I waited for the pod I was laying in to rise to its normal 45 degree angle for me to step out. As the pod rose I felt extremely weak. I decided I would take a break for a couple days to recuperate from being in that damn thing for one and a half days, just a bit over. I headed into the kitchen and made a couple sandwiches and grabbed a glass of water and ate. I also immediately after eating just laid down on the couch and fell asleep.

I woke up to knocking at the door. I grabbed my phone from the side table and checked the time. A whole day had pretty much passed and it was the next day as well. I wondered if the game had parameters for NPCs to know when a person logged out or not, I felt kind of bad for Antivitz. I laid there not really wanting to move, wanting to just die as I was also hungry again but didn’t feel like making any food. There was another knock at the door, so I was sure it wasn’t a figment of my imagination from just waking up. I immediately sat up and got off the couch with a groan, my muscles stiff from laying down for so long, from in the pod and sleeping. I went to the door and opened it. There was a giant box. A delivery guy from SigmaCorp peeked out from behind the box.

“Delivery for Zack Fitz?” the guy said.

“Uh, yeah, that’s me, but I didn’t order any-”

“Yeah, I know, just sign this please.” He held out a piece of paper from behind the box. I took it and placed it on the wall and took the pen he had now in his hand as well, and signed the paper on the bottom on the signature line. I stepped back and he carted in the box into the house. “It’s the newest model of VRPod, or whatever you wanna call it, fresh off the line, QA tested thoroughly and everything.” The box gave no indication of this, it was just a plain, huge cardboard box.

“What? When did you guys come out with a new model?”

“Probably a month ago? I’m not really sure, to be honest, maybe two months ago.” I hadn’t even heard of this being a thing anywhere, and I was sure the internet community would have been abuzz with this news. I was mildly skeptical.

“How come I haven’t heard anything about it, or read anything about it on the internet?” I realized it’s the “intranet” now but, old habits die hard.

“It’s been kept under wraps for quite a while. Do you need help setting it up?” He made like he was going to go out the door as soon as I said no, and I was sure he had other deliveries to get to.

“Nah, I’m good, thanks.”

“Alright.” He undid the wiring from the existing pod, and moved the new pod into position, unboxed it, and just plugged in the intranet cord into the specified port as well as performed a file transfer, taking all the files on the old pod and placing it on the new pod’s hard drive, and booted it up. After all that, he carted out the old pod. “It’ll have a thirty minute initial boot-up, but after that it’ll be seconds whenever you turn it off and back on, by the way. Just check on it after thirty minutes. Have fun!”

“Sure, sure.” I nodded to him.

He went out the door and shut it behind him. I decided since I was not in the mood to produce a sandwich, I ordered a pizza and just flipped the TV on. It was on a news channel, and coincidentally, they were talking about the new VRPods, the one that I had just gotten. A female news anchor and a male news anchor were talking about the VRPods and SwordGate. The woman was currently speaking.

“...met with critical acclaim as the game SwordGate, hosted by SigmaCorp, offers an enhanced experience with the new model XM005 VRPod.”

“That’s right, Kelly.” The screen shifted slightly to the left and zoomed in on the male, showing an image of a box for Swordgate. “The game has been a huge hit with people who are able to get their hands on a VR interface, as well as people who are using the haptic headset interfaces as well, even though that offers a slightly more lackluster experience, it’s an experience nonetheless.” The camera zoomed back out and focused on the two anchors, and the female continued:

“Also, SigmaCorp’ stock went up fifty points today, making their stocks one of the most valuable on the planet at the moment, and making quite a lot of people a lot of money…” I mildly zoned out from the newscast until I heard the male newscaster say something that piqued my interest:

“...criticism from many people about losing their children and parents, and in general many family members to the “imprint” process these pods use to simulate the game to people’s minds, so they can play the game SwordGate. We don’t personally know the mechanics of the imprint process, only CEO Robert Shwaltz does, the man behind the imprint process. At this time there is no other VR game that uses the “imprint” process, or a similar process, to have a person control an avatar in another virtual world, and Unfortunately as of quite a while ago people started dying in these pods or being shut off from the game completely, but this hasn’t stopped sales of these pods or sales of the game. The haptic feedback headsets do not have this issue, but they are very much a simpler technology than the VRPods.” The male continued, whose name was apparently Kevin at the bottom of the screen:

“Yes, there have also been reports that those people who died here are very well and good in the world of SwordGate! It seems with the “imprinting” system the pods use, the data collected from the brain is taken and used on the game’s servers, and sometimes people will die in this world, but they will live on in the virtual world. Needless to say, this news has been taken as a rumor by many, and has not stopped the virtual reality craze that is SwordGate Online. In other news…” I zonked out again after that, thinking about getting back in the pod, the new pod, to play more, but I said I was going to take a break and I meant it. I’m pretty sure eventually either I’d become “imprinted” on the game’s servers or be booted off permanently. I wasn’t sure how to feel about possibly being stuck in the game at this point, but I figured it was a long way off. I just had to remember to keep logging out on the regular to ensure that didn’t happen to me. Though, it’s not like I had any obligations in the real world to begin with anyway.

I continued watching TV until the pizza came, ate some of the pizza on the couch . and watched some more of the news and flipped through channels, and browsed the internet on my computer. I ended up browsing the SwordGate forums, which, I could also access from in-game as well as any file I really wanted while in-game that was on the pod’s hard drive, but there was nothing like sitting in a chair, staring at a screen, with a mouse in hand, just reading information. It was something I grew up with and still enjoyed, even if there were more advanced methods. I was particularly curious about my character’s race and the Archaeology profession. I ended up finding out a few things, such as the rarity of items ended up giving you more EXP and points towards Archaeology, and taking up Archaeology ended up giving you additional points in the Luck stat, eventually.

Also from the limited amount of people that have taken up Archaeology, a lot of them have found relics from the Naz’catec and relics that have race restrictions on the Naz’catec, so nobody else can use them, no matter how hard they try to equip a helmet or a bracer. And apparently, people have tried, for a really, really long time. I also found out that generally, the Naz’catec were basically the “Aztecs” of Eir. They were around even before Naga came out of the seas, and Demons from Hel roamed Eir. It was fascinating stuff, really. People pieced together their history bit by bit as they uncovered pieces of various lore from the Naz’catec.

Apparently, their empire spanned half the world at one point, generally before the Naga and Demons pushed them back, the Naz’catec too lax in their empire to defend their borders from the other fledgling races of Elves and Dwarves. Obviously the Aztecs in the real world didn’t span half a planet, of course. The Dwarves ended up being an offshoot of the Naz’catec, that just liked generally being underground and built separate societies underground, for the purpose of supplying the general public with rare ores and gems and such. Elves were of no relation to the Naz’catec.

This was all very interesting to me, and points that I would bring up to Antivitz when I got back into the game. But for now, I laid down on the couch again and fell asleep yet again. My dreams were full of weird looking artifacts and bandits, my sleep was a fitful one at the least.