By the time my body finally finished materializing in the doorless, windowless, utterly empty room, I wondered if it was too late to get my money back.  Sure, it was the most immersive virtual reality experience I'd ever encountered, but it was just a room—with a grid, like you'd see on Star Trek:TNG or something.  

And it took me a whole half an hour to materialize here, too.  Like a lot of people these days, five minutes looking at a loading sequence was already an eternity.  But when I had tried to take the VR set off my head, I found there wasn't anything there.  And I mean nothing.  Not a VR set.  Not even my head.

So, basically, I had no choice but to wait.  And wait.  And wait...  

It gave me time to mentally construct the scathing review on the game delivery service.  I mean, really?  What kind of game makes it impossible for you to take off your gear—besides the ones that you don't want to disengage?  It sucked.

And then it sucked some more.

"Hello?"  I expected an echo.  I didn't even get that.  It was like talking into a room made entirely out of felt.  I reached for my face to try to pry off the VR headset that I had placed over my eyes and ears, but all I felt was my face.  I looked at my hands and they seemed real.  I kept touching them to my face.  My head.  Each hand.  I couldn't feel the wires anymore.  I looked down at my body, and besides being clothed in some kind of black body suit that was so dark that I could barely see it, it seemed intact.  Yes, I checked my junk.  It was as intact as the rest of my body.

The next thing I did looked very silly, I'm sure.  But it had to be done.  I reached out in front of me as if all of the lights were off, groping for the computer.  I kept my feet planted and leaned forward while my butt counterbalanced.  Nothing.  I tried to find the computer chair I'd been initially sitting in when I started this whole process.  Nothing.  In fact, I was standing upright.  I swept my feet out, both fearing and hoping I'd stub my toe on some real, solid object in my bedroom.  All they felt was the virtual floor.  Eventually I got bolder.   Arms still outstretched, I walked to the grid wall.  Nothing tripped me.  My nose didn't collide with where my walls should have been.

I got up to the grid wall and carefully stretched my hand out to it.  Finally, a solid object!  It didn't have the texture of my bedroom wall.  It was just like touching glass or plastic, and almost no friction.

"Cool."  I smiled and tapped it a few times.  I was still planning to complain in my review post about the long waiting time to load this stupid game, but—damn!  How did they do it?  This was so utterly immersive, it's no wonder the distributor/developer, EveryAll, LLC, generated such a buzz at the last PAX DevCon.  This was beyond just VR, I was actually [i]feeling[/i] my fingers press against everything.

That's when I started to experience that whole "sucking more" thing I mentioned.  Because that's when I got over the fact that everything felt real and realized that's all there was.  A wall and a floor.  And a ceiling, but it didn't have spikes or lasers or even a cool visual effect like the sky was on fire or anything.

I touched every part of my head, face and neck, looking for a switch or headset.  I grabbed my arms, trying to trip some kind of menu or button or—anything.  Nothing.  I banged on the wall, yelled things like "exit" and "escape", and then finally just slumped into one of the corners, bored out of my mind.  

For the vast majority of people who lived during the modern era, being trapped in a small room with nothing to do and no way out would have lead to feelings like panic, rage, depression, anxiety.  But the entire world had just finished the year 2020 and a little pain in the ass called CoViD-19, a.k.a "The Coronavirus Pandemic".  Being boxed up, quarantined, and locked down was the norm.  Looking back, it's probably the biggest reason so many people signed up for EveryAll Online.  So being cooped up wasn't abnormal—just another in a long, long string of endless annoyances.  Back then, we all just rolled our eyes at the latest disaster, shook our fists into the air and cursed "Really, 2020?"  Why would a new calendar make anything different?

I looked up after a couple of minutes on the floor and saw it—the big blue letters.  It started out like a mist, but quickly coalesced into a single world: "WELCOME".

"Finally," I muttered as I stood up.  The letters seemed to come closer, descending out of the air.  They filled up the whole room, steadily getting bigger, clearer, bluer.  It was like gazing into neon.  I even tried to take a step back and found myself blocked by the gridded wall I had just recently slumped against.

"Um..."

The big word stopped.  It was just out of arm's length, but I decided not to touch it.  Not right away.

I guess it was a bit anticlimactic when the little man with round-rimmed glasses stepped out of the letter M.  I'm not sure what I was expecting—maybe some kick ass music or a montage or a booming voice that would make God piss his toga.  But, sadly, no.  The five-foot-nothing man just waddled up to me, pushed his glasses up his nose, spread his arms and said in a voice that wouldn't make an ant piss let alone a supreme deity, and said, "Welcome to EveryAll."

The dude was more like an accountant, dressed in some kind of tweed suit.  He even had one of those bow ties, and I swear to Glob, he had blush on his cheeks and a hint of lip gloss.  Fracking.  Lame.  It was like a boring version of Willy Wonka—the Johnny Depp version, not the clearly superior Gene Wilder version—only without the top hat.

"Uh...thanks?"

"I really am so very, very sorry about the delay.  We really didn't know we'd have so many difficulties on opening day!  It's really quite exciting, but our IT department has been overwhelmed, I tell you.  Overwhelmed!"  He stopped chittering like a caffeinated British chipmunk and stared at me expectantly with his faux-Pixar eyes.

"M'kay.  Guess like every mega-launch ever.  It happens."  I shrugged.

"I'm so glad you understand!" He clasped his hands and I thought he was going to go into some kind of tap-dance routine right there.  "The EveryAll developers have already promised an extra bonus for your trouble.  We are so, so sorry."  He extended his hand. 

I took it.  It was kind of like a wet noodle trying to flap my arm.  I just stared at the process.

"You an A.I.?"  Because if he totally was, that was another thing I was going to write in my review.  And a half star off.  No, a full star. 

"No, no."  He giggled and shook his head.  "I'm a full flesh-and-blood representative of EveryAll here to get you started in the most advanced and unique virtual experience the world has ever seen!  An experience like no other, in which—"

"Yeah, I already bought the expanded edition, Dude.  Can we just get started already?"

"Eager.  I like that, my boy.  Right you are."  He grinned and pointed right at me. 

I rolled my eyes.  In the running review in my head, I put back half a star because he wasn't a lame A.I., but I took it right back off because he was still a lame representative.

"Alright, then.  First, I must ask you to choose."  He took a grand step back and spread his arms again.  This time, eight globes spread out like balls of flame. Each sphere rotated, big as beach balls, flying as a collective in a lazy looping circle.

I tried to take a step back again.  They popped with electric potential.  I think I salivated.  Names appeared under each sphere, and I recognized them from the storefront page.  They were the eight servers, the eight universes, the eight adventures that EveryAll said would be ready at the big launch.

The Aquileian Empire — AtlasLand — Extinction Valley — The Hyades Cluster — the Nereidian Archipelago — Pleiadia — Tenebras Noctem — the Wuxia Dynasty

I already knew which one I was going to pick, well before I put on the VR headset. I stared at its glowing blue-green swirls and reached out to touch it. "Pleiadia," I said. "I choose Pleiadia."

You'd think that after a dramatic declaration of something I'd been drooling over since its announcement at PAX Dev Con 2020 that something equally epic would happen.  You know, that musical, eye-bleeding montage, God-pissing, spine-electrocution kind of thing.  But you'd be wrong.  Every gaming fan wants that.  Sometimes they get it only to realize that the intro falls flat really quick because the developers put all of their money into the opening sequence or the advertisements and spent squat on what matters most.  You know.  The friggin' game itself.

"Great!" Mr. Alger chirped.  "Let's get your character created then."  And with that, he turned and waddled back over to the big M and opened the same door in the letter from which he had originally emerged.  "Follow me, please."

I took a tentative step forward and then followed him through the door.  I half expected a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland drop sort of thing, but nothing happened.  Well, I mean that, and I don't mean that, because something definitely happened, and what happened was nothing.  As in, my body.  It completely disappeared.  I was totally disembodied.  Just a POV floating in a dark room, looking at an empty dais that had some kind of invisible spotlight shining right down on it.  I couldn't see anything else—not Mr. Alger and certainly not my body.

"Dude!" I yelped.

"Don't worry."  The disembodied voice of Mr. Alger seemed to float right next to me, but I couldn't see anything.  "I've already been informed by our Customer Relations Department that this part of the process has already been a bit disconcerting, and I assure you we will improve upon that in the next update.  But if you'll just bear with us through this process, it will make your immersion into Pleiadia that much more enjoyable."

I tried to nod, but, you know.  Disembodied.  So I just grunted.

"Now, we've got the generic model to choose from..."  Mr. Alger's words hung in the air as a three-dimensional model swiveled from obscurity into focus in the middle of the illuminated dais. It was...well... 

"I'd say he's probably cold, what with his lack of a stitch of clothing and all, but obviously not that cold."

"What?  What do you mean?"

"Dude, he's as well hung as the Chicago Art Museum.  This is really your standard generic model?"

"I assure you, my dear boy, that years of market research have coalesced into the design for this model.  It's a standard package meant for those who simply wish to get on with playing the game."

"Yeah, I don't know anybody who looks like this.  Not even Fabio in his heyday."

"You have the options of designing your own, of course.  Every inch.  Every detail.  Would you prefer our female model, perhaps?  We even have hermaphrodites and other mixed models.  And, in addition to the typical demi-human faire of our fantasy genre, your world also comes with a number of half-animal options..."  A host of 3D models flew into view and lined up next to the so-called generic male figure.  "...like fauns, minotaurs, mermaids—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Slow down there, Slick."  I whistled.  Seeing that minotaur made the so-called 'standard' model look a bit lacking.

"It's Mr. Alger."

"R-i-i-i-g-h-t," I drew out the word and gave him a hefty sigh.  "Let's just start out with a male avatar that I'd like to customize a bit."

He hummed in a way that I didn't like.  It reminded me of one of those kinds of people in sales that try to steer you to something on the clearance rack.  "I'd just like to point out that you should choose carefully.  Once you finalize your body, changing it is...well... difficult."

"'Difficult'?  How 'difficult' are we talking?"

"It would be like having to do plastic surgery on your earthly body.  So, when you say, 'start out', perhaps—"

"Right.  I get it."  I took another deep breath. 

"Would you like to see the standard library?"

I would have shook my head, but I still had that whole disembodied thing going on.  I was beginning to suspect that the missing-body dysphoria thing was part of the setup to keep the really OCD perfectionists from staying stuck on this part too long.  There was a growing sense of cognitive dissonance, like I was losing balance on a half-tipped chair that I didn't know was going to go forwards or backwards with my ass still in it.

"Nah.  As popular as Mr. Minotaur might be with the ladies, just take away all of the half-animals.  I think I'll stick to male models, too."

"As you wish, sir."

There was a blur as the impressive catalogue shifted to display seven obviously masculine avatar models.

"Dwarf, gnome, halfling, human, elf, half-elf—"

"Do you ever wonder why they're called 'half-elves' and not 'half-humans'?"

"Not really, sir—"

"And where are the half-dwarves?  I mean, what do they call a dwarf-gnome hybrid?  A dwome?  Gnarf?"

"Sir!  May I remind you that the delayed experience you had upon entering the game is also affecting those who've had the misfortune of logging on after you?"

He didn't really sound that annoyed, but maybe there was a bit of impatience in his tone.  Fortunately, he couldn't see my disembodied smirk.

"Sorry, Dude.  I just always wanted to ask those questions."

"I'm afraid I don't have the answers."

"Fair enough.  Um...let's just keep it really simple, then.  Take away the models for the short guys..."

The dwarf, gnome, and halfling models evaporated.  I gave a thoughtful hum and missed the ability to rub my chin.

"Would you like to see your present body configuration mapped onto these models?"

"You can do that?"

It looked like an ophthalmologist was changing his eye examination equipment as the figures blurred in stages to show...well...me.  I giggled.

The human looked exactly like I did in the mirror.  The elven version was more lithe and graceful with the half-elf somewhere in between, as you'd expect.  Pointy ears and all.  And there was a half-orc that looked ripped, but not exactly the kind I'd imagine being very date-able—especially in the dental department.  The green skin wasn't too bad, though.

"Wait, Dude.  Bring back the other models like that."

This time I heard a sigh.  The dwarf in particular made me belly-laugh.  Definitely missing the belly now.

"You certainly are fond of that word, 'D-u-d-e'."  Yeah, a bit more annoyance in the voice.  "Mr. Alger is adequate."

"Sorry, Du— I mean, Mr. Alger.  I'm just really excited, you know?"

Silence.

"Okay, take away the short guys again and...let's shelf the elf, eh?"

They disappeared and the silence continued.  That's okay.  It wasn't that funny of a joke.

"I've always been intrigued by half-elves for a reason—"

"Haven't we all?"

"Oh!  He does have a sense of humor," I snickered.  There was a touch of snark to him.  Definitely not artificial intelligence.  I never found them able to grasp the subtleties.  "Anyway, as I was saying, despite consideration, I'm down to the human and the half-orc.  Don't worry, no more jokes."

I looked back and forth between the two.  Like most D&D-inspired RPG games, humans didn't have any particular stand out characteristics.  They were more versatile, jack-of-all-trades types, able to dabble in about everything, but not exactly become masters in any one, and not as quickly as a specified species. 

The orc-human hybrids, however, was definitely all about the muscle.  Muscles bulged.  These guys didn't have six-pact abs, more like twelve-packs.  And I swear, besides biceps, triceps, and quadriceps, they had quintaceps.  Alright, I totally made that up.  Point being, brick outhouses looked comparatively flimsy.

I guess you could call me a nerd.  I was definitely a nerd growing up.  Never on the football team.  I got suspiciously good marks in the sciences and obviously poor ones in physical education.  I know it's cliche to portray jocks on the top of the food chain and nerdlings like me as their natural prey, but sadly a cliche is often such because it is nauseatingly too common.  And that was especially true for this natural prey.  I was so tempted to pick the orc-human just to get a chance to be on the top of said chain-of-food for once. 

On the other hand, with cliches come biases.  And when it came to dumb jocks, I certainly had them.  Plus, I was the pure nerd of cliche lore either.  I wasn't great at math, and I was as proficient as Bill Gates was in computer programming—enough to do damage, but not enough to be particularly useful at it.  I was more of an art/drama/music guy, but not one of the band nerds either.  I wasn't a complete stranger to sports, either.  I preferred to think of cross-country running as the perfect introvert sport.  Miles and miles of nobody but the guy ahead or behind you.  No cheering.  No conversation. 

Maybe I had more in common with the plain vanilla.  "I'll go with the human."

"Excellent!"  I could hear Mr. Alger smile so palpably that I could almost see it.  "Would you like the generic model, one based on your current physical form, or customize?"

I looked at the dais and saw the generic version (still considerably well endowed), the model that looked just like me, and a kind of blurry third option.  "I'm looking for something more realistic, but...I'm also a fan of reliving my wonder years.  Just a little, you know?  Don't see many fresh fifties running around slaying dragons."

"I completely understand.  You have the option of taking as long as you need to customize your looks.  Keep in mind that it'll be purely cosmetic as we haven't even started to calculate your stats yet.  And, I hate to bring this up, but being so far behind in our rollout, I will have to attend to other guests of EveryAll.  Just ring me when you're finished."

"Oh, yeah.  Sure, Dude; Mr. Alger," I added hastily. "How do I 'ring you'?"

Silence.

"Mr. Alger?"

More silence.

"Crap."

I wondered again about getting a refund.