Chapter 2

Once he was home and securely locked in his house, Ethan tried as gently as possible to place the box on his living room floor. Designed for a scenario like this one, it crashed with a loud thud but was otherwise, undamaged. No doubt thanks to some factory in China that was responsible for the creation of these gaming rigs. Out of breath and exhausted, Ethan grabbed a glass of water, took a few sips to calm down, and composed himself for the undoubtedly long night ahead. The rig box was about as plain as it got for any product these days. The only thing that was remotely visible, though small as hell, was the Alchemy logo. There was also another logo next to the Alchemy logo, which was probably the company that made the rig, the hardware that made this all possible. Inside the box was also pretty standard and plain. Despite being a three-thousand-dollar product, it was clear that Alchemy didn’t want players investing their time in anything other than their online experience, when balls should be dropping and the world getting drunk. Ethan wheeled the rig out of the box first. A set of joke instructions was behind it, which indicated that one should simply plug the power supply into a wall outlet first, followed by two other plugs that were labeled with pictures and arrows to where they should be inserted into the hardware. Anybody surely could have figured that out. Anyhow, the only other thing the box had is the three chords that power the rig. Ethan simply followed the instructions and the rig powered on in short order. The display, small for now, simply told Ethan that he should not be alarmed; the rig will stay powered on indefinitely from now on. It also said that under no circumstances should the rig be inadvertently or otherwise, unplugged from its current power supply.

On the next screen, Ethan was asked to select a Wireless network. He selected his current home Wi-Fi, entered his password and was inundated with Alchemy policies, rules and other standard information developers want new players to know for connecting to Massively Multi-player games. Finally, after signing that he understood the Perma Player policy, something that he no doubt would have to sign again; the Alchemy account screen displayed. After filling out his basic info and verifying his email, Ethan sighed with relief as he logged in with his account. Now, he was getting somewhere. His character avatar, for now, was just a tiny blob on-screen. Tutorial text along with an arrow to show where this blob was headed displayed on his screen, and Ethan read it internally with interest.