Chapter one.

I woke early.

4:20

Way too early.

I looked around but dog wasn't in my room. Mom must've taken him while I was asleep.

*sigh*

I closed my eyes trying to force myself back to sleep but after a few minutes I gave up. And decided to go online.

The thing about neuro-syncing is that you have to be upright and when you do it you kinda fall asleep, your physical senses are limited to about ten percent and the feed goes directly to your brain. So everything else kinda goes dim. Hence 'sleep'.

I kicked off the covers and prodded to my desk grabbing the neuro-link I place it around my neck bringing the ends together so it snapped shut.

I sat and soon it powered on and the retina display came up.

Updating neuro-link please wait...

"The hell?" I stated mostly to myself.

"An update at four in the morning? Strange..."

After a minute the word welcome imprinted itself on my retina display. The word seem to float there in the air not fading like it's supposed to.

Is it still loading?

I tried the wave gesture and... Nothing.

Nothing happened. The blue lettered welcome just float here. Then suddenly without warning I felt my consciousness dull and the welcome disapear.

Finally!

Then all too suddenly a falling sensation and the words;

Are you ready?

The decent came to a quick halt.

My world was completely changed.

I smiled.

The message indicator displayed three messages.

"Open them." I stated.

First message : 'hey man have you heard the rumors?

I heard Gia was releasing something new

but the nvn's health department halted its release

But guess what? I heard the beta version's on the net

Must be a leak or something. ~ strong steel

"Next."

Second message : yo we have a meet up and it's in your

neighbor-hood so I figured you could come?

~ clover x heart

"Why is she so interested in me?" I thought.

"Next."

Third message : Meet me at the concert tomorrow. Blue indicator.

~ 001

"Who is that?" I tried accessing user info but couldn't.

<User not online>

"Huh?" "No not that! Override standard security protocols."

<error code x3224 revert>

"Well I guess I can't meet you if I don't know who you are," I stated to myself. Closing the notifications panel.

The park square was bustling with other peoples avatars despite the time.

It had a certain surreal feeling to it and even though it was night both in nvn and the outside it still gave the feeling of being completely busy almost like the freeway except there are people instead of cars.

"Didn't expect to see you online this early," someone stated. I turned to see an avatar model I've never seen before.

"You are?"

"Oh sorry," the person stated."I'm 001."

"I don't know you."

"That's a bit rude don't you think?" She asked pouting.

"N-no, what I meant is that you aren't on my friends list."

" Really? Check again." She stated.

Reluctantly I brought up setting and opened the friends list and there at the top of the list, 001.

"Weird."

"What is?" She asked.

"Your username wasn't there a while ago."

"No, what's weird is the fact that you don't remember me." She stated.

(Who is this chick?)

"How about we go to my home space?"

Suddenly we were standing on a warp point. The ring marking on the floor expanded and disappeared.

And our location changed.

I looked up.

Crap.

"Where are we?"

"Switzerland, since we're using their server," she smiled. "Take a seat."

As the words were said data reconstruct created chairs and a coffee table, despite it being illegal to use data reconstruct with out a contractor the sheer impossibility of what she did and how simply she did it, blew my mind off its hinges. Not that I'd tell her.

What I could tell her though is

"Is that supposed to be humor?"

I hinted at the coffee table.

She smiled a little, "I have my reasons for that, so aren't you curious as to why I brought you here?"

She sat and I followed her lead. It felt surprisingly textured for something weaved into existence with data.

It was soft and even smelled like aged leather.

"A little."

"Well, I've created this," she held out her palm "and I want you to install it on your neuro-link."

In her hand floated piece of fragmented data.

It floated in the palm like weightless paper.

"I call it -material high-." She stated with a contented smile.