The video switched to a fast-forward montage of the two people collaborating on their project, before they disconnected the call and the screen returned to just showing her own workspace.
After her collaboration call ended, she young woman clicked an icon that looked like a tiny house. What appeared wasn’t a window but a full 3-D model of a house sitting on a small plot of land with flowers, bushes, and a few trees surrounding the house.
The woman reached out, grabbed the house, and pulled her hands in opposite directions. The house expanded in size, and soon she was inside one of the rooms inside the house.
She spent some time rearranging furniture inside the room simply by grabbing and moving pieces with her hands.
After fiddling with the room’s furniture for a few moments, she closed the house app, then clicked on another app.
The new app started as a window with a grid of moving pictures. One of the pictures showed a view of the ocean from the porch of a house. She tapped the picture with her finger, and the picture she tapped expanded until she was in the scene.
The scene started with her standing on the beach, the ocean to her left, tropical jungle to her far right, and beside her a young woman in a bikini top and sarong, no shoes.
The sarong-wearing woman started walking, and the view followed beside her. She started talking, introducing what appeared to be a beach resort hotel.
As the sarong-wearing woman talked, the young woman wearing the VR headset turned her head and looked around the scene.
At one point, the young woman paused the 3-D video and used her hands to zoom in on parts of the scene, then resumed the video.
After watching the 3-D beach resort video, the young woman watched several other short clips, then closed the 3-D video app.
There was a knock at her front door, and she got up to answer. At the door was a woman with a young girl of about seven.
"Sorry for the short notice," said the woman at the door. "Can you keep an eye on Sara for a few hours?"
"Sure, sis. No problem," said the young woman.
"Great," said the woman. "Behave for your aunt Tina."
"Okay, Mom," said the little girl with the kind of long-suffering exasperation that only little girls can manage.
The girl entered, the two women hugged, then the girl’s mother left and the young woman closed her front door.
As soon as the door was closed, the girl said, "Aunt Tina, you just have to help me. I’m stuck on the fourth level of the math dungeon and can’t seem to get past the division dragon. Kendra and Gregor both got past it and have been bragging about it all day."
"I can’t beat the dragon for you, sweetie, but why don’t you show me what you’ve tried and maybe I can give you some pointers."
"Okay," said the girl. She plopped onto the couch and pulled out a VR headset and gloves from her backpack.
Soon, the girl’s aunt was watching as the young girl faced a dragon with division problems on each of its scales. To defeat the dragon, the girl had to remove scales from the dragon by throwing the right answer at each scale.
There was a countdown, and if the girl didn’t defeat the dragon before the countdown ended, then she lost the battle. However, each correct answer and scale removed would extend the countdown, giving her more time.
The difficulty of the division problems was not uniform, with scales on the dragon’s breast and head being more difficult than ones on its tail.
The girl’s aunt watched as the girl started working on one of the hardest division problems, the scale right at the center of the dragon’s breast.
The girl solved the problem and hit the center scale with the answer. But removing that one scale was not enough to defeat the dragon. So she started working on the next hardest problem. The scale centered between the dragon’s eyes.
But before she could finish solving the problem, the timer ran out. The dragon breathed very cartoony fire at her and said, "Your strategy has failed. Perhaps you should try something different."
The girl growled in frustration and glared at her aunt. "See. See! There’s just not enough time. If only I had more time, I could solve the forehead scale and defeat the dragon!"
The girl’s aunt rubbed her niece’s back in reassurance and asked, "How much time do you gain for solving one of the dragon’s side scales?"
"Why would I do that? You can’t defeat the dragon that way," the girl said in frustration.
"That’s not what I’m suggesting," said her aunt patiently. "Please, just answer my question. How much time do you gain on the countdown for each side scale you solve?"
"A measly ten seconds," grumbled the girl. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novel·fiɾe·net
"And how long does it take you to solve a side scale?" asked her aunt patiently.
"I dunno, maybe five seconds," said the girl.
The girl’s aunt just stared at her, waiting.
When the girl didn’t grasp the solution, her aunt said, "So... it takes you five seconds to solve each side scale, but each solution gives you an additional ten seconds to solve more scales, correct?"
The girl nodded, then froze. "Of course!" the girl exclaimed. "I can give myself more time to solve the forehead scale if I solve some side scales first!"
The girl immediately dove back into the dungeon to face the division dragon once more.
This time she followed her aunt’s advice and defeated the division dragon.
The girl jumped up from the couch and did a victory dance around the living room while her aunt looked on.
The scene ended, and the presentation video transitioned to a woman who explained some of what was just shown and described various options available for purchase.
The shirt, for example, was one option. Another was just a clip-on battery pack with wires that ran to the gloves and headset. The girl in the video had been wearing the simpler setup.
The video presenter also explained that people who need glasses could use the headset without them because the headset would automatically adjust to the wearer’s vision.