Should I mention that Alice and Professor Ho were waiting for me? I want to note that this time I got out of the car faster. It took me about 10-15 seconds to get out last time, but now I started feeling my body after only 5-7 seconds. Maybe my body is adapting to the machine, and if this continues, I might be able to exit in 2-3 seconds. Thinking about this, I remembered biology lessons where we were taught about adaptability. Our body, like everything else, is very adaptable, and we can get used to any environment. Our body automatically adjusts to the current needs of a person.
"Aaron, how are you? Did the second attempt go well? Are there any problems?" Alice bombarded me with questions.
"I'm fine, Alice. This time, I even came to my senses faster after the shutdown. It seems there are no problems with the machine or the game. Although, remembering the welcome window of the machine, I recall that it said that these are preparatory gaming platforms. Maybe I haven't even reached the actual game yet," I said, after which I saw Professor Ho coming towards us.
"I made a program to read the algorithm of this machine's operation. Now I can say exactly what is happening and how. You need to go through about 3 intermediate stages. Right now, you're going through the stage of learning how to use your abilities and learning how to interact with NPCs. Even though they are not alive, you must learn to communicate with them as real individuals. Checking the algorithms of several NPCs, I found evidence of their conscious activity."
"So, you mean to say that they can feel?" I interrupted, unable to contain myself.
"Not exactly. To make it easier to understand, let me explain. They can't exactly think, but they can feel. During your interaction with some of the NPCs, namely Karheyn and Carlos, the variations in their responses kept changing. They were thinking about how to respond to you and chose their answers based on their perception of you. In other words, they were reacting to you based on their mood. Like what happened with Karheyn. You lifted his spirits by paying attention to his musket, so your further dialogue happened on a positive note, where he chose the best way to address you. If you interact with them in a more positive way, they will choose a sequence where you will get much more than you originally planned. While my program shows your actions as a log of actions, I think I can project your actions in a few days."
"The professor is too intelligent," I thought. "I suspected after Babylon's warning about offending NPCs, but I didn't think they could even feel other emotions towards the player. I'll have to pay more attention to them and communicate better with them, as I still don't know what I can get from interacting with them."
"Thank you for the clarification, professor. They didn't tell me where to stay today. Should I go to the hotel across the street, like last time?"
"Yes, I think the director has already booked a room for you, as we need to finish this project as soon as possible. Considering the speed of our Chinese competitors, we need to hurry. Right now, we need to figure out all the platforms that the program will provide, and then we can analyze the main game platform. It's probably going to be in the same genre as this educational platform. If we can study it, we can create a similar game based on it. But first, we need to familiarize ourselves with the operation of the machine itself. Although our company primarily creates video games, we also create portable gaming consoles. I can't say for sure whether we can create a more compact version of the machine, but we should try," the professor said before leaving.
"Where are you going to be today, Alice? I assume you also got a room at the hotel," I said, hoping to spend some time together.
"And how did you want it? Of course, I'll also be staying at the hotel. Right now, my main job is to keep an eye on you," she said sweetly.
So, after quickly getting ready, we headed to the hotel. A few words about the hotel: as I heard, it also belongs to the director, so it wouldn't be a problem for him to rent several rooms for us. How did I find out? Well, when our company's previous experiments failed, the director had to call in a bunch of experts from different fields to help our group of testers. That's what I'm going to tell you about now.
As I mentioned earlier, I participated in the trials of partial immersion consoles, which were something like brain immersion in a game. Unfortunately, the console turned out to be completely unsuitable for gaming. The idea of the console was to send all signals to the head and not let the head send signals to the body. But in the end, everything turned into a mess, the signals got tangled up, causing a wild rejection of the whole body. I guess I was lucky, as I got stuck in that machine for several weeks, but I didn't feel too uncomfortable. Of course, my condition was mostly like being locked in a black box, but at that moment, Alice's support played a huge role for me as she was constantly with me.
As for my colleagues... it would be more accurate to say that two of my not very successful colleagues experienced something like a brain reboot. They became like babies for several months, behaving like real babies. That is, they walked in their diapers, couldn't feed themselves, which means they were fed. Fortunately, this was temporary, as my first colleague recovered after two months and became the same as before, while the second took just over three months. It's still unclear why the time difference was so significant, but this console was banned from further advancement, which is not surprising.
Let's go back to the moment when Alice and I entered the hotel. As expected, we quickly gathered our things and said goodbye to everyone before heading to the hotel. There, two rooms were waiting for us in advance. Since it was just past 6 pm, I invited Alice to a small restaurant inside the hotel. I didn't have to wait long for her, as she quickly changed her clothes. I always liked her fashion sense, as she dressed in a light and colorful way. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about women's clothing, but I can roughly describe her outfit as a light shirt over a t-shirt and tight jeans for cool weather, or cropped denim shorts for warmer weather. But let's move on from her outfit and talk about how I spent time with her.
"So, do I look cute?" she asked me, to which I could only agree.
"Of course, as always. I've already reserved a table," I said, pointing towards the hotel restaurant. I always had a decent opinion of hotel service. The food wasn't bad, but it wasn't exceptional either. It was somewhere between a family restaurant and high-end restaurants. As you already know, I come from a well-off family, so the food I had before leaving home was of the highest quality. Therefore, having lived away from home for so long, the food from the hotel restaurant became the same level as the restaurants I was used to, like Michelin-starred ones. After escorting her to the restaurant, we quickly ordered our food and discussed various topics. During the course of our conversation over food, I told her about the gaming world.
" You know, the starting point where I appeared was a village called Ka-mi-lya-rys. The village seemed to have been transferred from a standard fantasy universe. The village elder met me and introduced me to the village in general. There, I met a magical swordsman, or rather, a "swords-woman", and a wizard at a training ground. I also saw a tavern and fantasy food. Imagine, there are potatoes of different flavors. - that's how our conversation looked like, mostly I talked and she just asked questions about what I saw there. The evening was great, after seeing her off, I went to my room, where, having made all the preparations for sleep, I started reading a book with a fantasy bias. That's how I went to bed, because tomorrow I will have even more new experiences from that world."