Level 002

Some people have natural-born talents.

You know those types of people, the ones that can pick up a tennis racket and make it look like they were born to play? Then there are the people who aren’t naturally talented, but can put in the hours to hone their skills and still have a fighting chance.

And then… then there are people like me.

I don’t think there’s anything I’ve ever been good at. Scratch that, I don’t think there’s anything I’ve ever been moderately average at. My school grades consistently hit the C-level, and if I didn’t continually mooch off my younger sister’s ungodly math knowledge, I’d probably be repeating tenth grade again. 

Anyway, what was I saying?

Right. Remy Chessler. Sixteen years old. Crushing hard on a VRMMO idol, and possessing absolutely no natural talent what to speak of, including playing even the most basic of video games.

This is my story — the story of how I conquered my fears, dove into my first VR game, and won the heart of my beloved Beryl. Or…something like that, honestly I hadn’t worked out most of the details.

Maybe I was so used to failing that I’d stopped imagining what success could look like. Or maybe it was because the idea of meeting the girl I’d been fawning over for the past three years was so overwhelming that I couldn’t quite fathom it.

After all, Beryl was everything I wasn’t. As far as anybody knew, she had become the top of CraftQuest’s league at fifteen, and started working as an idol and representative for the company around the same time. That made her just a few years older than I was — and she was already a legitimate starlet in the world of VRMMO games. Not only that, she was beautiful, charming, and energetic. What was I, except a boring, brunette, idiot?

How could I not be intimidated?

“Hey, Earth to Remy,” Jessie said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. She scowled at me, irritated despite wrangling two weeks advance payment out of me to cover her cancelling a shopping trip to help me out. Since when did my little sister get so busy on the weekend anyway?!

Ah, children, they grow up so quickly.

“Okay, okay, don’t poke my boobs. They’re not gonna magically transfer to you, y’know?”

I lay on my back, in bed, while Jessie hooked up the shiny new VRMMO headset to my computer.

“Thankfully, CQ still works with this dusty old rig. The thing that’s great about the new gen VR kits is that, although they have onboard graphics processing, the real magic comes from the server itself doing the rendering. That way, the headset just has to worry about relaying your thoughts and commands to the game client.”

I stared up at the alien that had possessed my sister.

“Since when did you become the biggest geek in the world?”

“Since when I didn’t have a reliable older sister to teach me this shit. Now shut up and strap this over your head.”

I let the insult slide and gingerly slipped the headset over my face. It was bulky, but not too uncomfortable, with a nice amount of cushioning over my forehead. The unit covered my eyes and nose, leaving just my mouth uncovered.

“I know you haven’t used one of these before, so I’ll quickly tell you what it’s going to do. Once you’ve turned it on, you’ll feel a little headache coming on — that’s pretty normal, especially for your first few sessions. Then your limbs will go dead, and once you see the green light, the headset is ready to start intercepting your thoughts as commands.”

I waited, and just as Jessie said, my limbs began feeling heavier as though I’d been laying down for hours without moving. A green light flashed in the upper-left corner of my vision.

“There’s a light now. Oh, — it’s turning on!”

With a digital crackle, a brilliantly clear image replaced my vision.

Nothing like the grainy old VR headsets of our parent’s day and age. This was crystal-clear 4K quality alright, fully enveloping my vision from all angles.

I stood somewhere in a startup menu, in a virtual space modelled after a wooden cabin, complete with a crackling fire and a window overlooking a snow-covered forest. It felt a little on-the-nose considering the searing summer heat outside, but hey, it was probably the closest thing I’d ever get to seeing the real deal.

“Try walking forward and moving your head around.”

I heard Jessie’s voice distantly, as though she was miles away instead of just beside my head. I made to move my legs — my real legs, that is — but instead, I found my avatar walking forward, further into the digital world.

“Whoa…” I whispered. I’d never played with one of these headsets before, and the initial impression was pretty mind-blowing. As I moved my neck, my real body stayed perfectly still, and my avatar twisted around so that I could see more of the starting-screen cabin.

“This is awesome!”

“Mhmm, it’s a bit weird at first, but you’ll get used to it pretty quickly. Okay, I’m going to load up CraftQuest for you now. All you have to do is follow the instructions. I’ll go to my room and log in too, so I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

“Okay…”

I was too busy exploring the digital world, using my not-real hands to pull back the curtains and look at the snowy forest “outside”. Jes had given me a pair of ‘haptic gloves’ to wear, so as my fingers brushed against the digital material, I felt a soft rumble across my palm, roughly mimicking the sensation of the cloth.

This was way beyond anything I’d experienced before — everything looked and felt as if I was right there in the game itself!

With another ripple through the digital space, the cabin dissolved. CraftQuest’s logo appeared, accompanied by a happy tune I knew all too well from Beryl’s live streams. After a brilliantly animated intro trailer, I was dropped into a series of start-up menus, each represented as holographic panels of light just in reach of my virtual hands.

“Is that — me?!” I yelped. Standing before me was — well, me.

A five-foot-two girl with boobs just slightly too large for her own comfort. The headset didn’t import my hair colour or shape, but it managed to accurately scan my face and body, all the way down to my slightly sallow skin and the beauty mark under my left eye.

Scary. And this was better than letting people choose their character? You could totally be identified IRL from this…

I paused, considering my options for a moment. This was, after all, an opportunity to look and feel differently from the real world — I could really go all out, within reason. But if I was going to meet Beryl here, in this digital universe, I wanted to stand on my own two feet — well, you know what I mean. I clumsily swiped my way through the menu system, selecting a few circular icons, and watched as my avatar’s hair loaded.

I chose short pigtails not too dissimilar from my normal look, but coloured my hair a pale shade of pink my mother would never condone. Hey, a fantasy world has to be good for something, right?

After accepting my new look, the game replaced the boring default undergarments with my first set of official CraftQuest clothes — and I let out another high-pitched squeal of excitement.

There was another reason I liked watching videos about CraftQuest, beyond Beryl. She was the major reason, of course, but the main player base of CraftQuest were female teenagers for a few reasons — the soft, pastel-coloured world, the reduced emphasis on combat, and the gorgeousclothes. 

My starting outfit was almost perfect — a soft pink dress that ended with white frills, bracelets adorned with little daisies, and a larger emerald bow on my waist, with two matching ribbons in my pigtails. 

I looked adorable. How could Beryl say no to this little cutie?!

There was just one thing left to do: choose my username.

That was, all things considered, the easiest part. I had never been one to hide my feelings, to disguise how I thought or felt. Some people — like my Mom, and Jessie — said that I should put up walls sometimes, that I shouldn’t wear my heart on my sleeve. But how could I be anything except my true, unfiltered self? Pretending to be somebody I wasn’t just didn’t feel right.

I entered my name into the holographic keyboard.

Remy.

With another ripple of digital colours, CraftQuest loaded me into the magical world of Theia.

My adventure in my very first VRMMO has begun!