Virtual Reality : Dystopian Tales Online

002.2 | Dystopian Tales Online

The age of modern technology only lasted for so long. 

Reaching the 25th century change the course of humanity that was totally devastated by world wars. Once everyone is proud of making machines destroy whatever they can destroy, the technology almost annihilated the whole human race. 

The century ended with an accidental nuclear blast that caused centuries of nuclear winter. There is almost no life on Earth if not from a few tenacious people to survive the harsh environment. However, as to how many life forms were left, genetic mutation due to nuclear radiation evolved the remaining humans. They gained immunity against the toxic environment and even extended life by a hundred years. 

Since then, the remaining humans started to thrive, giving birth to a new generation of humans. The nuclear winter lasted for a few centuries. As the planet aged the year 3000, the sky became clear from the grey dusty clouds as the world restored its atmosphere. Humanity came back to the timeline, recreating the world once again. 

For the given a chance, humanity is no longer dumb to repeat history. Instead of forming countries, everyone decided to form a central federation. Groups of people will form alliances under the federation that will occupy a certain area on Earth. In this way, the government will hold a Universal Law between alliances to avoid conflict. 

Humans were smarter this time and no longer argued with who will become who. Instead of fighting over positions, they are more interested in developing the primitive Earth to obtain the success humanity had in the past. Actually, they wanted to become better to uphold the position of being the smartest race on Earth. 

At the end of the century, humanity announced the birth of the new Earth. 

The wars almost destroyed everything. Fortunately, the creation of the Internet allowed history to be recorded that paved way to restoration. The progress of technological growth is quick this time - much quicker than it was still starting. It only took humans two hundred years to cross the modern technology area - the earlier interstellar stage. 

Under the age of interstellar, more efficient inventions are being created, making life on Earth more prosperous. Tall buildings reaching the skies are constructed, institutions are reformed, educational establishments are heavily funded, and medical technology has been enhanced. 

The world has become a paradise. 

There is no shortage of jobs, and the talents are emerging more often. There is perfect literacy that only the newborns are counted as the less intelligent. This opened to new professions and additional courses that anyone could take. Due to the extended life expectancy of people, the compulsory education age reached up to one hundred years old. 

So, that is to stay, humans aged between one to one hundred will be considered students while the age of consent has been adjusted to three categories: (1) Coming of Age at eighteen years old, (2) Young Adult at the age of fifty, and (3) Adult at the age of one hundred. This means that students below Young Adult could not sign legal papers without any parental or guidance's consent. Beyond that age, they could at least apply for semi-legal documents. 

There are lesser crime and violence too. The wars left visible scars that made humankind ashamed. However, ammunition and guns are still being produced but under strict regulations. An alliance could only make a certain number of weapons, and they have to report and share their process with the federation. These weapons are prepared for future instances in the case of inter-planetary invasion of alien species will happen.

On a smaller scale, there are no jails created but only correctional facilities that maintain order in the community. There is no poverty, but the margin between the rich families and the lesser rich is quite evident, so there are some small disputes like fist-fight and such. As for other heavy crimes like harassment and murder, the federation would do public trials and punish the perpetrators by throwing them into a primitive star and mine ores for life. 

The medicine development also showed great growth after this period. Almost all diseases are curable - cancer, immuno-diseases, etc. - with only the recently emerging illnesses in question. The facilities and equipment are all state-of-the-art that a person who got their legs sawed can restore it. 

Did you get scalded by boiled water? No problem! A cheap ointment is enough to pop the incoming blisters and heal the skin almost instantly. Cut your finger with a sharp object? There's a band-aid that could close the wound and heal it in just five seconds!

Famine, floods, earthquakes, magnetic space storms -  can be predicted through computers. There are special forces responsible for handling the public in case any of the disasters will occur. Shelters are created throughout the cities that could house thousands of people. If a disaster could threaten humankind once again, an exoplanet discovered will become their new home. 

Other than dying of old age, none of the people of the Earth suffered.

Well, this is just the first chapter of humanity's greatest change.

After another millennium, the technology slowly advanced. Though the peace is being maintained, humanity learned no discoveries. The laws that were created a long time ago didn't change. The lifestyle and everyday life continued, but nothing much added to it. With all the diseases, infections, disasters being suppressed by technology - it is as if the world suddenly stopped caring.

Nobody actually cared - stagnant. 

That is why games suddenly became a big hit. Violence and danger being out of the way, there is almost little to no chance for people to get worried or feel excited. There are still competitions happening around, like taekwondo, boxing, sumo, etc., but not all have the capability and interest to join the fun. Most of the time, people would just be walking around, sleeping, and eating. 

Online games are once famous during the twentieth century, and a small unknown company decided to release one. This version of the game is simple, just smashing some zombies by tapping the smartphone. If it were released in the past, people would just ignore it since it wasn't fascinating. But it is different with today's society. 

Later on, more engaging games are developed. It didn't take time for role-playing games [RPG] to emerge. Game developers then applied a virtual reality set-up where players could immerse themselves in different worlds inside the game. They could choose the environment, be it primitive or the post-modern world, then experience combat first hand. 

The interest in games gave birth to the age of gaming. Game competitions become popular as game clubs sprouted one by one. New professions, like game trainers, become something elite. It is even said that each house is estimated to have at least one piece of gaming equipment for the family to use. 

But then, this generation also never lasted.

Every year, the same style genre of games is being released with only quests, and names differ. The excitement of people declined as games become more boring. The ones that remained running are those old games with loyal fans. Other than that, they would ignore the new ones. 

Though, people still wanted to play. It's just that they don't know what game is good enough. This gave birth to the existence of pro-gamers. 

Pro-gamers, short for professional players, are a group of game enthusiasts paid to play games. They are not hired as employees but independent individuals that treat games as their life. They would buy whatever game is being released then play it in a given time. 

A website is created by these pro-gamers where they will post the reviews of the game. A rate counter will be released where all pro-gamers are required to cast a vote. Every month, rankings will be posted to show which games they deem worth paying attention to. This online ranking is worldwide, meaning if one pro-player says that this one game is crap, expect that everyone will read about it.

And nobody will buy the game.

Just in time, Dystopian Tales Online was released. As it wasn't attractive, only those gamers who are hardcore fans of this company's games bought it. Almost a month has passed, but they didn't even reach the quota of selling the only one thousand copies they distributed. Though, this changed drastically after the end of the second month.

The reason why nobody bought the game, aside from the few, until now is that most of the gamers are waiting for the pro-players to give their rate. After a month and two, these pro-players only posted the picture of the game, and a single sentence review made the whole world wanted to grab a copy of it.

"However, that is not what actually happened to groups of people who are not able to play this game."

Questions started to rise when the demand for the game suddenly increased. Knowing the excellence of this game, there's no doubt that it will sell great. Then, why did Foster Gaming and Co. only released one thousand copies? One could expect that investing more copies could give them more profit.

"An experiment to a selected few..."

Unknown to all is a hidden agenda created by the company. To enhance the gaming experience and create a new technological advancement, the team invented a game to bring the players to a different Virtual Reality. That is, conjuring the whole being of the player to the game where they will experience all of their senses without restrictions.

It is true that with their current technology, many developers can now do games with three of the senses present - the sense of sight, touch, and hearing. Some games may include the sense of scent and taste but still not fully intact with the game. They still need props like preparing food beforehand or creating a room while wearing a VR to fulfill the sense.

But this is different.

A known engineer, Tristan Foster, the sole owner of Foster Gaming and Co., designed a theory that suggests that creating a dimension of games is possible. No, he wasn't talking about the virtual reality games used in the recent gaming industry but a virtual reality that could surpass the augmented matrix's life. 

However, creating such a world is kind of difficult. He noted that it could be created through computers but using the computers of this world will only create a form but not the ideal experience. The computers are only copying the state of reality and not actually creating it. This is the reason why nobody can create a perfect virtual world. 

To create real virtual reality, they must be able to create a gate or a device that exists in this world but at the same time not happening in this exact world. This gate assumes the connection of this world to a rather different dimension where they can control its physics. They only have to open the gate, even just a small hole, to integrate it. 

DREAMS - this word perfectly fits the needed requirement.

Tristan Foster explained the run-through of his creation. According to him, operators will create a machine to stimulate the brain while undergoing REM. Synapses will be controlled using vibrations, sending signals to the brain's control center where dreams are created. This will send the compacted information clearly, attaching it to the game's server, then entering the world of dreams as if log-in in to a game.

Experts asked about this weird experiment. Of all, why did he chose dreams? It is still a mystery to them why people dream and what its purpose is. Inserting a variable that is not tangible would be useless and can be held to be a dysfunction. Besides, of all the body parts, the brain contains the biggest mystery of all.

The approval of this project lasted for years. Tristan showed data and statistics, including familiar theories and common sense. As years pass by, all the members of the team realized the point slowly. Few pages of research started to pile up with complex equations only a few people could understand. Experts are called in to help and somehow proved the theories possible.

It is as if creating a new world is this generation's mission.

After a decade and five years of work and Tristan successfully earned his reward. Showing the detailed blueprint of how the system works left those people who mocked him for being mad. Human ethics and rights are not violated; the safety of this whole experiment showed through trials that he himself created. Tristan became the first test subject.

Applying this, Tristan planned a worldwide experiment with the condition that the subjects should also have the same or closest brainwaves. Since the range of the initial experiment only secured his brainwave activity, the credibility of safety could also only handle within the number. 

If the subjects cannot meet this variable, he's afraid that the results would be different.

That is why he designed the Dystopian Tales Online. And in this game, the real virtual world is hidden. Everyone thought that he named it Dystopian Tales due to its feature of choosing a specific genre. But nobody knows that his real reason for choosing this word is from the description in itself.

Dystopian - the world of suffering. The ability to twist reality.

After the game's first release, some of the players reported this weird test with one thousand questions in multiple-choice right after the installation is finished. Taking the test or not taking it will not affect the game's features. However, those who took the test and passed the margin could not instantly play the game.

Instead, the whole game was terminated at the end of the test, and a black screen will show up. The middle of this black screen is a set of numbers that happen to be a telephone number. Of course, as if common sense, everyone called the telephone number. And then they are greeted with:

[HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A FALSE LEGEND?]

Inside the game, Dystopian Tales Online runs the world they called [VIRTUAL REALITY]. Those who managed to praise their worth are called to create a contract with Foster Gaming and Co., and By participating in the experiment, the subjects will be called Adventurers of Virtual Reality.

They are requested to play the game every night during their REM sleep with the company's technology. Also, they are not just playing for fun. Because of the importance of this experiment, the subjects are given insurances and a salary of fifty thousand pesos per month (about 1000 USD). All they have to do is play and level up.

"It's something new and kind of amazing," Aud said, playing the straw of his juice.

Looking around, faces of men and children gathered around him. His group occupied half of the seats in front of the bar; rather, they are found in their usual places again. Aud always sits in the middlemost part with Frass on his left. Leon and Shin would sit anywhere they want but often sits beside Aud. Two kids will be sitting beside them with another girl at the very end.

For ten years, these people sure have grown old.

"Wait for a second," Shin called out, touching the tip of his chin thinking. "How did you know that we are playing Virtual Reality? I mean, we are playing with DTO players, right? The difference is that they see it through a computer while we are all inside the game."

Aud blinked, wondering what he should answer.

He looked over at Leon, who is between them, currently staying away from their conversation because he is playing a bonus mini-game in front of them. A black translucent screen is floating at the front of the elf. He's dueling with the bartender, who is cleaning glasses at their front while waiting for Leon to move.

"Hmmm? What?" Leon noticed Aud looking over him. Despite not joining the conversation, he knows what they are discussing.

"You have something to say?" Aud said.

"Ah... let's see..." Leon clicked the screen on the mini-game to show his move.

"First of all, DTO is a first-person perspective game. Unlike many games, you can never fully control your actions, especially that everyone is still a noob at it. I guess even the players who played the year-earlier will not ever be able to move it flawlessly."

"However, we managed to break it as if we are actually in the scene. Can you remember the Speed Combo that you did? If it were from a computer's perspective, you would be hitting the monster in one place. You can't move to places due to the rate that you have."

"Whoa, do you mean you were able to recognize us by just looking? Wait for a second, how did you know about that," Shin exclaimed. "Are you watching us the whole time? Why didn't you help?"

"Not really," Aud took a sip from his juice. "We are actually heading to the floor's boss when we saw a group of low-level players entering the dead end. We just followed and watched. It's not that we have any responsibility to help you."

Shin grumbled, not believing the words he said.

A loud alarm suddenly sounded, making Virtual Reality players lookup. Like on any other day, a rectangle with smooth edges will appear above, showing the number in zeroes. The VR players recognized it, stopping or hurrying whatever they are doing to log out.

These zeroes inside the rectangle are the system's time for all the virtual players. The VR server will start as early as six in the afternoon and ends at three in the morning. Whenever the clock hits three, an alarm will appear across the accounts to announce that it is their time to log out. Only twenty minutes extension is allowed.

The purpose of this action is to run the maintenance to collect the data of the game. Also, the REM state would be fragile during these hours, and the machine might not grasp the needed information. Once the player is logged out, they will continue sleeping until their body clock wakes them up.

Moreover, if a VR player fails to log out of the game at the given time, the account will be forced erased, and the player has to restart again.

The twenty minutes is now counting down.

One by one, players' status changed to offline with green dots turning red. Some are still in the process of saving their profiles while checking their inventory. The twins and the girl from their group exited first. Frass also took his way out, only waiting for Aud to finish.

"Another day, another game. Well, see you later, guys," Shin said, looking at them while pressing some commands in his profile. After a second, his character vanished, and his status is now offline.

"I guess we have to continue this game later," Leon heaved a sigh.

The bartender nodded in agreement. Leon closed the mini-game screen and opened his menu. Other than him, nobody can see. Actually, nobody can see the other's player menu unless if shown purposely. He scrolled the space in front of him until he reached the end of the line.

"I'll be off now," he told the two. "See you again later."

"Bye," Only Aud responded.

All of the remaining players logged out in succession until no one is left.