A/N: Bold Font = Time for you to imagine this writing is in a table.

Chapter 2: The MOSS

Cur took his sweet time getting home, he was in no rush to be chained by the new school system. He went to the park and fed the ducks for a while, then he decided to give his grandmother a visit and eventually ended up at his cousin's house.

They were the same age so he figured they could talk about the system. His cousin was one of the only people Cur could stand being around… sometimes. (He was also one of the only people who could stand him. Ah… the perils of superiority.) Although Cur often thought of himself as smarter than Beri, which he probably was, this was not reflected in their ranks. While Cur was only ranked 38,737,918, Beri was usually ranked somewhere around the ten thousands. If Cur would bother to check the rank registries he would see that Beri had actually risen, significantly, in ranks recently. He was currently ranked at 8,142.

Cur didn't care though and when he arrived at Beri's house, his cousin's parents informed Cur that Beri was busy registering for the MOSS.

"The what?"

"The Virtual Reality Merit Oriented Schooling System… but VRMOSS is quite a mouthful so it's been shortened to MOSS… Where have you been that you haven't heard this already? It's all over the news!" Beri's mother replied.

"I've been... busy."

"I see, so you've already finished MOSSing?"

She didn't give him the time to answer.

"I was wondering what you were doing here… I figured you would be at home registering your own account. Beri has been at it for hours and he still hasn't finished…"

She looked behind her at the stairs that led to Beri's room.

"You always were a smart one though… A shame you don't apply yourself more… Well. No matter. Come in. Come in."

His aunt waved him in.

"Beri should be done any minute now."

Cur didn't correct her misunderstanding of his "MOSSing" and walked the familiar path to Beri's room. He saw a, now occupied, new capsule placed by Beri's old one. After a few minutes of waiting he was growing anxious. He didn't like not having anything to do. A couple of thumb-twiddles later he was about to head home and face the MOSS before his eyes landed on Beri's old capsule again.

'I might as well give it a last go before the school system applies. They said 24 hours… I bet I can still access Royal Road one last time before then…'

He had logged in briefly before school, so he knew that the MOSS rules were not activated as of yet… probably. Cur got into Beri's old capsule and logged in.

Cur was busy fighting a couple of high-level vampires when he received the sudden notification.

You have received an External Message request.

He saw that the message was from Beri. Cur thought about not replying, but then he remembered who's capsule he was in.

"What is it? I'm kind of busy here…"

"Dude. Come on! You've been in there for hours and my mom is calling us to dinner… So get your ass out of there and come down for supper…"

"Alright. Alright."

Thankfully he was almost done and executed a couple of well-aimed and critical hits before he beat the offending vampires and logged out.

By the time he logged out, Beri's room was empty so he headed down the stairs to join his Aunt and Uncle for dinner.

"Sorry I took so long to come down Auntie May." He gave her his best guilty-innocent look. It always worked on women… Blame the mother-hen instinct. "And thank you so much for having me over for dinner!"

He sat down gratefully and began eating. It was a common occurrence, mostly because his Aunt had a much higher cooking rank than his mother… rightfully so. The dinner discussion was centered mainly around MOSS, Beri was describing his experience while Cur was distracted by his food.

Beri knew not to disturb Cur when it came to food, so when Cur finally put his fork down to help himself to thirds, he asked.

"So, which one did you choose?"

"What do you mean?"

"For MOSS! Which one did you choose?"

"Choose which what?"

"The platform obviously! What else would I be asking?! I know what race you will choose… you are pretty predictable on that front… So!?"

"Ohh… That. I haven't yet."

"What do you… Are you serious!? What are you doing!? You should go register immediately!"

Cur was taken aback by his cousin's tone.

"I will. Calm down. Calm down. I've just been... busy."

"Cur! You don't understand. The registration is hell! It took me forever to get through it! I haven't even had the time to check out my platform yet. Granted… I've only had the time to earn a couple dozen credits…"

Seeing that Cur was quickly losing interest, Beri switched gears.

"Look. It's harder than you'd think. I will tell you that much. Which is why you should be at home... registering instead of here... freeloading."

"Alright. Alright. Calm down. I'm going. I'm going. Jeeeshh."

Sometimes Beri got on his nerves. He wasn't in the mood to stay and talk about MOSS or, in his case, the lack thereof, so he left. Cur stopped by the park again and fed the ducks some of the bread he had pilfered at his aunt's house. He really liked those ducks.

He stayed for a while, but eventually he decided it was time to go home. By now, it was long dark and he followed the streetlights home. When he reached his door, it was locked so he rang the doorbell. His father had an obsession with locking things and Cur was too lazy to look for the keys in his backpack.

The door swung open almost immediately, revealing his little brother. When he saw Cur, a scowl met his forehead.

"Oh… It's you…" He said dismissively and walked away.

"... Who else would I be? Jesus?"

Cur didn't really expect a reply, their relationship could be categorized as… distant. Ramz was quite a petulant little brother and Cur mostly ignored him and his antics. Cur figured if he gave Tui, Ramz's twin, attention he could balance the scales of "good sibling". So he treated Ramz as a sort of distant side-kick and Ramz… well… We would need much more than an amateur's writing to explain the intricacies of Ramz. So we shall leave it for now.

Cur watched as Ramz headed towards the living room and automatically left for his own room. There, he was momentarily caught off guard when he saw a new capsule in place of his old one. Cur experienced a pang of alarm before he reasoned his old capsule's absence. His room was smaller than Beri's since Beri's family's ranking was higher than Cur's.

Family rankings determined the house size, neighborhood and child allowance of the family. There were 6 broad family ranks. They went from Purple, Yellow, Red, Brown, Green to Blue, highest to lowest.

Family Ranks | Percentage of Population | Number of Citizens

Purple | 2% | 100,08,439

Yellow | 8% | 400,273,754

Red | 15% | 750,513,290

Brown | 20% | 1,000,684,386

Green | 25% | 1,250,855,486

Blue | 30% | 1,501,026,579

Cur's family was ranked Green, Beri's on the other hand was ranked Red. While Cur's house was small with no front yard, Beri's house was in a nice neighborhood, next to the Park and the ducks, had a big lawn and a parking garage. The red rank also allowed his family to have three kids if they so chose even though they only had Beri.

A Green rank was also only allowed two children. The fact that Ramz and Tui were twins could not be helped but it also caused a lot of discontent among other Green rankers who wanted more than two kids. Population control was a big issue and the government was proud that the population was shrinking, currently at 5,003,421,934 citizens. They wanted to get under the 5 billion mark in the next 5 years at the most and this required constant vigilance.

However, government control is neither here nor there when explaining the lack of space in Cur's room. With the tiny size, it was no surprise then that Cur's old capsule was removed. There simply wasn't room for the two of them. Cur figured the second one would soon become redundant anyway so he wasn't disturbed.

'I can only use one capsule at a time anyhow.'

Cur lay down on his bed and pulled out the book he had been reading recently, titled Are we alone? It mostly talked about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life and the reasoning behind it. It was quite fascinating. Cur's interests were quite random and varied. He had started out with the principle of relativity last week and had somehow moved onto astronomy and then aliens. He thought the study of conspiracy theories was particularly amusing.

A couple of hours later, Cur finished the book and laid it down. He glanced at the clock which showed, 00:18 a.m. He figured his family would be asleep by now, so he turned off his light and went to sleep as well.

His brand new capsule lay there, shiny, brand new, and untouched.

Cur's alarm clock woke him at his usual 5:30 a.m. He groaned, turned over and tried to 'pillow' the sound away. It didn't work. He knew he hadn't gotten enough sleep since he had stayed up to finish that book but he wasn't about to lose Royal Road gaming time. He begrudgingly got up.

He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, took a quick shower and returned to his room with a yawn. The shower usually wiped all his sleepiness away, but usually he had a bit more sleep in him. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand a second time, he faced his capsule.

He paused in confusion. It was new.

"Oh yah… MOSS."

He considered it for a moment… and then went back to sleep. Cur was used to getting up early to play Royal Road but he saw no reason to start a mandatory schooling system before he absolutely had to.

A couple of hours later his mother was screaming in his ear.

"GET UP!"

Cur didn't move.

"I SAAAID… GET UP! NOW! WHAT TIME DO YOU THINK IT IS!?"

When his mother received no verbal, visible or detectable human reply from him, she began a rant.

"This is the fourth time I have come in here. I don't have time to be getting you up like this anymore. Try acting your age sometimes. You are already sixteen. It's time for you to grow up and start assuming some responsibility for your actions. So get up. I don't want to have to repeat myself… again. If I come in here again and you are still in bed… Well. You really don't want to know. So move it!"

Cur heard her stomping out of his room and down the stairs. He laid there for another half a minute or so debating whether his mother's wrath was worth a couple more luxurious minutes of sleep. He heard a faint banging of pans in the kitchen.

"... Not."

He sat up and stretched his arms over his head. He did that thing where you rock your body forward as if you're about to get up… and then you don't. He did it a couple of times. Then… he got up. He smelled bacon.

Running down the stairs two steps at a time he jumped into his seat at the counter. His mother slowly turned around, eyed him up and down and returned her attention to the stove.

"Finally decide to join the living have we?" His mother said in a mocking and annoyed voice.

"..."

Cur had learned, through a lot of trial-and-error, that it was best not to comment until her mood had returned to… 'stable'. Tui and Ramz were equally silent as they sat and ate their breakfast with the utmost concentration. Einstein would be proud.

LD sighed dramatically with the sole purpose of calling her kids attention to herself, particularly Cur. (LD was his mother's name. It was short for her birth name Lemon Desdemona… which LD hated.)

LD finally turned around and gave Cur a meaningful look. You know the one… that look mothers give. Cur looked right back at her. He knew his mother would see it as a sign of weakness if he looked away first.

LD kept the stare up for a while longer, before she resigned in the name of expedience.

"Alright. Just don't do that again. I don't want to have to keep chasing you like that. I expect you to look after yourself. I just don't have the time to do it for you."

His mother really was a busy person. It's what happens when a person feels responsible for everyone and everything. This might explain why she had married Cur's father, who was of a significantly lower rank than her. Normally such things were not done. This might also explain why she took on a job as a nurse at the pediatric wing at a local hospital. While her academic rank could have easily allowed her to become a doctor, she had always wanted to be a nurse, "I want to actually help them. Doctors just shout orders and walk away."

LD was a rarity in her society, rank mattered little to her.

She usually came off as quite a stubborn and hard individual, but inside she was one of the most caring people you could ever hope to find. She was a great mother and tried to make as much time for her children as she could. In the end though, she was always in a hurry and ended up not being able to measure up to her own standards.

"Yes Mom, I'm sorry." Cur replied and he really was… in that moment. It was just hard to feel sorry at other times, like when he was so tired and the sheets used their siren powers entrancing him back to sleep. If you looked at it factually… you could even say he was the victim of the whole situation.

His mother gave him an appraising look. Satisfied with his apologetic attitude she changed the topic.

"Well then. Tell me about MOSS. How did the registration go? I heard on the news just now that some kids spent over twenty hours working on it… there are even some that haven't even finished yet. They are cutting it quite close don't you think? They only have what?"

She gave the holoscreen she had projected across the kitchen a quick look.

"A little under two hours left?"

The screen was broadcasting images of haggard looking kids as they stumbled out of their shining new capsules. They looked absolutely drained.

Cur felt a tiny pang of apprehension for the first time. He quickly stifled it though and tried to convince himself he would be fine… he always was... when he applied himself. Cur was always comforted by the thought that he could have done well if he had bothered to, and so he turned to the news.

One of Cur's mottos was that half of the world's problems solve themselves and the other half have no solution… so why bother worrying?

His mother raised the volume a little so the reporter's voice could be heard.

"... has been monumental. No one expected MOSS to have such an impact on some of the students. It has taken quite a mental toll on children… as well as their families. On to you Max."

The image left the reporter who had been interviewing some parents and went back to the main newsroom where Max, the famous news broadcaster, sat. He was one of the most charismatic men in the media industry and was probably the most well-known individual of the entire country.

"Thank you Alice."

He promptly directed his gaze at the viewer (i.e. the camera).

"As we all know MOSS has become the most talked about phenomenon of the last twenty four hours. Oh! Ha. I lie... Twenty two hours."

Okay... Sometimes his jokes were shit, but the man was loved… so lets overlook that for now.

"There are many worries that rose up concerning MOSS's effects on rankings and the government has asked us to share this information with you."

Max opened a holoscreen and read.

"Dear Citizens. We are trying to minimize the damage of this conversion period and thank everyone for their understanding. Rankings shall not be affected, even if your child has placed in a lower grade level than he was in previously. We realize that the stress of this unannounced change might have shocked and influenced your children and their performances."

Max swiped at his holoscreen.

"VRMOSS was not created as a way to change your rankings, it was merely designed to make use of the hours our children will unavoidably spend in the virtual world. We also believe that rankings will be much more systematized and correct with this new system. Though we have always strived for a standardized educational system, it was hard to implement with different schools and environments. With VRMOSS we will finally be able to offer equal chances to everyone. We are after all a society that values equality and the worth of merit above all else. ~May the odds be in everyone's favor.~"

Max finished closed his holoscreen, before he directed his attention to the camera once more.

"It seems the government has decided to assuage one of the big worries we were experiencing yesterday. So know that if your child went from grade 8 in real life to grade 7 in MOSS, his or her rankings will not be affected. Isn't that a relief to know?"

A graph appeared behind Max, and he swiveled to face a different camera.

"It seems that 99% of all students have completed registration. Fortunately this means that we will not be experiencing the drastic rank shifts that have been the talk of the night. While a child's level of performance will not influence rankings, the lack of participation will."

The graph on display was displaced by another.

"The government has also released a pertinent piece of information. Apparently there are still eleven children that have not began the application process, eight of which have been explained due to illness or other excused absences. The government urges the three children without excuses to basically "get on with it."

Max chuckled at his idea of a joke.

"After all, the penalties are applied until the registration is completed."

Max shifted his attention to a different camera, thus basically ending the topic before he moved on to a new one.

"As for the available platforms..."

Cur dropped the fork he had been using to shovel eggs into his mouth. He had been barely paying attention, but he was constantly aware of his surroundings and couldn't help but follow what was happening. The implications immediately dawned on him.

Cur had been putting MOSS off because, frankly, he wasn't interested… but now it seemed like his lack of interest was about to blow up in his face. He had thought that the penalty could be avoided as long as he logged on before the deadline was over…. apparently, that was not the case.

'That stupid, stupid, stupid Fergustard! It's his fault for not explaining it right!'

Cold sweat began running down his back. Cur was not used to the feeling of anxiety, and his muscles were all clamped up. He couldn't run up the stairs like he wanted to though. His mother would skin him alive if she ever found out that he still hadn't registered. Cur decided to sit and wait until his mother left for work.

LD soon took the kids out to the bus stop. Children below the age of fourteen were required to be outfitted with their capsule at their schools so they could be supervised. Cur sat and waited, gripping his fork, until LD came back inside.

She swiftly but the dishes away, cleaned the counter and looked at Cur. She gave him a worried look. Cur was immediately afraid his mother had found out.

"Are you okay honey?"

"Y-Yes… I'm totally fine! … W-Why do you ask?"

He stuttered anxiously.

"Well… I've never seen you leave food on your plate before!" She said jokingly.

"Hah…" He attempted a laugh. "No. No I'm just still full from Auntie May's dinner from last night! It was great…"

This comment shut his mother up and she buried her mother-hen instincts. She did not like to be reminded of how much better Auntie May's cooking was. LD had always been compared to her, so she just shrugged and put Cur's dishes in the dishwasher.

After efficiently turning the dishwasher on and gathering her things, she quickly grabbed her coat and headed for the door. She smiled when she looked back at Cur and added, "It seems so weird leaving you at home on a weekday. Be good and don't forget to MOSS!"

LD closed the door and headed for the bus stop. She wasn't really worried, she had never seen a kid as addicted to Virtual Reality Games as Cur… and she worked with quite a few sick children in the hospital.

'Maybe this will finally help him channel his energy to something productive. It's such a shame he doesn't do better in school. I know that if he applied himself he would do great...'

Meanwhile, Cur.

He waited for the door to close behind LD and immediately sprung into action.

"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm so, so, so, so dead." He chanted as he leaped from his seat and ran full-speed up the stairs into his room and into his capsule.

He had 1 hour, 12 minutes and 8 seconds left until the late registration penalty would begin. The only solace he could find was in the fact that time went by four times as quickly in virtual reality he would really have 4 hours 48 minutes and 32 seconds.

Cur knew that his mother did not really care about the ranking so much, but he could absolutely not be the reason they went down in ranks. Family ranks were near impossible to climb and while his mother might not care… his father definitely would.

Would you like to enter the Virtual Reality Merit Oriented Schooling System?

Yes | No

A/N: Anything in bold was supposed to be on a table. Unfortunately I do not know how to make tables work in fictionpress, if anyone knows... please let me know. I would greatly appreciate it, especially since my future chapters will have more and more of them.

Also. Criticism greatly appreciated :)