Elizabeth Turner was lying on a comfortable lounger, the helmet-like virtual reality headset covering the entirety of her face and head. Unlike a normal VR headset, the visor was a blank piece of plastic without any display, and the noise-cancelling headphones fitted snugly over her ears played no other sounds. In the darkness and silence, she was hyperaware of her own heartbeat and breathing, and had plenty of time to reflect upon how she had ended up here...<br/><br/><br/><br/>Elizabeth Turner, twenty three years old, on summer holiday with some friends, when they came upon a VR cafe. An evolution of the internet cafe, the VR cafe offered full-immersion VR, the next generation of virtual reality after the VR headset. It promised to link directly into the user's brain to to create a fully immersive virtual reality environment, as though they were really physically there, bypassing the limitations of audio-visual user interfaces by tapping directly into the nervous system, and adding the senses of touch, smell and taste to make the virtual reality indistinguishable from real life. The system was still too bulky and expensive for widespread domestic use, but VR cafes rented out time in the machines to VR gamers at more affordable prices, much as internet cafes had rented out time on computers during the early days of the internet before Elizabeth was born.<br/><br/>A couple of her friends were gamers and wouldn't stop gushing about the latest and hottest - Mark of the Hero Online, a VRMMORPG in which they had spent hours wearing those silly-looking headsets and swinging controllers around as though they were swords. MotHO was one of the first games to push into the full-immersion VR space, and was now hosting a closed beta to smooth out the last kinks in the system before rolling it out full-scale. Both of Elizabeth's friends had secured slots, and more amazingly, one invitation for a new player to experience the next generation of virtual reality gaming. She hadn't had much choice in the matter really, being practically dragged inside the VR cafe to join in the fun.<br/><br/>So that was how Elizabeth ended up in a VR lounger, waiting for MotHO to boot up. But she wasn't alone, her friends were occupying the loungers on either side, eager to guide her into the game and create a new convert out of her. A light shone, brighter and brighter in her vision until she was forced to blink...<br/><br/><hr/><br/>When Elizabeth opened her eyes again, she found herself somewhere else: in a picturesque valley flanked by forested mountains, on a path cutting through a field of wildflowers that led to a mansion in the distance. Not only could she see, she could feel the warmth of the sun shining overhead and the breeze cooling her skin, hear the wind rustling the leaves and branches of the trees, and smell the scent of blooming wildflowers.<br/><br/>"Wow..." the voice came from beside her. It was her friend Margaret. The avatar even looked sort of like her, sharing some similar facial features. "Amazing!" She spun in place, basking in the experience. "They had this tech demo with the old VR as well, you know. But this immersive stuff's a lot more impressive! Anyways, that there's the character creation mansion, same as the old version. If you don't mind, I can make a new character with you and we can party together until you're comfortable?"<br/><br/>She offered her hand to head down the path together...