Chapter 46: DCU Closed Alpha testing

[Bruce POV]

I just finished my usual night patrols. 

Nothing unusual so far. Just some thugs doing their usual drug deals. Easy enough to stop.

It's been a while since the alien stayed with us in the mansion. I've also gotten used to one of his clones serving as my suit at night. I have to admit, if I used normal protective gear, it still won't be as versatile as the alien's clone. 

Several times I've been dosed with gas. But my cowl was a full face mask. The outer appearance looks like my mouth isn't covered though. It makes for a good fake weakness.

When the alien mentioned developing what he called full dive pods, at first I didn't think much of it. But after some thought, it was practically an entire new world when you sleep. The idea was solid. But even further musing made me realize it can be used to do some form of training. If one did combat training there, once could acquire real world combat experience but still be relatively safe. I also tried hacking into its core programing but found out I couldn't.

The Venom mentioned time travel. I was very much surprised and stunned but I didn't show it. This had huge ramifications. If someone altered something, It could severely alter our reality and we wouldn't even know it. He said he knew what he was doing though. While I have my backup plans, I doubt I would be able to take him on at for now. Since first joining me and Alfred, he's already obtain several abilities we can't hope to contain. So I can only hope he really did know what he was doing. For now, my only back up plan involved corporate attacks to keep him busy with his company. Didn't seem like any physical attack would do anything to him nowadays.

Back to the pod, he mentioned it having software security from the future so it should be unhackable at least. After trying it out for the first time, I was able to create my own avatar, or my virtual representation. I had complete freedom though if I wanted more options, he mentioned I would need to earn those from other games. 

Since he said it was an Alpha test for now, I simply used my current face with no changes. 

After finishing the character creation, I was led to a short system tutorial. Like how to open up the menu, how to access inventory or log out. It acted pretty much like a standard video game. After finishing said tutorial, I was teleported to the main plaza of the base planet.

Everything looks so real. So much detail. I can even somehow feel the very wind on my face. I tried pinching myself and I felt it. Though the tutorial mentioned the pain simulation settings can't go beyond 40%. And it seems for the Alpha test, I had infinite credits in my account. Probably to obtain access to be able to try anything out.

As an initial test, I went to some nearby restaurant and ordered some food. To my surprise, the taste was even quite accurate and had very deep tastes and complex texture.

This was indeed a marvel of technology. It really does feel like an entire new world. 

I walked around checking each place out. The city wasn't very populated yet as he mentioned. But I'm guessing this will be full of stores in the future. I saw the main hotel and decided to check in to get a suite. Venom said the hotels came with space ports connections. And these ships take one to game planets. So I boarded a ship that went to a game planet. The label on the destination said Metal Gear Solid.

Maybe I could give this a shot.

[Cisco POV]

This is so freakin epic!!! 

Vgames first full dive pod! And we're going to get to test it! Of course I had a huge hand in making it as well. But that was just the how part. That Hiro kid is freakin genius too! But the actual content was all Ven Matthews. And based on his track record, this is gonna be historical!

I met Mr. Matthews a while back when his company contacted me for collaborations. Who would have thought it would lead to this eventually? 

It was a huge surprise when he showed up in Star Labs and saved Ronnie. Didn't even know the guy was a meta. And from the looks of it, he didn't get his powers from the particle accelerator we built. After all, he wasn't from Central city originally. 

Then he gave us some info dump that blew our minds. He actually knew of different timelines. He was also confident about the future that even Gideon had records of him from the future. Looked like he knew a whole lot more and he just didn't tell us everything just yet. Gotta say, the timeline thing is already pretty heavy. But what got us really shaken was the world ending stuff. But it was pretty cool that Barry would be part of a bigger crossover team-up that would handle those world ending stuff. And finally, before he ran off, he even hinted at a multiverse event so we'll be watching out for that. But the very idea of the multiverse is mind blowing. Then he goes off and runs as fast as a speedster. 

But despite the mystery that is Mr. Matthews, I can't deny that my gamer blood is freakin boiling with his products and ideas. He even gave a few pods here in Star Labs so we could try it out.

"Hurry up Barry! The pods are going to get access to the servers in a few minutes.!"

Barry finally set up his pod as well. Caitlin and Ronnie are all set up as well. After we all logged in, we had time to spare with our avatar character creation. The pods allowed us to create avatars that were visual representations of ourselves and we had a huge freedom on modifications and selections. It can even be non human apparently. But since the avatars were changeable anytime in the base world, we didn't think too much about it and just chose what appealed to us.

Finally, after the access was given, we all synchronized with the servers and appeared in the base world main plaza.

"Holy frak! This is mad trippy! I can feel the wind!" -Cisco

"Is this Virtual Reality? Everything is so real!" -Caitlin

"I can't believe we're in a game! This is unreal!" -Ronnie

"Woah, I guess my speed doesn't work here. Then again, it makes sense. The instructions did mention that any ability was earned through games or shops here." -Barry

"Guys check out the water in the fountain! It looks so good! It feels like water too!" -Cisco

"Hey lets check out the restaurant and try if we can actually taste the food!" -Ronnie

After we bought a full course meal, boy oh boy were we surprised! 

"This is incredible! Everything actually has taste! And it tastes so good!" -Caitlin

"I know this doesn't actually give us nourishment but it's so satisfying to eat!" -Ronnie

"Dude we can eat all the things we can't in the real world here!" -Cisco

"Yeah and I don't have to consume huge amounts of food here since I'm not using any of my speed so I can actually enjoy eating!" -Barry

We ordered as much as we wanted until we got bored. We were able to eat as much as we want without worrying about getting fat either so I'm guessing this was a heaven sent for girls. They can eat without needing to watch their diet or calorie intake.

After leaving the resto, we talked to several random NPC's as well. While they weren't very realistic in terms of response, they did their jobs and gave out the information we needed as tourists here. After getting a rough idea of the things we can do here, we made sure to get rooms in the hotel in order to get access to Vgames' planet library. The space ports from the hotel gave options of going to whatever game Vgames had published before, converting them to full VR as well. So all the older games instantly had huge replay-ability. Most of the games had a totally new first person perspective now so its like a whole new game. And for other non game activities, there were several space ports around the city that would take you to them or according to the guide, if we had enough resources, we can build our own ships as well. 

There were separate planets for some of the activities like a space station casino, sports planets and more. Even without the Vgames game library, the activities we could do here was freakin endless. 

The NPC even said we could explore the base planet if we wanted, or even set our own Clan headquarters. Then there's planet Doom where players could battle it out for resources, though that one wasn't opened to the public yet. And we were even told that we could earn cosmetics or resources from games. For example we could play Xenogears and earn materials and blueprints to make our own mech that would be usable in the base world or planet Doom. Or we can earn Cars from games like GTA or NFS to port over to the main world so we had transportation. 

"So what do you guys wanna try out first?" -Barry

"Me and Ronnie are going to try the theme parks. You know, considering we never got our trip. It'd be nice to go on a date." -Caitlin

"That actually sounds nice. Maybe I can get Iris to try this sometime to cheer her up." -Barry

"Hey Barry, I heard GTA got multiplayer now, why don't we try that one? I heard we needed to travel to that planet to try out that game. Supposedly we needed to buy a copy of said game first so we can get access but Mr. Matthews gave us free access to all of it."

"Alright we'll see you guys later then. Just send a message through the friend list later if we wanna meet up."

So me and Barry went to planet GTA to try out the multiplayer and maybe earn enough to get exportable cars for the main world. 

Right now the time passage was the same as the real world. Our bodies were asleep while our minds were playing here and the time is 1:1. But I heard from Mr. Matthews that he would discuss with his team if the game was better with a 1 day real world 2 days in game world dilation or even higher.

There's so much to do so we were all super excited! This full dive which Mr. Matthews called DCU is going to change gaming history!

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[3rd Person POV]

The morning after everyone's first log in to DCU.

Cisco and the rest of team Flash had a very good nights sleep. While they did so much in game, when they woke up, they felt incredibly refreshed and not tired at all, even mentally. 

When they tried to recall the events from the game, while they could recall everything, though not with all the minor details like textures or backgrounds unless that was the focus of the experience. It felt a bit like recalling a vivid dream where they remember the whole thing but usually can't remember every little thing. The system removes excess information that wasn't the focus of the experience so as not to overload the mental capacity of users.

So they experienced all the events and what they did but it doesn't mentally drain them so they had proper sleep through the night. 

Of course they had an option to review the experience since the pod saves the last session completely for a day before it gets auto erased unless they specifically save the footage externally. This was made to balance out the removal of excess information.

This was a game changer. If this was launched all over the globe, people who wanted to actually live out their lives would be able to do so in game despite working all their waking hours. It was no longer needed to spend so much time to travel or go do their hobbies since they can now do those things in game while their bodies were resting. 

There was no telling how this could affect the world but everyone knew, this was history in the making.

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