Casper “Doc” Lin, the Durnir medical corpsman, awakened feeling like he had overslept, his body overcome by a brutal sluggishness. Startled, he realized that he was back in the Jotnar VR simulated environment. The upgraded experience was profoundly different than before. He looked at his hands and touched his face and his thighs. Doc couldn’t feel the elements of his harness and VR equipment as he could before.

Doc began to take in his surroundings. He was sitting on something like a stone bench. Coming to his senses and feeling a jolt of excitement, Doc stood up and hopped vertically, then took a few lunging steps about the small room that he occupied. The room was like a square cell, about 10 meters square with walls, ceiling and a floor that looked like smooth grey stone.

Slowly, Doc’s recent memories came back to him. First driving to the new off-base location with Cowcatcher. Checking in, roll call with the squad, then a confusing briefing. There was a noted lack of military presence at the new facility, which appeared to be located in a recently completed, cheap one-story structure in a largely vacant industrial area outside Jacksonville.

Doc and the other members of Durnir spoke to a Marine First Lieutenant, last name Conroy, who was wearing civilian clothes. Lt. Conroy explained that he was tasked from the Marines to the National Reconnoissance Office (“NRO”), a division of the Department of Defense, hence the civilian attire.

Doc recalled that Lt. Conroy, accompanied by two civilian employees of BitStriker, delivered a briefing to Squad Durnir. There was a lengthy powerpoint presentation, which explained that the VR “Nine Mountains” training environment had been notably upgraded by way of new software and a prototype graphics hardware technology. Lt. Conroy told the squad that the name Durnir meant “gatekeeper” and their Squad were the “chosen gatekeepers for a VR experience the likes of which no one has ever experienced” and that their military skills would be challenged “in a new world” which was the Nine Mountains environment. Today would begin the trial of the new patch, but specific changes to the user experience were not mentioned. The Lieutenant closed with stating that the Squad Durnir’s experiences in the Nine Mountains would be the basis for developing metrics to document the relative improvements they expected from the new technological developments. In turn, these metrics would help the military extrapolate the benefits of a larger roller (and investment). Pretty dry stuff.

After the briefing, civilian employees guided the six members of Durnir to their new “harnesses” where the squad would plug-in for their immersive training experiences. These looked like oversized dentist’s chairs, surrounded by monitoring equipment. The squad changed into haptic jumpsuits which surrounded them with an array of tiny motors which would deliver sensory experiences to magnify the visual aspect of the VR immersion. The suits buzzed, tickled and pricked his body in waves as they calibrated baseline sensory experiences. Doc felt, cold, heat, even something like a gut punch. There were no military logos on the haptic suits, just the BitStriker logo.

A civilian nurse helped Doc strap into his harness and connected him to an IV drip. She dilated his pupils and applied a new set of VR goggles. These new goggles were much heavier than before, until a gyro-stabilizer kicked on, making the weight less noticeable when he moved his head left and right.

There was a gap in Doc’s memory after that.

Doc’s focus drew back to his immediate surrounding and with a start, he realized something was missing. “Holy shit where’s my rifle.” Doc said to himself. In previous simulated deployments, a standard issue M4A1 5.56mm carbine was always part of the package and he felt naked without it. No 9mm sidearm, either. He spun in a circle. “No team either, freaking perfect. Calm down, remember the training.” The stress of acclimating to the virtual environment tended to result in a psychological tunnel vision experience, causing users—the PSECTrops military personnel—to lose track of head’s up display (“HUD”) icons that populated the user interface (“UI”). An icon on the top left corner blinking purple, indicating vital statistics drew his attention. Using tongue and eye movements, he accessed a drop-down prompt from the blinking icon, which read:

Name: Doc

Race: First human

Level: 1

Class: Shaman

Element: SELECT (Fire, Ice, Moon, Sun)

Specialization: N/A

—————————

Strength: 50

Dexterity: 50

Health: 50

Acuity: 50

Mana: 50

—————————

Armor: N/A

Primary weapon: N/A

Language/Old Norse: 60

“Wow those BitStriker guys really gamed the hell out of this thing.” First human? Shaman? Doc wondered if he fell asleep in the briefing. He disregarded the UI for a moment and reexamined his surroundings. There were indentations in each of the four smooth walls that appeared to be doors, one per wall. Doc slid his hands along them. They felt just like the walls—cold unyielding stone. The bench was made of similar materials. There were no other openings, no air vents or drainage holes, of course. The prompt SELECT blinked slowly in the UI, indicating a non-urgent selection for the “element” attribute. It seemed that he had four choices: fire, ice, moon and sun. How poetic. He clicked on SELECT and another menu appeared, apparently a further description of each option:

Fire: Monk (Mana, Strength)

Ice: Diviner (Mana, Acuity)

Moon: Druid (Mana, Dexterity)

Sun: Healer (Mana, Health)

It seemed like the only thing Doc could contemplate in this void of stimulation was this one choice. He might as well have fun with it, he thought. No freaking way am I choosing druid, that’s for sure. Brought back too many bad NorCal experiences. Monk? Also a hard pass, seemed to imply celibacy. Doc had no idea what a diviner was, finds potable water or something like that? Of course, I’ll select Sun, I’m a born healer. Doc even played a cleric in a long-running tabletop RPG campaign back in high school. “Easy choice.” Doc selected Sun. The choice generated a prompt on the UI:

Congratulations, you have selected the Healer specialization of the Shaman class. You benefit from a connection to the spirit plane that imbues you with magical capabilities, which includes but is not limited to healing magic. You are also trained to heal using the inherent qualities of indigenous plants.

Doc’s stat sheet repopulated with new content emphasized with bold, slow blinking script:

Name: Doc

Race: First human

Level: 1

Class: Shaman

Element: Sun

Specialization: Healer

—————————

Strength: 50

Dexterity: 50

Health: 60

Acuity: 50

Mana: 60

—————————

Armor: N/A

Primary weapon: N/A

Language/Old Norse: 60

Skill/Herbalism: 60

Cast: Light of laeknir (Shaman, Sun)

Cast: Vioblindi (Shaman, Sun)

Doc heard one of the four doors, the one behind him, slide open.