Ding dong!
I started as my doorbell rang, and immediately a preprogrammed wolf howl and crack of lightning came from the nearest speaker, causing me to grin slightly at the old halloween effect I'd not bothered to turn off, immediately followed by Amazon Alexa announcing, "Someone is at the front door!"
It's always a bit of a surprise when someone knocks on the door. If it were my roommate, then I'd have heard keys in the lock. Anytime it's a door knock or the doorbell, it generally means only one thing. A package has arrived!
And I'm pretty sure I know just what this package is. My new VR headset!
Excited, I opened the door and looked down, hoping to see... YES! There's a package on my front porch!
Stepping out, I stooped down to pick it up, grunting at the weight of it. Pretty heavy sucker. Hope that's just the packaging and not just from the headset!
Going inside, I went to where I last left a pair of scissors, grabbed them, and cut off the packing tape, opening the box. Inside the standard amazon prime delivery box was yet another box, this one rather fancy and white with foil lettering.
The Aurora. A new headset pioneered by a kickstarter that actually took off and delivered with their promise, releasing a headset that, the company admitted, took heavy influence from the anime Sword Art Online. Boasting a state of the art neural brain interface of their own design, it bypassed the need for monitors strapped to the front of the face by tapping into the dreaming center of the brain, giving electrical signals that 99% of the population would actually see and experience... but only while asleep.
Unlike normal sleeping though, you could definitely remember what you dreamed with this, and people were making favorable, and unfavorable, comparisons to both SAO and Inception with this new technology. Luckily, extensive testing was involved and the company was completely transparent with everything. I had even waited till a handful of months after it was released, and so far everyone was raving about the experience, until I finally gave in and had to get the headset for myself.
Opening up the box, I found a silver sleek metal case and opened it up, and there it was. White with silver highlights, with a coating which made the light reflect green, purple, and blue in waves, hence the name Aurora.
"Wow. Apart from the coloring, it really does look like it was ripped straight out of SAO..." I murmured. The thing really does look like a nerv gear in a way. Front face shield with a simple heads up display, and a helmet that would encompass the head so it would stay on and not slip off while asleep. Not that anything bad would happen, but it would interupt the connection if it wasn't secure.
Hesitating only a moment, I shrugged fatalistically. I'm a paranoid guy, but ultimately, I'd already decided that if I did end up in a situation like SAO, to get my hands on a nerv gear would be worth it regardless, and now that I actually have one...?
Excited, I pulled the headset out and turned it on. I wouldn't be able to do much until I slept, but I could at least set it up and run calibrations, as well as use the face shield's simple hud to select what games to play, though I already had an idea of what I would choose.
Still, I downloaded a few staples to pass the time and checked out some others. VRChat is a must... Skyrim VR for sure after I modded it a bunch... Half Life Alyx and Boneworks... What I was looking forward to the most though was one of the launch titles for the game, also a kickstarter that gained huge traction after a demo release. It seemed someone had a sense of humor as they'd made an MMORPG for the not-a-NERV gear heaset that featured a multistory castle in the sky serving as the hub for a multidimensional game that featured a gritty medieval survival fantasy game without magic, a much more light hearted magical fae fantasy flight rpg with magic, and a battle royale type fps shooter that took a lot of hints from just about any FPS you can think of. And what was it called? Battle Arts Online. Yes, I'm serious. Like I said, sense of humor.
Most everyone really liked the game though. Personally I couldn't wait to try my hand at being a Fairy. That flight system looks to be the most fun thing especially. Everything else is cool too, but free flight without limits? You could literally fly forever in any direction if you wanted to. There were actually a few players who were doing just that, flying as far as they could in Avalheim, the name of the world of magic where players could switch to being one of the fae.
That was the interesting part actually. Each world had cross contamination with each other, though with a few caveats. You could do as you like freely in the hub world, but if you bring a gun out of the Huntlands to Avalheim, you'd be limited by only being able to use what ammo you could bring or make from raw resources. You could be a fairy and fly in any of the other worlds aside from Avalheim, but unlike in the land of magic, being in the Huntlands or Eiensgard, you could still fly, but it's much more limited as you would have to draw from your own magic to do so, and it wouldn't replenish as freely in those worlds with no magic.
By comparison, Einsgard had it the easiest, as you could take anything out of that world and have it work in the others, though much of the high tier melee weapons and armor you would get from there you wouldn't from the other worlds, and none of the NPCs sold anything useful in each world that the others had.
This had, of course, resulted in the creation of a fairly comprehensive player based economy, with player stores selling their wares within the floating castle that had been left unnamed, so everyone called it Aincrad by default, though the developers were always careful in interviews to not comment on what the players chose to call the place. The developers did say they had planned for a player economy to start up and had made it so 'The Castle' had the space and openings for it, though there wouldn't be anything like that in the other worlds themselves.
That didn't stop a few players from trying out the wandering merchant role, but it was few and far between since getting back to the hub castle was so easy. You could either do it from your player menu, which was available immersively from a magical book the player could call to their hand at any time, or simply travel to the place by flying to it, as it featured prominantly in the sky, visible in all three of the main worlds.
It wasn't the only ones though. The developers had taken their cue from VRchat and allowed for user generated content to be made, resulting in BAO becoming a major rival to them. Not that it was the first time someone had made a social platform similar to the giant, but this was the first one made specifically for the new Dream Dive system, even if VRchat had also entered that space recently, though it had suffered a lot for it as most of its old content didn't translate well to the new space. Turns out user created content that cut corners to just give you a decent user experience through what was essentially tunnel vision scuba goggles couldn't actually cut it when put under the weight of full human scrutiny via the brain. For most it felt a lot like looking back at an old beloved game you played in your childhood and realizing the graphics that awed you before now look hilariously bad. Some still enjoyed it, but compared to the worlds made for Dream Dive and The Aurora from the start? It was no contest.
And now I had it for myself. I couldn't wait! Settling down, I plugged the headset into the extension cord I had set up for it and settled back after putting it on. It was strange, not unlike wearing a slightly heavier motorcycle helmet. It wasn't uncomfortable though. It had a lot of padding inside as it was intended to be slept in, though it was advised to not bother with a pillow for that reason. And it could be unplugged without issue as it would just go into standby until it was plugged back in, so you could get up and go to the bathroom if your bladder woke you up in the middle of the night.
You didn't have to of course. And it's not like you wouldn't notice the need for the bathroom in game since you would be aware of it and know what it meant, unlike in a real dream, so you wouldn't be woken suddenly from a Dream Dive. The Aurora did have a nifty feature though. Unlike the inspiration it came from, it didn't hijack your normal senses, so much as added on to them, so you could concentrate and move and such while still in the headset, much like you could choose to lift one arm rather than both of them at the same time. I'd heard it was a bit disconcerting from new players, and part of the tutorial helped get past that strange disconnect, but it was a welcome feature as it meant another way that a person could not get stuck in the VR headspace. Simply taking off the headset would disconnect you, just like that, but since it actually took concentration to move your real body rather than your dream one, it meant you wouldn't accidently move and hit something in real life in sync with your dream avatar either.
That was all I knew from the reviews and playthroughs though. I wouldn't be able to experience it myself until I fell asleep, and it was only midafternoon. I had a sleep disorder which had me keeping odd hours because of it, but it also meant I couldn't really sleep when I wanted to, only when I actually felt tired, and currently for once my biorhythm was in sync with the rest of the world for once, so I wouldn't be able to sleep until later tonight.
Still, I have a fairly decent hud, even if the translucent picture allowing me to see through it wasn't super great... At least until I found the option to turn up the opacity. Now I could use the web browser built into the hud to do anything I wanted on the internet, so I did just that, reading, watching youtube, and playing a few of the hud based games some people had created, that allowed for control via the hand gestures the system could read, even if it couldn't project me into the world of Sleep Dive VR yet.
Eight Hours Later...
I cursed as I checked the time once more. My day had gone fairly normally for me. I'd heard my roommate come in from work and called out to him as he passed my closed bedroom door, welcoming him back. It felt like a nice little ritual to have, considering we didn't interact much. We were both fairly asocial, though me moreso than him, so while we did share the house, it was more like having a neighbor than someone you actually lived with, which suited the both of us just fine.
I said I was more asocial than him, but I wouldn't call myself anti social. I liked interacting with friends, and spent a lot of time on VRchat back in its hayday. I just... didn't get out much. It's easier to meet and talk to people who are only a button click away, and being mindful of the fact that they couldn't do anything to you, and even if they did, getting away from them or blocking them was also just a button click away, made it a lot easier.
But I can't really do any of that if I can't get into the stupid Dream Dive due to my stupid self being too excited to sleep, which was completely counter-intuitive!
I'd heard of some having similar issues before, and got around this by taking sleeping meds. It wasn't recommended though as it made it harder to move your real body if it were in an induced sleep and you needed to get off for whatever reason... That, and taking sleeping pills never really worked for me. The only time ones had an effect, the only thing it did was make me feel even more like a zombie after I woke up to go to work. That had not been a fun day.
I sighed. I just need to relax. That's all. Try not to think about it. Just relax... Actually... Maybe I could fall asleep another way. Cuing up a long ASMR video on youtube, I watched for a bit, listening as the sound bypassed my ears and was transmitted directly to my brain via the nerves connected to my eardrum. The audio clarity from that alone had audiophiles singing the headset's praises from every corner of the earth, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the sounds. While they never really gave me any tingles, beyond a few strange jolts, I was more interested in the way they seemed to- I yawned. They seemed to put me to sleep as I couldn't seem to help but relax listening to them. It did no good if I watched during my waking hours, but at times when I'd just woken up or close to bedtime? I could be out like a light after about ten to twenty or so minutes...
It was to the sound of light scratching when I finally dozed off, the webpage content pausing automatically as The Aurora's Dream Dive system kicked in.