The electronic Venetian blinds rotated to an angle that cautiously let in some sunlight. Everything shook violently - the bed, the floor, the walls, the entire room. The sound of waves gliding up and down a beach, and seagulls crying made the silence give way where it had ruled for a quarter of a day - except some snoring and rolling in the bed. It had begun just quiet and calm but escalated more and more in volume until it penetrated the barriers of a resting, unconscious mind that awakened more and more.
For half a second he expected to be standing on a small, tired porch or balcony that was part of an equally small and tired beach house - perhaps a place that had a coastline that bordered to one of the big seas. There, one could have a view of a petite, yellow-brown-ish beach that was fenced in and private to only the onlooker. The "fences" consisted of sharp cliffs that reached towards each other to almost form a circle - but they left enough space for the ocean to touch this beach.
The waves kept gliding and crawling, trying to reach the driest and thirstiest sand just below a patch of light green straws. The cries of the seagulls belonged to small, white, gliding birds that soared on warm winds - winds that rose up to places it felt like it could escape out of the atmosphere. The birds could be other kinds too - puffins or terns, maybe even pelicans, variating the collection of shrieking with smaller or broader sounds to diversify an otherwise uniform spectre.
The entire horizon laid there, whole and unbroken, bathing in a dim and foggy, yet clear, pink-orange light from a sunset that would never die. He stood there to take in this entire play of sounds and colours, all part of an all-encompassing panoramic still portrait - and he felt like he could smell all the pleasant smells there too - the rushing, throwing salt water, the sea air that was tang and kelp, and flowers in the midst of the dry seaside grassy fields. The waves showered him with a few drops all the way up to where he was standing, and the winds dragged and tore his light shirt, tempting him to go down to that enticing beach to have a quick dip. The heat was present, to be sure - the humidity combined with it to make his pores struggle to pour out all the sweat.
Then, that half of a second that had seemed like a small, though very pleasant eternity, was finally over - the walls simulated sunlight that dimmed down and down, and his eyes finally opened as from a delightful dream he would so love to experience even more. He rubbed his eyes and looked around to find his minimalistic bedroom, disappointed that he was not really on that beach - he had a moment of self-pity and swung his feet out of the bed to have his feet hit the floor. That was the way to stop the alarm clock function, and that summerly euphony slowly decreased until no more ocean waves or beach birds or summer winds could be heard. As he lifted his weight from the bed, it stopped completely. Johan then went and touched the door with the palm of his hand to open up the door from his bedroom. He then noticed that he was soaking wet over his entire back, which could signify that the "seagulls and beaches" setting made him a bit too imaginative while still asleep.
He went over to the coffee maker - he put in a pad and locked the machine shut, put his favourite mug in the slot and pressed a button on it. While it was going, he double-tapped the "core" in his neck to wake it up, too. While looking at the kitchen cabinet, he scrolled through the mail inbox to delete some trash. A new airline offered a flight to Copenhagen for just 199 credits. Another e-mail made him aware of a new cell phone with biometric scanning on the whole back of the phone. "Hah! Hardly worth it", he mumbled sarcastically, as he had just invested in a new "EyeCore" device. There was also a message from his work about how they were going to update their online safety policies to better guard them against hacking from forces with malicious intentions from the outside. It looked important, so he added a reminder to himself so he would remember to read it on the bus on his way to work - the geotracking would know when he was leaving his house, and moving at a faster pace than a morning grumpy Johan could walk, and then assume he was in a vehicle he was not driving, to then reopen that message. He kept scrolling through his interface for news or other significant material.
He grabbed his mug, looked past all the stuff on his lense to see there was sunny weather outside. He then found a weather forecasting app and checked the temperature and wind speed. They seemed mild and quite nice, so he thought maybe he would walk to work in such favourable conditions. A small bar on the news app told him some crazy guy had gone amok with a machete in a mall, one person with severe injuries. Johan spaced out and imagined that scene for a second, shivered at the thought, and had a sip of his coffee. He also saw carpenter's jeans had become fashionable again for some reason he could not fathom, but then he got a small message he expected to see - it said Trym Jørgen had already downloaded "Death by Stealth", and that he was streaming live in a short while. He opened "EyeTalk" to ask him if he had already begun streaming.
"Good morning, my dude. Have you already downloaded DbS?", Johan asked him by voice-to-text.
…
"Automated message ("do not disturb"-mode activated) - TJ is currently playing "Death by Stealth".
Of course, he was. Well, Johan had plenty of time to begin his morning in peace and quiet before leaving for work. Still, he could hear loud gunfire and explosions from the neighbouring room. Johan thought they had to be pretty loud, being that the rooms they had in their apartment were supposed to be practically soundproof. "Game rooms" they were called - optimized wall-, floor- and roof monitors, courtesy of "Cinerea", which, coincidentally, also was Johan's place of work.
The floors on their rooms also had gotten a pretty costly upgrade - the entire flooring had been made into "walking pads" or "VR treadmills", specifically for playing VR games. When not in "game mode", the floor functioned as quite plain and regular floors. The walls could also change form and contour themselves after objects in-game - the roof, walls and floors could shape themselves after a branch or a rock or any kind of physical object from the game, and it worked together with other sensory effects to copy the texture and feel of leaves and gravel and snow and so on. This would increase the illusion further so that the player of the game would feel even more like he or she was walking through a forest or a suburb or whatever sort of landscape imaginable - leaves brushing up against their cheeks, or it could feel like walking through tall grass.
Some of the newer games, such as "Death by Stealth", had also begun using holograms and simulation of wind and smells or scents, increasing the gaming experience even further. The list went on with pain simulators and the lot, as Johan had already experienced first-hand.
"Please set your sound to earplug mode", Johan yelled to his roommate. He did not expect that he would hear him through all the noise, but still, the sound decreased entirely. Silence mixed with some bursts of anger and annoyance with so-called "incompetent" teammates who, supposedly, "could not hit a barn door from half a meter out". Johan chuckled down in his mug, as he made himself a second coffee of a Colombian origin.