Doug stared at his friend Charles from across the lunchroom table. He a wide but short kid, with thick black-rimmed glasses that he touched a finger to in order to push them back up his nose. He had just heard something very interesting, and took a moment to think over the prospect with all the time it deserved.
Charles leaned forward. A red haired kid with freckles on his face, he thought for sure he'd made his argument clear. He wasn't in the greatest shape himself, but he was of average height and build... he just didn't eat whenever the world brought him to his knees like Doug did... and in a way, he was trying a tactical social maneuver to see if he could get what he wanted.
"Let me see if I get this straight," Doug said, finally, after seeming to talk all the time in the world, "You're saying that you'll pay for a whole month of service and let me try it out your Total Immersion set-up just because you want people to play with?" he asked if only to hear his friend make the request a second time.
"Yes, Doug. Yes," Charles said, his hands sliding over to the Player's Guide he'd brought with him, and slid it across the table to Doug. "You don't know what the Game feels like," Charles explained. "The way it fakes your eye-sight into seeing 3D images... the way the little fiber suit bits warm or cool or massage your skin," he shook his head. "I mean, it's no VR from the movies, but it's so immersive that it might as well be," he explained.
Doug thought on that, "I really don't want to feel all that stuff," he said. "And I don't want to wear it after you have," he added.
Charles shrugged, glancing around the cafeteria as if he was trying to keep people from overhearing some secret meeting. He nodded slowly and said, "I'll admit, all the pieces I have wont fit you," he said, trying to be cautious when referring to Doug's weight, "But the helmet and gloves will, and that'd be enough. When you get your own rig, you've got to get it to fit your form, so of course mine wont fit you," he explained.
"Why would I spend all that money when I get just play with Mouse and Keyboard?" Doug said, reaching for his lunch tray and taking off his square-shaped school pizza.
"Playing With a Mouse and Keyboard is like playing an FPS with analog sticks," Charles almost spit the phrase. "Once you tried even 3D, the touch, the surround sound, you'll have to have your own..."
In his head, Doug thought that he preferred using a Wiimote to even a Mouse and Keyboard when it came to FPS, but different people had different tastes. He took a deep breath and said, "Fine. You pay the first month, I try it at your house, and I play from my own with my setting," he said. "But I tried WoW, and I tried The Matrix, and neither of those Games did it for me... I'm a console Gamer, and you know that... but you seem desperate to share this so," he shrugged, "Yeah, I'm in."
"Nice... that makes a full party of ten," Charles nodded, sitting back in his chair, nodding at the deal well-made. However, this didn't comfort Doug.
"Who else did you get to play?"
Charles had neglected the full impact of his last statement. He had friends in other walks of life that Doug never spoke to or saw because Doug was always that outcast kind of kid... managed to always say the wrong thing, the first time, to everyone... which in an online world would probably be entertaining, he thought.
"Brittany Daws," said first, knowing Doug would be happy to hear that name. She was a popular girl and always hung out with the bimbo at school... but she herself had shown Doug friendship time and again. The two of them just happened to understand that they couldn't be seen together at school, even if they wanted to.
Doug nodded, "I see you pulled out your big gun first," he smirked, "But that leaves seven people," he noted. "Who else?"
"Darrell Jackson," Charles added after a long moment.
"Wait, wait... The black kid who's captain of the football team? The big guy who locked me inside my locker when I was a Freshman?" Doug asked. "That douche bag is going to be part of this endeavor?"
"I realize he's one of, like, twenty African-Americans in this school, but could you keep down 'the black kid' comments when teachers are eating at the end of the hall?" Charles asked, motioning to the long table at the end of the cafeteria. "Yes. He's not a complete douche. I helped him with his last two Biology Quizzes and he agreed under the same terms you did," he explained. "He's been playing for a week already."
Doug frowned, but Charles went on. "Additionally, Tom and Dan Cook... the asain-looking twins who sit opposide me in home room. They're in. Lorna, a black kid," Charles sighed, squinting a bit at Doug and wondering what the look on his face was for. Was Doug racist? Perhaps. "She said something about wanting to get away from it all, so she agreed too," Charles said.
"I bet she wants to get away from people like Darrell. She's got the biggest boobs on the Cheerleading Squad, so every guy drools over her," Doug thought aloud. "Then you got Jim and Sean, I'm sure," he said, thinking about the situation, a hand to his sizable chin. "Who's number ten?"
Charles smiled, "Why Miss Jean Richardson," he said, playing his true 'big card'. Doug's eyes went wide. Miss Richardson was a hottie. She was probably a blonde bombshell in her younger years, but now she was a fourty-year-old High School Math Teacher. Still, Doug fawned over her as he saw her as the smartest and nicest teacher in school.
"You bastard," Doug smirked. "OK. I'm so in. I'll do the sign-up tonight with you in IM's, and I'll come over on the weekend to try your setup," he said, his mouth still not quite closed. "I'm so in," he repeated.
The Game was known as Price Herald's Unfinished Kingdom... a name made about as much sense to those outside of gaming culture as The Old Republic or Jet Grind Radio. Still, it was an up-and-coming slick MMMO that could potentially rival World of Warcraft. It's visuals were pretty, it's Gameplay Systems interconnecting and multi-tierd wand was sure to be addicting to anyone who'd liked anything about any MMO ever.
You can play from even the most mundane of tasks, of any gender, of any walk of life. You can level up and become more powerful, or you can side-level and make your way creating goods for money, power, and influence over a given area. The Unfinished Kingdom is perpetually so, as it is a purely user-driven experience. The ability to create towns in the desert or raze communities to the ground is all up to the Players.
It's a life away from life, and that's what it's appeal is. Knowing that whoever and whatever you decide to play can take on a life of their own... but that your own life lay in wait for you just beyond the logout command. It combines any means from Fantasy (the most popular) to Science Fiction and even into situations that resemble the real world...
The Kingdom is what you make of it.
When Charles returned home that afternoon, he headed up to his bedroom, passed his mother and father, and up to check his mail. Before he was to go down to dinner, he decided to boot up PHUK and make sure there hadn't been a patch pushed out while he was at school that day.
To his horror, the following message appeared before him:
"The developers of PHUK would like to inform the players that a serious server hack as breached out firewalls and corrupted some game data," the message spoke in loud and capital red letters. "Your levels, job classes, races, and all manner of character-relevant information remains intact, as does your billing and account information," it said. "What has been lost, though, has been the connection between your character information and your account itself.
"Simply, this means that you may have someone else's characters and them yours. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this issue in a timely manner," it explained. "We are going through archived data and are slowly reconnecting this information. When the time comes, you will have the ability reclaim your old character profiles. For now, the servers are up, and you may continue playing with whatever characters are currently tied to your account as we know many of you would rather play as anyone rather than not play at all."
"Lastly, only brand new accounts during this time will we allow to create New Characters until this issue is resolved. All currently active players, we again apologize for the inconvenience. Our database indicates there should be four of five characters across each and every account, which may allow more variation than you expect and may allow some of you to experience game content you have never seen. Think of that as the silver lining.
Charles stared at the screen for a few moments, wondering if his account had been one of the ones restored. He couldn't check though, as there did appear to be a 86Meg Patch pushed out this morning before the hack occurred. He sighed, and turned to head downstairs for dinner.
As Charles ate dinner, he thought it to be irony that out of his party of ten, the only person who would have a character of their choosing would be Doug... the person who least wanted to play. He walked back upstairs with this knowledge after a quite meal with his family, and opened his Game account to see what his choice of characters might be.
Taking off his school cloths and even his underwear, he slipped on the specially made cloth suit like a pair of longjons over his body as he watched the aqua-colored bar of his loading screen. He slipped on the socks and the gloves, and reached back for his helmet/mask. He spent the extra money to get a comfortable one that was also bluetooth, and sat down at his computer desk to look at his choices.