Interlude- Brandon (27 page)

Chapter 77

“I don’t know exactly why Mr. Strayne has declined to sell his virtual reality technology to private businesses, but I can tell you that it’s a great relief that he has. Many jobs would be lost if companies began to use computer generated resources instead of the physical components currently used. I for one am a supporter of Brandon Strayne, and I hope that his new education system brings about effective and lasting change to Tygon.”

Businesswoman Lilith Avernare

“Mr. Thorn is here to see you, Sir,”

“Thank you, Jenny. Send him in right away.” Brandon stood up and walked towards the door.

A moment later the door opened and a pretty secretary held it open for Thorn. He smiled and nodded at her as he entered the room. 

“Thank you, Jenn,” Brandon said. “That will be all for now,”

“Of course, Brandon,” the young woman smiled and closed the door.

Thorn shook his head as the door closed. “They could very well be my greatest creation,” he said.

“Who could?” Brandon asked.

“NPCs,” Thorn said. “When I first created them, they were mindless automatons, placed in situations to carry out simple tasks. Then we installed better programming to make them witty opponents against players in the Sim. Next
, I took what I’d learned and increased the programming parameters to allow them to learn, feel, teach, and replicate. They then began to evolve by passing on their information from one generation to the next. I’ve developed simulations where NPCs have lived normal existences and reproduced for millions of generations.”

“Really?” Brandon asked. “I had no idea.”

“Oh, yes,” Thorn said. “Now look at how they act. Extremely realistic.”

Brandon nodded, “When I entered my first thirty year Sim, I was concerned that I’d go insane from being all alone in a world with only NPCs for company, but I was surprised to learn that they are just like you and me.”

Thorn chuckled, “There’s nothing that is as similar to us as they now are, but there are still some differences.”

“But that might not always be the case,” Brandon said. “If they continue to evolve… you may have created an entirely new sentient, self-aware species.”

Thorn nodded thoughtfully, and then he shook his head. “Enough talk about NPCs, I’m here to discuss the developments going on in your reality at the moment.”

Thorn walked over to the window to admire the view. Brandon got them both a drink and came to stand beside him.

“When people knew that I had working VR technology,” Thorn said, “I needed to quickly choose a partner powerful enough to protect me and rich enough to fund my development. You’ve managed to do both and stay totally independent; an impressive accomplishment in such a dangerous environment.”

“I had help,” Brandon said. “I’m sure if you’d had a team like mine, you would have fared better than I have, Father.”

“Maybe,” Thorn said, continuing to look out over the skyline. “How are things progressing?” he asked.

Brandon sighed. “On track. I wish I had more time, though. I’m twenty now, which means I’ve spent seven years here already. Twenty-three years is aggressive for what I’m planning.”

Thorn nodded.

“I guess we’ll just do the best that we can,” Brandon said. “If we fail, then there’s still time to try your other alternatives.”

“About that,” Thorn said. Something in his tone made Brandon glance at him with concern.

“What’s wrong, Father?” Brandon asked.

“The situation has escalated in the Dream,” Thorn said.

“Escalated, how?” Brandon asked.

“Time is running out,” Thorn said. “Everything is deteriorating much more quickly than I’d anticipated. I’m afraid there won’t be enough time to try anything else. This experiment… you are our last hope.”

“What’s happening?”

“We can no longer stop people from entering the simulation.”

“Of course you can,” Brandon said. “You told me you stopped producing VR helmets. If a person doesn’t possess a helmet, then there’s no way to enter the game, right?”

“There is another way into the simulation,” Thorn nodded. “The purpose of the helmets was to focus the subject’s brain waves to a specific wavelength. We selected a familiar wavelength for the brain so that people could stay inside the simulation longer. I didn’t think it would become a problem, but it has.”

“What wavelength is it?” Brandon asked.

“The same one that we generate during sleep,” Thorn said.

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” Thorn said. “People are beginning to enter Tygon 3.0 without the aid of any electronic focusing devices, when they fall asleep.”

“Do they exit the simulation when they wake up?”

Thorn shook his head. “They don’t wake up.”

“Is there any way to prevent it from happening?”

Thorn nodded, “If we can get them to shielded underground locations, then we can prevent them from being pulled into Tygon 3.0.  We don’t have the resources to gather large numbers of people, nor do we have large shielded facilities. In a very short time, the entire population is going to be pulled into Tygon 3.0 against their will when they fall asleep, and once inside the simulation they will have no way to get out.”

Brandon considered this new information, taking a drink and looking out the window.

“So you have to wake them up, somehow.” He finally announced.

“Yes,” Thorn nodded.

“Shutting the simulation off won’t work,” Brandon said. “That’s like closing the only gateway back to reality.”

“Correct.”

“Why don’t they try to get back?”

“Because,” Thorn said, “they forget there is anywhere else to get back to.”

“What do you mean?” Brandon asked.

“We can observe players inside Tygon 3.0, and it appears that they believe the VR
Sim is their only reality. There are billions of souls trapped inside a virtual prison who have no idea that they aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”

Brandon nodded thoughtfully, “Okay,” he said, “I can simulate that.”

“Where?” Thorn asked.

“Inside my Game here,” Brandon said. “Do you have any idea how long it will take for everyone in the Dream to transfer into Tygon 3.0 from going to sleep?”

“I estimate that by the end of this month, everyone except myself and a few thousand key people will be immersed in Tygon 3.0.”

“How can you protect yourself?”

“We are underground, and protected by layers of concrete and minerals.”

“Will the servers lose power and go dead?” Brandon asked.

“Not for six months, at least,” Thorn said. “I have a generator and enough power underground to keep Tygon 3.0 online for that long.”

“How long can the bodies live while their minds are inside the simulation?”

“Less than six months,” Thorn confirmed.

“How much less than six months?”

“I’m not sure,” Thorn admitted. “The body seems to slow its function down considerably when the mind enters the simulation. I’ve seen some live for three to five months.”

“That’s incredible,” Brandon said.

“Yes,” Thorn agreed.

Brandon considered this information, writing key points down and making notes furiously in a black notebook.

“Since you are now our best hope of finding a solution,” Thorn said, “I’ve managed to increase your stay in this simulation.”

“By how long?” Brandon asked.

“It’s uncertain. The mainframe that runs this simulation has been set to monitor the situation in reality. There will come a point when most of the bodies on our planet will begin to die in mass numbers. Just before that occurs, the mainframe running this simulation will give you a sign and begin a countdown. “‘I’m not sure how clear it will be, but there will be indicators.” Thorn made a wry face, “If I had to guess, you likely have thirty more years from a set date in your reality here.”

“Why thirty?”

Thorn raised an eyebrow. “It’s a number that keeps coming up.”

Brandon sighed and looked at his notes. “Let me recap what you’re saying, then.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have maybe thirty years to figure out how to wake the entire world out of a virtual reality simulation before their real bodies die?”

“You make it sound simple,” Thorn said.

Brandon nodded confidently, “One of us will find a way. It’s a good thing you have thirty of your best minds all working on it for thirty years.”

Thorn nodded. “You’re our best hope, Brandon. You truly are the best Gamer I’ve ever seen.”

Thorn stood up to leave, pausing as he reached the door. “One more thing,” he said. “Tygon 3.0 is a mouthful, so I’ve changed the name of that simulation.”

“To what?” Brandon asked.

“Earth,” Thorn said.

===

Thorn took his helmet off and placed it carefully on the desk. He stood up and walked down the hallway to a large room. Thirty tables were spread evenly around the room, each holding an elite leader. Their teammates were in adjacent rooms.

Cooper leaned against the wall, looking out over the tables. Thorn came to stand beside him.

“How’s the General doing?” Thorn asked.

“He’s responding to my voice now,” Cooper said. “He still isn’t talking, and his eyes look a bit… unstable, but I think he’s coming around.”

“Good,” Thorn said. “We’ll need his help.”

Cooper nodded at Brandon’s still form on his table.“You told him more than I thought you would,” he said, referring to Thorn’s conversation with Brandon just a few moments ago.

“I had to make it clear to him that he’s our best chance for surviving this.”

Cooper nodded his head at the tables in front of him. “He’s our only chance for survival now.”

Thorn looked at the bodies lying on the tables, sheets fully draped over twenty-nine of them, the monitors turned off and unhooked. Twenty-nine of the best teams the game facility had produced, 172 children, were now dead because their simulations had been powered down while they were inside. Brandon and his team were the only ones still connected to their simulation, and therefore the only ones who could be brought back. Keeping the other teams alive after turning off their simulations would have meant spending wasted energy on maintaining empty biological husks, so Thorn had ordered them disconnected from life support.

“The power drain was too great,” Thorn shook his head. “We could only keep one running and be sure it would last the full length of the program. I had to make a choice.”

“Do you think it was the right one, Doc?” Cooper asked.

“Yes,” Thorn said. “Do you?”

Cooper looked at Brandon for a few moments, “Yeah,” he said, “I think so.”

Chapter 78

“Something’s different, Lock,”

Lohkam frowned, he could feel it too. “I agree, but what? Can anyone put their finger on it?” he asked. The other members of his Hand surrounded him as they walked down the street. Lohkam wasn’t sure where they were going; he could distinctly remember being away from his teammates a moment ago and on his way to dinner with a cute girl he’d met the other night at a club.

“I was in a different city, heading to meet with that jewel dealer,” one of his teammates said.

“Whoah, wait just a minute!”

“What?” Lohkam stopped and the entire group stopped with him.

Aaron, the team member who’d stopped them, pointed up at a large building. “Either we glitched, or we aren’t in our Sim anymore.”

Lohkam followed Aaron’s gaze to a large sign that read “VirtDyne.”

“You’re right,” he said. “We took that sign down when we dissolved the company. We’re not in our Sim.”

“What kind of game are they playing with us?” one of the others asked. “They told us they wouldn’t Blurr us or switch things up without our knowledge.”

“I have no idea,” Lohkam said. “Let’s go see who owns that business. Then we’ll try to figure out where we are and how to proceed.”

Chapter 79

Joe never dreamed.

That likely wasn’t true. Everyone dreams when they sleep, it’s just that Joe didn’t remember ever having one. Whenever he’d heard others talk about dreams, he would shake his head and tell them that he’d never dreamt once during his entire 42 years on the planet.

Tonight was different, though. When Joe closed his eyes, he opened them almost immediately and looked around with a mixture of wonder and surprise.

There was no doubt in his mind that he was dreaming…

He’d been watching the news reports about the new virtual reality game called ‘Tygon 3.0’ that everyone was playing. Joe had always been a gamer; getting older hadn’t stopped him from keeping up with the new computer games and being able to compete with the kids. Reviews of Tygon 3.0 started to spread around the globe, and everyone talked about how real it was, but something made Joe decide to pass on playing it. Friends and family were surprised that he wasn’t in line to buy the first special editions. Joe was known for getting the special perks that came to early adopters, but this time he wasn’t interested. When people asked him why, his answer was simple.

“It looks too much like real life,” he’d said with a shake of his head.

All the reviews agreed with Joe, but everyone else seemed to view that as a positive fact. Joe had continued to stay away, even when some of his close friends and family members who’d never played games before told him that they were playing and that he would love it.

“If I want to spend time working in a restaurant, or building a successful business, or learning how to fly an airplane, then I’ll go ahead and do that in real life,” he’d said with a smile.

Weeks later, Joe watched with interest as increasingly more people began to play Tygon 3.0. Weeks after that, he’d watched in alarm as millions of people from every facet of society began to ignore the real world in favour of playing inside a virtual one.

Then it had gotten even worse as local municipalities began to decline. Most towns and cities were no longer picking up garbage or delivering fresh water to households; the world was in grave danger. News reported that people simply stopped showing up for work because they were too busy living inside the virtual game. Power companies began to struggle with keeping neighbourhoods lit and heated during the nights, and society slowly toppled from being inconvenienced into full blown crisis.

Eventually, people began to die.

Not violent deaths; lazy deaths caused by a lack of desire to exit virtual reality to take care of necessary things, like eating. Violence came later when Thorn Inc., the company who had invented the game, stopped making VR helmets in an attempt to prevent people from playing.

It was at that point that Joe had packed up his family and grabbed as many supplies as possible, then headed for the woods to escape the looting, and stealing, and violence that was spreading like a rampant disease.

Most people left Joe alone once they saw his size and the serious set of his eyes. They walked towards the wilderness on the horizon for three days, searching for safe places to hole up on their journey.

On the third night, they approached a house which looked deserted. After a quick search he’d waved for his family to enter. “There are two gamers upstairs,” he said, “but they’re stuck in the game and don’t look like they want to come out of it anytime soon.”

Joe and his family searched through the kitchen and found food to eat. They made up beds on the ground floor to sleep on for the night. Before the stations went offline they’d heard that people were becoming locked inside the simulations. Because of this, they felt safe sleeping with two gamers upstairs.

Joe and his family didn’t know that it was now dangerous to sleep near active headsets. They hadn’t heard that you could get pulled into Tygon 3.0 against your will simply by sleeping near someone already inside.

They certainly didn’t know that once you entered Tygon you no longer came out…

“I’ll remember this dream, that’s for certain,” Joe said as he walked towards the wall sized computer screen. An avatar of plain appearance rotated slowly in a circular motion on the screen, while a large banner above its head read, ‘Tygon 3.0”. Joe put his hands on the keyboard and scanned the attributes to the right of the avatar. Somehow Joe realized this must be the login selection process for entering the game. Shrugging his shoulders, Joe began to speed through the menus, the knowledge of how to play the game and what attributes to choose were solidly in his mind, which convinced him even more that this must be a dream. Within minutes, Joe had almost completed the avatar creation process. On the giant screen now stood a perfect replica of Joe, minus the extra belly weight and with larger muscles. Joe paused as he entered the information regarding personal life for his game avatar. Everything in his head screamed that he should recreate his marital status and number of children, but instead he entered ‘single and no kids’. He figured it was just a game, so a few variables could be changed for the few hours he was inside the simulation, right?

Joe watched the cursor flash above the ‘Enter Tygon’ button. He took a deep breath and pressed the mouse.

The screen became a bright white light which leapt off the screen and enveloped him, knocking him backwards forcefully onto the ground and causing him to lose consciousness.

===

“Joe, can you hear me? Hey, come on, buddy, wake up.”

Joe opened his eyes and tried to sit up.

“Whoah there, man.” A firm hand on his chest kept him from rising. “Take a second and lay there. You had a nasty fall.”

Joe looked around. He was lying on the floor surrounded by kitchen equipment. It took him only a moment to remember where he was. “I had the craziest dream, just now,” he said.

“Really?” a blonde man with an unshaven face and crooked teeth smiled down at him. “I thought you never dream?” he said.

“Yeah,” Joe nodded. “I don’t, normally, but this one was so real.”

“What was it?”

“I was playing a game,” Joe said. “I was standing in front of a big screen selecting my character.”

“Sounds cool,” the man said.

“Not really,” Joe admitted. “I ended up making a character that looked identical to the way I do now, and I was going to play a game where I lived a regular life.”

“Yeah,” his co-worker said, “that doesn’t sound very cool at all. What was the game called, do you remember?”

Joe frowned, “I think it was called Tygon 3.0,” he said.

“Cool name, at least.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Joe shrugged. “I kinda like the name of our world better, though.”

“True,” the blonde guy helped Joe stand. “Earth is a better sounding name, for sure.”