I land in Virtua, Virtua Metaverse, specifically, this thing Vanar runs, and nothing. Not empty-nothing. The wrong kind of nothing. Avatars already standing there. Someone mid-dance. Someone else adjusting their camera like they've been bored for hours. The banner in the corner looks... settled. Like it aged there.
I don't know if I missed it or if it's still coming. That's the thing with Vanar. There's no "now we're starting." No freeze. No countdown. The world just... kept rendering before I arrived.
I stand there. I know I'm standing there. My avatar doing that awkward default pose while I scan for the cue. The mental line that tells me where to put myself. It doesn't come. Background stuff keeps closing and opening. State shifting in these tiny fast steps I can't quite track. That's Vanar Chain underneath, I guess. The L1 doing its thing, making sure the environment never pauses even when I do.
So I move. Not because I know it's right. Because stillness starts feeling like I messed up. Like I'm the one lagging behind the room.
Someone else moves too. Then another. Not confidence, just... not wanting to be the only one paused. You know that feeling? When everyone else seems to know the choreography and you're still checking if the music started.
I open my inventory. Fast. Close it. Open it slower the second time, like maybe I missed something. Like the UI might tell me what phase we're in if I just look right.
Ten of us landed in the same ten seconds carrying completely different ideas about whether we're early or late. One guy already clicking something. One watching. One reacting to, I don't know what, something that touched the shared state before my screen finished loading the walls. That's the thing about Vanar's live environments. They don't wait to see who's ready. They assume presence and let understanding trail behind.
No seam. No reset. No "hold to confirm" that buys us time to sync up.
I type "are we live already?" Half joking. Or completely serious. Hard to tell which.
Nobody answers. They're all checking different surfaces. Menu. Close. Open. Someone saw a reward flicker in the corner. Three of us missed it because we were looking at our hands, basically. At our own confusion.
No wallet prompt. No fee line. Nothing that tells my brain to slow down. Wallet-less interaction, they call it. Part of how Vanar's supposed to bring the next three billion people in, remove the friction, remove the pause, remove the little rituals that used to tell us "yes, this counted." It feels frictionless until it suddenly doesn't.
"Okay, it's started," someone says. Too loud. Too sure.
Two seconds later they're quieter. I saw it happen. That little deflate.
Then someone triggers something. Animation resolves clean. Response lands just... late enough. Late enough that clicking again feels reasonable. Not greedy. Reasonable. The system didn't push back. Didn't ask me to wait.
So my thumb, my actual thumb in my actual hand, taps again.
Gas abstraction means it's free. No sting. No little cost signal that normally turns my impulse into restraint. Vanar built it this way so normies don't panic about fees, but what it actually does is remove the feedback that tells me to stop asking. Back. Forward. Same button. Tap again.
Screenshots start flying. Different angles. Different milliseconds. One cropped tight, looks definitive. Another showing a state that already moved past. Each one real. None of them the same reality.
A mod pins the wrong one because it's clean. Because clean wins over true when everyone's scrolling fast.
Two minutes later the correction comes, long and messy, and gets scrolled past. Another mod snaps "stop spamming chat." Someone replies "i'm not spamming, it started before I got in" and, I get that. I totally get that. Two realities now. The one the system already closed. The one we decided we saw.
I refreshed too fast once. Missed what I was looking for. My friend didn't refresh at all, kept playing, nothing broke for him. A third guy repeated an action because the first one didn't feel like it counted. And that second action wasn't private, another session watching, another player reacting, two stories diverging before we agreed on what the hell just happened. This is VGN Games Network, by the way. Or Virtua. One of Vanar's verticals, gaming, metaverse, brand stuff, whatever. They all inherit the same rule here. Nothing rewinds to explain itself.
Ops sees green. Dashboards calm.
Support is screaming.
Tickets don't say "broke." They say "lagged." "Didn't take." "Started before I got in." One actually asks where the start button is. Like this was supposed to be normal. Like apps are supposed to have doors.
From outside, smooth. Worlds persist. Sessions don't stall. The VANRY token keeps everything moving under the hood, not that I see it. Not that I feel it. That's the point, right? Three billion people aren't going to watch block confirmations. They want Instagram speed. Vanar gives them that. Gives them almost that. Gives them the action without the echo.
I'm still trying to locate when I arrived. The environment won't confirm it. Won't pause to say "yes, you were here for that."
Back. Forward. Same surface.
I'm still checking. I know I am.