Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

4. Engineering a Body - The Skeleton (Part 2)

"System, I would like to try out the modified avatar. I want to know how the changes feel."

A button appeared in Flora's user-interface. Taking a deep breath, she pressed it.

Flora felt her skin, meat, and organs vanish and caught a glimpse of her hand. White skeletal fingers clenched and then fell apart. She tried to curse, but it proved difficult without vocal cords.

The world went black, and a moment later, she returned to her original body. She stared at the bare-boned avatar.

'Forgot to add the other layers back, before testing... I guess I got a bit too excited, well.' The encounter unsettled Flora. You don't experience everyday dissolving into bones.

She created a save file of the avatar. Then she opened the original avatar. Newbies would just have replaced the bones, but that would displace the soft tissues in the space where the bones had a different shape. An advanced user like Flora knew a better method. She created a transform sequence, which allowed the old bones to morph into the modified form. The benefit was the tissues moved with the transformation. Of course, even this method wasn't perfect. She expected bruising or maybe even internal bleeding. After creating another save file, she watched the avatar concerning these problems.

'Looks good. Ready for test two!' She smashed the button enthusiastically.

Immediately she felt 20 years younger. She rolled her shoulders and hips and did a few jumping jacks.

"System, add a note to this save file: Good mobility, less pain, no bruising noticeable."

Flora stopped the test.

"System, please change the shirt of this avatar to one with the print 'V0.1'. Could you animate it to do continuously jumping jacks? I want to see if there are any longterm problems."

The System complied with her wishes. Now, two of her avatars occupied the workspace: the skeleton and the jumping V0.1. Of course, the S rated female model was still there, too.

Flora pointed to the mandible in the avatar's head. "System, please show me a model of this bone with the best material."

"Because of privacy concerns, all data shown must incorporate at least 1000 individuals."

"I know, dear. When I say 'show me the best', treat it as if I would have said 'show me an aggregated version of the thousand best', if displaying the real best violates the rules. Accommodate grammatical variances." She had forgotten how arduous it was communicating with AIs.

After the model of the mandible appeared, she selected a layer of the bone and a similar segment of the bone of the avatar. Then she exchanged the material of the avatar with the content of the model.

Flora repeated this approach for all the bones and all cartilage in the head.

Only now, she noticed V0.1 had stopped jumping. Not only that, but it also stood stock-still.

"System, why did you stop the animation?"

"The avatar died of exhaustion. I didn't restart the animation, because you wanted to monitor the condition of the avatar."

"Good job." Flora praised System because he got it right, but she was still dismayed about her avatar perishing.

System told her the reason for the death, exhaustion. Flora didn't know that was even possible, and the System elaborated.

"In Cetviwos, CentralTank virtual worlds, everybody has a stamina pool. The stamina pool can be overdrawn according to the strength of the avatar, but if it exhausted, the player gets defeated."