Elia flopped down onto her couch; finally able to relax after a long day of work and school. It had become apparent to her in the past couple of years that neither her full-time retail job nor her full-time university understood or appreciated how much time and energy Elia had to expend into each of them. Without her assistant manager position at New True Blues, Elia would have no way of paying for her hefty tuition and affording rent at her small, cramped apartment; and without needing to pay for her university classes and future Business degree, she wouldn’t have a reason to put in so many hours at New True Blues, which desperately needed her expertise and dedication among a crew of workers with a high turnover rate, who were always either unqualified or unwilling to work as hard as they should.

She sighed, wishing they would both cut her some slack. At least, miraculously, she had the next three days off from work and school; an unprecedented occurrence.

Elia briefly flipped on the TV, but was bored within minutes. She turned it off and rummaged in the fridge for some leftovers, choosing cold pizza over a Tupperware full of cold spaghetti. Once her hunger was sated, Elia wandered over to her room; grateful for the lack of stairs in her one-story apartment.

She flopped onto the bed just as she had flopped onto her couch, and her hand brushed against something plastic. Elia brought her head up to see the helmet she’d touched; the grey headset for her FIVR console. Elia smiled. She hadn’t touched it or logged into her Firewind account in more than a few months. Perhaps it was what she needed to jumpstart her three-day weekend in a good way.

Elia turned on the console, plugged in her helmet, and tugged it on over her dark curly hair. The visor greeted her with a ping and a message.
[b]
Welcome back to your Yxel Entertainment Systems FIVR Gaming Console. Software update in progress, please wait until this update has completed before you continue.[/b]

“Huh? I didn’t install any updates,” Elia pointed out.[b]

Mandatory updates installed. Uploading process in progress. Please wait until this update has completed before you continue.[/b]

“Oy.” Elia removed the headset and lay back on her pillow, wondering just how long the supposedly mandatory update would take. Sometimes these FIVR games were more trouble than they were worth.

Elia fell asleep, woken only by the ping of her console several hours later. She wasn’t hungry yet, so she sat up, rubbed a small bit of drool from the corner of her mouth, and placed the headset back on. This time, a paragraph of words scrolled across her field of vision.

[b]Software update: Complete
Initializing system start-up.
Start-up: complete.[/b]

Elia smiled and spoke the words she hadn’t said in too long of a while. “Start up, initialization. Connect.”