by Isaac Stone
We had dinner in a large corporate dining room. This wasn’t your standard cafeteria with vending machines or lousy lunch lines. We had an actual waiter who came and took our order. There was even a hostess who found us a table. The place was decked out in the red and gold colors the company favored. The only difference I noted between it and a fancy restaurant was a lack of prices on the menu. This was a place for the entertainment of investors and future customers.
“So how long has Ruby Realizations been around?” I asked Heath as we sat down at the table.
“At least twenty years,” he told me. “I came on 2 years ago when they were pumping money in the development of the VR system. My background is in cybernetics, so they snapped me up after I finished graduate school. The original company was founded as a traditional role player gamer company, but they latched onto some investors with deep pockets. They want to see some results after all the cash dumped into the program. Humble beginnings, glorious aspirations, just like it says on the letterhead.”
I recollected that this was pretty much the same story told me by Jack at Sandstone Gems. How many other up-from-their-bootstraps companies were racing to be the first to have a workable VR system for the gaming industry?
“And you think this will take off and replace the current online gaming systems out there?” I asked him as the waiter brought us our salads.
“Once it becomes established,” he answered as he unwrapped his tableware, “I believe it will replace all other forms of entertainment. Why sit back and watch someone when you can be part of the action? What young guy out there wouldn’t want to be part of a treasure hunt, historic battle or space adventure?”
“You have a point,” I agreed with him. “Beyond that, there is a lot you can do with this VR system. Meetings where people don’t have to be there in real time. You could tour all kinds of sites and never have to leave your house.”
I could see this would be the biggest gold rush in history while the market worked to establish a winner. However, I remembered the technology that won out was not always the best one. The one that triumphed had best marketing department. Sorry Tesla, but Edison had better packaging.
“Believe me, I’ve thought about them all. The company has a whole division that looks into the practical application of VR. It’s going to be huge."
We ate our salads in relative silence, which was a good thing because let me tell you, those were some salads deserving of silent consumption and thoughtful contemplation. I bet you they even baked their own croutons in house.
"So what about this phase-shift you told me about?” Heath asked later as the main entrée was brought to our table. “You said something about hallucinations where you went back to the game world. Did the doctors have anything to say about your condition?”
“They said there was nothing physically wrong with me,” I told him while I cut into my steak. “I can walk down the street and find myself back in the game world. It’s why I took an Uber here. I can’t risk driving and have it happen to me on the expressway.”
“Good point,” he told me after he took a sip of his wine. “Have you had one recently?”
“Not in the past few days. The doctors gave me some medication to take. It’s supposed to act as a mood stabilizer and help me sleep. I brought the drugs along with me. Did you say something about me undergoing a medical exam?” I decided not to tell him about the dream where I was back on the mountain.
“I did,” Heath answered. “Bring the medication along, we’ll want to show it to the doctors who work for us. I suppose we could have requested your files, but the company felt it best to do the evaluation here. Besides, we don’t want to give Sandstone any ideas that you’re working for us. Did you tell anyone?”
“Not a soul. I don’t have a lot of friends.”
“What about your family?”
“Told them I’d taken a job with a new company. They asked who and I told them it was branch of my old one.”
Heath laughed. “No entirely untrue. We do cooperate in some areas, but the company, which makes this system profitable, will be the one that reaps the wheat. What do you see when you experience these phase-shifts?”
I told him about how I’d find myself back in the old game world and had discussions with the Non Player Characters (NPC’s) who lived in the game. I told him how real the whole experience seemed when I was in the middle of it. I didn’t tell him I was here because Howard warned me of Sandstone’s desire to erase his entire game world. I tried to be vague when I told Heath about Chamita, but I think he saw my loss when I had to leave her behind.
I assumed everything we said was recorded by the company. Since I was inside their corporate world, it was safe to make such an assumption. Give a guy the kind of paycheck they did, then wine and dine him like they were, no way they weren't making notes on every little thing I did.
“I’ll take you back to your room,” he told me. “There is a phone you can use to call out if you need to. It has an emergency button if you need to call housekeeping. I’ll tell the medical staff to be aware we have someone in the building who’s had some psychiatric issues in case they have to render assistance.”
I thanked him for his hospitality when he saw me back to the room. I expected the phone was bugged and traced, so I didn’t call anyone. Nobody to call anyway, at least not in this world.
Someone knocked on the door the next morning, but I was already awake. Wasn't I?
I’m an early riser who was always up first in my dormitory when I was in college. While the rest of the kids in my classes stayed out late and partied, I was up early making sure I had everything ready for the upcoming day. I should have partied more.
I’d already shaved and showered that morning. When the knock came, I had the curtains to my room open and the TV turned on to an old movie. I killed the feed and went to the door to see who it was.
As expected, it was Heath. “Time to go have your physical,” he let me know. “It’s a short walk down the hall to another part of the building. Don’t worry; they won’t even have to take a blood sample.”
“No problem,” I let him know. “Do I have to lock up? You didn’t give me a key last night.”
“Housekeeping will take care of the room for you. You don’t need a key in this place, we’re safer inside here that most parts of the United States. You did notice the security on the outside?”
“Of course,” I told him as I stepped out of the room and shut the door behind me. If they planned to go through my things, the corporation would be very disappointed, as I didn’t bring anything with me but my medications.
“I have the pill bottles with me,” I told him as we went down the hall.
“Good,” he replied, “the staff will want to see what you’re taking.”
Once I signed all the consent forms, the doctors spent the rest of the day looking me over. I noticed they took pictures of my medications and noted how many pills remained in each bottle. They didn’t seem too impressed. There were a few older doctors and plenty of nurses and technologists in the clinic, which seemed empty. My speculation was that they maintained the clinic for emergencies and didn’t use it much. There was too much money at stake for Ruby to be hit with a lawsuit over a seizure or some other problem from the VR system, even this early in the development of their game system.
They put me through several brain and body scans, plus a series of visual recognition tests. When everything came back normal, they gently asked for a blood sample, which I agreed to let them take. By the end of the day, they announced me fit for duty with nothing physical wrong.
“I could run more tests,” said the lead doctor, an older man from South Korea named Moon, “but I don’t think we would find anything wrong.” He marked my forms “approved” and passed them to a nurse who’s been with me through all the procedures.
CHAPTER TWO
“You ever watch old jungle movies?” Heath said to me the next day. I was back in the conference room wh
ere I’d filled out the forms on arrival.
Across from me sat three members of his VR staff. None of them wore lab jackets or any kind of covering over their street clothes. One appeared to be from India, the other two were Caucasian. None of them even wore suit jackets or ties. Other than Heath, they were all dressed casual. At least none of them had pocket protectors or horn-rimmed glasses.
“Just a few when they’d pop on TV,” I told him. “My dad used to watch the old Tarzan movies. He didn’t care much for the modern ones. I never liked any of that black and white stuff.” Which was true, I never could understand why you would watch a movie or TV show unless it was in HD color.
“We’re sending you back to 1942,” he told me.
Heath noticed the look of surprise on my face. “Not the real 1942,” he clarified with a laugh. “We’re sending you into a VR world that resembles the last age of the British Empire. However, in this game time line, World War 2 hasn’t started. You’ll be traveling into our reconstruction of the Northwest Indian continent.”
“There is, or used to be, a small country called Baharaj,” Heath continued. “No need to look it up on a map, you won’t find it there. It was a little mountain principality which was absorbed by several other countries after World War Two.”
“We’ve decided to make it the scenario for our game,” he explained further. “It was under British control at the time because it guarded the entrance to India from the mountains. The Russians tried to stake out a claim on it at one time, but gave up. In 1942, it was still wild and uncivilized outside the major towns. The British and their local troops didn’t bother to control much outside the rail lines, but this is all history. What makes it fun is that there were many places someone could go in search of adventure. We want to duplicate that adventure.”
“With a safe environment,” he added. “But there is still a world inside there to explore and we’ve done our best to recreate it in the game scenario.”
“So I get to play a character in the game?” I asked him. “Did that already. How is this one different?”
‘From what I’ve managed to learn,” he continued, “you were dropped into the scenario and needed to make contact with a team in order for the scenario to progress. This time, we’ve built a complete backstory into your character, so you can just hit the ground running, as it were. It’s all in here.” He slid a file across the table to me.
I opened it up and looked inside. Oh boy, I was going to be a captain in the British Army. What fun, walking around a subtropical environment with no bug repellant. In shorts. I hoped they’d either eliminated the mosquitos or given me netting that worked. At least I got a swagger stick to go with the job and a wool hat. They also made sure I kept my name. Too bad, I’d hoped for “Aleister McSweeny”.
“So how do I get into the game?” I asked him. “I thought you told me there would be no VR pod this time.”
Heath turned to one of the men at the table. “Sunil, why don’t you tell him about this new system for the transfer? You are the principal designer afterall.”
The man named Sunil pulled out a computer tablet and brought up a picture of something. He moved it across the table and let me have a look. It was an elaborate chair with bands inside a dim room. The chair had conductive pads near the armrests. I shuddered as it reminded me of photographs I’d seen of electrical execution chairs.
“This is the first one,” he explained. “We’ve eliminated the entire immersion chamber concept. The room around the chair is part of the system and feeds the information into the person sitting in the chair. All we have to do is sit you in it, lock your arms in place, tune the chair to your own brain wave patterns, and you’ll be inside the VR world. No reason to stuff you inside a pod. Consumers were never going to go for that.”
It was still a burial chamber, as far as I was concerned. The only difference being one of size. Nerveless, I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to save the mountain. I still had no idea what I was supposed to do to keep it from erasure. I didn’t even know what the objective was in this game.
“So who stays around and observes me?” I asked him. “Will you be inside the room with me? What about bathroom breaks and food requirements?”
“We’ll be on the outside of the room once you’re in the VR world,” he explained. “Although we can go inside to take care of you whenever we want, it’s not a good idea to disturb the subject at this stage of the game. As for food and other requirements, we’ll slow your system down to the point where you don’t need much. We’ll synchronize you with the sensors that put you into the VR world. Does that sound alright?”
It didn’t sound a whole lot different from the last method, in spite of what Heath told me. “What happens if I have a problem while I’m inside the game? Can I communicate with the VR team?”
“We can pull you out anytime we want,” Sunil replied. “We’d rather see you reach the goal, this is indeed meant to be a rather thorough beta-test, but you can leave any time you desire. Yes, we do have a way for you to communicate with the team once you are in the VR game world.” Wonderful, just like the last time.
“All you character specifications and hit points will be inside a logbook,” Heath continued. “Don’t lose it, or you’ll have no idea where you are in the game. I’ve heard about you losing the last one, so please don’t do that in this scenario.” Apparently, Mr. Mint had all manner of contacts inside Sandstone Gems.
“Your goal it to find a missing box of documents,” Heat continued. “You will be part of a secret team of British military sent into the mountains in search of the Colonel Farnsworth Buttersnipe expedition. The good colonel, a bit of a dodgy crank to use the old terminology, was supposed to deliver a box of important documents to another principality in the low lands. However, he was told of the ruins of a vast city in the most inhospitable part of the jungle. It’s savage place where the local tribes respect no law outside their own elders and resent anyone who cross into their lands without asking permission.”
“Does this lost city have a name?”
“Virkya. I think it means ‘she-wolf’.”
“I can’t wait,” I told him. “Anything else?”
“Yes, there are Nazi Death Commandos who want to locate Virkya for their own reasons. They’ve been in that part of the forest for months, trying to find the lost city. They will kill anyone who gets in their way. I’m sure I’ve left a few things out, but discovering them is half the fun.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“Don’t you want to hear the best part?” he asked me.
“It's not Nazi Death Commandos?”
“We double your bonus if you find the courier box in the next five days. We’ll pull you out anyway, but if you want to get some extra cash, find the box before we need to bring you home.”
“Language?” I asked.
“Everyone speaks and understands Basic English,” he told me. “Except the tribal people who only speak their own dialect. You’ll have to hire an interpreter if you want to parley with them.”
“Great. I wouldn’t expect you to make it too easy. Now how do I communicate with the VR team? I don’t want to ‘die’ in the game, regardless of the bonus money.”
“Your gun.”
“My what?”
“Your service revolver. It will have a screen built into the handle, which no one can see but you. Depress the bottom of the handle and it activates. Other than that, works the same way as a normal one. You’ll need to make up some excuse to use it, tell everyone you have to clean the gun or something, I don’t care. Keeps the AI happy.”
Well, this was a little different. My last communicator was disguised as a pocket watch. I lost it several times. At least there would be a holster for a revolver. This was a pulp adventure, and things got crazy last time, no reason to expect they won't go right off the rails this time too.
“Any questions?” Heath asked me.
“What’s next?”
“Anothe
r team of doctors want to see you. The higher-ups weren’t satisfied by the clean bill of health the last team gave you. This time it will be several psychiatrists.”
The meeting was over and the other three men filed out of the room. Heath took me back to the medical center where three doctors waited to interview me.
We were in a small room inside the larger clinic. Once again, they were across the table from me. Heath didn’t sit on this part of the interview.
There were two doctors this time. One was a man about 50 years of age, who was chunky, with a thin woman of 40. They turned out not to be employees of Ruby, when I asked them, but psychiatrists with their own private practices in the area. The corporation hired them to come in and do a set of independent evaluations before they put me in the VR world.
“So I understand you’ve had hallucinations since the last time you worked for a VR company,” the man, who wore a tag that read “Dr. Stoffer”, told me.
“We’d like to hear from you what happened each time,” the women, a Dr. Kelly, told me.
“Not a whole lot to tell,” I began. “After I play-tested a VR game for another company, I began to have visions of being back inside the game world. I had some headaches each time, VR PTSD they called it, but the doctors the company sent me to couldn’t find anything wrong, so they put me on some meds.”
“We’ve seen the medications they prescribed for you,” Dr. Kelly said. “Nothing too strong, but not the dosage I would recommend. When do these visions take place?”
“Any time,” I explained. “They come whenever they want. Thank God I quit driving when this started.”
“Any strange sensations?” the man wanted to know.
“Sometimes I smell chocolate. However, most of the time I’ve had head pains when they come. Like I told you, they don’t seem to bother me much anymore and I’d like to think they’re gone.”
They both paused and made some notes on a computer tablet. “When was your last vision?” the man questioned. He had intense eyes and starred at me while he spoke.
