LIGHTNOVELONLINE 2
We spent the evening planning our entry into this new game. It had been running in a closed beta for about two months now, so there were players who had gotten a head start over the general public. The other two wanted to find a crew to join up with though, apparently you could join up with a bunch of other people, designate a captain and then an ingame company would lend you the money to buy a ship. I’m not sure why those ingame companies thought that giving a bunch of randos off the street that kind of money was a good idea, but I guessed that the game had a lore reason for it or something.
That night, I slept in the spare bed that was now my own bed. In my apartment. With my roommates. Life had moved quickly for me, and my stomach was all knotted up in a ball about it. What was going to happen to me? My future was a big flat void of nothing without my parent’s carefully laid plans to guide me.
The next morning had us all standing in the pod room, game accounts created and pods ready to go.
“See you both on the inside,” Ed waved, pressing the button to open his pod.
“Wait, last thing,” David interjected quickly. “Everyone make sure you choose Spaceport Halifa as your spawn point, okay? It would absolutely suck to have to spend our first month or two trying to find each other.”
I nodded, and Ed gave the other guy a smile, “Yes dear, I’ll remember to spawn at Spaceport Halifort.”
David gave him a glare. “Don’t you dare!”
“I’m going to get in the pod now,” I told them, rolling my eyes. They bickered so much. I think they just enjoyed winding each other up.
The hatch to my pod opened very quickly, sliding up at a pace that looked almost but not quite dangerous. While they continued to pester each other, I got myself hooked up and pressed the button to get myself into VR. Did I mention the pod was also sound proof? When the door slid shut, I could no longer hear them being doofuses.
The transition from reality and into the virtual was a seamless one, and my onboard AI was quick to greet me.
“Welcome back, Clay,” the soft feminine voice intoned. “What will it be today?”
“I’d like to load up Digital Galaxies please, the new VRMMO,” I asked her nicely. I made an effort with my AI, especially since it became known that they could become sentient. I hope she stayed with me if that happened.
“Certainly! Loading Digital Galaxies,” she told me cheerfully. “Have fun!”
Okay then… time to play.
My vision faded to black, and a gentle tone pinged from all around me. Slowly, the black faded to a grey, walls and floor gaining definition around me. In the center of the newly rendered room, a woman stood in a white dress, smiling pleasantly.
“Greetings, player, and welcome to Digital Galaxies. Please note that from here on in, all interaction will be as immersive as possible. We ask that you please remember that this reality is indeed virtual, although some live their lives entirely within this space, and we also ask that you respect that,” she told me sombrely, although she still wore a smile.
The room flashed black for a moment, then back into being, with nothing changing.
“Good to see you awake, spacefarer. We are glad to see the integration process was successful,” the same woman said, although she was obviously speaking in character this time. “Thank you for using Galicorp Industries for your transformation into a spacefarer!”
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but nothing happened.
“Ah, yes… sorry about that,” she winced, giving me an apologetic smile. “You are currently in a virtual space. Your old purely organic body has been recycled, we will now need you to design a custom one, or we may load your genetic profile, if you so wish. We will now load you into a mannequin body until you have chosen either of the two options. You may now select using the holographic menus before you.”
Two buttons appeared in front of me, as well as white plastic arms. I picked the custom body option, I sure as shit wasn’t going to spend my virtual escape from reality in the same shitty body I’d always wandered around in.
“You have chosen to create a new, custom body,” the woman smiled, stepping off into a corner of the room as controls sprung up around a mannequin body much like the one I currently wore.
Wow, there were a lot of options. No alien races, at least yet, but we could customise our bodies beyond what normal humanity had. First off though I had a rather fundamental decision to make.
Guy, girl, or something else.
I knew that I should pick a male character, because I was a man and that was just the done thing. Plus people could sometimes feel a bit weird when they tried to use a character that wasn’t what they were used to.
But. Big ol’ but here… I was here to help with the stress of real life, and a major part of that stress was the fact that as a man, there were a lot of expectations on me. I was expected to be strong, make money, be a good leader… all that shit. Basically, I was expected to be a man.
If I picked a girl character though, that was a different story. The stigma of being a shy woman was far less than if I were a shy man. Basically, I could more easily chill out and be myself if I was a woman in the game.. So, I chose female.
Instantly the mannequin morphed into a generic human woman, complete with nakedness. Right… this game was all about that realism.
The interface said she was currently five feet and eight inches tall, which was far too tall for me. I dialed that down to somewhere around five feet. Being small was just a no brainer in a game all about flying around in cramped space ships.
I set the skin tone to white, and then set about with the face. I wanted to be as cute as possible, so big eyes were a must. I also angled them slightly, to give myself a little mystery. They would be perfect for some big winged eyeliner. As for colour, I went a little flashy… an iridescent blue-green colour that really popped. Oh wow, that was intense. A stare from those was bound to unsettle people. Hopefully enough to have them look away.
For hair, I settled on plain old dark. If my eyes were all intense, there was no need to get rowdy with the hair colour. I didn’t want it too long though, it would get in the way of helmets and such, so I shortened it into a long messy bob. Cute and feminine, but still serviceable.
For the body, I did wide hips and thick thighs, because… reasons. It looked good. I made sure there was a great gap between those thighs too, because that also looked good. Then I had to look away, because I found myself blushing furiously at the body I’d created. God, she was hot and cute and… everything.
“Uh... can you, can you put some underwear on her, please?” I begged the silent woman in the corner.
“Done,” she said agreeably.
With my future modesty covered, I got back to work, messing around with the limb length and all that stuff. I made sure her hands were pretty small, I didn’t want to be arm deep in some shipboard system and then run into the oldest problem in a mechanic’s book. Hands too big.
I ended up creating a character that was honestly quite petite, apart from the hips. Boobs were average size, not too big, not too tiny. On the whole, she was small, cute and a little on the unnerving side. Perfect.
“I think I’m done,” I said at last, turning to the woman in the corner.
“Great, please use the virtual testing function to make sure this is a body you are compatible with,” she smiled, gesturing to the big button off to the side. Oh geez, okay… time to get into the pilot’s seat I guess.
I bopped the button.
My perception changed quickly, one moment I was piloting some dumb mannequin, the next… well first off I was a lot shorter than I was used to.
“Huh,” I commented, then frowned at the voice that came out. That was not cute and small enough. I’d kept the default… damn, there were almost too many options in this character creator.
I wandered around to the controls and sorted through them until I had the— wait a second… was that… was that a tail option?
I twisted, glancing down at myself to get a look at my backside… but the view was wild and had me screeching to a halt. Oh hot damn… I was really walking around as a girl. I felt weird for a moment, and I feared that my mind was going to reject the body I’d chosen, but then it all sort of just… clicked.
I have no other way to describe it, but I just suddenly felt… no, realised, that this was me. Wow, what a strange sensation. I shifted my hips a little experimentally, then shimmied them when a smile broke out on my face. Oh my god, this was… kinda great.
I looked up from my body and straight into my own eyes. A mirror was now standing where my body had been while I worked on it from the outside. Let me just say…
H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T
I found a cute grinning girl just… there, and she was me. I was that person right there! I could see myself blushing over it, which just made the whole image even cuter. Oh I had so many things I wanted to add now!
First off, freckles. I needed them. I needed all of the freckles. Well, maybe not that many, but… yeah. I rushed through the menus until I found the option, then played around with positioning, colour and density for a while. I put them across the bridge of my nose and along my cheekbones, as well as a few on my shoulders and chest.
Perfect… now what else was I doing again? Oh right! A tail! Wait… that would cause problems with spacesuits, like way worse ones than my hair would have been if it were long. Ah shit, voice first.
That one took a while, lots of fiddling with sliders that I didn’t understand, but after lots of talking to myself and listening to the results, I found a voice that suited this body way better. Small, was how I’d describe it, small and feminine.
Yes. Good. Excellent… now I needed to decide if I wanted the tail or not. Big decisions.
“Hey, uh… lady?” I asked, turning back to my helpful lady in white. “Can you buy space suits that work with the tails?”
“You can indeed, they cost slightly more, but most are available with options for extra-human parts,” she told me helpfully.
“Tail it is then!” I exclaimed, then got all happy about my voice. It was a good voice, it suited this character very well.
I gave myself a nice big fluffy tail with black fur, although I had the tail taper into the colour of my eyes at the tip. It was like a fox’s one, except… there was one option that foxes didn’t have, and that was control over how their fur stood. I could have it flatten out for easier space suitingness, or have it puff out.
I could apparently add a lot of functionality to this body, although most was gated behind ingame money that I didn’t have right now. Cyborg eyes were already a part of it, but only with basic HUD functions right now. Infrared vision was something I could add later.
Only thing I had left to do was choose my spawn point! Spaceport Halifa locked in!
“I think I’m done now?” I asked tentatively.
