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  “Never better. So what made you move back from Australia?”

  There’s a flicker on her face, a brief flash of sadness and then it’s gone. She says, “I had a fiancee, but two days before the wedding I found out he was sleeping with his secretary and my best friend.”

  “You were best friends with his secretary?”

  “No. Two different people. Needless to say I wasn’t keen on sticking around. That’s when this job popped up, right back in our home town. Take about fate!”

  “I’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve that, but I am glad you found out before you married him.”

  “I suppose. I just wish men weren’t such lying, cheating arseholes, you know.”

  “Yeah, really! Men are the worst.”

  Bollocks.

  LEVEL 3: GAME OVER

  Carlos finally catches up to us as we reach a large building at the university. He takes one look at us and says, “Wow, who died?”

  My chances with Sarah. I give him a weary glance and announce, “Sarah was just telling me about her game. It sounds awesome, right up your alley.”

  “Bring it on! Let’s show them how it’s done.” He glances up at the building, “So what are we doing here? Shouldn’t we be in some hipster all glass video game company building that has ping pong tables and free booze?”

  “This is where we test the game for now. We haven’t optimized it for home computers yet, it requires a lot of raw computing power to run smoothly. The university has very kindly offered us time on their super computer, but only out of hours, hence the unsociable test schedule. They even lent us some old office space they weren’t using, so I spend most of my nights here.”

  A young Indian guy stops us in the foyer. “Hey Sarah. I thought our testing tonight was cancelled?”

  “Hey Raj. I found us a couple more guinea pigs.”

  “I wish you’d said, I just closed down the VR lab. It will take me some time to get it up and running again.”

  “Don’t worry about it, they can use the headset in my office. I just want to get a fresh perspective from players that haven’t already seen the game. Is the latest build stable?”

  “We still have the issues on our fix list, but you already know about those. We also have a new glitch on the final boss. The latest patch was supposed to increase his health regeneration speed by 1.5, but someone forgot the decimal, so now it’s increased by a factor of 15. He’s basically unbeatable at the moment.”

  “Ok, we’ll steer clear of him. These guys are fresh meat so we are going to be taking it easy. You can go home if you like, I can handle it.”

  “Are you sure?” He’s already reaching for his coat.

  “Yep, go spend some time with those cute kids of yours. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

  Raj is out the door so fast he’s practically supersonic.

  Sarah leads through a cavernous space filled with VR headsets. There must be ten or fifteen, all hanging from a central pillar on the ceiling like a cyberpunk octopus. It is eerily dark and our footsteps echo through the dead space. There is no light source, just a vertical line of green LED’s blinking on the far wall, which we head towards. Sarah says, “Sorry about this, the overhead lights take forever to power up in here. It’s just through here.”

  We come out the other side into a long corridor filled with offices. We pass one with the door cracked open and can hear someone mumbling to themselves in what sounds like latin. We are almost past when the door beside me bursts open and a man says, “Who’s there?”

  Apparently when considering the correct response to the fight or flight reflex my body went for secret door number three, which is stand in the same spot and scrunch my face up like my poop is coming out sideways. Natural selection at work.

  The man looks at me concerned. “Are you ok?”

  Sarah jumps in. “Hey Professor Jasper. It’s fine, these guys are with me. I’m just giving them the tour. I didn’t expect anyone else to be here.”

  Professor Jasper pushes his thick rimmed glasses up his nose and looks around shiftily. “Yes, I’m running an experiment tonight. Ground breaking stuff. Will change the way we see the world. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to work.”

  The door slams shut without so much as a goodbye.

  “He seems nice.” Says Carlos with a smirk.

  “Yeah, he’s a bit of a character, he has some pretty wild theories about the universe. Apparently none of this is real and it’s all just some giant simulation.”

  “What does that make us, NPCs?” says Carlos.

  “I guess so. The rest of the staff think he’s nuts, but I find the thought kind of comforting. If none of this is real then you might as well make yourself happy and do what you love, right?”

  “Right.” I don’t even know what that would be, but it certainly isn’t Junior Business Analyst.

  Two offices down we reach a door with Sarah’s name on it. She fishes the key out of her pocket and ushers us inside. With a few flickers the light comes on to reveal a surprisingly large space. I was expecting a cozy cupboard, but there is room in here to swing a cat. One wall is a giant whiteboard and is covered in meticulous handwritten formulas, along with several sketches of cool dragons looming over mysterious dungeons.

  Sarah picks up gloves and a VR headset off her desk and hands them to Carlos. “Just give me a minute to get the demo configured. I don’t usually run the tutorial program, I need to make sure I have the latest version.”

  “Pfft, I can figure it out. Tutorials are the worst.” Says Carlos.

  “Ok, well if you think you can figure out how to map your brain signals to your intentions on the fly then by all means skip the tutorial.”

  “What? Ok fine, I’ll play along.” He slips into the gloves before putting the headset on. His jaw immediately drops open. “Holy crap! These graphics are awesome.”

  Sarah smiles with a hint of pride. “Pretty cool huh. Try picking something up.”

  He does and he says, “How is this possible? I can feel it in my hands.”

  “Haptic feedback gloves. A small electric current stimulates material that can stiffen up to simulate you holding something. We can’t fully simulate the weight yet, but it’s a start.”

  Carlos sniggers. Sarah looks at me confused and I mutter, “you said stimulates and stiffens in the same sentence.”

  Carlos suddenly starts swinging his arms around like a windmill. I look at Sarah and she says, “Sword fighting tutorial. Everyone does that the first time. If he can just take a breath and calm down he will do much better.”

  Carlos shouts, “How do I move around?”

  “It’s the next tutorial. Patience.”

  I mutter, “Patience is not one of the skills Carlos has levelled up over the years.”

  Carlos suddenly starts jogging on the spot and Sarah ushers me back out into the corridor. She talks in a hushed tone, “I don’t want to disturb him while he’s playing, it will break his immersion. So what are you doing with yourself now?”

  “I’m working at Master Systems as a Business Analyst.” I decide to leave out the junior part of my title, it will only get my blood pressure up again. I need to keep the conversation focused on her before my anger starts to show. “How long have you been working on this game?”

  “Just since I moved back a few months ago. I think we’re really on to something here, like we are standing right on the edge of this amazing revolution. I always felt like games could be something more, it just took a while for the technology to catch up.”

  “I didn’t even know you played games.” I’m cursing myself. There is so much we could have talked about. What if that was my chance and I blew it.

  “I didn’t really. I was interested in them, but they were clearly designed by men, for men. It was all about shooting and dominance and putting your balls on another guys face. That just wasn’t for me. I wanted something more nuanced. Where you have to make hard decisions and those choices have real consequences.
”

  I can’t help but stare at her. She looks exactly as I remember her, that same frizzy hair, the line of freckles above her top lip, the flecks of grey in her blue eyes. I could close my eyes and draw her from memory, if I could draw worth a damn.

  She catches me staring and looks away. I feel the urgent need to apologize, but then I’d have to admit I was gawking. Instead I say, “How are your folks?”

  “Dad is doing ok, he retired last year. Mum on the other hand is on the warpath around this whole wedding fiasco. She’s never been happier, she gets to pick up the phone and shout at Aussies all day.”

  Ah yes, Sarah’s Mum. She drops hints with the precision and subtlety of a German bombing raid. The first time I met her she kept repeating the fact that I was Sarah’s friend from university. Her inflection on the F word was like a knife to the heart and she hit me with a flurry of them, one after the other, testing my resolve. I had to hide in the bathroom for ten minutes to regain my composure. She is not a woman to be trifled with, particularly when her daughter is involved. I don’t envy Sarah’s ex fiancee on that one.

  There’s something else she’s not saying. I’m about to pry when Carlos starts yelling. We run back into the room to find him shrugging off the VR headset, a concerned look on his face. “Erm, Sarah, I think I broke your game…”

  She rushes over to the computer and starts frantically typing. After a few seconds she says, “Don’t worry, it’s a known issue. The engine we used was originally designed for turn based strategy games. Sometimes the game crashes and reverts back to the old ruleset. We are still working out the kinks. Do you remember what you were doing when it crashed? It will help with logging the bug. It says in the log that you had 7,217 gold coins, so it looks like your inventory glitched out too.”

  Carlos looks around shiftily. “No, that sounds about right. I may have been exploiting a pricing issue with your merchant. He sells sticks and rocks for 1 gold coin each, which can be combined to make arrows, which he buys back for 4 gold coins. I may have repeated that process a couple of thousand times…”

  “We left you alone for five minutes!”

  He stares at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We’ve been testing this game for months and nobody found that exploit. I’ll get that patched right away. I should hire you!”

  He perks up again. “Damn straight, but I already have a cushy gig. I’ll let you know if that changes. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how to decapitate the enemies.”

  “Yeah, our game is rated 15, so there’s violence and nudity, but no decapitation, graphic sex or swearing.”

  “Hey Marcus, sounds just like your average week!”

  I give him the look that reminds him he is supposed to be on my side. As usual he completely ignores it. “Mate, you’ve got to try this game out, it is amazing even without all that cool stuff!”

  Sarah hands me the gloves and I slip them on. They are still warm from Carlos’ turn. Then she helps me into the headset, tightening the straps to hold it into place. I am plunged into darkness and I instinctively grope around, finally landing on something soft and warm. I give it a squeeze. These gloves are amazing, it is as if I am holding something. I hear Sarah’s voice over the headset, “Could you stop groping me please.”

  I hear Carlos’ distinctive chuckle behind me and feel the blood rushing to my face. He’s not going to let me forget that for a while. The sad part is, that’s the most intimate I have been with a woman in a long time.

  I’m just starting to feel sorry for myself when icons appear around the peripheral of my vision. I see a standard life bar, a blue magic bar underneath it and something that looks a lot like my inventory. Sarah’s voice comes back in my ears, “Wave your hands. You should see them represented in the game.”

  I do as I am told and am surprised to see realistic equivalents floating in the game world. She says, “Ok, I’ll boot up the tutorial. Don’t move, the system has to scan your resting brain waves.”

  There’s a tingle in my scalp and a green checkmark appears on the screen. Then a message appears. It says, “Prepare to defend yourself.”

  A sword materializes in front of me and I instinctively reach out to pick it up. As soon as I do a knight comes around the corner and runs straight at me, his sword raised above his head. I start flailing my arm and remember Sarah’s tip from earlier. I take a deep breath and wait for the knight to get into range. I lunge forwards and skewer him before he can hit me.

  He doesn’t look best pleased. A hint comes up about how to hold my sword up to block and I get to practice it a lot as he starts wailing away at me. My health is being slowly chipped away. I can’t stand here blocking forever. That’s when I get a new prompt:

  To parry, try blocking at the exact moment you are hit. It will negate all damage and build up a multiplier to make your next hit more powerful.

  Sounds good. I do exactly what it said, but I can’t figure out the timing. I go too early and it only counts as a block, then I try too late and get a sword in the face. Thankfully this is the tutorial, so my health keeps replenishing, if this was the real game I’d be dead already.

  After a dozen attempts I finally get it right and there is a ching sound. The damage multiplier ticks over from x1 to x2, which is a big improvement. I hit the knight once and the rest of his life vanishes.

  I’m still feeling smug about it when my health starts to disappear again. I turn to find a guy behind me stabbing me in the back with a dagger. Sarah’s voice comes over the headphones. “Don’t forget to always be looking around so you don’t get ambushed. This guy is too close for your broadsword, you’ll need to fight him hand to hand.”

  I open my hand and the broadsword disappears. As my attacker prepares for another attack a prompt briefly flashes on the screen, but I don’t know what to do and I get stabbed again. I shout to Sarah, “how do I click on the prompt?”

  “You don’t. You just have to think it.”

  Next time I am ready and I think disarm as the prompt appears, flipping my hands up in what I feel is a very convincing attempt at realism. The knife falls out of the knight’s hand and he turns and runs away.

  The next prompt tells me to walk. I move to take a step forward, but it flashes up just think about moving. I do that and jump as my character takes a step forward. I think about running and he sets off at a pace I couldn’t maintain ten years ago, let alone now. I shout out, “this is creepy!” It’s really hard not to move my legs.

  A platform appears in front of me and it says try jumping. I do as I am asked and immediately plummet to my death. Sarah says, “The system is still synchronizing with your brain waves, so there can be a slight delay. It might feel a bit like lag in an online game. That will improve with time.”

  I scrunch up my face and try again. This time I manage it. Next up is a fallen tree at waist height. The prompt says combat roll so I think about it. The screen spins and I find myself on the other side of the log. It is very disorienting, but I’m confident with practice I could get the hang of it.

  A new message appears. Tutorial complete. Loading demo.

  I find myself in a field of wheat, which sways gently in a virtual breeze. I reach out my hand and run it through the swaying plants and I jump as I touch one. Please don’t let it be another part of Sarah. She comes back over the headset, “Pretty cool huh. That’s the haptic feedback. There’s a sword behind you. You’re going to be needing it.”

  I spin and see a sword sticking out of the ground, it’s blade glistening in the sunlight. I reach out and wrap my hands around the handle. I brace myself to pull it out of the ground, but it has no weight and I nearly topple over. It is absurdly long. I swish it at the wheat stems and they fall to the ground decapitated. “This is amazing!”

  Carlos shouts in the background, “Right! Have you tried throwing a fireball yet?”

  As soon as I think fireball a flickering light appears in my left hand and grows into a small ball o
f flames. I haphazardly toss it into the field and it immediately sets fire to the dry plants. The fire spreads quickly, threatening to engulf me. I shout, “Sarah…a little help please.”

  There’s a giggle in my ear and dark clouds appear instantly in the sky, pouring rain onto the fire and extinguishing it with a puff of smoke. She says, “try not to burn all my hard work to the ground!”

  I’m still marvelling at the realism when a flashing green arrow appears on the screen. A small red circle appears in the bottom red corner. As I focus on it a menu expands to fill the screen.

  New Quest: Bring 7 chickens to the cook in the tavern.

  I hear the faint sound of clucking in the distance. I set off slowly. I’m still finding my feet. It feels very unnatural to move around without moving my body or pushing a button, but I can see the potential. With practice, this could bring a new level of immersion. I only have to think about running and my avatar picks up the pace.

  As I crest the hill I see a group of shady characters approaching. They all have their weapons drawn. One of them shouts, “there’s the warlock. Grab him and we can collect the bounty.”

  The goons stare at each other and one says, “Do we need him alive boss?”

  The leader sneers at me. “These magic folk can be tricky. It will be easier to drag a dead body back to town.

  They fan out and move towards me with surprising speed. The tutorial is certainly over. I wave my sword at them ineffectively as the nearest one lunges towards me. I attempt to dodge but I react too slowly. I’m almost expecting to feel the blade pierce my skin, but it passes right through me, taking a chunk of my health bar with it. Sarah’s voice is back in my ear. “Don’t forget to parry. You can build up a pretty significant damage boost if you get a few in a row.”

  I try to do as I am told, but I still can’t get the timing right. I’m getting stabbed over and over while my opponents dance around me, landing blow after blow. One of the bandits laughs and wipes my virtual blood off his blade. “He’s even softer than I expected.”