In a room inside an office building in Tokyo a woman sat on a chair typing on a keyboard as the screen Infront of her displayed a development environment with lines of code scrolling fast as the woman scrambled to finish the final preparations for the release of the game their team was developing. With a sigh the woman pressed the hotkey that would begin the process of compilation for the program before leaning back on her chair watching as the screen Infront of her changed from showing the development environment to the primary screen of the game, smiling the woman closed the application before committing her changes and uploading them to the production server. The sound of the door opening and closing caused the woman to turn around on her chair smiling as another woman entered the office holding two mugs of coffee.

"Thanks for the coffee Rinko-san." The woman greeted the new arrival as she accepted the other mug before taking a sip of the hot beverage, looking around the woman named Rinko gave the woman sitting on the chair a confused look as it seemed the third member of their team was missing. "Where is Kayaba? Isn't he supposed to be overseeing the launch of the game?" The woman sitting on the chair laughed as she placed the mug beside the keyboard before looking back at Rinko shaking her head. "The three of us have been together for nearly a year now Rinko-san you should already know how he is, once the working product is completed, he never stays for the inevitable phase of clients wanting modifications and subsequent bug fixes." Rinko nodded in understanding as her colleague brought up the clock application on her computer showing the time as 3:57 PM in just three minutes the servers for the MMO Phantasy Star Online 2 would be going live, she watched as her colleague monitored the servers for activity, the clocks slowly ticked away the seconds to the launch with both women in the room growing tense as the time ticked closer, finally the clock struck 4 and the servers began showing activity the two watched and waited for a few minutes with baited breath as logs began to come in with player activity soon the initial onslaught of players logging in passed and the servers began to stabilize.

Rinko turned to her colleague who was now leaning back on her chair with her eyes closed releasing a sigh of relief before opening them and looking at Rinko. "Congratulations Luna-san the launch is a success." The woman names Luna nodded with a smile as she stood up and walked to a corner of the room while holding her mug of coffee. "Would you care to have a drink with me Rinko-san?" the woman names Luna offered as she took her jacket from an unused chair before wearing it. Rinko held up her hand which was holding a set of keys, Luna smiled and the two exited the room leaving the computer which after a few minutes shut off with the screen displaying a drawing depicting a floating conical object in the sky before completely blacking out.

August 13 2014

Rinko walked down a hallway towards a door located at the far end of the building holding two mugs of coffee, arriving at the door she carefully entered the required code onto the keypad beside the door causing the heavy metal door to unlock and slowly swing open, Rinko was greeted by the sight of a man typing on his computer along with a woman who was fiddling with a motorcycle helmet that had several wires protruding from it's back, the helmet had been stripped of it's normal foam padding and now contained the prototype electronics of their project. "Luna have some coffee." Rinko called out to the woman who lifted her head from working on the helmet, smiling Luna took the mug from Rinko before leaning on a desk and drinking her coffee, Rinko watched her drink before speaking. "The tests went well I take it." Luna nodded her head before looking at the man who was busy typing up code in his computer then back at Rinko. "Kayaba-san and I tested the electromagnetic sensors on myself and all of them returned the expected data." Rinko nodded her head watching as Luna placed her mug on the table before returning to working on the helmet. they had been working on this project for three years now alongside other projects that would be accepted by the de facto leader of their little team at times Rinko couldn't help but release a sigh as she watched the two work, the two wouldn't say it but at times Rinko felt that she was only hindering them, these two geniuses would shape the world one day, idly she wondered if she would be able to keep up, with these thoughts running through her head she couldn't help but gaze at the man who was still busy typing at the other side of the room from her.

Luna watched from where she was seated on the floor as Rinko gazed at Kayaba, shaking her head Luna stood up and approached Kayaba forcefully turning his chair around so that he would face her. "Kayaba-san, Why don't you go and have lunch with Rinko, I'll handle the recalibration of the software for the helmet and prepare the code for the induced sleep while your both gone." Without waiting for the man to answer she pulled on his hand forcing him to stand up before subsequently pushing him out the laboratory followed by Rinko, satisfied that she was alone Luna sat back down on the floor continuing her work on the helmet.

After a few minutes she stood up from the floor gazing at the prototype before releasing a soft sigh, they now had a working model of what would be in the future a gateway to an alternate reality if she used the words of her colleague to describe the device which in a sense was the truth as this device would allow for a person to experience an alternate world. "There's still a long road ahead." Luna muttered to herself as she turned around and walked towards her computer, opening a new project on her development environment Luna began the task of writing the program which would use the electromagnetic transmitters in the device to induce a sleep like state to the body before intercepting the signals from the brain.

November 20 2016

Luna sat up from a makeshift bed with a gasp removing the helmet situated on her head she placed it on the table beside her before looking down and breathing deep trying to catch her breath. "Luna-kun what happened?" Luna looked up at the voice seeing Kayaba and Rinko standing there the former holding a tablet as he asked the question while the latter looked worried, releasing a sigh Luna looked at Kayaba before speaking. "we're back to rejection, my brain immediately began rejecting the virtual body almost immediately as I entered the space, instead of a standardized avatar we need to program a calibration process to the helmet to properly measure body size and length along with contour to generate a replica of the person's body." Kayaba nodded his head before walking away towards his computer. Rinko handed Luna a glass of water which she downed quickly before addressing the woman. "Rinko-san there was significant lag in between my brain processing movement and the helmet picking it up, could you adjust the power of the transmitters." Rinko nodded her head, Luna smiled before standing up from the bed and walking towards her computer, pulling up the software for the helmet Luna began the process of adding the requirement for calibration.

Hours later Luna sat back on her chair having modified the program to use the generated avatar as the base for the virtual body of the user, pushing her commits to the repository Luna stood up from her chair and began stretching, working out the kinks from her bones and muscles, looking around the room Luna could see Rinko and Kayaba still hard at work at their stations. looking at the helmet on the table beside the bed Luna approached it before picking it up and examining it, this had been their 8th prototype in the 6 years they had been developing this technology and so far, while they had been able to nearly perfect the hardware the software for the device still left a lot to be desired. With a sigh Luna placed the helmet back on the table before looking back at her two colleagues. "Have you both heard of the Shigemura Lab?" Her two colleagues turned to face her both of them looking at her curiously. "I've heard it was a course founded by Shigemura Tetsuhiro at the Toto Institute of Technology." Kayaba answered at which Luna returned a nod. "Isn't Shigemura Tetsuhiro a professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering?" Rinko asked receiving nods from both Kayaba and Luna with the latter continuing the discussion. "I think we're still lacking something in our design for the device and approaching Professor Shigemura could give us new ideas or improvements." Luna watched as her two colleagues thought about her words.

May 16 2018

Rinko watched dumbstruck as her colleague Luna pulled her arm back and punched their other colleague causing him to fall on his back. "Sugou! For the last time, the NerveGear will not be used to scan the brain." Luna said to the man who glared at her from the floor. "You don't understand the potential of the NerveGear, scanning the brain will allow us to learn more about its functions and possibly allow us to access memories." Sugou replied as he stood up towering over Luna's small stature "A brain scan is pervasive to the person undergoing it and the risk of brain damage is too great, instead of your obsession in manipulating the human mind, why don't you help Rinko in her project of using the NerveGear for medical purposes." Luna glared back at man who scowled before turning around and marching away.

"It's always scary seeing Luna-san angry like that" commented someone who was spinning around in his chair. Luna glared at him causing him to stop and gulp raising his hands up in a placating gesture. "If you have the time to joke and play around, why don't you work on your dissertation Higa!" "Aye, sir" the person named Higa replies as he turned and went back to working on his terminal. Luna began walking passing Rinko headed towards the laboratory presumably to continue working on their 16th prototype of what they were now calling the NerveGear.

What a misleading name Rinko thought as she walked towards her terminal taking the mug of cold coffee from beside her screen, the device they were calling the NerveGear did not interact with any of the body's nerves at all in fact apart from the head being enclosed inside a helmet like device the NerveGear only interacted with the brain using electromagnetic signals. Rinko shook her head as she unlocked her terminal to continue working on the plans she was developing to allow the device to help with treatments for the terminally ill, while technically the NerveGear was being advertised as the next generation gaming device, the truth was that the device itself could perform various other functions one of which was what Sugou had been suggesting narrow minded his view might be. Rinko thought about Luna and Akihiko-san's words one time they were discussing the potential of the NerveGear. "This device isn't only a gaming device it's the key to the secrets of the human mind." Akihiko san said as Luna continued the conversation. "Its also the gateway to the human soul." Rinko shuddered at the implications of their statements.

Rinko unable to concentrate on her work any longer while these thoughts were running through her head stood up and locked her workstation, taking her keys from the side of her keyboard she began walking towards the lab thinking of asking Luna to accompany her for a drink, maybe the liquor would erase her fear of what they were doing.

October 26 2019

They finished it. It took the three of them 5 years to finish the NerveGear five years of working 24/7 with barely any sleep couples with other projects they had to earn money for this one project. The NerveGear was now finished and the modified prototype called the Medicuboid was in it's final phase of production. All they had to do now was get approval from the various government agencies and they could sell the NerveGear to the masses alongside providing the Medicuboid for medical research.

"All we need now is the software for the NerveGear" Rinko commented as she sat down joining Luna and Akihiko at the table.

"We all know that there is only one piece of software able to utilize the full potential of the hardware." Both Rinko and Luna turned towards Akihiko who gave them a nod with this the discussion was over and the three silently ate each thinking of the floating castle in the sky.

The three of them began the project alongside the NerveGear Kayaba had designed the concept of the floating castle Aincrad. The structure would contain a hundred floors each one a vast landscape built according to the theme of the floor, each floor would feature different themes with the structures, mobs and quests tailored to match. It took the three month the design the largest floor of the floating castle and with this came the realization that they would not be able to use any of the currently existing game engines as the first floor by itself was already casing so much lag not to mention the sheer amount of data that the floor was occupying caused the three to shelve the project as it appeared they needed to lay the groundwork first and could not use any of the existing foundations they had.

After developing their third prototype of the NerveGear they picked up the project again with Luna and Akihiko working on the engine for the game it was decided that they would adopt a project Luna had been working of years before a system that adapted and could update, maintain, repair and patch itself. Completing the firmware for the NerveGear allowed the two to use the program to automatically handle the process of reading any analyzing the data produced by the NerveGear allowing full control of the virtual avatar this also allowed the two to more precisely send the required signals back to the user's brain with Rinko using this data to further her study into using the device for medical purposes.

The next thing that the three had decided upon was how progress was to be recorded for the players of the game, they had briefly considered using a ranking system with different metrics being accounted for the rankings, however they quickly realized that an ordinal based system would cause an imbalance in the player base hence they decided to stick with the a cardinal based system fit player progress. From there development of the game was done at the same time as the NerveGear, the program dubbed the Cardinal System by Akihiko would handle all the processes of the game which included precudurally generating dynamic quests, managing the in game economy, balancing player level vs mob level alongside other in game mechanics. The system would also handle taking care of the mental health of the players this feature was something Rinko had insisted on adding to the game.

The development of the floating castle went on smoothly from there with only the available hardware limiting their progress this however was solved by their company acquiring rights to manufacture their own ARM based processors which allowed them to solve their processing problem, the problems which stemmed from memory and storage resolved themselves in the following years of the development of the game and with the completion of the NerveGear on the horizon, the day when they castle would fly across the endless sky drew near.