Epic

by Alexander Strijewski

  While the problem of neglect of real life had been a problem before, it was now becoming to be a true threat to existence and was an epidemic. With revenues continuing to snowball, and the creators of VR environments now being massive corporations, every business there was, was trying to hop on board the gravy train heading for the horizon of the green and gold. In 2,130, all the major VR gaming corporations amalgamated into one final business entity, “The Better Life Company” and achieved monopoly status. Given its financial state of power , the BLC had strong ties to legislation, government and of course entertainment and so PR. Somewhat like Microsoft, it would develop what would come to be the “Killer app” everyone would use whether they wanted to or not. One group could dictate your virtual existence, and they pretty much had carte blanche on where they wanted you to go.

  In 2,143 the last element to VR was added and BLC announced what would be its final creation already beginning mass production worldwide. As it was a lot of work continually creating fresh content in terms of communication and interaction with the characters inside VR, integrating the responses and originated communications of many thousands of players into other player’s experiences systems was the final touch that added a never ended store of originality that made them want to abandon the real world. The final product named “The Paragon” v3.4.16 with the tag line “the ultimate in human experience” was the result. It was a self-contained VR room of 40 feet by 40 feet and 20 feet high. Telling the difference between the Paragon and real life was next to impossible.

  An uprising began, but given what was now the power of BLC, was easily crushed. Real life became an afterthought. Also those demonstrating even were themselves gamers. How could they not be? VR was an integral part of the culture and everyone partook in it. You couldn’t get through school without a mandatory curriculum of VR learners and social discourse included many times their best experiences online. Those who wanted to deal with the real world were left behind as America and then its affiliates across Europe and other continents began mass production of Paragon VR Rooms by the millions and then finally billions. Many fail safes were installed to make each unit fool proof and self-sufficient. Triple redundancy as well as one paragon providing power for another in a sort of grid-like pattern made it so that if one were ever to possibly fail, the unit next to it would affect repairs and sent it right back online before its occupant would ever know anything had happened. The units were solar powered and completely self-sustainable. All the major problems of real life were now solved, matters of food, shelter, energy, entertainment, rest and sex were all covered. Thus no one needed to work anymore and a full migration from R into VR began, even for the underprivileged. Actual procreation was done by saving the real semen from a male inhabited Paragon while he was in the act and passing it onto the next Paragon inhabited by a female whenever she engaged in the act. Thus new children were born. Thus a couple could create progeny without ever really having met. You also didn’t live in a house anymore, you lived in a Paragon. And addresses? Who needed those? You’re actual family, as long as you could stand them, lived right next to you in the Paragon over. You could say hi from time to time if you wanted to, but it was many times considered a chore. In-laws were quite definitely supplanted with more personable and courteous VR equivalents as a general rule.

  500 years passed. With the population holding steady at 23 billion, there being no particular need to reproduce, man did not expand further. He could produce sensation as well as any real life experience. Man still did not reach for the stars. He had brought the stars to him. The only problem was, were the representations of the cosmos actually faithful to the real thing. Were there true alien beings out there? Well, the BLC architects sure thought so, but were their imaginings true to life? Were the experiences of falling in love, of seeing a shining moon illuminating a dark night, of taking a stroll through the forest accurate? Man didn’t know anymore, but worse he didn’t care. Life was easy, much too easy.

  Man knew everything about classic battle tactics, about women, without ever really knowing about them in the real. Not in actuality. But it was enough for him, he thought. Real life was really dull in comparison.

  * * *

  Chase Brimley kicked away the debris right outside the exit of his Paragon unit in disgust. Couldn’t anyone clean up this mess? The dreary, music-less and drab saffron sky of reality greeted him as he descended the steps leading to the common road. No one cared for the worlds atmosphere as the Paragons had self-contained breathe gas generators. Snaking through further discarded remains of candy wrappers further reminded him of just how much he hated the outside world. Pointless he thought, why would anyone want to eat outworld candy when it could be synthed into exactly what pleases your own palette. And then to just leave it discarded out here? Why? Garbage didn’t collect online.

  Across the way he saw the P-home, or as they were referred to the “P-abode”, of his sister whom he barely spoke with. He thought he would visit with and catch up on things, despite the fact that a lot of her communication style had already been ported directed into his own VR. He pushed further pointless trees out of the way and hit the call-button right outside.

  Moments passed as she was surely in the middle of her adventures inside. Man, it really smelled out here. Wasn’t there anyone whose job it is to clean up this place, thought Chase? Surely they’ve invented some kind of robotic cleaning agents of some sort. Oh well, he wouldn’t be out here for much longer. He hit the call-button one more time. A mutated bird landed on a nearby dilapidated tree limb. Its warble really set Chase’s teeth on edge.

  “Go on! Get out of here!”

  He threw a rock towards it scare it away, and it squawked its strained caw in defiance as it flew elsewhere. Hopefully to bother someone else.

  “Come one, come on, come on Sis!”

  He rapped his knuckles against the side of his sister’s pabode hard one more time out of frustration. He felt a disturbance in the air as a deliberate series footfalls seemed to be headed in his direction now.

  “Hey! What do you want!” she wailed.

  “Geez Jessica, I just wanted to say hi. What’s the matter with?” taken aback.

  “Oh God, OK fine, HI! Are we done?”

  “What, can’t a brother come by and say hi to her sister anymore?” Chase snapped back.

  “I have something I was in the middle of if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh ok, well I do mind, I wanted to see how you were getting along and how things were?”

  “Oh come on, you know just as well as I that we know each other through the characters in our games don’t you. You speak to me practically every day, same with mom, same with dad, same with everyone. Why can’t you just leave well enough alone? I was just in the middle of an important board meeting regarding the future of several of my planets futures.”

  Chase’s brow furrowed in derision, “Several make believe planets you mean. Have you talked to our surrogate parents lately?”

  “Yes in my game. You know one of them is probably busy surfing the waves of Hawaii while the other is off designing clothes or some such. Who really cares? OK it was nice talking to you. Goodbye.” She slammed the door. No one had a right to walk into another’s unit.

  Well that was pointless thought Chase. What a waste of time. He suspected that there weren’t entities within his own programs who fully represented the level of bitchiness that was Jessica. When was the last time he had really talked to her in game he thought?

  Oh well. He considered going over to his surrogate father’s pabode. It was 500 yards away. The steady row of Paragons which lined the countryside made for a very repetitive and mundane view. The land was unkempt. Did he really want to walk 500 yards through this stench? No. No he didn’t. He wondered why anyone would want to have anything to do with this planet. If only there was a program to nullify its very existence he would be very much for that. VR was his true reality. OK time to head back. Maybe he could have a nap in on
e of the low-G hammocks overlooking the beaches in the Phillipines, or no a secluded beach in the Seychelles. Yes! That was it, time for a break. He wandered back to his home, the only real home he knew.

  * * *

  It was time for the next mission briefing, the campaign against the Harnak conglomerate was moving along very well, especially with their last victory securing the outpost and converting it to an automated listening station. Planning the next offensive was practically a piece of cake, because they finally had accurate read outs of enemy garrisons and troop movements. The next mission practically fell into their lap. A high security convoy was expected to pass through the Rigel system very soon and despite requiring the highest in security measures, was being disguised as being routine traffic by leaving it relatively undefended. Intelligence was reporting this particular convoy was to be transporting VVIPs and a simple capture could lead to some real hot information in the war if they interrogated the passengers, whoever they were. Of course it was very possible that however lightly defended they were, that this was only a ruse, designed to lure the Alliance into a trap. The engagement window was closing soon as the convoy was purported to be moving through the area in less than two hours.

  Major Lee Hanson listened intently to the Admirals briefing. If the enemy craft fighter escort was eliminated quickly, there would be no chance for countermeasures to arrive and disabling the craft for boarding should be done in a matter of minutes. He loved the anticipation of all these missions, especially with so much at stake. If they won here, the information could turn the tide of the entire war and the Alliance would finally have a voice in the galactic scheme of things.

  He took careful notes and then it was time to board his Kalidon Systems, Alliance Hypercraft. He set about testing all systems, especially those for disabling enemy ships. All systems were go. Countdown to launch was a few minutes away. He readjusted his HUD display and optimized where he wanted all the combat information to be displayed, internal energy distribution here, friendly craft positioning here, communications systems there, targeting systems centered. In the bottom right of his display he could read the missions probability for success, only 12%, given the strategic importance of the convoy. Yeah right, this operation would be over in under half an hour. Clowns were those statisticians! Also if this convoy ended up just being routine traffic after all the probability for success was close to around 100% anyways.

  He readjusted his helmet and before beginning opened up the universal game console to readjust the temperature to be more to his liking. Hmmm… it didn’t seem to be responding. It was getting a little bit cold for him actually. But he could fix that. He went back to the main menu console commands and type in further commands using his 3D keyboard which seemed like an extension of his own body to him, it was so natural to use. Again nothing happened. Hmmm… very odd.

  He went back to the troubleshooting section of the menu to help him out. It had been quite a while since he had needed to use it when something else very odd happened. The right side of hangar bay seemed to begin flickering and slowly fading in color. Frustrated, Lee began typing away further commands to enable the fail-safes in the event of malfunction. He rerouted power from Paragons 23B and 23C in the local block. This should be handled in just a matter of a few minutes. But he found his keyboard seemed to be locked up, he could type in anything he wanted but it wasn’t having any effect! He felt perhaps a hard reset was in order. Only once in his life did he ever have to do something like this. But nevertheless, frustration was now replaced with fear. He could hear a strange continuous sound coming from somewhere, he just didn’t know what it was, or from where. He initiated the sequence for a hard reboot by running an override and walked over near the Paragon’s exit. The circuit he needed to manipulate was right by the door in the event of an unexpected blackout. He removed the metal sheath which was hard to make out through the natural 3D image projections of the room, but somehow he managed. Disconnecting a wire and pressing a certain button would reload everything and he did so. He wasn’t worried about saving his progress since that happened automatically anyways, he would be able to pick right from where he last left off.

  He waited for the reboot and after an expected short black out period, the hangar bay began to slowly re-materialize in front of him once again. He made his way to his Hypercraft and secured himself with the proper harness to keep himself from being thrown all around the cockpit. He caught his bearings and went again through the typical safety inspection of all his equipment before beginning the mission. All game activity took place in real time and a loss would affect the future just as anything in the real world would. He had to win and he couldn’t have critical systems malfunction in the heat of battle. Everything checked out. But then the unthinkable happened. The flickering returned and suddenly everything went black. The music stopped, the sensation of the upholstered seat beneath him vanished and he couldn’t see anything! The coldness seemed to increase further and whatever that strange sound was had increased in intensity now.

  He carefully waded back to the override bypass circuit for a hard reset and unscrewed the metal casing once again. He hit reset and nothing… he tried it again… nothing. What was frustration which had become fear was now stark terror! Nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no one there to help him. He was all alone. There was no one to talk to. He looked around and couldn’t even see the hands in front of his face in the pitch black. How can this be!? These units were triple redundant and worked on a network. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Or so he was taught and the legends had said. It had been a long time since he had bothered with an owner’s manual on his Paragon unit. Why should he have bothered, they always worked no matter what.

  Tentatively he crept towards the exit. He needed light. The room repressurized to allow him access to the outworld and suddenly the door blew out and away from him hard! He was lucky that the door didn’t come clean off he thought. The force of the wind was enough for him not to be able to move the door back to its closed position again. He stared out into the real world. “Unreality” he liked to call it. In the real it was now night time and he was in the middle of a raging storm. He edged away from the furious force of the tempest winds lest he be caught and become a hurtling object himself. He could make out various rubble and objects as they passed through the air as his eyes were starting to become accustomed to the darkness now. With nothing to lean on, he slumped over. There was no computer generated furniture to lie on now. Lee realized he was just Chase again. And he watched as his world was carried away with the mighty winds into the void. He watched in stark terror as the blackness enveloped him and everything that ever had meant anything.

  * * *

  All night he looked out through the door to the outworld in the hopes that someone could help him. However with nothing to lie down in except a hard floor he found sleeping to be incredibly difficult. It was the worst night of his life. He had no rest. But when he finally awoke, he saw the morning light began to peek through the exit door with a brilliant silhouette of saffron. It was nice to see something again he thought. Again he made his way over to the reset switch to try a hardline restart. Again nothing happened. What would he do now? Everything just came to a crashing halt in this life, literally. Going over to look out into the outworld he saw what happened. There was a great and powerful storm which had flooded the entire area. Ruins and branches and dead animals filled what was now a river, more than a country side. He hadn’t done a lot of swimming in his programs so it appeared he might be stranded here. Then it suddenly hit him, he would have no food, he would need to eat.

  He heard a strange sound in the distance. It sounded like someone was crying out for help. He looked closely. He made a quick motion to enable his transparent visor to give him a statistical analysis before he realized that he didn’t have it anymore, it only existed in VR. Then noticed that it wasn’t just his own Paragon that had failed, the exit doors for each unit had been opened for as far
as his eyes could see. Thousands and thousands of them must have failed. No wonder his own did not restart, while the program relied on the power of the other machines to rekindle itself, there were no others operating either and the storm had created a cascade failure for thousands of people all at once. He had no instructions for what to do. All instructional material was in the form of software and books were a thing of the past.

  Once again he heard the faint sound. He scanned his surrounds once more. There was someone drowning neaby! At this point he would usually task someone in his team to take point and begin a rescue operation, only after he had surveyed the probabilities, and without any chance of his coming by any physical harm. But Chase was out of shape. He looked on in despair, but he did the best he could. Once again slowly he descended the steps leading to the tumultuous river. The icy water was crushing to him! It stabbed with the force of knives! He was in shock and quickly withdrew back up the steps as fast as he could.

  “Help me!” a female voice cried.

  The voice sounded familiar. Chase had always loved the sense of excitement in VR, but this was completely different. With everything else he loved gone, he decided the right thing to do was to risk his life. He braced himself and dove towards the sound. Fighting off the freezing waters he struggling up stream until he came upon a protruding branch just behind his unit. Jessica, his sister, was hanging onto some debris and was stuck. She seemed senseless not knowing what to do.

  “Just hang on! I’m going to get something to pull you out.”

  He found what looked like rope and tossed it to her.

  “The water is freezing, you have to hold onto the rope as hard as you can don’t let go. No matter what you do, don’t let go. Then we have to get to the higher ground to our left.”