Surprise arrival

It arrived yesterday, I only needed to see it was my name on the box, nothing else mattered, nothing else would've come for me, if I cared I might've noticed the lack of the usual details on a delivery parcel but I probably still wouldn't care. After all, it was finally here!

I shouldn't have even got one by most respects, but apparently a lot of people got them for free, The new VR console, called a Full-Immersion VR set.

Once I got to my room I opened it and read everything I could inside the packaging before opening the 2nd box, I hardly ever got giddy anymore but it was like Christmas for the first time all over again, the butterfly's in my stomach were gonna make me fly away.

I opened it a carefully lifted the plastic wrapped helmet out of the box and smelt the smell of sophisticated plastic molding and felt the padded ventilated inside of the helmet, I was already in love.

I took the rest of it's plastic off and plugged in the power cord and the cord that attaches to what was under the helmet inside the packaging, the rest of the "set" which was just a black box with an on button and what seemed like space for air to ventilate through to cool as you would expect of most consoles but extremely bland & basic. It also had to be plugged into the wall. Now all that was left was to wait until 2am when the servers would come online, For now I was gonna log in and set up the account and such but it read on the helmet "deeply advised to wait until server launch to start of device for first time."

"Well shoot."

It was only 11AM. I got my package later since I had them hold it till a day I wouldn't be caught bringing it into the house, considering my standing if people thought I was ordering things I'd be chewed out till there was nothing but bones, not even any marrow.

I decided to get something to eat and maybe try and sneak in some snacks as no-one but the house-keepers were home at the moment. 

I'm not held in high-esteem, I don't do much else but stay in my room but my step-mother seems to prefer that so no one but my sister really does much regarding it around the house. I don't know what my dad thinks but we've never really spoken much as he's always out on business. But I wouldn't want to hear from him anyway to be honest.

Anyway I shouldn't think about those things, we have something that'll give us a full reprieve!

As I look through the cupboard and fridge I put some hot-pockets in the microwave, grab as many snacks as I think I can without anyone noticing them missing and head back to my room.

On my way back to my room and as I put everything down I think about how I'd like to play the first full immersion MMO-RPG, What kind of build do I wanna play? What should my avatar look like? I wonder if I can get top-ranked? nah I couldn't, I don't even know if there is any form of ranking, but I wouldn't be able to keep any number I'd get.

Regardless I want to screw around a lot, Maybe a joke build? I wish I knew more about the game.

As I sat down at my desk and waiting for my hotpockets to cool I look at my helmet longingly before turning to my computer. "Guess i'll try and find some more details for now."
I started doing some google searches.

There's not much known about this equipment, apparently it works according to a few testers but apparently no stores have received any shipments, it's all by order. In fact most of them seemed to have been distributed via contests, many for games no ones heard of or had active communities in years. Paired with next to no advertising other then at most 2 short pieces of news a year, however they were meaningful enough to get the game some traction, mainly the demo footage of 3 hours of gameplay.

It was just him in a small farm area in a un-bypassable fence fighting slimes and very slowly learning new skills but it looked so awesome, you could see the slimes splatter, the damage numbers ding right where you hit it, and it seemed like he was actually getting faster & stronger every time he'd level.

It went viral for a few weeks, there was so much skepticism on if it was real, at the end of the day even if it was, there didn't seem to be any profitable reason they'd lie about this considering the internet couldn't find anyone investing in the project/company. in fact they could only find a small private company that apparently lost it's licensing for being unreachable.

after that some sites started collecting every contest that'd be held with the set as a prize, just about all of them video-games, some were random raffles or sport contests but hardly any.  And that's how I got mine, I can't ask for money but we have internet & time so I tried for a few of the contests and won a cheap poorly balanced card-game through an RNG deck I scrapped together, God I never got so much hatred in game-chats directed directly at me other then that time I quit an MMO and decided to spend my final month pirating and player killing.

Other then that you could pre-order for 6'000$. Apparently it's that expensive because they only have server room for 20'000'000 people. once the servers launch, distribution will be halted apparently as well.

I don't know how many people got them but scrolling through the web I see a lot of social media posts and news articles regarding the oddity, some even advising to turn them in... jeez I hope I don't get in trouble for this, it is kind of sketchy.

I immediately turn my attitude around when I begin reading the posts from other receivers explaining how excited they are and how they can't believe it's real. I didn't notice the grin creeping on my face as I scrolled through the posts.

Eventually I replied to one. "I know right, I hope to god this game is good to boot, if it is, I can completely give up on life Lmao~ good riddance."

little did I know that was also the last piece of proof of my existence in this world for quite a long time.