Sword Art Online:ME12

Status: Incomplete

Preview Script

ME12: Sword Art Online 16.8

Part 1

The first consumer use full dive machine «nerve gear» sent super weak electromagnetic pulse signals containing information on the five senses of vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch to the user’s brain, allowing the creation of a virtual reality environment with full bodily sensation. However, that virtual reality, from the perspective of I, who had lived in the electronic prison for two years, reproduced the senses slightly different from in reality. The reproduction of touch and hearing can almost be called perfect. The information that came in were artificial 3-D objects and synthetic sounds, so although it couldn’t be exactly like the real world, I practically had no memories of discomfort with my senses of sight and hearing.

My senses of smell and taste were also fairly consistent. «The feeling of eating», in other words the data for taste, fragrance, texture, and consistency, were being generated in real time, were resigned to doing that. Preset data could be made with a «taste playback engine», but if you somehow got used to it, you’d think that simply delicious virtual food was incredibly delicious real food. In particular, food made by a certain Fencer-sama who had completed her cooking skill, like even a simple fried egg, gives an unforgettable satisfaction in this virtual world. Well, I guess a few mental changes were also made.

And finally tactile sense, which includes, in particular, the feeling of warmth and the sensation of skin touching. Unfortunately, this uncomfortable feeling that I’m being followed has yet to disappear... Anyways, it feels good to actively touch things, like the leather lovingly wrapped around the sword handle, creating a reliable, comfortable grip, or the smooth, long hair of the one I love.Those feelings have a resolution no less than the real world, satisfying my tactile senses.

However the passive information, in other words the various natural feelings of my skin on the entire body, is vastly different from the real world. The feeling of rubbing against the inside of my clothes; the weight of my outer garments and the stretchiness of my pants; the temperature of the air and feel of the current; the feeling of pressure on the soles of my feet as I stand on the ground, or on my bottom as I sit in a chair. These «continual complex sensory systems» were simplified to the maximum in SAO. This was probably because the amount of information would be too much.

Of course there was the feeling of wearing something, but it was blurred, like a low resolution image. Nonetheless, it’s still possible to get used to it. Even in reality, one can not possibly be always conscious of the feeling of their clothes. As long as you don’t mind it, everyday life (although there’s a sense of discomfort using this word in Aincrad) is not really ill effect at all. However, situations where bodily experiences are affected by the low quality tactile data inevitably occur. Like how the entire body, fully unequipped, feels when submerged under heated liquids. In other words, a hot bath.

October 25th, 2024, 10AM. From the other side of the bathroom door I could faintly hear humming “nnnn fufu fufu n” in addition to the light sound of water. I recalled my time spent at a dark elf’s camp, but now, I now have something I didn’t have back then--the right to open this door.

Breathing heavily, I lightly knocked on the wooden door. The humming stopped, and after a brief pause, “come in” was softly spoken in response.

“E-excuse me”, I replied, also in a soft voice, as I opened the door. Rays of sun entered the bathroom through the window in the back, reflected off of the enveloping steam, causing me to squint my eyes.

The log house on the 22nd floor of Aincrad wasn’t really large, but it did have a bath house. It was about 2x4 meters. The size of a normal unit bath in the real world was 1618, or 1.6 meters by 1.8 meters, so the area was was a little over 2.8 times larger, on par to a hot spring inn--or perhaps that would be a bit of a stretch. Rumor has it, in the «DDA», fort-class guild home on a hill on the 56th floor, there was a 10 meter large, enormous marble bath, but it’s unlikely I’ll ever be able to go there. For a player home, however, this bath is simply luxurious. Furthermore, It’s covered in cypress trees, and hot spring water flows from it’s source.

“Nee, how long are you going to keep standing there?”