Prologue: And thus it began...
The arrival of the Oculus Rift and it's popularity was only the start of a worldwide gaming revolution, Sight, hearing, touch, smell, and even taste blended together in a virtual gift to the users, the sensations and signals given to the brain even permitting the blind to see, the crippled to walk, the deaf to hear and, of course, the mute to talk in no less than one hundred and eighty languages and dialects as a powerful translator was created on the Virtual Age, as it is now called, twentieth anniversary. This was a revolution, this was the start of multiple new lives for the hopeless.
One could be anyone they wished, from a mere beggar to a god, passing through a dragon slaying hero to a clever politician. All was now possible, and as technology advanced the cost for such miracles became affordable to all, no longer the fancy of the elite but the playing ground of humanity.
Not only games were made for such things as virtual realities, as, indeed, conferences, experiments and, now, even a school for the socially remote was created by a Japanese corporation: Kurozawa Industries. That school, named Hikikomori Virtual Academy, was open to all Japanese speaking individuals from fifteen years of age to eighty, and was set in the greatest and most extensive virtual reality server ever created.
Suddenly there was advertisements of such a marvel everywhere on the net, you only needed internet, a Virtual Helmet and a registered handle to enrol, and could then learn anything from the most basic to the most advanced of subjects! As such, tonight, on the fifth of February, when midnight fell upon Tokyo, the Academy opened it's virtual doors to all. Set as a night school to permit a restful sleep of the body while one learned, this was ideal for a healthy life, as was the goal of the programmers of the Academy, called HVA for short.
Clocks ticked all over the world, and as soft or not so soft alarms sounded, in unison, countless desperate souls put on their new helmets and got ready for the last chance they would give themselves... the chance to learn... the chance to live.
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As the lights got out, the world shifted, and each found themselves alone in a bare room of pure white, a strange sensation filling their beings and they were scanned, an exact copy of themselves created pixel by pixel before them, smiling softly. When the process was completed, the double started to talk, it's voice mechanical and gender-less... entirely neutral save for a certain warmth permeating it's monotone.
”Welcome to Hikikomori Virtual Academy, Future Student. Tonight will be used to create your Academy Persona, to give you an orientation of our services and your new responsibilities, as well as to test you in the three areas that, we believe, are the fundamentals of Humanity: Physical, Mental and Social. When you are ready, merely state so by pronouncing “Start” clearly, and the Persona Creation Process will commence with myself as the model.”
As it finished speaking, the hologram smiled blandly and grew still like a statue, time slowing down to a crawl as the outside world finished to disappear from each new student's senses.