It was smaller than I thought but it was very elegant. Housed in softly gleaming metal with a brushed finish and a deep sheen, it radiated quality and value.

"It" is the Optasia, an enhanced perception monitor. Built by Horama Labs it is designed to work with, and take advantage of, Google's latest internet browser, Chromium Max.

Chromium has been around for a while now and its support for virtual reality headsets of all types has put it at the top of the browser world. This combination of C-Max and Optasia promises to blow the lid off the VR business. Together, they pitch a complete virtual reality experience with no goggles.

My name is Marty Howard. I am a freelance beta tester. This assignment came with a book of non-disclosure agreements and a single line of instructions.

"Plug it in. It will self configure and tell you when it is ready".

So I did. It did. I sat down to go to work. There was no keyboard and no mouse. It was a bit like looking into a high quality ladies' makeup mirror. Not much bigger. Just about the time I thought there was a glitch, I experienced a fantastic bloom of color in my head. I am experienced with VR goggles so I didn't look away. The visuals were amazing. I was not looking at a startup page in front of me, I was experiencing it in my brain.

With VR, the computer can tell from your eye movement what part of the screen you are looking at and can take appropriate action. The menus were easy and intuitive and I very quickly found the control panel and opened the configuration pages.

Again I experienced amazing visual effects. I was in a three-dimensional room with colorful, labelled feature balloons. As I looked at a balloon, the settings for that particular feature were displayed. I noticed that one was pulsing a gentle blue and white pattern. It was the audio settings.

I have a Bowers and Wilkins sound system attached to my computer. While not the absolute best, It is very good. C-Max was suggesting that I try the Aural-Optical link that was new with the Optasia. Well, I was there to test the software so, sure, why not? I selected the appropriate line items, brushed past the warning boxes and stepped out of the configuration room and into the demo.

And what a demo it was. I rode a bus through the Tuscan countryside, sat in on a debate in Parliament, and stood at the rim of a volcano in Hawaii. Intellectually I knew that I was watching a demo but emotionally, I was right there on that bus. I felt the heat of the volcano on my face. Somehow, the engineers had managed to convey all of that sensory information to my brain through the laser interface. I sniffed. No sense of smell, yet. But the audio... oh my lord. The audio was not coming through my ears. It was in my head. I was not hearing it, I was experiencing it.

Horama Labs had found a way to code the audio into the video stream and it was fantastic! On the 'flight' back from Hawaii I selected a playlist from the entertainment menu and just sat there dumbfounded.

A warning light was flashing gently. Optasia was letting me know that I had been viewing for two hours and recommended that I take a break.

Reluctantly, I shut down the system. I am supposed to be impartial, a Beta tester, looking for problems; but all I could think of was how soon I could get back into that magical wonderland they had created.

The house seemed abnormally quiet to me. I live alone but there is always noise in the background; the air conditioner or the refrigerator or noise filtering through from the street. But this was just...silence. Eerie silence. I opened the closet door and slammed it shut. Nothing. I hit the door with my fist. I could imagine that bang echoing through the house but for me both the bang and the echo did not exist.

I could not understand what was happening to me. I had heard the music through Optasia just fine.

Optasia!

I fired up the system and went to the pages reserved for Beta testers. I skipped past all of the FAQs and feedback forms and went right to the live query page.

"Has there been any reports of hearing loss with the use of Optasia?"

|> "Seven percent of Beta testers have reported complete loss of hearing after use of the Aural-Optical link. It is unknown if this loss is temporary. Please use form 17-B to report such loss to our statistical analysis division.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause to our Beta Testers."<|