“Hey Alex.”

“Hey Luke,” Alex replied to his next room neighbor as he passed through the door and unlocked the second door for his dorm room, past the shared bathroom and Luke's room. He held a box that he had just picked up from the postal office under his arm, and he had a fair idea of what it might be. It was about time too.

Fortunately, Alexander lived alone in his dorm room, his supposed roommate living in an apartment with his girlfriend or something. Alexander couldn't really remember and hadn't seen him since the beginning of the semester in any case. He didn't talk much with his next door neighbors either, so that left him with the few friends he had in the dorm, clubs, himself, and video games.

Inside, he walked over to his desk and got out scissors, cutting away tape to open the box, which revealed his new copy of Gun Gale Online. He'd kept away from VRMMO's, but now it was time to break that trend. Hopefully this would be fun.

He sat down on the bottom of the wooden bunk bed and slid in the game. He'd read the manual, but there wasn't really any way to prepare for this...so he'd been told. Synchronization done, he said the words that would send him on his way. “Link start.”

Programming activated, and Alexander found himself flying down a tunnel of color that seemed a split second away from an epileptic seizure or something. Then he was there, at the intro for the game. He passed by the importing option and put in his username (the first few he wanted were already taken, of course). Then straight on it seemed, with no character customization option. He could only hope he looked good.

Everything went dark, and then he suddenly found himself in a ruined, desolate battlefield. He stood there in awe for a few seconds at the sheer graphic and detail of this, blown away by the actual feel of everything around him. It was really, really incredible. 

Fortunately, it was hard to miss the phrase “Tutorial Start” that popped up, and he grinned to himself. Tutorials, boring, but necessary. He wanted to actually know how to do things after all. He followed along with the instructions as he found his anticipation growing. “Alright, let's do this,” he said to himself, wondering just what would happen next.