Virtual Perfection: Technology has drawn everyone into Virtual Reality, but what will happen to humanity if no one can get out? (Veiled Destiny Book 1)

by Jason Bourn

  Calaes didn’t know what else to say. There was so much to do, but he didn’t know where to start. Samantha smiled and said, “You look like you could use a little rest. How about I go over the procedure on how to contact those that are waking up after you have had a chance to relax and acclimate yourself. Go down to your room and I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

  Calaes took the elevator to the second floor and quickly found his room. It was elegantly appointed, with magnificent art and sculptures. All of the furnishings were of the highest quality. Calaes found the bed extremely comfortable. With the background sounds of waves crashing on the shore, Calaes lay down and was immediately very relaxed. He set his persa to wake him up and quickly drifted off to a short but very pleasurable nap.

  When he woke up, he was treated to a wonderful shower, where he could control the multiple sprays and the temperature by voice commands. Calaes felt like a king in this building – he could get seriously used to this.

  Samantha looked up when he walked back into the top floor meeting room. She smiled broadly and laughed. “It looks like your rest has done you a world of good. You look much better.”

  Calaes responded with a grin on his face, “Yes, that nap was an excellent suggestion. I feel much better. And the rooms are great.”

  Samantha nodded. “Yes, there is not much demand for physical assets any more. All of these buildings on this campus have priceless works of art and the best in sculptures from throughout the world. In fact, all the new artisans do their work in VR, which can be rendered into physical form at any time. This has made the term ‘first edition’ or ‘original’ obsolete. So, enjoy the sights and your surroundings. Your team will have the best that has ever been created at your command. It’s not like the sleepers would know or care. They have access to the best of the best every day in VR. In fact, they don’t have to be saddled to a five hundred-year-old Michelangelo piece – they can have it refurbished in VR so that it gleams like it did when it was brand new.

  “Let’s get back to the subject at hand – now that you’re refreshed. As I said earlier, you will be responsible for contacting the sleepers when they awaken. They will be in the same state that you were – just coming out of VR and searching for what to do with their lives. We have buildings that they need to get to that are within walking distance. This is part of the test. If they are able to break free from VR, they must be able to get to the building. Sadly, there will be some that will attempt to break out, but will be unable to and they will go back to VR. These candidates are not suitable for our purposes and you should never allow any further contact with them if this is the case. For those that do make it to the designated building you will bring them back here, introduce them to our team and commence with training. Any questions?”

  “Well, I think that I can manage that,” he said. “It is a lot of responsibility, but I think I can handle it. I would like to work on the details of how to contact each candidate – that part is a little unclear to me.”

  Nodding, Samantha looking at him. “That is very perceptive of you. We have feedback from the Flight Simulator sim and know who is successfully approaching the end. After they are done with the simulation, we monitor their search queries and after they have been looking for long enough, assuming they are as diligent in attempting to find something as good or better than Flight Simulator as you were, they are able to access our link. Instead of me showing up on this link, it will now be you – since you are the first.”

  “I see,” said Calaes. He thought about it and said, “Wait, what did you mean that I am the first?”

  “I was wondering when you were going to ask that question. Yes, you are the first to successfully get through the sim. Don’t let it go to your head though, since there are several candidates that are right behind you. Congratulations to you, but now is the time to get to work.”

  Calaes pause to let that sink in. Finally he said, “Thank you. Now, about the training plan that I am supposed to put together. I can put together a general training plan, but the specifics are going to depend on the position of the person. I don’t know what role each person is going to fill – for that matter, I’m not sure what role I’m going to fill.”

  “Again," she responded, “that is very perceptive of you. Since this is going to be a self-sufficient colony, while every person will have a specialty, everyone will at the same time need to be a generalist. You never know when something might happen: whether an accident where someone is killed, or a new need arises and a new function is needed. You only have a fixed number of people and you will need to make do with what you have. It is not like you can make a request for an xyz specialist from Earth. You will need to utilize the innate capability from your own pool of resources. Also, we need to have the full range of character traits as well. For example, if everyone was a pacifist then that society could be easily overtaken by the first threat. On the other hand, if everyone was rebellious then society would tear itself apart – it would break down and everyone would die. We have tried to ensure there is a large enough pool to support the talent needs, both with specific training and with generalists, along with the diverse human character traits needs. The settlement needs to embody the entire spectrum of capabilities from the entire human race. In order to make this feasible we need to have a pool of at least one thousand people.”

  “It is projected that this pool will be available within two years, since those getting out of the simulation are expected to adhere to a bell curve probability. Specifically, the beginning of the curve is you and the few that are ready right after you that are early finishers. Then there will be a much larger number that follow – I’ll say they are the average finishers. This will slowly taper off until there are only a few left. Those that were born into the virtual suit are far less likely to ever successfully break out from the VR world. They just don’t have any idea of what the real world is and they can’t face ‘reality.’ This is really our one shot at pulling those that are able out of VR. So, the responsibility on you is great.”

  Calaes mulled this over. He agreed with this assessment. He hadn’t realized that this was really a one-shot experiment. If they were not successful, the human race really was doomed to be incarcerated in VR forever.

  CHAPTER 11

  Calaes remarked to Samantha, “How did you come up with this concept to get the people out of VR in the first place?”

  Samantha responded, “When we saw that there was such a push to get into VR, we determined that there was no way to stop it. The technology was so good that there was no way to successfully convince the masses to give up on this experience.

  “Counter intuitively, the only way to rescue a significant group of young, smart, resourceful people was to actually let them get fully involved in virtual reality and provide them with the best that virtual reality had to offer.

  “Two simulations were created that were far beyond anything available, the first was the Martian Survival Challenge’ simulation and the second, once the virtual suit was available, was the Flight Simulator simulation. This included simulation complexity, level of detail, and depth of personalities.

  “The plan was that after spending so much time in these detailed and accurate simulations, going back to “vanilla” VR would seem a waste of time. This was the only way the participant would “push” to get out of VR.”

  Calaes thought about it with growing wonder. He couldn’t believe the amount of planning that had gone into this concept. He would love to meet the mastermind behind it all. To have conceived of a way to pull sleepers willingly out of VR and back into the real world was ingenious. “Will I get to meet the mastermind behind all this planning?”

  Samantha responded shaking her head negatively, “No, ironically the mastermind of this all is enmeshed in VR himself – that is the only way he could get all this completed – by collaborating with everyone necessary to make this happen. It has been quite a large undertaking and ironically would not have been possib
le without the coordination possible within VR – so he is constantly busy. I’m afraid that meeting him is not possible. Did you have any other questions?”

  There was a long pause where Calaes was thinking about the ramifications of everything that Samantha had said.

  Finally he responded, “No, I think that I have everything I need for now. I’m assuming you will provide the names and locations of the candidates as they become available?”

  “Yes,” she responded. “They will be sent to you on a daily basis. If that is all, then I need to take my leave.”

  Calaes watched her leave and sat for a long while deep in thought assessing and re-assessing what this all meant and how much responsibility was being thrust upon his shoulders. He knew that he could handle it – the VR simulations had honed his people skills and his problem-solving skills as well as fostered and cultivated his creativity.

  He set about making top level training plans, mostly for general purpose skills, since he didn’t know the specialties of any of the new candidates as of yet.

  Two days later he was refining the training plans when a message from Samantha was received. The first candidate was ready to leave VR.

  Calaes’ persa had taken care of the initial contact with the first candidate. Calaes had monitored the exchange, but had not had to override the AI program. They had gone through the same questions that Samantha had gone over with Calaes earlier. The AI knew that Calaes would be interested in some of the details of the candidate, so his persa had asked some additional questions which Calaes now reviewed.

  The candidate’s name was Terri Chidubem, from Africa. He was very intelligent and, Calaes noticed, very black. His ancestry was nomadic, constantly moving from place to place, which Terri had leveraged into being an outstanding Astrogator (pilot) on the Flight Simulation sim. It made sense that an Astrogator would be one of the first to successfully complete the sim since the final sequence, at least for Calaes, was the crash landing on Europa. A face-to-face meeting had been set up for the following day, so Calaes had to get to Africa quickly. His persa had arranged for transport – he was to leave shortly.

  As Calaes headed to the lobby, he was glad that he had been walking a great deal within the building so his legs felt much stronger and were no longer sore. He would have to remember how sore they were when he met Terri, since he was sure that the African would be just as sore. Walking out the double doors, Calaes realized that he had been so busy with the training plans that he had not even been outside since he had arrived. Looking around, he saw another sleek vehicle – intended for him, since obviously there was no one else anywhere around. He got in and the vehicle took off and he settled in for a comfortable ride.

  He shook himself awake as the vehicle started to land. He smiled wryly to himself that he always was lulled to sleep as he was flying. Well, so much for planning the meeting with Terri.

  He had arrived slightly less than an hour before the meeting, so he had plenty of time to become acquainted with the meeting building. Similar to the giant building that housed the virtual rooms that Calaes had been in, this African virtual room building was huge. Looking outside from the meeting room, the immense African virtual room building could easily be seen – Calaes estimated Terri would have to walk slightly more than two km to get here. Calaes went to the adjoining room and sat down to monitor Terri’s progress and await his arrival.

  The vid screen showed Terri’s departure from the massive virtual room building. Terri appeared somewhat overwhelmed by the outdoors. Calaes had no trouble remembering that feeling, especially the unfiltered sounds and smells. He recalled how everything could be so controlled in VR – it had been rare that anything was left exactly as in real life. Everyone wanted to change this or that, especially making small improvements in the name of making the experience better.

  Terri trudged down the street, following his persa’s instructions. As he approached the building that Calaes was in, he stopped and looked quickly left and right as if trying to spot something. This caused Calaes to suddenly remember when he was in that same situation and he had thought he had seen someone. Calaes had completely forgotten about this with all the work he had been doing and all the new situations he had recently experienced.

  Terri entered the building and wearily climbed the stairs. With a determined look on his face, he entered the meeting room. Calaes did not want to have him wait very long, so he quickly went into the adjoining meeting room.

  Terri looked bone-weary, but smiled gratefully when he was offered a chair and food. Calaes realized that he was the first person that Terri had physically seen in many years – seven years in Terri’s case. Calaes smiled to himself, hoping that his out-of-this-world shower this morning still kept him smelling good.

  “So,” Calaes said, “welcome to the land of the living. I hope you are feeling OK. I imagine that your legs are killing you.” Terri’s persa instantly translated Calaes’ English into Terri’s native Swahili.

  Terri responded, with Calaes’ persa translating instantly to English, “Yes, I’m doing fine – I guess that I am going to live anyway. How did you know that my legs feel like they are going to fall off?”

  Calaes smiled and told Terri about the process and what he could expect.

  Terri was very interested in the Mars settlement. He said, “The Mars settlement sounds like a worthy cause, but I do wonder how I would fit in as an Astrogator. I can pilot anything that flies, but obviously my favorite was the Flight Simulator sim. That was great. I can see a shuttle being needed going to Mars and flying around Mars – so that sounds like my best bet.”

  Calaes responded, “We need both specialists and generalists of all types. We won’t know what exactly we will need in the future. You never know.”

  They discussed some of the details until both were satisfied. Terri was as intelligent as his file had indicated – confirming Calaes’ belief that high intelligence could be found in any race.

  Finally, Terri looked like he was ready to fall over in his chair due to his fatigue. The meeting ended with Calaes feeling very good about Terri. Calaes showed Terri where his room was and they agreed to meet in the morning and fly back to the training campus.

  The next morning, they walked out of the building’s lobby and, as expected, a vehicle was waiting for them. As they became airborne, Calaes looked down and saw all the buildings getting smaller and smaller. This caused him to remember the look on Terri’s face when he had stopped and looked quickly left and right as if trying to spot something when he was walking to the meeting building.

  “Terri, this view from above gives you a different perspective of the entire city. I noticed yesterday that you seemed to hesitate when you approached the meeting building. Did you notice anything strange?”

  Terri shook his head. “No, not really.” He paused. “Well, maybe. I did notice that there seemed to be movement just beyond the periphery of my vision, but I suspect it was just an artifact of leaving VR. I haven’t noticed it today. Did you also experience these effects?”

  “Yes,” Calaes responded feeling better. “I could have sworn that I saw something moving, but it sounds like it is just a normal physiological effect.”

  They were quiet for a while, watching the scenery unfold below them. The African plains were back to their previous glory with no competition from mankind. Calaes ruefully thought how many people would like the fact that nature was back in its full regalia – if only the cost to mankind was not fatal.

  “So, Terri, what exactly did you do to become captain and get out of the sim?”

  “Well, in my case it was just a lot of fancy flying. Of course, I had the ship’s AI helping, but with the AI’s help I was able to guide the ship down and saved over a third of the personnel on board. That was much better than the five percent figure that was projected. I guess it helped that we were successful in a couple of maneuvers I thought up where we dipped in low and took advantage of the additional drag by skimming the ship through th
e water and water vapor created as part of the tidal flexing. Did you know that the tidal flexing effects can be predetermined? We successfully used that to save a lot of lives. The only reason that I became captain, though, was that our captain and all the other senior officers were killed. Not exactly how I wanted to ascend to the top rank, but what do you do?”

  Calaes was impressed. He could well understand why Terri was here. His intelligence and creativity set him apart.

  Calaes responded, “Wow, it seems like you did a great job. You used your flying expertise better than just about anyone else could and you mixed that with amazing creativity. It’s no wonder that you are here today. Great job.”

  As they approached the training campus, Calaes felt that things had gone well and he hoped that all the candidates would turn out as well.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hayden was feeling not just irritable, but closer to exasperated.

  He had made small, but unfortunately insignificant, progress on breaking into the President’s security. And now the AI-based search for deleterious effects on Hayden’s position had found something else. There was an accounting issue that was flagged at the national level of the United States.

  The United States had a unique position as the world’s richest country with by far the largest Gross Domestic Product. This meant that their spending budget was huge, compared to other countries, even with the pressure that the World Government had been applying. Although Hayden didn’t have firsthand access into the President’s confidential data, he did have full insight into everything from a wide range of top government leaders from the USA, including the treasury secretary and the chief of staff.