1 Chapter 1 - Prologue

Humanity has reached a great milestone in the year 3123, some speculate it to be even greater than milestones such as the Mars colonization and the sentient AI invention. What is this milestone? After decades of research albeit the lack of actual human experimentation except for its final testing, humanity was finally able to produce, popularize and affordably market DVR; Dream Virtual Reality. DVR induces a dream like state in which the equipment called dream dive capsules or DDCes are used as a physical platform for altering the dream, the possibilities such technology provided blew (Not literally...) people's minds.

By the year 3201 DVR another milestone was breached, not the whole of humanity acknowledges this though. DVR had fully settled within the medical, scientific and industrial companies but on this year for the first time since gamer wanted life + game = reality...DVR technology gained it's very first triple A video game. As in there were video games made for the technology before, hundreds of them in actuality but none compared to the scale of this one single game. A game that cleaned up the shelves from previous PC and console games, a game that cleaned up the shelves themselves for space to show off its equipment that was specifically made for it.

Grand Adventure Online, the very first Triple A DVR video game, VRMMORPG and an explosion in the gaming industry. Everyone and their cat (Author is unsure if someone wouldn't actually try...) stormed the store's sites that had the privilege of gaining a contract to sell the game along with the equipment, stores cleaned out their supply faster than they resupplied forcing the parent company to increase the supply as per demand and bidding wars ensued over special offers allowed by the company.

And such is life for these gamers now...a new world to explore, a new system to abuse and new developers to hate on. (Filthy casuals...)

Or is it?

There are some that disagree with this life, each will talk about it differently with scaling levels of knowledge and or hostility. These "people" are rejected by society in the same way they reject it, some parts of society welcome them hoping to reform their views on it, some of them try to welcome society hoping to reform IT but in the end, what is society? It's a system created by us, for us. Do we have to live under it? Can we avoid it? What's the point of it if there are those who question it?

There are many words used for these people, the most common though, is shut-in. Kyle Dean is one such shut-in, at the age of 21 he lives with his parents and the only reason he ever leaves home is to...never...He doesn't leave home. Spends all his time reading books, playing video games, watching tv series and the occasional walk as it is for loners. Life couldn't be simpler for Kyle but in his opinion life simply couldn't be more boring.

There he sat on his cheap office chair staring into one of his four monitors, clicking away on youtube searching videos and tabbing them to watch. Pale white skin, short brown-black hair with almond brown eyes and a short lazy neck beard Kyle is your average young man with average height and slightly above average weight.

He stretched out his arms grunting in the process "Ma is dinner ready?!" his shout traveled throughout the house and a reply came shouting back "In a minute! Come down to the table hun, dad is gonna be late again!", he momentarily stared at the multiple open tabs then sighed "When isnt he late?..."

Pushing his chair away from the desk he stood up and walked out of his room, "What's for dinner?" he said as he turned to the left into the corridor containing two other doors and walked to it's end where he began descending the stairs.

The stairs lead him to the living room which right next to it and fully visible from it was the kitchen only separated by an arch way, his mother answered as he walked over to the metallic table that sat facing the kitchen like a bar "Don't got long hun so it's cheese burgers today, can't be late for that interview you know? Has your equipment arrived yet?". She stood by the fryer manually frying a couple burgers, Kyle sat down on one of six silver stools with a single leg ending in four.

His mother was a reporter for a well known DVR news website, her blogs, reports and interviews mostly went under the scientific and medical category but today was a big day for everyone within the DVR community.

She turned around with two plates of burgers and fries "Here you go!" she lay a plate in front of him and walked around the table to sit on the stool to his right, "Ordered it couple weeks ago, should be one of the first to get it knowing the delivery time so maybe in an hour or two tonight". At this news she made a face, the one which showed faked annoyance "Aww, so you won't be able to use it until tomorrow morning then? We did have a deal you know", Kyle rolled his eyes "Yeah yeah...you payed you try first..." which gained him a chuckle and a grin from his mother.

She laid her arm on his shoulder and pulled him close for a kiss on the forehead "Just kidding hun, it's all yours. Don't gotta be so dense all the time, resembling your father so much!" she loved teasing him from time to time and because of that he'd grown so used to her ways that he saw them coming from miles away but still purposely walked into them.

They spoke of different topics as they ate, his obsession with staying off the net so he didn't see spoilers, her interview with the two lead developers of the game and his father's ongoing tournament this month. His father was known for years as a professional gamer and still to this day he works as a host for this generation's top pros, his game of preference? Only the top of first person shooters for the newest Nintendo console Call of Luigi.

After they were done eating, his mother said her goodbyes for the night and rushed over to the garage, as he sat there munching on the remaining fries he could hear her car start and leave. A single beam signaled the garage's full closure "I swear if they delay..." his thoughts had not left DVR even after the change of subjects, it was a rule for him to not think too much about his father.

Ever since Kyle had been old enough to push a button his father had tried his best to pass down his now life-long hobby of console gaming to Kyle, he on the other hand grew up to hate the constant rambling about consoles, shooters and anything that had to do with professional competitive game play. His father had truly hoped for Kyle to be there on that stage with him holding the controller as he rose the ranks alongside his team while his father filled the background with his quirky and informative comments.

In the end Kyle found something else to call a hobby, still within the video game genre he was introduced to PC gaming through a friend in middle school the same friend introduced him to his longest standing game which ended up being one of the top three MMORPGs for years.

Now Kyle waited patiently for the milestone of the century, the very first VRMMORPG utilizing the DVR technology, Grand Adventure Online by ComicGamePlay who along with NightmareCorp the creators of sentient AI and their parent company the creators of DVR and the DDCes Lucid&Co made the game's creation a possibility.

Kyle looked up at the AR digital clock hovering to the top left of his vision

Augmented Reality had overtaken the last ten centuries and continued on into this one but unlike the previous generations Kyle of the 32nd century simply saw it as part of life...having a UI in real life...was now just life and has been for centuries. He stood up from the table and grabbed both plates, being a shut-in without a job and supported by his parents it was up to him to clean up and take care of the house. He walked over to the sink where he dumped the two plates activating the auto-clean system then walked away and back up to his room.

"Mom's gonna be a couple minutes late again so the stream should be in 15? 20 minutes?" his mother since her first stream had ended up with this ongoing character plot of being a couple minutes late even when the stream started before she even arrived, just as entertainment to see how awkward the ones being intervened acted for a couple minutes without their host this kept going for every stream afterwards.

Kyle sat down on his chair and rolled over to the black wooden desk, touching the screen to switch to a tab he then flicked his fingers making the window pop out into augmented reality and grabbed it between his thumb and index finger. He then walked over to his bed and laid down with the window still in hand, flipping it around he laid there looking up at the window as they streamed some ads.

A couple minutes passed and after the seventh or so ad the stream began.