Life's cocoa and pillow forts

Chapter 4 - Sevanna's gift

"Hey, Nolan~!" Sevanna chirped from behind Nolan's door in a singsong voice. "My parents got me this cool thing for my birthday, but it arrived a week early! Wanna open it with me?"

"Sure, I have time to kill," Nolan agreed, having just finished their yet another writing sprint just minutes earlier. Most of the working hours had already passed and it seemed Sevanna was too excited to even think of drawing right now, so it wouldn't hurt to spend some quality time with her instead.

Nolan followed Sev to the living room, where a big cardboard box stood by the couch. "It wasn't too heavy but not exactly light either. I have no idea what's in there," Sevanna admitted.

"Let's find out," Nolan said with a shrug. Sevanna nodded and crouched down to the box, trying to pull open the end of the tape holding it closed. Nolan instead went to grab a box cutter from the tools drawer in the back of their closet.

"Of course," Sev sank a little at the sight of the knife in Nolan's hand. "I should have thought of this myself. Alright, start cutting."

Nolan did so, cutting open the tape, allowing Sevanna to open the box. She caught sight of another black cardboard box and froze. "It's... I know that logo, that's Oculus!" She lifted the box from the small amount of bubble wrap to the living room floor, revealing the entirety of the packaging.

"They did not send me a virtual reality headset."

"It looks like they did," Nolan argued lightheartedly. Sevanna looked up to Nolan, her mouth open in a wide smile. She squealed loudly, unable to contain her emotions. "THEY DIDN'T."

"No, they did," Nolan repeated with a smile. Sevanna looked up at Nolan and back down at the sleek black cardboard packaging of the expensive device. She reached out her hand. "Gimme the knife," she demanded in a sort of kind way. Nolan complied, retracting the blade of the box cutter before giving it to Sevanna, who quickly cut open the tape on the smaller box and opened it up. There was more packaging inside, but all in all the device was very fancy-looking.

"I can't believe it, oh! I'll read the manual! What's this cord for?" Sevanna wondered, mind already racing to all the pieces in the box. Nolan had a glance at the manual's front page. "I'll have it charge. You read the manual?" they offered. Sevanna agreed hastily, rushing to read through the manual as quick as possible. "Can't leave it in sunlight and be very careful about the lens. We don't want it to scrape on accident," she lectured as the writer plugged the headset to the wall.

"Sure," Nolan agreed. What else?

"Can't submerge it in water, obviously, put batteries in the controllers and uh... That's it for outside the headset. Next set of instructions is about the setup once you put it on."

"Interesting. I can dig up some batteries, but for now it has to charge, so let's make some dinner meanwhile?" Nolan suggested with a shrug. Sevanna agreed to it and they went to the kitchen to make something to eat.

The two freelancers returned to the couch with tacos in hand. Sevanna turned on the TV and Nolan started looking for something interesting to watch while they waited for the VR goggles to charge.

Nolan stopped scrolling when they found a documentary about some ship sinking mystery. "That sound interesting enough for you?" they asked their roommate, just in case. Sevanna didn't mind and so they watched the hour-long documentary. By the end, both had finished their tacos and the plates had been deposited to the sink in the kitchen. Sevanna went on ahead and checked the headset.

"Looks like it's fully charged! Time to set this baby up! Can you help me with the instructions if I need them?" she asked Nolan, who simply nodded and sat down on the hammock with the instruction booklet. Sev put on the goggles and strapped the controllers, then turned on the devices.

"What do you see?" Nolan asked out of curiosity.

"A loading screen, hold on. Oh! There we go- Woah this is cool!" Sev replied, looking around and moving her hands in front of her face. "I love it already!"

"It says a screen should pop up asking you to calibrate the floor?"

"Oh, yes, a screen!" Sevanna crouched down and touched one of the controllers to the floor. The device chimed lightly and she stood up again.

"Now the-"

"Playspace?" the artist replied playfully, already pointing their right hand forward and circling around themselves. "I can see you through the headset, heh!" she said with a smile. Nolan gave a small wave and dove back into the manual. "Right, what's next," they muttered.

"Oh, it's showing me a tutorial on the controllers."

"Do that then. Let me know if you're free to explore, perhaps hook it up to the TV so I can see what you're doing?"

"That's a good idea, I'll do that as soon as I'm free to move on my own!"

A couple minutes passed with Sevanna pressing different buttons and waving her hands around. Nolan's attention was pulled back to the immersed artist when she randomly started spinning around in circles and throwing her hands above her head as if she was dancing. "What are you doing?" Nolan asked with a slight smile of amusement. Sevanna seemed to have forgotten they were even there. "I- Uh- There's this robot who invited me to dance in the tutorial-" she quickly explained, clearly caught off guard. Nolan turned their attention back to their phone. "Riiight," they muttered, provoking Sev a little bit. "I'll tell Dan that you're cheating on him with a dancing virtual robot next time we see him."

"Please don't do that, you know that's not true!" Sevanna replied, still circling around, her voice taking on a note of concern.

"Alright, but it's still good blackmail material," Nolan agreed.