Skylair Online

Episode 2

The day passed quickly, helped along by the occasional nap Leo managed to take when a teacher was preoccupied. At lunchtime he went along to the chess club that ran once a week. It wasn’t exactly a club, it was just him and a girl in the year below named Lidia but she was actually getting pretty good and he enjoyed their games.

“How has your day been?” she asked as they set up the pieces.

She spoke with a small stutter. When they had first met it had been really bad and it took her ages to say anything but as the year had gone on she only stuttered on the occasional word, at least when it was just the two of them.

“Fine I guess, to be honest I slept through most of it and daydreamed through the rest.”

“Were you up playing all night again?”

There was no judgement in her voice, but it was hard to tell. Leo thought that it could be concern but she spoke so quietly and monotonously.

“Yeah, I got to 1989 elo, but then as I got tired I started losing and ended up back at 1926 again. I just can’t seem to get into the 2000s.”

“I am sure you will get there.”

“Thanks Lidia.”

They played in silence for a bit, Leo pushing his pieces about largely out of instinct more than thought. He was far too tired to give it everything he had.

“Check, and I think, that’s mate in three,” she said, moving her bishop across the board triumphantly.

Leo blinked and looked down at the board, not believing what he was seeing. He ran through all the possible moves but there it was, he lost in three moves no matter what he did.

“You must be very tired indeed,” she said, but her tiny features were glowing with pride at her first victory.

Leo laughed, “No, you did well, I didn’t see that coming at all.”

The bell rang for the next lesson to start and they packed up the board.

“See you next week,” Lidia said and hurried off to her next class.

Two lessons later and Leo was outside the school gates with Ben at his side.

“So, tonight, Skylair right?” Ben asked.

“I’m pretty tired but yeah, I’ll play one game with you.”

“Alright,” Ben said gleefully and got on his bike, “See you.”

Leo waved goodbye and went to pick up Diana.

She was waiting for him outside her school gate with her group of friends.

“Diana!” Leo called.

She turned, saw him and said goodbye to her friends.

They walked home in silence, Diana glued to her phone.

When they got home, Diana grabbed a cookie from a jar on the kitchen counter and headed straight to her room. Leo trudged straight up the stairs and collapsed on his bed.

He shuffled round and opened up his bag while still hanging off his bed, pulling out the headset and the 30 centimetre wide, black box that it plugged into. He quickly set it up and connected it to the internet.

He gingerly put the headset on and lay back on his bed. His vision flashed blue then white and he found himself floating in a void, the world ‘loading’ floating in front of him then a room rendered itself around him.

The room was filled with shelves and on each shelf there floated a selection of game titles.

He went to pick one up but his hand passed through it and he hit his real life hand on the wall beside him.

“Ow!” he said and pulled the headset off, looking at his painful but not really injured finger, “This is going to take some getting used to.”

He put the headset back on and went back to the library room, trying really hard not to move his actual body when he was walking about. It seemed like whatever he tried to do, his virtual body would do just a little bit more, resulting in him hitting into bookshelves and having to wave his hand about before it actually interacted with what he was trying to touch.

Most of the games seemed to be dating sims and rpgs and he didn’t feel like he would be playing any of them any time soon. However, he turned another corner and found himself looking at a topless and very well built man standing behind a counter and lots of featured games on the shelves behind him.

“Hey beautiful, can I interest you in some new games today?” the man said, smiling and winking at him.

Leo cringed a bit and walked over to him, on the desk in front of the man was a button that looked like a gear. Waving his hand near it a couple of times opened a menu and after another couple of attempts he was able to press the ‘calibrate headgear’ button.

The calibration involved him touching some red balls floating about and walking down a straight line then he was back in the library.

“Hey beautiful,” the man said again, “Can I interest you in some new games today?”

Leo looked down the settings list and found one that said ‘Shop Avatar’ and pressed it. He didn’t trust any of the custom options Ben’s sister had downloaded so he hit default and the man was replaced by a robot figure with a blocky shape and black and white panels covering it.

“Good afternoon sir,” the robot said after it rendered, “How can I help you today?”

Leo looked about for a menu or search bar on the counter, then decided to just tell the robot he was after Skylair Online.

“Is this what you mean?” the robot asked him and a box showing Skylair online floated between them.

“Yes.”

“That will be free, would you like to complete your purchase?”

“Yes…”

“Skylair online has been added to your library, would you like to download it now?”

“Yes.”

“Estimated download time, two hours and thirty eight minutes.”

Leo sighed and pulled off the headset.

If he was going to have to wait that long for the game he might as well get some sleep. He reached over and set his alarm clock for three hours’ time and went to sleep.