Chapter #3At home by: Yote   You stand at the window, waiting until your mother's car dissapears round the corner before running through the house to Ryan's room room. You find Ryan lying on the bed, strapping himself into his new VR headset, his console active and humming away on the floor. He looks up and groans as you enter. "Not again."
"Please please please please please pleaaaase," you plead.
"No."
"But why nooot," you whine. You've been trying to persuade your stubborn elder brother to let you use his VR machine ever since he got it months ago.
"Because mum says you''re not allowed to until you're sixteen, and if she found out she'd kill me," he replies firmly.
"But she just left! She's not here all weekend! She won't find out. Besides, when have you ever done what she tells you to anyway? You're just doing this to spite me."
"It's my machine, I can use it to spite you if I want," he says. He reaches for the basket of game cartridges that sits beside the console, but you snatch it away, dancing out of reach. Ryan glares at your furiously. Having spent five minutes strapping and wiring himself into the headset and body sensors, he'd need to spend the same amount of time extracting himself from them if he wanted to chase after you. "Mike, gimme the games."
You linger outside the range of Ryan's leash, holding the games to your chest. "Look, you have a new headset, let me use your old one. We can play together. I just want to see what it's like."
Ryan grinds his teeth. "I don't want you fucking up my save files. They're my campaigns, alright? I just got them how I like them. Don't interfere."
Your heart leaps. "You won't even know I'm there."
"You do exactly as I say. And I get to choose your character."
"Fine."
"And I don't want you telling mum about any of this, understand? Any of it."
"I promise not to tell mum you've been using VR for porn," you swear, hand over your heart. He glowers, mumbles something under his breath, and tosses you his old headset. It is an early model, bulkier than his and fitted for his head, so it's a bit of a loose fit. You screw it down to your scalp as tight as you can. The bundles of thick wires dangle down about your ears, feeding into a single cable almost as wide as your wrist. Plugging it into the Player Two slot of the console sends static crackling through your hair.
"It's your first time, you choose a game."
You flick through the basket. The cartridges are heavy, grey plastic squares about the size of a book, similar in appearance to the sort used in old consoles, each one its own high capacity hard drive - the only way to store the massive amounts of data required to create the simulations. Ryan has about two dozen of them. There are a few titles you recognise, Halo: Evolution, Dota 4, Legend of Zelda, but most of them are rather obscure indie games.
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
<<-- Previous · Outline  · Recent Additions © Copyright 2025 Yote (UN: yote at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Yote has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work within this interactive story. Poster accepts all responsibility, legal and otherwise, for the content uploaded, submitted to and posted on Writing.Com. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author