Melissa rubbed the little knot at the base of her skull and smiled. Most of the tenderness was gone and soon she would be able to plug in.

The average Gibson still surfed the net the old fashioned way... a terminal and a VRML browser. Technology had advanced far beyond the old static web pages. The 3D adventure games of the late 20th Century had provided a new engine for the presentation of data. The worlds they moved through were rendered in 3D but it was still a flat image on a flat screen.

HMD's with stereoscopic displays were fairly common but the resulting motion sickness many people experienced turned them off it. You could fool the eyes into thinking you were immersed in a virtual world but you couldn't fool the inner ear.

The eventual solution was to bypass normal sensory input completely and feed the data directly into the brain. NueroData Interfaces were available on the market, but were still restricted by cost to the filthy rich.

Melissa's parents were filthy rich... and her 18th birthday had been last week.

Melissa's family was not typical of wealthy Americans. They had some very traditional values and had earned their money the hard way. Her father had been a police officer in Los Angeles... which during the 20th century, was not always the easiest place to be a "good" cop. In his youth and throughout his career, he had trained at the Inosanto Academy and when he retired from the force, he opened his own martial arts studio.

Melissa's mom had been a graphic artist and programmer. A rare combination of talents that led her to work on some of those games that had changed the face of information technology.

Melissa herself had always been a good kid. She was pretty, intelligent, athletic and compassionate. Qualities that had made her a lot of friends and a few enemies as well. She had displayed an uncanny ability to read people's emotions and sometimes even their thoughts. Her parents often joked that she was psychic. She had managed to avoid the pitfalls that claim so many young people. Instead of hanging out at clubs she preferred to concentrate on her schoolwork and train at her father's studio. Not that she was anti-social. She just had different goals than many of her piers. Her family had known some hard times when she was young and she recognized the value of hard work.

Her parents surprised her, on her 18th birthday, with a NueroData Interface and a state-of-the-art console installed in a Decker data-chair (which some people thought looked unnervingly like a dentist's chair). 10 days after the surgery to implant the jack, she was ready to log in.

Melissa calmly sat herself in the chair. It was equipped with sensors to monitor her vital signs and would sound an alarm if anything went wrong while she was online. She toggled the activation switch and heard the soft hiss and click as the data-pin slid into the socket in her skull. The room around her gradually darkened, like someone dimming the lights, as the console took control. She found herself watching an abstract light show, designed to allow the brain to adjust to the new source of input. Then the lights came back up and she was sitting in a circular room. The chair she was sitting is was an exact duplicate of the one her body occupied in the real world. On the other side of the room was something that looked like a cylindrical phone booth. Over it was a sign that said "Start Here".

She had spent the past week going over the documentation for the console so she had a pretty good idea what to expect. She walked over to the booth and placed her hand upon it. Despite having read the docs, she was slightly startled to see her hand was chalk white and completely devoid of features.

"Please select an Avatar or design a new one," a pleasant voice stated.

"Misty001," she said.

Within the booth, a perfect representation of her real body appeared. She issued the verbal commands to rotate the avatar so she could examine it. It was accurate right down to the small birthmark behind her left ear.

She spoke the command to accept the current avatar. An opening appeared in the booth and she stepped into it. Instantly, she was in the body she had just called up. She knew an avatar could literally be anything you wanted, but for her first foray into this reality, she decided to just be herself.

There were a lot more things she had to do before she could venture out for the first time. She had to designate what she wanted her home point to look like, select her wardrobe and accessories, and many other details. She decided to have the main command module look like a martial arts studio. Three solid walls, one lined with mirrors. The other two walls were adorned with Asian style weapons. The final wall was rice paper, with a sliding door. In one corner was a mook jong wooden dummy. A stairway led up to a loft that overlooked the studio. The loft had a simple desk, chair and file cabinet. She went up to the office, opened a desk drawer and pulled out a folder labeled "Mail". She leafed through the pieces of paper inside until she found one from Draxx.

As she held the paper his face appeared on it

"Hey, Misty," he said, "I know you'll be playing with your new toy today... if you can, meet me in UA around 8."

"Reply," she said, "Ok D... I'll be there... end reply... send".

She put the folder away and eyed the studio below with a mischievous grin. She leapt toward the balcony and did a handspring off of the hand rail... vaulting out into the air. She landed nimbly on her feet, on the soft mat below.

"Main Street," she said as she walked toward the door. When she slid it open... she greeted by bright lights and a lot of noise. She picked up her "travel bag" and walked out onto the busy street.

Main Street was kind of a starting point on the net. At the turn of the century, it had been one of the more popular search engines that helped people find the information they needed. As the net went 3D, it became the most popular place for people to gather before running off to their destinations. Her parent's wealth and influence had bought them an IP address right along the Street itself.

Melissa, or Misty as she called herself on the net, walked down the street and took in the sights. She had been there many times before, but that had been flat screen. Now.. she was really there. She could feel the cracked pavement beneath her feet, and even smell the food being hawked from sidewalk vendors.

She turned down a side street that would lead to an apartment her friend Miki leased (and always seemed in peril of losing). She figured that the usual group of bangers would be there to harass her. Previously, it had always been a challenge to manipulate the mouse and keyboard commands to get past them... but now... she suppressed a wicked smile as figures began to move from the shadows in her direction.

"Hey Misty!" one of them shouted, "got anything sweet for us today"?

"Yah... as a matter of fact, I do" she struck a provocative pose and continued, "You wanna come and get it"?

This stopped them for a second. Usually, she just tried to dodge around them... she had never actually spoken back to them before. With a "whoop" and chorus of cat calls, they charged at her. She waited until they were almost in reach and then jumped straight up. She grabbed a hold of a third story fire escape and swung herself onto it. She burst out laughing as the goons collided with each other in the spot she had been standing just a second before. Gleefully, she pulled a canister out of her bag, toggled the switch on top, and dropped it down into the middle of them.

"Oh shi..." one of them exclaimed, just before the alleyway was filled with a static discharge.

Misty doubled over with laughter as they blipped out one by one. They wouldn't be able to log back in for another 20 minutes or so... and then they'd each be back at their own home point. For some of them, that meant another hour before they could make their way back to the alley.

Once the smoke cleared, she jumped off the fire escape and landed back on the pavement, and continued on her way to Miki's.

Continue