I'd seen the ads, they were everywhere but nobody would tell me what it was actually like. They were all too busy, too addicted. Just like I am now. When I first logged in I was blown away, the tech just made you feel like you were really there.
After I had done the usual demos, dropping to earth from space, flying, swimming, fighting dragons I decided to try just wandering through some replica of an old city.
I walked into a huge crowd of avatars; women, men, and a menagerie of creatures. I had only been walking for a minute or so when I saw her. She reminded me of- well, I don't know who exactly. But I tried to follow her, jostling my way past avatars and npcs. I caught sight of her from behind, I could see her brown hair moving through the crowd. No matter how fast I moved I couldn't seem to catch her.
At the edge of the square I gave up and started to query the interface, trying to find a way to search for someone. It offered to show me profiles of users in the area and I scanned through hundreds, thousands of thumbnails but couldn't find one the one I wanted.
Over the next week I thought I was going crazy. I saw her everywhere but couldn't catch her. I seemed to see her in the crowd at every public event. I captured screenshots of her from a distance but could never seem to get close enough. I shouted at her in the virtual environment to try and get her attention but I was kicked from areas by moderator bots. It was like she was haunting me, a perfect girl from a dream that I could never quite remember when I woke up.
I tried a pleasure pot - virtual porn sites to try and get her out of my head but that was my biggest mistake. A poster of her on the outside of a venue pulled me like a moth to a flame. On a spotlit stage she was dancing slowly. Her back arched and her long hair was swept around onto her shoulder. For a split second she looked at me, right at me - just a moment and I felt myself stop breathing. I forgot about everything but her. Her movements were sexy but hesitant. Was it her first time dancing? I approached with my heart racing and saw a battery indicator flicker in the corner of my HUD. I had forgotten I was in VR. My mind pulled back and I looked at this artificial goddess. She was just my type, long hair like my first crush and skin like- I pulled the headset off in a sudden panic. All of the crowd scenes, all of the thousands of avatars I had walked past, they were testing me. What did I look at? Which boy girl or dragon made my head turn? What movement made me glance again? They were statistically filtering my desires and fantasies so they could sell it to me piecemeal, virtually. The headset I'd been wearing for a week monitored your pulse, galvanic skin response, your pupil dilation, some were saying that it could even read brain waves but the company said that wasn't true. It didn't matter, they had seen exactly what I wanted.
I left the headset slumped on the floor and cried. How sad a specimen I was, looking for a love in an algorithm online and even sadder for finding it. I dreamt of her while I slept. She smiled at me and turned away, tucking her long hair behind her ear.
When I woke I put on the headset again.