On the usual day, they were woken up at 7 in the morning. In groups of 10 people, they were taken to the basement of the building, and from there, after going down more than 5 floors, they entered an underground complex.
Due to medical recommendations, they were not even given the chance to have breakfast or a coffee, which caused bad moods among the players, sleepy faces and more than one complaint to the organization, but without giving them any chance, they were taken to the facilities where the dive would take place.
The staff was friendly and polite in their instructions, although they were not exempt from a certain impatience when one of the participants arrived late or stopped to look around or try to talk to the other people. Just as the drivers and all the staff who had attended to them those days had done, no one gave any kind of explanation or clue about what they would find once they connected to the game.
Due to the distance traveled in the corridors, the underground complex had to cover the entire width of the outdoor grounds. This meant that it was a huge facility... The different groups were put into rooms, in which there were a total of 10 cabins. These looked like a mix between a spaceship and a water tank...
There were no women in his group, so he was grateful that before getting into the tanks they were all put on sensor suits that looked more like neoprene... Spending three months with 10 naked guys was not a good idea for Ikky...
There were nerves; some players who spoke in English exchanged words of encouragement, and others with a smug or arrogant look did not look at anyone or looked over their shoulders.
He had to admit that he was nervous, it seemed that he had gotten into a very different story than the one he was used to. How could he do anything if he did not have access to the code, to a computer, if he had to experience everything directly and without interruptions in the game itself? Ikky doubted at that moment about his own survival capabilities but it was too late to back out.
The classic file hacking was out of the question, he just hoped he could take advantage of the bugs and details that this world would allow him to use. It wasn't the first game in which he had to take that kind of approach, but it would be the first one he would experience from the inside.
It's easier to see the errors and failures from the outside, looking at them on a screen than when you experience them in first person. His companion in the capsule on the right was a "typical" German, tall, blond and stiff as if he had been shoved a stick up his ass... And the one on the left was the example of a nerd, chubby, with glasses, sweaty, a geek from head to toe who oozed the word gamer from every pore.
In front of him, there was an oriental man, just like the one on his left (due to the poor communication between them, I would say they were a Japanese and a Korean); on his right, however, there was a good-looking Italian, dark-skinned and smiling. The rest of the room consisted of a huge, clumsy-looking Nordic guy, an American with a drug-addicted face, and a guy who must have been Hindu or something...
Of all of them, he knew the Italian as a streamer, since he specialized in RPG video games for mobile phones, and the American, who had been a promising precursor of "online gaming sports" until he disappeared a couple of years ago...
No one recognized him, it was normal, Ikky was just a name with a bad reputation, except for some unfortunate and funny incidents in the past, he was not given to appearing in videos or in front of the camera. He felt relieved to be able to go unnoticed for the moment.
They sat inside the cabins, the medical team put the sensors, connectors and respirators on them, the capsules were closed, and the viscous liquid began to flood them. It was cold and could be overwhelming, but as they had already explained, a sedative supplied by one of the intravenous lines would take effect quickly to avoid possible anxiety attacks and facilitate a peaceful synchronization…
This was the closest thing to a science fiction extrasensory experience that she had ever experienced in her life, the liquid made you feel as if you were floating and the medication calmed the slight nervous tremors in her hands.
She closed her eyes and in less than 15 seconds she felt her body falling asleep…
Have you ever been on a free fall attraction? Well, that's how her consciousness felt, as if it were being pulled downwards at high speed. At the same time, the voice of the system that, from now on, we will call "Data", which is what Ikky christened it, began the first of a series of countdowns…
It was strange, it was like clearly hearing the voice in her head and not with her ears, her consciousness was far away but that voice was like a hammer hitting against the little lucidity she had left. "Initiating physical exam completion rate: 1%... 5%... 19%... 67%... 93%... 100% completed"
"Initiating muscle memory reading 1%... 100% completed"
It can be said that he only felt this in his consciousness as a tickling sensation; it was like a sleepy feeling because at that moment it was like being dreaming but at the same time being aware of not having a physical body...
"Initiating real memory synchronization 1%... 100% completed"
That made me dizzy more than anything I had experienced so far, it was like all your memories were appearing to you throughout your life... but it wasn't like living them but like seeing them even though I didn't have eyes...
Had he died and everything that happened to him was the classic and typical shit scene where everything happens before your eyes? The voice of the system inside his head was the only thing that indicated to me that he was still alive and within the experiment. "Starting synchronization of intellectual abilities... 100% complete"
The best way to describe those feelings was "What a fucking hangover, please give me a painkiller." It's like after a night of drinking you were made to take a college exam, a mix of pain, disgust and feeling like your brain was burning...
More than fifty synchronizations and various readings were completed one after another in what felt like an eternity and ultimately an ordeal of different psychic sensations.
The only good thing was that he didn't feel pain, it was just as if his mind was spiraling down. At one point he wished it would all end and he would be disconnected from the machine, but there was no way to stop the whole process.
"Full synchronization completed" adaptation percentage: 95% starting construction of the physical body 1%... 2%..."