Meeting a classmate

After waking up in his bed, Ikky took a VR helmet off, his hairs were all sweaty and sticking to his head. After checking the smartphone, he noticed several calls and messages from his friend Josh. Ikky wanted to call his friend back and ask him about the quest when he finally noticed the time.

'Why is it so late?!!' he panicked for several seconds.

With everything that was going on in the game, he didn't have time to check the in-game time even once, and without knowing it was already 9:30 PM, while Ikky played since 7 AM, which means it was much more than the safety feature should allow.

'Is my helmet broken? I should get it inspected tomorrow if it's broken I might have been in the trouble,' Ikky was deadly worried if his helmet was indeed broken and he didn't log off after getting out of the labyrinth, or if exiting the labyrinth would take longer...god know what could happen to him.

After calming down a bit, Ikky went downstairs to check on his family, but the living room was already empty. Everybody was probably in their beds. However, there was food on the table, together with a note.

*Please eat up when you wake up, With love Mom.*

"Mom.." Ikky sighed with regret.

It has been several months since he missed dinner with his mother, it was the first time since that incident, which was also a reason why his mother was not going to work.

'I should make up for this tomorrow.' with a determined goal in his mind Ikky did a short nod to himself and moved to the bathroom to take a shower.

After a while, he was lying in the bed. It was time to sleep normally once in a while, even though he considered going out for a run, after the in-game experience he didn't feel like it at all... However, Ikky couldn't fall asleep, no matter how much he tried, he was not tired and had too many thoughts on his mind.

***

When he woke up it was just 6:15 AM.

'I must have slept for like 2 hours only..' Ikky thought full of dizziness. However, his body acted as always, therefore he woke up early.

To get the dizziness out of his head, he completed his morning exercise before using the shower. In less than an hour, he left his house with a VR helmet in his hands.

Ikky went straight to the transport train and noticed that there were more people than a few days ago. He started to play with several more ideas about why would there be more people, such as people quitting jobs, or quitting the game, but after a while, he gave up trying to figure it out and just waited for his train.

A half-hour later he arrived in front of the Testing Center. But the line in front of the Testing Center confused him once again.

'There are even more people...' guessed Ikky when he saw a long line coming to the Testing Center, it wasn't even 8 AM so why was everybody out waiting in a line? Could there be a big problem with the safety feature?!

Ikky skipped the line which led to the shop, instead he aimed at to customer service desk.

"How can I help you, young man?" a middle-aged woman behind the desk asked.

"I think my VR helmet is broken, it didn't trigger safety features even after 14 hours of playing," voiced Ikky his problem.

"That's not good, We will take a look at it. However, as you can see, there are a lot of guests present now, the inspection and repair might take up to 2 hours, our apologies." she slightly bowed her head in apology.

"It's okay, would it be a problem if I leave for a bit and return later?" Ikky asked with an idea.

"No problem," she answered with a smile.

"Okay, thank you very much. Goodbye." said Ikky while aiming at the exit door.

"Goodbye, young man." she bowed again in farewell.

Ikky went to the store, he wanted to buy some ingredients and prepare lunch for his sister and mother. Compare to the outside, the shop was relatively empty and he was back in the Testing center just in twenty minutes.

When the woman behind the desk saw his arrival she immediately waved at him. When Ikky approached her, she took the helmet from below the desk and placed it on top of the desk.

"Your helmet is in excellent condition, there is nothing wrong with it," she explained to him.

"But I played 14 hours?" Ikky said confusedly.

"I thought it over, 14 hours in-game is something less than 12 hours in the real world, so you shouldn't necessarily trigger safety features if you were in top condition," she explained to him.

"..."

Ikky was speechless, he played for 14 hours in real-world time! Not in-game time. However, he asked just in case.

"Are there people who would not trigger safety features no matter how long they play?" he asked.

"Hmmm," the woman behind the desk put one finger on her chin and turned her head to the side as she was thinking.

"Basically yes,...but they are very rare. As you may know, a low-budget helmet makes you take a pause every 2nd day, but top-tier helmets extend this by an additional day. That is because your brain needs to process every single thing that is happening in the game, which is not helping your brain to 'rest' when you are inside of the game. " she said after a while and continued.

"Top-tier helmets extend this because the Hardware of the helmet is better. Therefore your brain is getting some halts during those processes. But the same could be done by your brain and neuron system itself. If the helmet sent information to your brain, and if you accept the information and proceed with it faster than expected delay, then the remaining time it can be used for resting, there are also some unique causes where people don't need much sleep, those people might not trigger safety feature because they are in a 'good condition' even after playing for tens of hours." she finally finished her explanation.

"Do you know by how much it can extend the VR helmet usage?" he asked with interest, this was quite interesting information.

"It still depends on the Hardware you use, I heard for the low-budget version it's just a few hours, for top-tier it was several hours of the game time, and for capsules which are not yet for rent or sell it was several days!".

"Several days? Isn't it too much?" Ikky asked.

"Not necessary, the capsule itself is a completely different design compared to the VR helmet. In the capsule, the user's whole body is threatened in sleep, which not only extends the usage, but users won't even have bedsores after playing for several tens of hours.". After listening to her, one would wonder why she was working for the customer service desk and not in the sales department.

"I see, Thank you very much," Ikky said with appreciation and left the Testing Center by the front door.

The lady behind the desk watched his back, once he fully left she proceed to write the whole conversation they just had into a special email which was sent to hana.k@crystal-company.com, the subject of the email was Irregular #34."Hey! Did you just rent the helmet just now?" somebody shouted behind Ikky while tapping his shoulder.

"Huh?" Ikky turned around.

"Hi Ikky." said Norm, his classamte.

"Oh, Hi Norm. No, I had a helmet since Sunday," answered Ikky.

"Then what are you doing here? Wait I know why! You are going for the tier-upgrade!" said Norm in confidence.

"I just went for a helmet examination as I thought it was broken. That's all, by the way, why should I upgrade the tier, are you here to upgrade yours?" Ikky asked.

"Yea, I want a higher tier, so I can play longer. Did you not see the news? That's why everybody is here." Norm pointed at the never-ending line.

'Again some news? I feel like I'm learning everything as the last person alive.' thought Ikky with some salt.

"I- I see, then good luck, see you in school after 2 weeks." Ikky bid his farewell and turned away, but he didn't even make two steps before he was grabbed by the shoulder once again.

"Hey wait! by the way, what is your in-game name and level? Somebody discovered a dungeon on level 12, everybody is now pushing their level to be the first one to clear it," asked Norm.

Ikky really couldn't deal with people like Norm, they were friendly, but also very talkative, same as Josh, and one Josh was more than enough.

Ikky thought for a few moments.

"You can contact me in the game, my nickname is #Ikky, my level is just level 10" Ikky considered telling him that he was close to 11, thanks to endless waves of stone statues, but in the end, he decided to just say what his status window showed.

"10?! Did you already select your classpath? Ma-aan, you are lucky. I'm just level 9 still, one mode to go." Norm continued with his monologue.

"Alright, contact me, later in the game, see you." Ikky turned away, but once again was grabbed by the shoulder.

"Wait, are you interested in joining the guild?" asked Norm, visibly unhappy that Ikky wanted to leave so soon.

'I'm gonna kill this dude if he grabs me by the shoulder one more time...' thought Ikky while his patience was already running out.

"Guild? How can we join Guild when everybody is spawned randomly?" Ikky asked while remembering the windows message he saw for the first time while connecting to the game.

"The random spawn means random town in the game, however people from the same city or close range usually spawn near to each other, either same town or nearest town," Norm explained.

Ikky was listening, as this information was quite new to him. Now it made sense why Josh was in the same town.

"Alright, alright. Write me in the game, I really, but really... have to go now." Ikky raised his hand which was holding goods from the nearest shop.

"Oh…Okay, see you later." his classmate finally noticed that he was holding food for lunch.

"See you." said Ikky and left in hurry.