After the exam, Dr. Lambert walked with me to the fourth floor where the FIVR LTP units were housed for the testing teams. Only one wing of the floor actually had LTP units installed, with the rest of the rooms currently sitting empty. Most of the floor was still being renovated, with the walls still showing bare drywall and some rooms being without their doors.

Brian was waiting for us just outside one of the rooms. He was wearing a well-tailored navy blue suit, minus a tie. He looked like he had either just come from the main office, or was getting ready to head over.

“Bought time you got here,” Brian said jokingly. “What took you so long?”

“Hey, the schedule says I don’t need to be here till noon, I’m a few minutes early,” I said. “Ya I know, but I have an important meeting over at the head office and my boss is trying to move it up so we can avoid the weather before the storm comes in,” Brian said before turning to introduce a short man with dark hair and clear rimmed glasses who had just walked out into the hallway. “Erik, This is Liam, he’s one of the LTP techs. Liam, this is Erik, one of the Beta testers.” We both gave each other a nod as we shook hands.

“You must be very excited,” Liam said, suddenly becoming overly animated. “During our initial training, we got to dive in some earlier models. You know, to help us get an understanding of how everything worked from the player's perspective. But, wow! It’s such a rad experience, to just be in a new world all of a sudden.”

“Umm ya…” I said while looking over at Brian, who just shrugged his shoulders. “I’d say I’m more nervous than anything, to be honest.”

“Techs like Liam are responsible for maintaining equipment and monitoring systems while players are logged in,” said Brian.

“And a member of the medical staff is responsible for monitoring player vitals,” interjected Dr. Lambert. “The auto-monitoring and ejection features in the consumer FIVR models are not used in the LTP systems. Everything is monitored manually, which should help cut down on accidental ejections that can happen from time to time with the automatic systems.”

“How many players do a tech and a medical staffer monitor at a time?” I asked, knowing that they wouldn’t dedicate two people to watch a single player.

“Off the top of my head? I’m not sure. Each floor has two wings, and each wing is monitored by a technician and a nurse. Right now it's a bit overkill, but by the end of next week I believe we’ll have 3 full testing teams logging in here, and all of them will be looked after by a monitoring team, 24/7,” Dr. Lambert said. “But I’m the guy in charge during each tester's first few hours in-game. I have first and last say over whether or not you get ejected. Once I’m confident you are fine, I’ll hand over medical monitoring to one of my nurses.”

“I don’t want to seem like I’m rushing anyone here, but we need to get him logged in so I can go. The other group leaders and I are meeting with the department head to go over our schedule, and he is adamant about getting out the door before the storm hits.” Brian said. “Liam, go to the monitoring station. Me and Dr. Lambert will get Erik squared away.”

Liam nodded his head as he walked to the end of the hall. I followed Brian inside the room which contained my FIVR LTP capsule. Next to the capsule was a bench, with a black full-body suit that looked like it was made out of a combination of breathable athletic wear material and rubber.

“Go ahead and strip down and suit up,” Brian said. “While you're getting dressed, I need to go over a few things with you.”

I sat down and started to remove my brace while Brian pulled a few things up on his tablet. He looked up to start filling me in when his voice trailed off. I had started to remove my hoodie and he was staring at me. I suddenly realized that he hadn’t seen shirtless since before the accident, back when we were college roommates. Back then, I had played hockey for our college's team, and I had been in great shape. Not only had I lost a lot of the muscle mass since then, but I now had an extended beer belly and several scars from the accident.

I looked at Brian with an annoyed glare and snapped my fingers. “Hey, my eyes are up here, you pervert. Get on with it before I call HR.”

He shook his head, looking embarrassed. “Sorry man. Umm, let's see.,” He fumbled around with his tablet, trying to find his notes. “Oh ya. So back when we were running the alpha testing, we only had a handful of teams, and we had been limited to only picking from a selection of basic races and our testing teams were located in a handful of the larger cities in the game. The developers want more testing done in low level areas farther away from major spawn locations, so we are going to be spawning in a small border city called… Jadestone.”

I started to pull the suit up onto my legs as Brian talked. “So anything I need to know about this Jadestone. How big is the game map anyway?” I asked.

“Massive. The planet in-game is about 80% the size of Earth, with a lower land to water ratio. There are four total continents with several island chains and archipelagos. Overall, the game has a total land area about the size of North and South America.” Brian said.

“What!? How is it possible to maintain a persistent game environment that large? I mean, how can you design NPC’s and quests to populate a map that big?”

“Do you want the long technical answer that you're not likely to understand, or can I give you the quick dumb version?” Brian asked.

“Hey, just because I didn’t study computer sciences doesn’t mean I can’t…”

Brian cut me off. “Ya, I’m gonna give you the quick dumb version. Essentially, Ironwood created a massive, and I mean MASSIVE main server here in Columbus that is capable of handling hundreds of petabytes of data at any one time. This one server covers the entire player population, everyone will be playing in the same world. Players connect through regional server hubs that boost their connection to the main server to a massive degree, to the point where players all the way in Australia shouldn’t experience any lag. And to populate the game world with believable NPC’s and unique quests, Ironwood developed a hyper-advanced storyteller AI. The history, major NPCs, and their initial large quest changes were designed by the developers, but the majority of the regular NPCs, their storylines, and quests were made by the storyteller AI. In fact, all the areas the beta teams are spawning in are AI-generated towns filled with AI-made NPCs, though the developers did go in and make a few updates for us before we spawn in.”

The idea that Ironwood had created a game so massive that they needed to create an advanced storyteller AI in order to fill it with NPCs and quest lines wasn’t actually much of a selling point. Simple machine learning AI’s have been used by other games in the past to help fill in the gaps when developers created environments too large for them to manage entirely on their own, but in most cases, the AI created quests and NPCs have stuck out like sore thumbs.

Hopefully, Ironwood’s self-developed AI storyteller didn’t end up being a detriment to the game overall. When it comes to RPGs, whether MMO or single-player, quality has always trumped quantity in my opinion. There isn’t much point in having a huge map to run around and explore if it’s full of empty space, janky NPCs, and lame quests.

“So what kind of updates did the developers make to the town I’m spawning in?” I asked.

“Nothing too drastic. They had to enable spawning in the town and remove the race restrictions that would have been in place. Once all the teams are logged in they should revert the towns back to their normal settings.”

“Wait, so certain races are restricted based on where you want to spawn in at?”

“Ya, what races you can spawn in as depends on two things,” Brian explained. “The population of the area surrounding the spawn point and the cities general relationship to a specific race. As an example, in a human kingdom’s capital city, you would likely be able to choose from a good portion of the subraces for dwarves and elves and maybe a few other uncommon or rare races depending on the population makeup of the surrounding region and neighboring kingdoms. Any race you want to spawn in as also can’t be labeled as a racial enemy of the local government. For example, it’s fairly common for human kingdoms to have goblin tribes that live in or on their border, but most human kingdoms view goblins as racial enemies and kill them on sight, so you wouldn’t be able to spawn as a goblin in the city even though they make up a portion of the areas playable races. However, in those cases, you could still play as a half breed that is a part goblin, as long as it’s mixed with a playable race.”

“Wait, you're saying I could play as a goblin dwarf hybrid if I wanted to?” I asked. My mind was reeling at the thought of all the possible race combinations.

Brian scrunched up his face in thought for a moment before responding. “Honestly, I don’t really know. Some races can be mixed, and I don’t know off the top of my head what races goblins and dwarfs can mix with. I do know humans can mix with the most races and you can play as a human goblin hybrid and a human dwarf hybrid.”

“Ok, but none of this is going to matter for me right? I’ll be able to pick whatever race I want when I log in.” I said.

“Ya. They enabled spawning in Jadestone and limited your account to only spawn there. They also altered Jadestone’s reputation with any races from hostile to hated and enabled all race options for non-native races.”

“Hated still sounds pretty bad. Shouldn’t they set it to neutral or something?” I asked. There wouldn’t be much point in selecting a race if the starting town was still hostile to me because of my race.

“I asked the same thing, but they don’t want to negatively affect local storylines and quests. A town’s reputation score with a race affects how a town’s government and guard NPCs will react towards that race, not how a town’s population will treat them, though there is a bit of overlap. NPCs have their own reputation scores with races and individuals, which is usually based on the NPC’s own race and the history given to the NPC, so regardless of what race you pick, you should find NPCs in the town willing to work with and help you. They also added tutorial quests that normally aren’t available in the area. These quests are how you pick up most of your starting gear, but they added in a lot of additional reputation to help counter any negative reputation score you might start with. When they set the reputation setting back to normal, your reputation with the town shouldn’t change either.”

Brian paused for a moment, thinking something over in his head. “My only suggestion is to check a race’s reputation with other races before making a selection. Any race listed with a negative reputation, like hated or despised, will have an automatic flat negative applied to their reputation score with you and a negative multiplier will be applied to any reputation you gain until you reach a neutral reputation score with someone. The town’s population is made up of mostly dwarves and humans, with a really small population of elves. I wouldn’t pick a race that views both humans and dwarves listed as hated or despised.”

I nodded that I understood as I finished pulling my arms into my NMS suit. Dr. Lambert walked over and started to look me over. “Go ahead and stand up for me Erik. I need to check and make sure the suit fits, and that the electrodes are lined up in the correct areas.”

I stood, putting most of my weight on my good leg. Dr. Lambert first checked my arms, where there were two half-inch wide openings on both sleeves below the crook of my arms. He moved down to my back and stomach, making sure electrodes were lined up in the appropriate spots. He gave special attention to my right leg. It looked like they had made a special suit just for me since both legs of the suit fit me perfectly.

“Alright Erik, let’s have you lay down here in the capsule and lay your hands palms up inside the enclosures to either side,” said Dr. Lambert.

I looked down at the capsule, which looked like a tanning bed where one half was made of some sort of gel-like material. As I laid down on the bed of the capsule, the gel material conformed to my body weight and felt cool through the fabric of my suit. After I placed my hands inside the metal enclosures, Dr. Lambert gave a verbal command, and both devices around my hands separated from the end of the capsule and moved up my arm until they reached the opening in my suit, just below each elbow.

“These,” Dr. Lambert said while pointing at the devices now sitting over my forearms, “are automatic injection cuffs. When you go under they will scan your arm for the appropriate veins, and inject you with an IV line. Your left cuff will administer an intravenous fluid that contains a nutrient solution that will keep your body fed and hydrated. Your left cuff will give you two injections. One is connected to a nanobot solution. These nanobots are designed to enter the digestive system to break down, capture, and contain waste material. The other injection will then draw your blood and run it through a machine to separate out the nanobots and their collected waste. Think of it like a dialysis machine.”

“But for pee and poop,” I said.

A smile sprouted on Dr. Lambert's face and he turned back towards Brian. “Hey, this guy gets it. Most people get kind of grossed out when we first tell them.”

“Ya well, when you've had to wear a catheter for weeks on end, the idea of having a simple IV in your arm handling all that sounds pretty damn amazing,” I said, shuddering at the memory of when I had my first catheter removed while I was lucid.

Dr. Lambert gave a quick chuckle before he reached out and pulled the FIVR headset out of a cradle just behind my head. The device looked like an elastic headband with an attached metallic band that stretched around half of the device. One end of the metallic band was attached to a cord that ran off into the capsule itself. Dr. Lambert placed it on my head, showing me that each end of the metal band should sit over my temples, with the metal band itself rapping around my forehead.

“Well, you’re all ready to go,” He said to me before he turned to Brian. “I’m going to head over to the monitoring room to double-check everything. Just buzz down there when you’re ready to start the log-in”

Dr. Lambert gave me a quick smile before he opened the door and left the room. Brian pulled up a stool and sat down next to me.

“Alright, so when you log in, the game is going to take you to character creation. This is where you’ll pick your spawn, race, class, and skills. There is too much in there for me to go over everything in detail, but I do want to talk about the classes you’ll get to choose from. To start, you’ll only have access to six starting classes. The starting classes only unlock the ability to use certain weapons or cast certain spells. They don’t offer any specific class traits or skills. When you are picking your starting class, you want to have a character archetype in mind and build towards that with your race, stats, and even skill selection. You’ll get to pick your base class at level 3 and you can select a sub-class at level 5, but I don’t think you’ll get that far before logging out on Monday. Each class requires you to meet certain requirements in order to pick them. Some common classes have simple stat requirements, but there are uncommon classes that can become available if you have the right stat spread and have certain skills trained and leveled up.”

“Is there any way for me to look up any of the class requirements while I’m working on character creation?” I asked.

“Yes and no. The game has a wiki that all players have access to, but some of the information is hidden behind certain requirements. All information on common classes and sub-classes is available by default, but anything uncommon and above is locked unless you have the appropriate knowledge skill or you physically research the knowledge in the game. Some of your tutorial quest NPC’s might have some books about different classes, but that's not a sure bet.”

“What did you do for your character?” I asked. Brian hadn’t told me anything about his time in-game even though he would be logging in and joining the group starting with our second dive.

“I just picked a common class, but I ended up taking an uncommon subclass I got access to at level 5. My character is a Wood Elf Ranger with the Stalker sub-class. It’s kind of why I suggested you just build towards an archetype. I wanted to play a stealthy ranger, but I had been planning on taking the common Hunter sub-class. Since I prioritized improving my stealth skill, I met the requirement for Stalker which fit perfectly with the character I wanted to create. That's kind of how it seems to work for everyone else too. Everyone I tested with ended up getting access to higher rarity classes and sub-classes that they didn’t know would be available.”

“Alright, I think I got it. Anything else before I go under?” I asked.

“Just use your head and rely on your wiki. Your P.A.T. was connected to your work account, so you’ll have access to it in the game as well, which should help you navigate all the information. You’ll also have access to two unique chat tabs in your interface. One connects you to the system tech on duty who is monitoring you, which will be Liam until his shift is over. The other tab is for bug reports. If you run into anything weird, just mark it down and the game will capture the time and location for you automatically.”

Brian looked down at his watch and some of the color drained from his face. “Oh shit, my boss is going to have my ass.” He frantically looked around the room until he found his bag and slung it over his shoulder before he turned back to me. “Ok, you're good to go. I’m going to lower the top down. When they start the login sequence, a screen will appear just above your face. Countdown with the numbers as they show up on the screen, that's all you have to do.”

I gave Brian a thumbs up. “Will do. I guess I’ll see you when I log out Monday then.”

“Ya, for sure. We’ll have dinner down in the restaurant. You, me, and the rest of the team.”

“Sounds good, now close this thing up and get out of here. You’re taking up my precious gaming time.”

“Oh so now I’m holding you up, I see how it is. Later bud.” He said as he closed the lid to my capsule.

As soon as the lid closed, the smile on my face faded away and I let out a long worried breath. I could faintly hear Brian speaking and followed by the sound of the door clicking shut. Above my face, a dim light appeared. The light was slowly growing in size and brightness until it was the size of a dinner plate.

The number 20 appeared in the center of the light and it began to tick backward. As I counted down the number, the light grew in size and strength until the darkness was gone. In the last few seconds, it felt as if my body was being pulled forward, towards the lid of the capsule. The numbers started to grow large before fading away altogether. I rose faster and faster into the endless bright light until suddenly coming to an abrupt stop. A few seconds ticked by until a screen popped up in my vision.

Welcome to Hazelsong. Please select your desired spawn location.