Aelius Solaris woke to a headache and the smell of last night's corks. Sunlight slid through the penthouse's polarized glass and mapped the carnage: two bottles on their sides, three upright like survivors, a robe flung half over the couch as if it had tried to crawl away and hadn't made it. Somewhere under a fan of legal envelopes stamped with cheerful corporate insignia, his holowatch pulsed.
He fished it out with bomb-squad care and flicked a finger through the air. The display bloomed to life. Lars's grin filled the air same grin from the "we're about to do something fun" days while Mira leaned in at his shoulder, her eyes sharp but patient in that 'you're a dumbass but we love you anyway' gaze.
"You're drinking before breakfast again," Mira said, voice crisp, narrowing her eyes at the glass in his hand.
"The drink is the breakfast," Aelius said, and took the last sip from the glass.
Mira sighed like she'd budgeted a sigh for this exact moment. "How did this guy survive until now?"
"He would've been dead if not for us," Lars wheezed, already laughing. "Remember when he did forget to eat for three days and just drank that fancy wine? You had to beat some sense into him before he touched a sandwich."
"I did no such thing! This is slander! Insubordination!" Aelius said, but the corner of his mouth tipped up anyway. With these two, it never felt like an employer and subordinate. They'd been a trio long before adulthood, since the cafeteria trades and dare-you-to days, before exams and job titles got in the way.
The watch chimed again. Lars squinted offscreen. "According to the Gaia Online official page there are still 30 minutes before launch. So which village are we meeting at?"
Aelius swiped open the official page of Gaia Online to check.A countdown ticked with steady inevitability: Beta Access: Launching in 29:43… 29:42…
He flicked through all the info again, he'd gone through it hundreds of times already but it wasn't too bad to look again just to be sure. There was little information, limited but cleanly explained, stats, ways to improve them, status panels, and some information about the game, like the ten novice villages you could choose from.
"Village Two," he said, not because of any reason but because number two felt neat. "Let's meet there."
"Copy," Lars said, already itching to run around and test the game.
Mira lingered, a crease carving between her brows. "I still don't like that we still can't find anything on EveCorporation. No registry, no investors, no footprint. If this is a scam-"
"Please." Aelius turned to the window. The city stretched silver and blue below: glass hips, clean angles, a horizon line sharpened by money. Three districts away, SolarCorporation's logo burned on a tower like a lighthouse for ships that no longer answered to him. He let himself look at it for one heartbeat too long for comfort before snapping his attention back to the duo with a teasing smile "You two signed up before I told you, didn't you? Don't pretend you're not itching to find out if '100% immersion rate' is real." He smiled, knowingly.
Lars laughed loudly while Mira adjusted her glasses, looking away pretending to check on something important.
"So obvious" Aelius muttered, rolling his eyes at their obvious act, "See you inside the game then," Aelius said, and cut the call before Mira could talk him into oatmeal or nagging him to eat something.
He crossed the living room barefoot, the floor cool underfoot, the white robe belted in a lazy knot, and paused at the neural link. The pod's shell sighed open, silver-white and perfectly engineered, like a designer's idea of a womb. He glanced at the official page one last time, reviewing the bullet-points he could now recite in his sleep.
He slid into the pod and the lid closed with a hush.
Somewhere, the countdown hit zero.
The world turned black.
Aelius hung in a star-flecked void, weightless as a thought as the message arrived in front of his eyes.
[Welcome, Otherworlder for Gaia Online: Beta Access]
[Please choose a Novice Village.]
Numbers unfolded like constellations. He touched 2 without much thought.
[Avatar Initialization in progress.]
[Scanning Body: Complete]
[Scanning Mind: Complete]
[Scanning Soul: Complete]
[Otherworlder Perks: Activated]
[Talent Awakening]
[Congratulations. Talent "Sword Maiden" has awakened.]
[The Will of the World acknowledges your existence.]
A series of messages paraded past his eyes.
He stared at the words one by one, even getting excited that his talent was related to swords, after all, according to Gaia Online a Talent would be his most powerful ability, and no man out there hasn't dreamed about wielding swords and soaring into the sky. That's it until he read the whole name and froze. "…I beg your pardon? Maiden?"
The void rippled. A reflection surfaced; full-length, merciless. A woman stepped out of him like the mirror had turned inside out. Tall, voluptuous. Blonde hair falling to the waist. Sapphire eyes like stolen sky. A face that looked forged by a team of jealous gods, no doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
"What the f-" His hand flew to his cheek; the reflection did the same, perfectly mirroring his disbelief. "What is this?! Are those messages earlier just for show!! You can't even scan my gender right! Where's the reset button! I want to make a new character!" he screamed into the void.
Of course he knew that each person can only have one avatar, but fury decided not to read the fine print.
[Avatar Creation complete. Commencing Descent. Please hold still for a smoother descent]
"Wait!"
Light fractured. The void fell out beneath him, and he plummeted like lightning until he landed head-first into a puddle, went under in cold shock, and surfaced coughing mud and grass, actual mud, actual grass; green and grit and the rumored memory of frogs. The sun warmed his scalp. Breeze skimmed the wet robe and raised a parade of goosebumps.
"Guh, damn," He spat mud, gearing up to curse out devs and deities or whoever for flipping his gender and deciding his first in-game sensation to be mud, then he stopped.
'Wait' He realized that he could actually feel everything around him: how the mud clung onto his tongue, the sunlight, the morning breeze, how every hair on his body reacted to the dampness on his skin. "It wasn't a scam?" he muttered in disbelief, the claim of "100% immersion" stopped being a line and became the reality.
All around him, other white-robed figures descended, standing upright and landing on an open field with serene dignity he had not achieved.
"Holy shit, earth tastes so real!" someone yelled as they immediately started tasting dirt after arriving, then gagged, then kept chewing in betrayal of their own taste buds.
"Slap me, bro, make sure I'm not dreaming! This is actually not a scam?"
"Sure" Smack.
"Ow! Are your hands made of stone? Why did you slap me so hard?"
"That's my talent. It's called Wakey Wakey."
"Bro why are you touching me?!"
"I'm performing the sensory test!"
"Perform your mother!"
Aelius flushed water from his ear and tried very hard not to grin like an idiot as he took in everything around him, he hadn't felt this excited in ages.
A panel suddenly slipped into existence before him.
The others also paused what they were doing and went quiet too, apparently getting the same message.
[Welcome to Gaia]
[Tutorial Quest added to your status panel.]
Aelius opened it without a second thought.
Name: Aelius Solaris
Title: Otherworlder
Race: Human
Tier: Early Stage Common Creature
Body: F-
Mind: E
Soul: F-
Talent: Sword Maiden
Path: None
Equipment: None
Bloodline: None
Quest: Make your way to Novice Village.
After checking every section carefully, he closed the panel, planning on looking for Lars and Mira as he glanced around.
Then he noticed his reflection on the puddle, the only one in an otherwise clean field, the one he'd worn like a hat. The robe clung everywhere it could cling; water glued fabric to his curves in a way that was less family-friendly. Still, he couldn't help but appreciate how beautiful his avatar was, and so, as any man would do in this situation: he looked down and sure enough he couldn't see his toes! Before he could marvel any longer, a sudden loud shout broke him out of his thoughts.
"Aely! Where are you! Come towards the voice wherever you are!" Lars's voice boomed across the open field.
A short, silver-haired woman strode beside him, Mira, lenses gone but somehow she wasn't squinting as usual, seeing just fine, her gaze was sharp. Both of them looked… tuned, somehow. Not glamorous or suddenly super-model perfect, just smoothed a little: Lars's posture a degree straighter, the worn edges on his face smoothed; Mira's skin clearer, expression brighter.
Aelius slogged towards them, robe dripping a trail. "Your voice is still as loud as ever, Lars. And how many times do I have to say it? Stop calling me Aely; it's too girly."
Mira stepped half in front of the big man without thinking, automatic as breathing. "Do you know my husband, miss?" Her tone was calm, and friendly, a bit too friendly, a tone Aelius had never heard before.
"It's me, Mira," Aelius said. "Aelius."
Lars and Mira looked at each other, eyes communicating as they concluded this girl might not be right in the head. They stared back at Aelius in synchronized skepticism that said 'Yeah, and I'm the creator of Gaia Online.' Mira's mouth did the skeptical tilt. Lars looked away after a beat, trying not to stare at the obvious.
"It's really me! Lars, come on, bro, you know me!" Aelius said, rubbing his forehead before looking at Lars with a hopeful tone.
Silence.
Mira blinked once, twice, then a smile blossomed soft and outright, the rare, sharp-edged grin. "Oh? Is that so? Husband, do you know this beauty?" she said, turning to look at Lars.
"THIS IS A SETUP I DON'T KNOW THIS GIRL!" Lars, eyes going wide, shouted quickly, but it was too late for his accusing finger to help.
"M-Mira, listen to me," Lars stammered quickly as he tried to explain, wilting under his wife's gaze.
Seeing this scene, Aelius's mouth twitched as temper, unhelpful and familiar, rose. "Motherfuckers! Keep playing and I'm cutting your wages in half for the next six months!!"
Silence again.
"Oh, it really was our Aely," Mira blinked as she stared at him with a wide mouth. "No one else would say it exactly like that."
Lars stared a second longer, then broke into laughter. "Hah! Mira, look, he became a girl!"
Twist
Mira's knuckles found his waist. He coughed, reorganized his face, and clapped Aelius's shoulder with brotherly awkwardness. "I mean ma'am cough dude. You look… uh, not losing even to Roxana Soprano herself" he said with a thumbs up.
"Call me ma'am again and you will regret it," Aelius said, as dark lines seemed to ink across his forehead.
Mira and Lars weren't the only ones staring. Whispered commentary eddied around them as more players finished checking their status panels and quests and started focusing on their surroundings.
"Whoa, who is she? She's hot. Hotter than Roxana Soprano, I swear."
"No way, Roxana is still number one in my heart!"
"Is she an NPC? No, look at her clothes, she's one of us. How come we have never seen her before? With her looks, she should be famous all over the world."
"Don't gawk, bro, or you will get reported."
"By who?"
"Me."
"Ptui. Damn white knight."
Noticing the stares, Aelius didn't feel anything. He was used to attention already from press conferences his relatives forced him to appear at, once in a while to act out his part as an heir.
But Mira frowned, already moving.
"Lars, your robe."
"Huh?"
She tugged Lars's robe off, leaving him in his underwear, and draped it over Aelius's soaked one, doubling the layer.
"Uh?" The act caused Aelius to blink at her in confusion.
"Your avatar is that of a woman, so don't be so unbothered to be in that state in public. You might not feel embarrassed, but as a woman and as your friend I do on your behalf" She said, efficient and protective like a mother.
"Honey, what about me?" Lars chimed in with only his underwear on.
Ignored.
Scratching his head awkwardly, Lars looked around, noticing that people, after getting their share of marveling at this eye candy, moved towards the village on the distant horizon, shimmering with weird light. After all, beauty is temporary; quests are eternal.
"Should we move too? According to the distance it will take us till noon until we arrive" Lars suggested.
"Mm." Mira nodded. "Let's walk and share Talents and anything useful we've learned." Her hand rose to adjust glasses that weren't there, a habit.