- Exam Start

When he awoke, Gus was in an unfamiliar place.

He was in a facility in some desert on some unknown planet. In his hands, he tightly gripped a rifle of some sort. The overall design of the black weapon was standard, but there was a large cylindrical device attached to the right of the rifle, making the entire thing look awkward and clunky. Looking up into the sky, he saw a trio of suns staring back at him, their blazing forms burning their way into his eyes.

Submerged beneath the sand that surrounded him was the building of the facility. Somehow, despite the amount of sand around, the entrance to the facility, which was a small door found a little to Gus's left, was not covered in sand. A little further out from the entrance to the facility stood three freshly planted battlements. In fact, they looked so freshly placed and devoid of the presence of sand, Gus jokingly thought that they were not real.

A voice appeared suddenly in his ear. "Listen up. You've been virtually transported to a recreation of one of our facilities on a planet in the frontier. Pirates who have caught wind of the research that we carry out in the facility are inbound, and there's a lot of them. Your job is to protect the facility until extraction can be completed. Good luck."

'Is this something to do with the system?' Gus immediately thought. He raised a covered hand to his head as he thought, but it was blocked by a helmet covering his head.

"A helmet? I thought that voice just said this was virtual? How can I feel things?"

Gus decided to slowly study his surroundings. There had to be more to this than merely defending his current position against enemies alone. He must have had access to some military grade weapon, or some allies of some kind, otherwise there was no way to feasibly defend this place.

Gus's eyes widened as he realised what was happening. He quickly looked around with purpose, hoping to find what he was looking for.

Spotting a humanoid figure nearby, Gus made his way over to it. He made a mental reminder to thank Claire, once he was finished, for setting his mind down this path.

"Hey!" Gus called out as he approached. The figure's head turned to look in his direction.

"Are you here for the academy?" Gus asked as he got closer.

The figure nodded its head. "Not a clue what's going on, though. I just put on the helmet in that room, saw a few numbers, and then I blacked out and appeared here." Judging from the person's voice, it was a boy who came from somewhere in Ireland.

"I think I've figured it out," Gus said. "It's a simulation, specifically a high tech one, like one of the ones that you get with the Rayine devices."

"Rayine? You mean Rayine Entertainment? What the hell has a military academy got their gear for?"

"I guess they must think it's accurate enough to consistently simulate situations for the students, although I wouldn't be surprised if they were just using this stuff to make money."

Rayine Entertainment was a relatively new company by galactic standards. Founded a little over two decades ago as a joint venture by David Rayand and Harry Inell, two genius graduates from the Venus school of Technology. The company burst onto the galactic market with the invention of the Rayine converter, a small device that fit onto your wrist.

The point of the device was that, with a single command as simple as the touch of a button, a person's entire surroundings could be converted to that of a make belief world. The main draw for the general public, however, was the immense amount of care that had been put into the designs of the safety of the device. Somehow, the device took into account every single atom of reality when designing the conversion of the surroundings, even displaced atoms like those found in moving vehicles. This meant that, as long as the user was alert, their life was not at risk from accidents.

Following on from their success, they innovated on the range of devices used to simulate different locations. It was an arduous task, one that caused numerous delays to the release of the device. At one point, it was widely popular idea on the globanet that the device was never going to release, and that Rayand and Inell were merely buying time before their company went under. But it was no fault of their own. How is one supposed to advance on an immersive technology that already engages all five senses observable to humanity?

It is unknown whether this is the truth or merely a rumour, but apparently the answer lay at the bottom of a bottle of Ralf's Lager, the most popular selling lager brand through the entire home system of Sol. Specifically, dozens of bottles.

The trick was, and it was a notoriously hard trick to master, if the fault rate of the first billion produced were anything to go off, the machine had to pull the user's mind from its body.

In order to feel more immersed, there needed to be technology that would actually immerse the user by submerging them in the experience. Due to the unfamiliar sensations felt by one's consciousness during the process, it was very easy for a user to get confused when they finally arrived in their new, simulated world.

It was this very sensation that resulted in eight of the ten members of the team being reduced to stumbling morons as they clutched at a grasp of understanding.

"Yeah. Not what I expected academy to be like at all," Gus muttered. He extended a hand to the boy he was with and introduced himself.

"Connor," the boy said, reciprocating the gesture.

Slowly, more and more of the team noticed the two people stood together and decided to join them. Eventually, all ten members of the team were grouped up just to the side of the main door. Once they were all here, Gus and Connor explained the idea of what this was to them and, once they had confirmed everyone else heard the voice mentioning the mission and the pirates, decided they needed a plan.

One of the team, a tall, bulky boy named Joel, suggested that any of them with cybernetic abilities test out if those abilities translated into the simulated world as well.

"I heard somewhere that their devices have gotten so good at simulating conditions that they can replicate the unique abilities of an individual now," he said in an attempt to justify his suggestion.

It was not a bad suggestion by any means, and one that Gus was in agreement that they should try. However, the sudden appearance of a large ship overhead indicated that the team was out of time to display any powers or abilities. Noticing an opportunity to take over, two of the team immediately tried suggesting plans that, if agreed to, would automatically put them into a pseudo leader role.

Their entrance test had barely started, and they were already facing an issue that threatened to tear them apart and end their mission early.