The remaining days before Fate’s launch passed in the blink of an eye and Eric soon found himself staring at his ceiling as he slowly blinked his eyes awake on the morning of Fate’s launch.

With a yawn, he hauled himself out of bed and quickly went through his morning routine. After he’d dressed and had breakfast, he set to work doing all the chores that were expected of him today. Mowing the lawn, loading and running the dishwasher, setting out food for the cat, anything that needed to be done was done. Finally satisfied, Eric collapsed back into bed, setting an alarm that would go off one hour before the official launch.

As the familiar ringing sound rang in his ears, Eric was pulled back into a state of wakefulness for the second time that day. Sighing regretfully at the nice dream he’d been having that had been ruthlessly cut short by the sound of the alarm, he reached over and pulled on the Fate VirtuNet helmet. As he flicked it on, he absentmindedly thought to himself that he should really come up with a better name for it. The VirtuHelm perhaps? The FateGear? He’d think of something.

As he materialized inside the scenic room, he collapsed into a comfortable leather couch he’d installed the day before after Eleanor questioned why he always stood in front of the window. After a brief chat, he’d discovered that he could redecorate the room as he desired. The result of which being that there were a few new additions to the room, the most obvious of which was the enormous couch he now lay upon and had designated his new spawn point, discarding the simple bed that had served as the default loading point.

Speaking of Eleanor, today she was standing in front of the window watching the ocean which had taken on a greyish hue. A storm was coming, he surmised, once again finding himself surprised at just how detailed the VirtuNet game lobby was. Clearing his throat to gain her attention, he addressed Eleanor.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask if there were any more hidden features of the connector? Like being able to customize the room and other stuff like that.”

“Of course! An obvious thing is that I’ve noticed you never use a voice command to start the connection. You always activate it manually. If you just say ‘Gear, Connect!’ the system will turn on automatically,” Eleanor responded cheerfully, turning away from the scene at the window where the surf was beginning to smash forcefully against the rocks.

Eric chuckled at this, so it turned out there really was a ‘Link, Start!’ option for the VirtuHelm.

“That’s a good one. Anything else obvious like that that I may have missed so far?”

Eleanor pondered at this, “Hmmmm…” she muttered. It was at times like this that Eric truly marvelled at Hurricane’s coders and developers. The scenery and graphics was certainly impressive, but the level of characterisation and humanization that had gone in to creating Eleanor was truly impressive.

“Aha!” Eleanor said, breaking Eric’s reverie. “You also haven’t added any other rooms to the house. Currently you only have the one room, but if you desire, you can also add other rooms, maybe a kitchen or a bedroom. If you wanted, you could even go outside and sit at the beach.”

Eric noticed that Eleanor seemed a little wistful as she said this last part, gazing out at the sea which had since turned stormy, the dark waves crashing into the rocks, the resulting surf only slightly receding before the next wave came in and repeated the process. Does Eleanor want to stand by the ocean? He wondered to himself as he nodded in acknowledgement of her words.

“Well that’s definitely something I’ll do later. For now though can you load up Fate? I want to be able to get in the moment the servers go live.”

Eleanor nodded demurely in response to his request and waved a hand at the until now unused right wall. An icon suddenly appeared: the same icon that was engraved on the front of his FateGear. FateGear, at first, that was just what he had called it in his head. But now that he thought about it, wasn’t that the true name of the helmet he was using? I must have heard it somewhere before, Eric thought as the icon grew larger, taking up the entire right hand wall. As Eric watched, the emblem suddenly began to twist, morphing organically into that enormous hourglass from the Fate website, signifying the time remaining before launch.

From what he could see, the amount of sand remaining in the hourglass was almost gone, as he focused his eyes a set of numbers appeared overtop the hourglass.

“0d 0h 38m 41s," it read. Eric nodded satisfied, then raised his hand and shouted, “Strife, Launch!”

Unlike last time, the doorway did not appear in front of him. Instead, that familiar interface appeared in the upper lefthand corner of his vision. Focusing upon it, he quickly navigated the UI and joined the call.

Kyp has joined the room.

Mark: Hey dude, good to see you made it.

Eric: Yeah, where’s everyone else?

Mark: Griffin just left to go grab some water before we all settle in.

Gio: I’m here, Ryan’s over at my place too. I think he was grabbing some food.

Ryan: I’m back.

Shinvincible has joined the room.

Mark: Hey Jun. We’re just waiting on Rob now.

Jun: Cool, I’m just going to go take my sister to her violin lesson. I’ll be back in like half an hour though.

Mark: k

Shinvincible has disconnected.

Eric: So we’re just waiting on Rob, and technically Griffin and Jun?

Mark: Yup.

Ryan: You guys ready?

Gio: Haha yeah.

Boreik has joined the room.

Griffin: Sup

Mark: Welcome back Griffin. Jun just came to tell us he’ll be here before the game launches. We’re just waiting on Rob.

Griffin: Cool.

Eric: Oh damn. You guys mind if I grab some water real quick and check on my brothers? Need to make sure they’ve both eaten.

Griffin: Are your brothers cats?

Eric: No, cats are easier to take care of and at least pretend they love me.

Ryan: ROFL

Mark: Go for it Eric. Just be back here five minutes before launch. We’re gonna go over strategy one more time.

Eric: Will do.

You have disconnected from the call.