With a burst of melody, the green indicator on Buddy’s visor began to flash. Face pouring with excitement, he effortlessly put on his experience suit and double-checked the connections to his PC are properly secured. Laying down on his couch, he gently pressed a green button on the neural interface. As his vision began to fade, his body was overwhelmed with a familiar surge of energy rushing down his spine. After a moment, when his eye sight was restored, he was standing in a room of infinite white. He extended both of his arms and flexed his fingers slowly, taking in the sensation of joints popping and tendons buckling with his movements. Everything was in working condition.

“Voice Chat.” Buddy said to the void whereupon a green holographic panel extended from his forearm.

“Connecting.” A robotic voice replied.

“Load scenario” Buddy spoke again, “Central Park 62. Default settings.”

The white void turned pitch black, GeneTech’s logo flashed briefly around Buddy, followed by a progress bar, then PEG58’s avatar appeared below it. “Hey Buddy, what took you so long” her mesmerizing voice inquired.

“Sorry Peg, my room is a mess. Spent 20 minutes trying to find the connector. Anyway it’s loading join in anytime.”

The sun was the first object to render. Squinting from the bright piercing light, Buddy could feel the radiating heat dialed up as the time was shifted to 10am. Volumetric clouds appeared next, casting pockets of cool shadow on the textureless ground. Then the grass grew, starting from where Buddy stood, photorealistic vegetations sprawled out in every direction. Dense norwegian maples and other species of trees shot up from the ground, their branches extended far beyond their trunks blocking out sunlight with layers of lush leaves. The park was starting to take shape with the scent of freshly cut grass and the the sound of birds chirping in the distance. A young mother pushed her baby stroller casually walking beside her husband on a slither of concrete trail which was fading into reality along with benches, fences, and lamp posts. From the opposite direction, an athletic biker whizzed by, leaving a soft morning breeze in his wake. Finally the luxurious Middletown apartments, accompanied by the noise of busy morning traffic, rose all around Buddy, completing the picture he’d seen countless times before.

His attention was brought back from scenery when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. “Sorry got a little immersed in the environment.” he turned around and studied at what appeared to be another player. “So this is your first time?”

The textureless stick figure stood before him had a humanoid shape, except all her limbs ended with a large sphere signifying the position where the head, hands and feet should be. “I didn't choose a model yet.” She whispered low. “How come no one reacted to me like this?”

“I turned AI to medium, they are only moving for now. Can you believe it we are processing around 20 million NPCs concurrently. It’ll probably get laggier on higher settings especially with physics and all that later. We’ll see.” Buddy explained while fiddling with the hologram panel above his forearm. “Alright I got some avatars people tend to choose from just touch the one you want.”

Five T-posed models rotated slowly on the display. The first one on the left was a generic canine. Next to it a reptilian with the features of a wingless dragon. Then a feline, shaped somewhat like a cross between a tiger and a cheetah. The horse was next, Buddy winced slightly at this. Finally a vulpine of some sort, the display was small but its thin snout had made it apparent.

When her “hand” connected with the canine, her bare stick figure morphed into the shape of a wolfness almost instantly. The bland and textureless shade of gray was slowly washed away by a coat of glaring white fur. Buddy adjusted a few sliders on his hologram display and Peggy’s coat rearranged into a more natural gradient of brown and gray. For a moment, he marveled at each distinguishable strand of fur as they swayed with the cool morning breeze, all of which were as realistic as realism could be conveyed by the simulation which was practically indistinguishable from reality.

Peggy lifted her arms and flexed her fingers tenderly, she gently ran a hand down her own arm, overwhelmed with the sensation of warmth, softness and perhaps some disbelief. She was still rubbing her neck and arms when a man sweating profusely decided to take a break from his jogging routine and sat down on a bench next to her. “That.. is a really …. nice costume.” he said as intelligible as he could while trying to catch his breath.

She tried to thank him but swallowed the sentence midway as a child tugged at her tail boyishly “How do you get this to stay up?”

Another senior couple also stopped from their morning stroll to inspect the unusual curiosity. Before long, there gathered around a dozen people, one even offered to take a photo for some obscure magazine’s weekly column. Fidgeting, she slid her hands into her pockets looking rather helplessly at Buddy.

“Ten minutes in and you are already at the center of things. I haven’t even done anything yet.” Buddy said with a sly grin.

“I thought you turned NPC to not react?” she whimpered, slightly embarrassed from the attention.

The crowd switched glances repeatedly between the two, incredibly confused. Buddy murmured something low and in an instant everything stopped. The traffic noise was gone, the crowd was no longer talking in fact nothing was moving. He inched himself closer towards Peggy carefully navigating through the frozen torsos as if touching them was a great sin.

“Don’t worry you’ll get used to it soon enough I guarantee it.” He rested his hand on Peggy’s shoulder for a moment then stepped back a little. “I’ll start you off slow, some people get horrible vertigo going too fast. After ten, twenty minutes you’ll feel completely different.”

“What?”

Buddy dragged a slider slowly on his hologram display until the tip of Peggy’s ears just barely brushed upon a batch of leaves hung from the elm tree they stood under. The status indicator showed she was 34 feet and weight about 16 tons. Looking up, he wanted to ask her how she felt since it was her first time but judging by her hands violently fidgeting in her pockets and her rapidly heaving chest, he knew she was probably feeling the hot whips of panic. And just like an statue she had not moved an inch. Her flannels and jeans grew with her, perhaps the last vestige of shelter keeping her from collapsing from certain embarrassment. Buddy had introduced other people to the simulation before, many of whom also suffered from similar anxiety, in fact very rarely did people transition to the new perspective comfortably. But he knew with a little push, their innocence will come around, eventually.

“What’s wrong now?” He inquired anyway.

Peggy turned her head to survey the inanimate people around her. “It’s… uhhh.” She exhaled deeply. “You know sometimes when you jump into things thinking it’d be great but it turns out not what you think it would turn out to be.”

“Wait a second.” Buddy interrupted suddenly, “You sound like a man with the deepest voice in the entire system. I’m going to switch to voice chat. I won’t be able to understand you when you get any bigger. Ok go ahead.”

“And this wet feeling is disgusting.” Her slender fingers clamped onto the bulky elm trunk for support, her right foot-paw, now nearly 5 feet long, rose steadily as she tilted her neck to inspect whatever lies underneath the black pads and among the soft grey fur.

Player models grew with respect to their center of mass, even though she was standing on the cement walkway her heels had edged onto the green lawn and pushed up clumps of dirt and grass some of which evidently clung to her delicate furs. It didn’t help when the morning dew still lingered somewhere down the grass stalks, mixing with the soil to form something quite unpleasant. Buddy shrugged, failing to think of something meaningful to say while Peggy scraped the underside of her heels on the bench where the frozen jogger sat and watched motionlessly.

“Oh, looks like you got a little on him.” Buddy remarked, “I can disable some physics if you are going to be this OCD about it.”

“How do you like walking barefoot in mud and grass.”

“Ey, I’m not the one who wants to be big here.” He protested. “It’s gonna get worse anyway.”

After wiping a satisfactory amount of dirt off of her heels she stepped over the paralyzed crowd with extraordinary grace and stood in the center of the walkway. Looking at a few leaves brushed off by her ears on her massive frame which took up almost 2/3 of the trail, she asked Buddy what comes next.

“I want you to get comfortable with all these.” He brought up the hovering control panel again above his forearm. “I’m going to turn AI back on now. A lot of them will stare. I don’t know. Some might say things you may not like, each session is different.”

The photographer with a camera hung around his neck along with everyone else blinked back into life as the rowdy New York noises rose up into the cool morning air. The subject of his photograph and everyone else’s topic of discussion, needless to say, vanished from their view. So they turned to look. The jogger sneezed from the dirt and furs fell on his face, and the general consensus among the crowd was to slowly back away at least 40 feet from Peggy until they found comfort and safety in the distance. Buddy pretended to be just another innocent park goer caught up in the fiasco and also backed away with them, smiling. The elderly couple was speechless, everyone else stared breathlessly except for a middle aged man who broke out suddenly “My god someone call the precinct!”

“I’ll get the public phone!” shouted the jogger who was still panting breathlessly but not entirely from the physical exertion then sprant away perhaps fastest he had ran in his life.

“What are you waiting for?” shouted Buddy somewhere in the crowd. “He is going to call the cops on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stop him, cops will ruin the fun!”

Without a word, she gave chase. The ground trembled with her heavy footfalls which were, much to Buddy’s surprise, not quite heavy enough to crack the cement walkway. But the sudden rush of wind she stirred up by skipping atop of the staring crowd had sent a couple of straw hats flying along with other headwears light enough to be peeled away. Most people who were unfortunately caught in her path hurriedly shuffled aside, a few jumped and dived over fences upon seeing the approaching mass. But some of whom closer to her only stood in shock which resulted in her sloppy movement from having to choose her footings carefully to avoid stepping on anyone by accident.

The tremors from her steps could be felt from yards away and those who felt them turned their heads to trace Peggy’s movements while their bodies were suspended in disbelief. The middle aged man who suggested phoning the police grabbed Bubby by the collar and yanked him around with a fierce temperament that bordered violence. “Now listen here, punk. Why did you say that?” He spoke with a heavy italian-american accent and his broad arms shook Buddy just like ringing a bell.

“I don’t know man.” answered Buddy unconvincingly. “But this is where the fun begins.”

The poor jogger ran with such an awkward posture that it was blatantly apparent his strained muscles were screaming in pain, but with Peggy gradually closing her distance he dared not slow down the slightest. Her initial speed had been slow, she was mostly tip-toeing among those who stood rooted in the ground, in shock, like deers caught in the headlight. Her speed picked up when the trail was mostly devoid of people or pets, and at a casual running pace her speed easily tripped that of an average adult sprinting at full speed. Occasionally heavy tree branches that hung low below her chin would pop into her view, but they were more annoyances than obstacles. For the most part she was able to duck over nimbly with a slight bend of her neck, otherwise she simply closed her eyes and clipped them with her muzzle or her forehead. Of course the simulation provided enough sensation to signify the existence of an object or an impact but it wouldn’t convey actual pain unless specified by the player. While it might’ve looked painful to others, Buddy knew those branches probably felt just like soft linen brushing across her face.

Peggy and the jogger were, if estimated generously, around 200 feet apart when she had enough room for her footings and broke into a fast jog herself. Within a few seconds that distance was reduced to 150. Although it was clear to make out her pleads for the jogger to stop through voice chat, her voice sounded more like monstrous rumbles to everyone else now that her vocal cord had expanded 6 times the normal size. Each time that monster roared the jogger would snap his head around only to find the distances between them shortened at an alarming rate. Within half a minute Peggy was at a car’s length away, she bent down slightly and extended her right arm, her furried hand was in a readied position to snatch up the man at any moment. But the jogger, more dexterous at their relative size, turned abruptly to his right and skipped expertly over the trail fence, finally landing gracefully on the green lawn then spirited away.

Being in a simulation, her size did not affect her reaction speed. But with physics applied to her however, inertia carried her a little further than she would have liked. All her 16 tons of weight slid forward uncontrollably for a short distance despite her best effort at stopping her momentum by twisting her feet sideways to increase more friction. Her toe claws screeched terribly against the concrete walkway and within their paths left a few short white skid mark. Peggy hesitated a little after coming to a full stop, probably considering whether she should give up the chase, after all, her previous experience with the wet lawn was not entirely pleasant.

Eventually she decided against it. Her snout was scrunched up with disgust when her foot slammed down on the lawn, it made a squishy sound as the pressure from her weight forced water in the soil to spread outward. She was practically running on a thin layer of mud. The loose soil did, however, soak up the impacts of her feet and the tremor was replaced mostly by a new suction sound every time she lifted her foot. Once again her distance was shortening with each passing second and the jogger had slowed down significantly no doubt due to prolonged exhaustion. From 200 feet away, everyone was anticipating her movements with tight faces and agape jaws.

Buddy slightly nudged the size slider to 50 feet, after all a simple capture scenario wouldn't be amusing without some sort of mishap. Almost immediately this sudden growth was felt by all: Peggy let out a surprised yelp as her shadow shotout well past the running man and the people watched it unfold gasped almost in unison. The length of Peggy's stride also increased with proportion to her height, she had carefully calculated her steps so that her foot wouldn’t actually land on the jogger, or at worst land beside him for a good scare. But with this unexpected change, the jogger’s life was in imminent danger. Thinking quickly, she kicked the ground with her left foot in an attempt to gain more speed and skip over the man but she had not considered the lawn was well lubricated with the morning dew.

Her fall was swift and comedic, it might have been prevented if she was wearing shoes but the player model was different and the ground was slippery. Her left foot was first to lose traction and it catapulted a chuck of soil straight into the air, her right foot landed at an awkward angle which also grazed the grass and failed to find a solid holding. She held out her hands to brace for impact but when her wrists touched the ground they also slid forward and she fell flat right on her face. The jogger let out a loud cuss when he realized gravity was relentlessly pulling down some 50 tons of mass on top of him, then swiftly disappearing beneath Peggy’s red and black flannel. The resulting tremor was unexpectedly meager caused in part by the loose soil absorbing most of the impact but the air under Peggy’s belly was hastily compressed and a tiny pressure wave was formed which blew past the spectating crowd like a wave of evening breeze.

“BUDDY WHAT DID YOU-” she screamed over the voice chat.

“Settle down, he’s fine.” Buddy replied. “Safety is on.”