Chapter 7 - Jackson

We got up early the next morning. The only interruption in my sleep was letting Gerald inside in the middle of the night after receiving the code from him. I, for one, tried to forget about the news story from last night. My morning shower was a practice in awkwardness as I worked to keep my cast out of the steaming stream of water coming from the shower head.

I was surprised to see detective Daniels in the middle of making a large breakfast of bacon and eggs, humming to himself. Morning people. I grunted and groaned my way to the coffee pot to secure my morning medicine. I handed a cup to Jane who was sitting on the couch watching the morning news for any new updates. She sipped at the steaming cup, her hair in a sleepy halo around her head. Gerald was finishing up some morning calisthenics with a kettle bell and some body weight movements.

After a few big gulps of coffee; I hated every moment of the walk, but I moved over to join him. Fifteen minutes later and my mind was clear, my breathing labored, but my muscles primed and ready for the day. I had a love hate relationship with morning workouts. I loved the feeling afterward and well, I hated everything else.

“Alright, down to business.” Jane said with a yawn. “Infinity Online goes live in four hours. We’re about as ready as we can get here. Gerald and his dad were pretty scary about setting up the safe houses, and I’ve added some tech and code that makes me a little nervous about what Gerald’s going to be using it for.” Gerald stared, blank-faced back at us. “At this point, we’ve done everything we can to prepare and dig in. All we have left is to set everything up.” Jane took a long, deep breath and let it out. “Okay, Gerald. What’s your take on this man hunt?”

“Damage control. I’d put my money that Susan found some information and stirred up a nest of hornets. When they couldn’t get the information out of her they went after her family for leverage. If it wasn’t for Daniels here…” He shook his head. “When that failed they cut their losses.”

“If they can do all this, is dad safe?”

Gerald raised his hand in a stopping motion. “They don’t need Lionel. They know that he is in the hospital with Susan, and they know he’s not working against them with that bum leg.” His brows drew lower. “But if they want to try to stick their hand in the cookie jar that’s okay by me. They’ll lose the hand at the shoulder.”

“Okay,” Jane breathed out, “time to start getting ready?”

“Sounds good to me.” Daniels said. “Now that Gerald is back with them headsets we’ll all be ready to get in there and find answers.”

“We?” I asked.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you go in there without me did you?” He smiled.

“You still on board?” Gerald shifted his stare to me. He folded his arms. I started to squirm a little under his hooded gaze. “Okay then.”

Three hours were spent quickly as we finished eating, completing our morning rituals, and setting up the capsules as well as the two headsets. The headset calibration was less extensive, but we still needed to calibrate the Immersion Rigs to our unique bodies and settings. Jane remembered in time for us to log in and formally refer Gerald and Daniels. The Refer-a-Friend program allowed for some nice bonuses when grouping with registered referrals. Jane referred Gerald, and I shot a request off to Daniels. There was a significant bonus for certain benchmarks in the number of players referred. Jane and I had created numerous forum posts, each of us using our specific six digit identification code to refer anyone who was already willing to play. It was low hanging fruit that we didn’t think would amount to much, but we were surprised when we had a flood of responses. Soon after, there were dedicated threads for posting your ID for other people to use as a referral code, but ours were the parent threads and seemed to receive the most responses. We helped Gerald and Daniels choose their character names but would have to wait for login to actually choose the character and traits. Choosing names early was actually one of the perks we had unlocked as a tier in the Refer-a-Friend program. We could allow those referred to choose their screen names early and lock them in before they had a chance to be taken by the flood of players entering this new world. Jane filled out Daniels and Gerald’s character names and when she heard that our esteemed doubles would be logging in from our house, she smiled as she started typing away at her keyboard.

We had a one hour before the game went live, but the company allowed you to log in an hour before to set up the character creation and complete the synchronization. Once we climbed in there, it would all become real. I took a deep breath and nodded at Jane before stepping into my room. I wasn’t sure if I needed to be naked, or if clothed was okay. I met my internal dilemma half way and stripped down into my boxers. I opened the clam shell lid. The inside of the capsule was contoured with a strange looking gel-like subtance. I climbed into it carefully. The material inside firmed and softened in places as my weight was distributed. It felt like sinking into a warm and relaxing bath. I pressed a small button on the underside of the lid labeled: Close.

The lid swung shut.