GLOBAL REACTION - FIRST HOUR - 9:00 AM TO 10:00 AM
Manila, Philippines - Maria Santos's Apartment
Maria Santos, fourteen years old and currently supposed to be in school but playing sick to watch the Starr Technologies announcement, sat on her bed with her laptop open and her Starr VR headset sitting beside her like a precious artifact, purchased some weeks ago with money she'd saved from a year of doing odd jobs and skipping meals, and she could barely contain her excitement as the announcement concluded.
Ten credits per month. Ten credits. She'd been terrified they'd announce some astronomical price that would make her headset worthless because she couldn't afford the subscription, but ten credits was nothing, was coffee money, was something she could earn in less than an hour of tutoring younger kids in mathematics.
