It's been four whole years since that Interview when Benjamin sat in front of his chimney, adjusting his reading glasses while tapping on his phone to browse through his E-Mails. Amongst requests for custom-made items that he has already long rejected, there was one mail that caught his mind.
"'Prime Industries – Thank you for your help!', huh? What was Prime Industries again…? Was it that game company?" Intrigued at the memory of back then, Benjamin quickly tapped on the mail to read through it.
[Dear Mr. Joyce,
Due to your immense help in the past, it was possible for us to complete a big part of our project in even more detail as we could have wished for.
Thus, especially after hearing about your recent condition, we once again want to give you the offer of being one of the first players of 'World of Magic'. This would make it possible for you to continue your craft as much as you want without further damaging your real body.
If you are interested in this concept, please inform us and we will talk about the details.
Of course, you will not have to pay the regular monthly fee for the game nor the initial payment for the capsule, and instead, the company will pay for it completely.]
We would love to hear from you,
Your friends at Prime Industries
"I can continue making stuff, huh? Well… Maybe it isn't that bad of an idea after all." Benjamin mutters to himself. Four years ago during the interview, he had no plans of ever playing the game that Prime Industries told him about. But that doesn't mean that he is or was ignorant to what this kind of technology means, he just wasn't interested in playing it himself. He actually is also very knowledgeable about modern technology.
He even hesitated for a month before agreeing to do the interview, after he finally realized that this would be the best way of passing on his will. After all, neither of his two sons nor his daughter ever had an interest in his crafts. Of course, he was proud of them no matter what they chose to do in their life, but he was still sad to see that the knowledge he worked for within the many decades of his life would vanish together with him someday.
Thus, after carefully being told about the concept for the game as well as the level of realism, Benjamin agreed to teach Prime Industries some of the things he learned. Of course, he didn't only give them the info they could gather during the interview but also gave them copies of the journals he kept throughout the years so that they truly gained as much knowledge as he could give them.
After that, he would have been fulfilled just quietly working on random items for the rest of his life. That was until one day around two years ago…
Seeing that the lights were off in Benjamin's house, a thief broke a window and stepped inside, only to find the old man working in the back inside his workshop working on a commission. The thief, startled at seeing a mountain of a man bearing a weapon in his direction, jumped backward into a pile of steel scrap that Benjamin got from a steelyard just the day before, knocking it over completely.
As a chain reaction, the metal fell on top of some tools laying on a table near Benjamin, flinging them right into the opening to the hot coal-filled forge. Of course, as one might expect, some of the burning coals were thrown out of the opening through the impact, directly onto Benjamin's right arm, melting into his flesh.
Benjamin may be resistant to hot temperatures for the most part after working as a Blacksmith for so long, but burning-coal coming from a forge that was heated above a thousand degrees Celsius is nothing any human being can handle.
The thief ran away after seeing the old man lying on the floor, screaming in pain. The police tried finding him, but it seems like he got away successfully.
Without the emergency-button that his daughter put near the door of his workshop, who knows what might have happened to Benjamin at the time?
He had multiple surgeries after that, trying to save as much of his arm as possible. Luckily, it didn't have to be amputated, but there was still a lot of damage done to the muscles and bones in Benjamin's arm. The surgeon that worked on Benjamin did an amazing job, but even so, he had to give up his passion for most of his craftsmanship.
So, the offer from Prime Industries to this broken old man seemed like a miracle to him.
"It's all set up and ready to go, Mister Joyce. All that's left to do is lay down inside with comfortable clothing on, and sync up with the machine. It's going to explain the rest to you. For others, the game will launch in a month, but you can play in a few hours already." A private technician from Prime Industries explains to Benjamin while they are standing in front of the capsule that was just installed. To make sure he wouldn't do anything wrong, Benjamin turned to the young man. "So that's it? I don't need to install anything on it, or let it run before getting into it?"
The technician shook his head with a soft smile and answers, "No, there's no need for that. The capsule will automatically detect when you get into it and set everything up. You can choose to start the game from the desktop mode, or just by tapping the icon on the screen inside. If you ever decide to buy another game for the capsule once they come out, all you need to do is add the file-drive onto the side here. No installing, so you can just hop right in." Pointing at the backside of the capsule where there visibly are slots to add something into. Benjamin crossed his arms and nodded impressed at the state of this technological peace of wonder.
"Now then, I'll leave you to playing the game now. Have fun, Mister Joyce."
After leading the technician to the door, Benjamin walked back to the capsule and looked at the huge contraption.
He slowly stepped inside after he changed into comfortable clothes. Benjamin knew that the game wasn't online yet, but he wanted to at least try out this 'Desktop-Mode' the technician briefly mentioned. He layed down onto his back and closed the hatch to the capsule.
[No Applications Available]
[Commencing Desktop-Mode]
After seeing this message in front of him, without any warning in the slightest, Benjamin was now standing in a nearly pure white world with a single, futuristic gray desk and chair in front of him. It took Benjamin some time to get used to the sudden change in environment, and after nearly dropping on his ass, he grabs onto the chair until his slight dizziness dissipated.
"What's this now? There's nothin' even here!" Benjamin yells out and sat down at the desk in front of him since it was the only thing to do. Then, just when he did, a white orb appeared in thin air that Benjamin was barely able to notice in this white space if it hadn't been for its faint blue glow. In the middle of the orb, two small blue circles appeared as the orb released a male voice.
"Welcome! My name is Rover, your personal assistance! Do you want to set up your account information?" It asked happily, swirling around Benjamin's head. Confused at this, since he hasn't heard about it at all, he scratched his white beard and nodded, agreeing to set up his account.
For about the next 20 minutes, Rover asked him a number of different questions, such as his name, age, as well as likes and dislikes.
"Alright, Benjamin! It's time to perfect your Desktop! You can change the style of this whole space! You can keep it like this, of course, but that's boring, right?" Rover asked cheerfully. With a smile on his face, Benjamin thought about it for a bit, and then answered, "Hmm, can you set it up like this is a small log cabin in the middle of nowhere? Maybe in a forest, or by a lake surrounded by steep mountains?"
"Sure can do, Benjamin!" With that being said, Rover suddenly turned from a perfect sphere into a cube, dropping down onto the desk. The moment he touched it, the desk slowly turned from a futuristic, metallic gray to a fine, but still rough, wooden table. From then on like fire spreading, the area around Benjamin changed just into what he described. After about two minutes, Rover's body turned back into a sphere and he began to float again
"The actual area is equivalent to about 5 square kilometers! You can go outside and have fun, or stay in here and work on things! Anything, just as a book, for example, can be exported as a file into a flash-drive! Time Dilation or Contraction can be set up as well!" The small, robotic sounding ball floating in the air explained to Benjamin. However, just to make sure, he asked one question to see if he understood correctly.
"Time Dilation or Contraction? Can you explain?"
"Sure thing, Benjamin! As the name suggests, it means that the perception of time in here compared to outside can be changed, up to a certain point! The current maximum rate is 4:1 for Contraction and 1:4 for Dilation! In the Contraction setting, 4 minutes will feel like a single minute to you, while in the Dilation setting they will feel like 16 minutes to you! However, for health and safety reasons we only allow a single hour to be 'skipped' via Time Contraction every day!"
"Oooh~?" Benjamin groaned out impressed. He had never heard of this kind of thing before, and was surprised this was even possible. For now, though, he didn't change anything about how he perceived Time. Instead, he simply asked some more questions. "Will anything I do here influence me in the game, or vice versa?"
Rover's body turned to the left and then to the right a few times while he was seemingly trying to shake his head. "Nope! However, since you allowed a link to your security software, I will appear within any application you run and will let you know you have a visitor, or someone is trying to break into your house, etc, so don't worry about that! Also, you will be able to keep in touch with other players through your Desktop-Mode, since Friend-requests are account based and not game based!"
"I see, I see. Thanks, Rover." Benjamin smiled softly and placed his big hand onto Rover's 'head', trying to pat him. Just then, he realized something he should have tried out way earlier.
"Wait… my- my arm, it feels completely normal!" Excitedly, the old man jumped up and made a tight fist using his right arm. "So they were right! I can use my arm normally! Yes, yes, yes!" Not having been this excited for years, Benjamin nearly began jumping up and down like a kid. Confused at first, Rover's eyes flashed green for a second before turning back to the normal blue.
"It seems like the muscles in your right arm are severely damaged. If you want and will allow it, I am going to keep check over your vitals and inform you in case something is wrong." The small orb suggested and lost his excited voice for a second. This, however, changed when Benjamin agreed to let him do it, making Rover as excited as always.
"Now, Rover! Tell me when I can finally play that game!" Benjamin asks and looks over at his Virtual Assistant, who then pulled up a small futuristic-looking and see-through floating screen.
[Time until 'World of Magic' can be launched:
2 hours, 13 Minutes]