Avery bust through the door carrying a box, grinning from ear to ear, which was a far cry from her attitude towards boxes the past few days. She was still in the process of unpacking, mostly because she had been busy… with things. Things that weren’t unpacking. As such her things were mostly inaccessible unless she actually wanted to put in some effort, which she didn’t at the moment. The end of school year performances had taken quite a toll on her. She was almost glad they were all done and she had a week off.

“Drop whatever you’re doing!” She called into the house, dropping her keys off in a bowl beside the front door as she kicked it closed with her foot. “I’ve got distractions!” And boy were they exciting distractions. She knew Rick had been ogling over these ever since the announcement was made when they were in junior year. Linked In. The new gaming system that was supposed to change everything. Gone would be the controllers, the consoles, the disks. The TV screens. Now everything was streamlined straight to your brain. And Avery had to admit she was a bit more than excited herself.

No doubt Rick would be surprised. These things didn’t even go on sale until next week, but apparently her father had performed surgery on the kid of one of the big wigs at the company that makes them and they’d just given these to him! She certainly wasn’t complaining. “Rick!” Avery called again as she stopped in the living room and put the box down on the table. The instructions suggested playing lying down on a bed, but she figured here was the best place to reveal her big surprise was right here. Hopefully he wasn’t too mad about her bringing home another box to clutter up the small home and avoiding doing what she was supposed to in favour of video games.

It was still so strange to think that they were actually living together. They had talked about it so much growing up, but when she’d applied for NYADA she had thought it would mean they would finally part ways after all these years. The girl was still upset that her application hadn't been accepted. NYADA was the school to go to if you wanted to get into the performing arts. And she couldn’t think of doing anything else for a living. But, for now, spending the next few years here with Rick studying the arts sounded like a pretty good deal.

He had been unpacking his oil paints onto his drawers. The college classes wouldn't start for another week, but he was excited to get started with his art classes. He still couldn't believe Avery agreed to stay with him. They weren't "living together" not like a couple. More like just house mates. They each had their own bedroom. Of course, Rick gave Avery the master bedroom. But it wasn't that much bigger than his own room. Besides he planned on spending must of his free time in the living room in front of the TV with his Xbox. Or in the backyard drawing. There were some nice trees back there he wanted to draw.

Rick smiled when he heard Avery call out and went into the living room. She was always fun and always knew how to raise his spirits. "What's going on? What are you doing?"

He looked at her and didn't even see what she placed on the table.

The girl smiled mischievously and moved to stand in front of the box, it was just a regular box anyway, holding the two gaming headsets inside. Clasping her hands behind her back Avery rocked back and forth on her feet. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands.” She told him, trying to keep a straight face, trying and failing, her smile slipping through every now and then. Waiting patiently for the boy to comply she eyed him suspiciously. “No peeking.” She made sure as she turned and reached into the box, pulling out one of the headsets and moving over to him, placing the box carefully in Rick’s hands.

Avery was not sharing if he broke his before he opened it. Well… she told herself that. But she’d totally share with him. “This, is to make up for me being grumpy and lazy and not here the past few days. I hope you like it.” Making sure he had a firm hold on the box she stepped away slightly and was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet as she clapped her hands together excitedly. “Okay, open them!” She chirped, her voice squeaking slightly as it did when she got too excited.

"What do you have?" Rick closed his eyes with a smile. He almost put his palms forward and not up, as if he were reaching for Avery's chest. But he didn't think she would find it as funny as he would.

So, he waited with his palms up. "I'm not peeking...honest."

He held the box in his hands but his forehead winkled up in confusion.

He opened his eyes and whooped as he saw the Link In box in his hands. "What? .. how? ... these don't go on sell for a week. How did you get them?" He quickly knelt by the table to began to excitedly open the box. "Did you open yours already? Oh, this is so cool!"

@midna-phobia

(Sorry had to walk my dog)

Avery smiled contently as he opened the box, like a kid at Christmas. “I have connections.” She told him cryptically. “I haven’t opened mine yet, I wanted you to open yours first.” However as she said this she moved over to the box and pulled out the other unit and began carefully un-boxing it, a lot less enthusiastically than Rick was. Pulling the head unit out of the box she looked at it, carefully turning the device in her hands. It certainly had a sleek and appealing design, kind of like a futuristic Cyclops visor type deal.

Placing it gently on the table Avery pulled out the instructions and began reading it over casually, safety warnings, directions, how to set it up. The usual type deal. “Okay, so they haven’t released this to the public yet,” she eventually said, leaving a pause for effect. Everyone had been wondering what types of games they’d release on the console. So far apparently they only had one official game, but a few more in development. “But I did get a copy of the first game too.” She held up a case with, of all things, minecraft on the front.

Minecraft had been one of Avery’s favourite games to play at least, it was calm and peaceful and she liked the non-competitive and creative nature of it. They did say on the front of the box that some aspects had been changed for the Link-In console and she was excited to see what new features waited ahead.

"You waited for me? You're so nice, Avery. You're a great friend."

Looking over the photos and the quick setup Rick put the headset on. It fit over his eyes. He could see through the visor, like looking through dark sunglasses. "And this is how you must turn it on." He pressed the power button over his right ear. "Hey! Is this working? He turns his head in all directions. "Everything .. I mean everything is pitch black. He waves his hands before his own face. "I can't even see my hands. It's like I'm standing in a huge empty dark warehouse." He tried to pull it off of his head without turning off the power button. "I can't get this thing off. What's happening?" There's a slight panic creeping into his voice.

@Midna-Phobia

Avery was still reading through the instructions when she heard Rick.

"And this is how you must turn it on."

The girl looked up in alarm and was about to shout out a warning when he suddenly went limp and fell to the floor. She waited a few moments before pressing the log out/ off button and taking the headset off his face. "Are you crazy!" The girl snapped as she held the head gear away from him. "Don't you remember the ads for this thing? It literally cuts off your mind from your body and puts it in a virtual world. But it needs to be hooked up to a game server to operate. Otherwise all you're gonna see is black."

She rolled her eyes slightly and eventually handed it back to him hesitantly. “Come on, we’ll take it to your room and I’ll log you in okay? You got the internet and your computer set up didn’t you?” She asked as she took his box and head set and made her way towards his room. Admittedly her bed and her gaming laptop were the only things Avery had gotten around to setting up in her room. Mostly because she was playing games at night to wind down after some slightly stressful performances.

"Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Did you hear me talking while I had the headset turned on? I couldn't hear anything, just myself. But I couldn't hear you at all. Pretty awesome, isn't it?" He smiled at Avery.

"Of course, I have my internet and computer ready. If you forget the Wifi password, it's taped to the router. Let's het this bad boy going." His computer was already booted, he just had to unlock it and it was ready to go. "Let's load the game." He jumped on the bed and watched Avery load the game. He loved to watch her. She was so cute.

@Midna-Phobia

The girl shook her head slightly when he asked if she’d heard him. “You kinda just went limp and fell over. You’re lucky you didn’t hit your head.” Avery told him sternly. He could have gotten seriously hurt, great start for the product launch if some early releases put some kid in hospital. She pulled out the manual again and quickly loaded the game in; it took a few minutes to load so she took the time to get Rick ready for the in game experience. “I’m gonna give you the headset back and we’re gonna run a calibration okay?” She told him.

Plugging the device into the computer she launched the software and sent it into calibration mode, which was basically a lot of physical prompts so that it could accurately interpret the mental signals to physical actions in game. He could still hear and see her and he was still conscious as messages began appearing on the screen like ‘touch each finger to your thumb’, ‘raise left leg’, ‘raise right arm’, ‘count to ten’, etc. “Okay, I’m gonna leave you to get comfortable and finish the calibration on your own. When you’re down lie down and the game will ask if you want to launch it when it’s done installing, just use your hand to click yes and you should be sent into the game no problem.”

Standing Avery made her way out of his room and back to the living room where she collected her own system and moved back to her room where she began setting up her own system, softly singing a song as she did so. At this rate he should be in there by now and maybe get about ten minutes of game play or so before she got in. If she got in game and he wasn’t online Avery was going to assume Rick messed something up somehow and needed her help.

Rick ran through the calibration well enough. She said to get comfortable so he pulled his shirt off once Avery left the room. Rick had just barley logged on before Avery logged on. he smiled, as a computer avatar, when Avery "popped in". Rick was speaking a little too loudly.
"This is awesome." He stood in the game and turned a 360, just looking at every thing.

"Now you can hear me, right? I had a little trouble getting it. Did you notice most of the settings were just like starting a new game and world on the computer version of Minecraft. There was something new. Did you see the 'Damage = Pain' setting? I never heard of it, so I turned it on. I don't know what it does yet."

@Garth
The first thing she noticed was that the avatars were a lot… more organic looking compared to the original minecraft. They were rounder and looked more like people, probably to make the interface easier and more compatible with humans. After mucking around with the settings a little to make her avatar look more like her. Spawning in the world the first thing she noticed was that it looked like they had applied a shader patch to it, which she approved of. It felt a lot more organic, even if everything was oddly square.

Gonna take a while to get used to that, but she was glad they kept it. It wouldn’t have felt like minecraft without it. Avery winced as Rick suddenly spoke very loudly at her. “Yeah, I can hear you now. Too well. You’ll need to recalibrate your volume before you log in next time.” She said gently, still taking in the world around her, so pure and untouched. It was hard to think this was really… real. In a sense. When Rick told her he’d turned on the sensation settings Avery’s eyebrow arched and she turned to look at him with a smirk, walking up to the boy and hitting him, doing a quarter of a heart of damage. “Figure out what it does now?” She asked cheekily.

"Ouch! It gave me a little shock. I never heard about that in any of the news about Link-In. Is it new or is it just in the early release?" Then Rick smiled broadly. "You look like you now. Wait..wait. Let me make me look like myself." He played with the settings. He made himself look like himself. But he was vain enough to make himself with just a tad more muscles. He flexed at Avery, "Check it out, my muscles really flex. Want to play on creative at first?"

Playing with the settings a little more he said, "Damnit. I can't turn off the pain thingy. Maybe I need to log out to do it. Oh well, I'll do it later."

He reached out to Avery's hand. He could actually feel her hand in his. It felt warm in his hand. He looked at her hand with his mouth open. "This is so real. Don't move." He gently caressed her arm. "Can you feel that? I can."

Smiling at her, he said, "Let's go exploring. Then we'll build something. Okay?"

“Early release.” Avery replied casually. “Do you really think they’re gonna allow a game aimed at kids to shock people when they get hurt? I wouldn’t be surprised if they release a patch later that disables it. I mean I know they sell those shock games at hobby stores… but I think it’s different.” She sat down and watched as he played around with the settings, shrugging slightly at being unable to turn off the sensory setting. “Might just be a bug. Pretty sure you can report it when you go to log out.”

When the boy was done fixing his settings she stood as he reached out and touched her hand. It was so strange; it felt exactly like it would if he touched her in real life. How bizarre. The technology was certainly impressive. “So cool.” Avery agreed when he began touching her arm. It was strange, anyone else and she’d probably hit him. But she’d know Rick so long and trusted him so deeply she hardly had a second thought about it. She nodded excitedly at the suggestion of exploring. “We should probably leave some kind of parker around here to show us where the spawn point is…” She began absently but Rick was already off and she took off to catch up to him.
@Garth

"It makes sense about the early release. Maybe you got us an enhanced version of the game. You know one that's not normally sold?" He shrugged.

Rick stopped and looked over his shoulder waiting for Avery. he reached back and took her hand again. He was more bolder and more forward here about holding her hand then ever in 'real life'. He wasn't sure why. But he has longed for so long to walk hand in hand with her. He has rarely held her hand. He did more when she had her broken leg. But that was a long time ago. He liked it now, even if it was in the computer game and not for real.

He led her up a hill. It was a hill but with the block construction, it was like climbing stairs. Up a high stair case. he stopped for a minute. "It's much easier to do this sitting in a living room and watching my guy climb on TV. Are you doing okay? We are almost at the top."

“Limited edition! Now with real pain!” Avery joked back as she caught up to the boy and he took her hand and began leading her up one of the hills. “It’s certainly a different experience, having to walk around for yourself.” Avery agreed. “But I like that you don’t feel tired of fatigued or out of breath. Guess they chose to leave it out or maybe it was just too hard to simulate getting tired. Too bad this doesn’t count as exercise. They would have just solved the obesity problem.” She laughed. However suddenly the girl pulled away from him, darting forward as she began running.

“Race you to the top!” Avery called back over her shoulder. Now, as an observer someone might think that was unfair. However since Rick was on the field team Avery never took him on in a fair race. He simply knew how to run better than her. He had tried to explain it once, that there are better ways to run than others, but she never really got it. Plus his legs were longer than hers. Literally when they walked side by side one of his strides was two of hers. Here, without the fatigue she might actually have a shot at winning for real.

Sometimes he let her win and tried to pretend he hadn't done it on purpose, but she knew him way to well. She could always tell when he was lying, though the sentiment was not lost.

"Hey hey! That's cheating." He ran after Avery. Of course, in the game they now ran at the same speed. She had a good head start on him, so he couldn't catch up. He tried jumping twice, hoping to 'fly'. However, that most not be a feature in this version of the game. Rick just laughed as he chased her up the hill. He pumped his arms, and lefted his legs high, like he does running uphill in the real world.

In the real world, he was able to beat her in running races. But she usually beat in him swimming contents. he was much more graceful in the water than he ever good. We was tempted to join the swim team once. But he knew he would do much better on the track team than the swim team.

He was surprised to find he wasn't breathing hard at all as he chased after Avery. She was already at the top of the hill and doing her little victory dance... Rick smiled as he stopped next to her, but this was the first time he lost to her, 'for real'.

Avery was pretty happy with herself, even if she had cheated. Looking around the scenery from the top of the hill Avery took in the environment, judging if it was a good world seed or not. They had come from a fairly large plain to the south; she was struggling to make out where it ended and what lay beyond. Over the hill it led to a mountainous biome to the north that had a river running through it that could potentially lead to an ocean. There was a large forest to the east and hills and what looked like a ravine to the west.

“Looks like a fairly good area.” She said eventually, turning back to the plain they’d come from. “I wonder if there are villages and stuff… do you think we should try and set up a shelter or anything?” She had a quick glance at the hot bar. The food bar was there, still full for the moment. But she couldn’t see any animals for them to… oh god she was actually going to have to kill things… it was going to be a lot harder than on the computer. Wheat and a farm was first on her list.

"It's beautiful up here. It's still boxes but you don't notice the edges off in the distance. I know you always like to build a farm first. Let's get some wood and build a cabin. And a couple of beds." Rick pointed a he spoke. "Let's build the cabin on the edge of the plain. We should be able farm there and we might find some animals."

Rick laughed as out of the air he pulled an axe. "Lookie, iron axe in my inventory. That'll help with the wood."

"I was hoping we would see a village from the hilltop. Maybe we'll find one as we cut wood." He hoped that cutting wood was like running here, you do it without getting tired.

"Shall we?" He held the axe in his left hand and offered his right to Avery, hoping she would take it.

Avery simply looked at the boy suspiciously as he pulled out an iron axe. “Where did you get that?” She instantly accused. “You better not be cheating.” However she smiled eventually and rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Look, you’ve got the axe, so you go get started on a shelter and some equipment and supplies. I’m going to get some stone and maybe some coal so that we have light when night comes to keep the mobs away.” It would be a good day or two until they were ready to take on mobs at night, right now getting set up defensively was her main priority.

Avery still wasn’t sure how death worked in this game, but she wasn’t overly eager to find out. And with Rick’s pain sensor bugging out she wasn’t willing to risk it. “I’ll be back before dark.” She said hurriedly as she took off towards the nearby mountains. They weren’t too far, so she should be able get there, get the stone and get back before it got too dark. However she only got a sort way before stopping and turning back to look at the boy. “Any… try not to get into too much trouble okay?” Rick had always been a bit more of a risk taker than she had.

"I'm not cheating. It was in my inventory. Don't you have one too?" Rick shrug.

"Whaaaat? You be careful. Scream if you need help." Rick laughed as he called back. He jogged over to the woods and began chopping the wood.

Harvesting wood was always boring. It was sort of odd swinging the axe many times and not getting tired. After some time he had enough wood to make their basic house. It was nothing fancy yet. But it was on the edge of the hill and forest.

Just as he finished the basic block house, Rick saw it. It was a cow. I fat beautiful cow. He walked slowly and quietly towards the cow. Then once he was close enough.... He jumped and attacked it with an axe. *wham* *wham* the cow disappeared and two steaks were laying on the ground. "Ha! That was easy." He picked up the meat and returned to the house. He needed to add a roof now.