You just got a VR headset. You've played three or four games for a few minutes each, swearing that you've been in game for hours but steam only says it's been twenty-four minutes. The nausea hits, playfully at first. Like the time you thought you could show off your high-school dance moves at a party and ended up gasping for air halfway through the first song. Some part of you thinks, quietly: maybe this is all an overpriced gimmick. Maybe playing games, standing or sitting up straight, tensed arms held up, straining your wrists, is all just proof this is carriage-before-the-horse idiocracy.

Then it hits. Something cool happens and you give yourself permission to pretend. You feel like a kid wielding a cool looking branch like a sword. Like when your parents got the new fridge and you got to turn the box into a space ship. The rain hits the windshield, you pause for a second and you think "**** it I'm going to do a loop." Nausea be damned. Then you do a ****ing loop. Head leaning into non-existent momentum, grip adjusting on an imaginary steering wheel, easing into the final turn. Smile pushing up the headset just long enough to feel it sag back down again. Then one day you just stop feeling the nausea.

Free's a pretty good price to pay for that.