with bubble wrap and it contained another cardboard box which was the product box. It had the logo of the makers of CAPSULE, GGL Tech, it was a matte finished black box which looked amazing. It had a silver line in between which showed the cut in the matte box for opening it.

On unpacking the box, inside contained a headgear which looked like a beanie with metallic stitches like a metal web all over it and a couple of connection optical cables, a Video/Audio output cable and a small box which is probably the quantum computer to which the headgear would be connect to. The box also contained a user manual, Pre configuration steps and troubleshooting guide.

The CAPSULE headgear was easy to assemble and the user manual had a simple diagram to show what connects to what and sufficient instructions were provided such as, the quantum computer was to be placed on the ground and it should have sufficient cable length when connected to the headgear such at them sitting up the quantum computer would not be pulled up from its location. The quantum computer had its own version of the complex AI which then communicates with the Network AI to process the data at faster speeds. The AI in the quantum computer pre-processes the data and such that no load is directed at the network AI rather than routing the correct data.

After having assembled the CAPSULE, Alex read the Pre-Configuration steps to see if all the boot and other functions were operable. After all these steps were confirmed, he slipped on to his bed and forced a command into his MR goggles to mention that he was Away and can only be contacted through his e-mail or chat. The CAPSULE was capable of linking a personal inbox of the user such that he doesn't lose connection with the outside while playing in case of an emergency.

He plugged in the internet cord for communications as the AI was connect with the same wireless network as the MR goggles. Checking the time to see it was around 8:45PM, he slid into his bed wearing the beanie headgear and muttered

"Initiate initial configuration"

On having said the command phrase to start the sequence, he was suddenly in a room which got brighter slowly and soon it as white all around. He didn't remember closing his eyes nor felt he had opened his eyes to this room, an infinite white room which can only be described as infinity with marble flooring and a never ending horizon.

While looking around he could see a body and legs, it looked nothing like his body. He assumed it would be a default skin for configuration purposes.

Welcome to the CAPSULE configuration panel. There is a total of Five steps to configure the CAPSULE to your personal use.

Step 1: Please follow the lines on the ground by placing one feet over the other. Concentrate on the line while doing this to configure the motion.

Suddenly a few green line appeared on the floor and Alex started following them by placing one feet over the other on the lines. After having walked for around 5 meters straight ahead, the lines turned left for another 5 meters and then right for another 5 meter. After having completed this, the lines disappeared and a strange number of white steps were created in front of him. The steps were strange because each step was almost 3 feet high and the only way to climb them would be to jump.

Step 2 : Please jump up to climb the stairs.

Alex jumped up the stairs and on having climbed over 10 steps. The ground merged and he was back on a plain surface.

*Bong*

As he turned towards the sound, he found a huge white board which could be found in class rooms and a table near it. On the table was a white board marker. With the items present he could guess what the next would be.

Step 3: Please pick up the marker and write 8 in the different boxes which appear on the board.

On taking the marker and approaching the white board, a large box of around 1 meter x 500cms appeared. He found it easier to write an eight inside this box. Later the size of the box decreased over 30 times while the smallest box was about 2cm x 1cm, where the marker tip also became finer. As the box size reduced the hand co-ordination was challenged and after a few mistakes of drawing half outside the box, he completed the Step 3 successfully.

Step 4 : Speaking factory. Please repeat the words written on the board now to make sure lip sync is perfect.

As the notification vanished, the white board was now filled with a list of 20 words one after the other. On completing these words, the white board was now filled with 20 sentences or phrases.

After completing these 20 another set of 10 more longer phrases were displayed and this completed the Step 4.

Step 5 : Emergency Log out.

To setup the emergency log out it requires two conditions to be set, first the player has to select a escape phrase to initiate the emergency log out and secondly a way to jog the brain to wake up. A few examples of this would be to imagine falling or drowning, which would cause the body to awaken.

Please take caution to remember the escape phrase as Emergency log out would be very crucial in case of getting stuck during long instances. Also please use Emergency log out with caution cause' it will not log out the avatar for 5 minutes and it is susceptible to harm or even death.

"Please select an escape phrase and recite the phrase clearly"

Alex through for a while on what his escape phrase would be. He didn't want to say something that can be said even casually. He needed a phrase which would bring him back to reality and he knew only one said by Albert Einstein.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Is ' Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.' the phrase you have selected for Emergency log out.?

"Yes."

For the second part, imagine a sudden shock to awaken the mind.

Falling is the recommended option.

Alex though about how he had a dream about falling from top of a building and he woke up on his bed with a jerk as if he had fallen on his bed.

"You have selected an instance of falling backwards as the way to awake the brain. Are you sure?"

"Yes." He didn't want to wait longer and confirmed the action.

Thank you for completing the configuration of CAPSULE. Please try the emergency log out and restart the configuration to initiate the game.

On hearing the last instructions, Alex started with his emergency log out procedure.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

He said while thinking of the sensation of falling down.

*thud*

He was now awake on his bed.

"So the emergency log out worked. Cool. Might as well log back in." He thought to himself.

"Initiate initial configuration"

He was back in the same white room.

You have successfully completed the CAPSULE personal configuration. If different users are using the same gear, the configuration needs to be done per individual. It is not required to redo for individuals already configured.

Initiating sequence, Hundred Worlds...

Please wait...

5...

4...

3..

2..

1...

The view went blank and it felt like he was facing resistance from wind.

-"Am I flying?"

Suddenly the screen went bright with a flash and blinded the view. As time passed by the horizon was visible as time passed by..

"Am I falling....??"

Welcome to Uno - The premiere