A tingling sensation like an electric current flowed through his body. The helmet kicked into gear and Eugene saw a grassy clearing surrounded by an orchard of blossoming cherry trees. Pink petals fell around him as slow rain. He reached out to grab hold, only to find that he had had no arms, nor any physical body at all.

A grey status window appeared in thin air [Synchronizing 1%] followed by a series of vertical loading dashes that were beginning to light up. Eugene's body materialized from the top down as the tiny electrical current sparked into tiny painful pinches from head to toe. It stung, but was over in a few seconds [Synchronization Complete].

He stood naked in the forest. It was almost a bad dream. He really wished the developers would have come up with a digital towel or something.

“Welcome to Levia Online,” a soothing female voice announced. The voice came directly from the status window. So Levia Online was the name of the game; the details on the VR-01 mmorpg were kept a complete secret, other than to say that it was a fantasy setting.

Eugene quickly covered up his private parts, and then tried to hide the scars on his arm, which he found had disappeared. Somehow that made him feel a little better, despite the possibility someone was watching him, bare naked. The game was amazing. He could touch. He could hear. He could see. And even the cherry blossoms smelled like flower petals, whether they smelled like cherry blossoms or not, Eugene had no clue, but it was still impressive.

“You have entered the character creation zone. Here you are able to select the components and customizations for your ideal character.”

A duplicate of Eugene appeared in the space in front of him. It wasn’t the ‘real’ Eugene. It was as if the game had copied him, except without all of the flaws. It was his own face that stared back at him (amongst other things) but he was now more handsome, more uniform, flawless. Apparently his image wasn’t shy, because it stood perfectly still with its arms at its sides.

“I’m alone here,” Eugene realized, though he couldn’t stop himself from hiding his junk. A series of status windows appeared around his double; at the same time another grey one popped up in front of him [Help Tutorial #1]. The grey window followed him around when he moved, while the rest stayed in place around his clone. He reached out and touched the Help status. It was like touching a glass panel, not a digital image, but a solid floating object. The tutorial panel opened with a bunch of information for noobs, along with the typical, ‘hide tutorials’ check box at the bottom. Which Eugene checked off right away. As cool as this was, he was tired of being naked, and tired of waiting. He wanted to play.

One of the status windows surrounding his double had some clothing options, and he was happy to find that, once applied, not only his clone, but he himself was suddenly wearing the selected attire. It didn’t matter what he wore, at this point, but he did find that although all of the choices fit perfectly, some were itchy, and others were too constricting. Eugene just picked the most comfortable clothes he could find quickly and scrolled their color settings to black, not even bothering to look through the pattern options.

The [Lineage] window was the one he went to first. Apparently lineage was the fancy way Levia Online tried to say races, which was fine since he didn’t care what the developers called them, so long as the stat bonuses and special abilities were good.

As Eugene moved about flipping through the windows, he was amazed at how real everything felt. This game was going to change the world. People could do anything in this virtual environment, create their own personal utopias, fulfill their wildest fantasies, or just play really cool rpgs. And through crowdfunding he’d managed to be a part of all that, and that was sort of cool, sort of really cool. It was so good, it even let him forget . . . other things . . . for a while.

[Minotaur], flip. [Human], fast flip. [Shadow Elf], linger then flip. [Halfling], flip. For an indie game there were a ton of races. Eugene may not have known exactly what form Levia Online was going to take, but it didn’t really matter. He always played the same character anyway, the ganking rogue. The invisibility he hated and longed for in real life was ironically his favourite place to be in-game. Solo, hidden in the shadows, ready to pounce on his unsuspecting victims, or just listen in on the secret conversations of his supposed allies. There was something badass about being a rogue. That’s how he always played, solo and like a badass. He traded guilds like he upgraded equipment, often and for the better, knowing that none would last longer than the next raid, or the next piece of gear.

In moments, Eugene had his character ready to go, [Shadow Elf Rogue]. He pressed the apply button and his physical form morphed to be the same as his double. His face retained most of its normal look, with changes to his skin tone, height, weight and hair (still white). A red bordered status window with flashing lights popped, [WARNING: only one character may be created in Levia Online, do you wish to continue?] [YES] or [NO].

This was Eugene’s character, the same character he always played. The same escape he always found in MMO’s. So why was he hesitating? He stared at the dark features and black clothes he’d selected. He had adjusted his body size to be as small as possible in hopes of shrinking his hit box, the typical area other players had to hit in order for normal games to record damage. This was the body he was going to spend hours playing and let’s face it, probably days and months too. And for the first time, in a long time, Eugene changed his mind. [NO], he selected. This time was going to be different; he was going to be different. It was time for a change.