- Beginnings
The year is 2160 and it has been ninety years since the birth of Neural Helmets. In the past, Neural Helmets exist purely for amusement and entertainment but people with bold ideas created new world where one can have alternate lives. If not because of mental and body impact caused by prolonged connection to the virtual world, some probably would chose to stay and forget their real lives.
But assuming a virtual world do exist on a condition that the user will never be able to log out again, would people really take the chance and live another life?
Today for the first time, the company housing the most controversial game called Baru Rugee sent their top employee to be exclusively interviewed by Global News Channel.
“So Dr. Miranda, what exactly does Baru Rugee mean?” A stunning gorgeous woman wearing a tight black skirt casually asked while comfortably seated on a sofa with her legs crossed.
“Well… to start, Jenny… It is pronounced Ru-Gi meaning “Start” and Baru means “New” so we therefore have new start but in this context, it means rebirth.”
“I’m learning something every day.” Jenny seductively giggled without being obvious but her face can’t hide the fact that she just had an “ahh” moment having finally learned what it means. “Can you give us a brief history of how the game created or started?“
“In the interest of clarifying rumors, it all started around ninety years ago during the early days of Deep Dive MMORPG. A student finishing her doctorate by the name Tomiko Himari and don’t ask me what that name means as I’m not Japanese. I just live in Japan and….”
“Ha ha ha” There was a loud audible laughter from the crowd including Jenny.
“As I was saying, Tomiko Himari was a psychology student and she proposed that virtual world addiction can be cured by what caused it but her dissertation was immediately rejected causing her scholarship to be revoked so with her future on the line, she used her abilities to salvage what she can, then later contacted a few fellow students and formed a team to create their own virtual world.
Now as we all know, it was the golden age for realistic virtual industry and at that time, while thousands of ideas were competing with each other, Tomiko had one simple proposal and unlike popular games where they offer alternate lives which are temporary, her goal is to bring this experience to a new level and make it permanent.
She proposed to make Isekai a real thing, an actual Isekai where log out is not possible. And ridiculous and unappealing to many as it sounds, many elderly people actually love the idea and luckily for Tomiko, a wealthy businessman was willing to invest in the project. I’m sure everyone has heard of Ikhet Lawayan and. . .“
“Wait. The… “ Jenny interjected. “Before we talk about Ikhet’s origins, the idea of not being able to log out, didn’t we have those ideas the past two centuries?”
Dr. Miranda paused then continued, “We did. In fact that’s how it all started. We have stories centering about being transported to a new world and not being able to return back to earth. Then the idea of Isekai exploded that in the year 2000’s to the 30’s, TV shows became saturated that the word Isekai has been redefined numerous time to a point it just means another world. And it was also during this period that the digital realistic world was still at its inception.
Then, forty years later in the year 2070’s, Neural Helmets were introduced. It was a thing of marvel. With the help of artificial intelligence, anything can be made possible in another world.
It was the peak of Isekai. But while majority of people seek thrill and fulfill their fantasies in the worlds they created, somewhere in Kawagoe, Japan, Himari and her team developed their first prototype of replicating the same old earth, devoid of magic and filled with suffering. Unlike your typical fantasy world, there will be no cheats, no quests, no clear objectives and just plain old earth and it is as realistic as it gets. You start as a baby and die as you would like you would die in the real world.
It took them a year to finish the prototype and after six years of convincing old people in their death beds to participate in their experiments, then followed by a lengthy scrutiny of the hundreds of brain patterns of all participants, the project was soon determined to be successful and registered the named Baru Rugee.
And guess who could not wait to be the first official player of Baru Rugee?”
“Let me guess. Old Ikhet Lawayan?”
“Indeed. Despite countless and better virtual worlds, he’d rather re-experience earth. With his time running out, he could not wait to be reborn but unfortunately when he connected to the program, it was no longer the Isekai world the team had created.
Not even ten minutes after Ikhet connected, Tomiko and her team noticed an unusual brain patterns. It is as if Ikhet connected to a fantasy game instead. Thinking that someone tampered or hacked the system, Tomiko forcefully terminated the program.
Thinking that Ikhet has been logged out, never did the team anticipated what happened next. Ikhet’s brain was mysteriously fried and was deemed irredeemable.”
The atmosphere in the room changed but Jenny maintained a warm smile and asked, “And what happened afterwards?”
“The entire operation was suspended and while the only explanation is that someone tampered with the system, evidence showed no signs of changes nor corruption. The system was replicated multiple times and when compared to the original program, everything was the same and not even a single clue of deviation was found.
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And to this day, the realm Ikhet’s consciousness connected to remains a mystery.
Whether it is a game he connected to and what is going on, we don’t know and even after all these years, a lot about the system can be answered by “we don’t know”.
But what we do know is that everything Tomiko and her team created is still perfectly preserved and functioning and continuously operates without running out of power.”
Seeing that Dr. Miranda paused, Jenny posed another question. “So if the studio was shut down, how was MM-X discovered?”
“MM-X otherwise known as Mysterious Matter X is a literal panacea and was discovered one month after the incident. The weak and wrinkled body of Ikhet was mysteriously rejuvenated but without a soul. For a ninety-year-old body to suddenly transform into a twenty-year-old man, the director of the hospital reported it to authorities and it was a matter of time before the secrets of the studio was revealed.
The government did not disclose anything and in an attempt to unravel the mystery, they made it appear that Tomiko and her team was at fault and as punishment, they were forced to enter the game they created.
Sadly, when the team entered their digital world they created, there was no option to log back out and force disconnect means death. Three died and the rest was subject for observation.
In an attempt to understand Ikhet’s rejuvenation, the country invited leading experts from other countries and in less than year, the results rocked the world. The plasma separated from the blood of Ikhet can cure all existing illness, re-grow any missing body part there is, and lastly, reverse aging and can extend one’s life.
The bad news is that all succeeding participants could not emulate the production of MM-X.”
There was silence in the audience and sensing the weird atmosphere, Jenny remembered the other questions she must bring up.
“I did read the recent story and it was gruesome that every part of his body was experimented on. There were even news that succeeding participants were fed to insects but given the moral dilemma, as someone working with the company, would you be willing to sacrifice in hopes of becoming the second Ikhet?
“Ha ha ha” This time, it was Dr. Miranda’s turn to laugh. “First, as an employee of Rugee Studios, not once did I receive a dose of the mysterious potion. Secondly, if there is a guarantee that I could replicate what happened to Ikhet, then I will selflessly offer my body to science.”
Jenny knew they have limited time and limited questions to ask but upon hearing the last sentence of Dr. Miranda, her instinct as an experienced TV personality told her to follow up.
“So, from what I’m hearing, participants die in our world but gets to live another life in another world? What makes you so confident they are indeed transported to another world and not the artificial technology at work?”
“Setting aside MM-X as solid proof, advancements in brain imaging allows us to translate thoughts into data and build an image of that data and from that data alone, we can easily tell apart if there is interference from the original thought and on this case we can tell that participants are having a life on the other side. It is for this reason we believe their consciousness had been transferred to another world while their physical bodies stays on earth. We can read those pulses and electronic activities in the brain like a sequence of numbers.
It is difficult to explain but in simple sense, you know how in Math we assign “x” as a variable? It is the same thing but on an elaborate scale of endless representations. Say, a person eating a burger. Let’s assume that, that data series is called B as in burger 0-0-0-0-1. Now assuming that person is a male so we turn the first zero into 1 and say that person is in a restaurant so we turn the second zero into 8 as well and so on.
So a series called B-1-1-1-3-4-0-8 can be interpreted as a boy eating a restaurant with her mother while surrounded by strangers. And we are not even considering what they are wearing, the color of their eyes, and all other intricate details we can think of. And to give you an actual example,” Dr. Miranda turned on his phone and showed sequence of random alpha numeric characters towards Jenny.
“That second isolated sequence out there, B-3-5-0-4-7-6-0-0-1-C-4 has been simplified summarized to mean our subject is on a date with a co-worker in a nice restaurant.”
“I think my nose is going to bleed just looking at them.”
“It takes a while to get use to them and if you’re interested, you can start with something simple, scroll up on the first page and I think there is one that says 011-345-5xxx, that can be interpreted as someone falling in love with someone.”
Jenny was stunned for second. “Did you just give me someone’s number?”
“Whooooooo!” The atmosphere in the room changed again and a few in the audience got excited.
“That’s actually my colleague’s phone number and he thinks you’re cute.”
Murmurs of jealousy erupted among the crowd and some even stood up shouting that Jenny take their number as well.
“Anyway, setting aside his disgusting flirtation, the reason the Studio is going public is primarily to search the second Ikhet. He died of old age three months ago and we have yet to find cause of MM-X. In hopes to understand what many experts have missed, almost everything about Baru Rugee has been made public. In turn, we hope everyone can share their findings or even volunteer to play Baru Rugee.
We hope to find success by involving every country in this shared collaboration.
I’m sorry but I need to go. I thank your station for allowing my presence.”
Jenny refused the interview is prematurely ending to so she asked, “Can you at least tell us what exactly is in the plasma that can cure illness and extend one’s life and is it possible it was just a human mutation? It’s all chemicals. Why can’t we replicate it?”
“You can find proof that it is not a mutation on the information we have shared. Again, we don’t know. Believe me we’ve done all that. Our best guess right now is that that we are dealing is a matter from the 4TH Dimension and that we as beings from the 3RD Dimension have no ability to sense or perceive this matter. Thank you again for you time.”
Meanwhile, inside a VIP lounge at an airport, an obese game addict is munching on a piece of chicken legs as he watched the TV. His name is Reginald Merldoza, single, jobless, on his early forties and is set to fly to Japan in the next hour.
Contrary to what Dr. Miranda said about volunteering, he was actually abducted while playing inside a game capsule a week ago. It took him great effort to contact authorities only to find out the people who abducted him is the government itself.
From then on, at least six people came to convince him to give up his wasted life but in turn, they will ensure his relatives will live in comfort. He thought it was a prank but on the fourth day, a professor and three historians from China and Japan came to visit and explained the details of what he will be doing in exchange.
Accordingly, he will be entering a game but unlike the games he is familiar with there is no option to logout which means good as dying. And apparently, the game world he is entering has close similarities that of ancient china where martial arts exists.
For the entire time, he just stayed quiet and listened but in truth, there are many things that are unclear to him just like the existence of a miracle drug called MM-X.
MM-X had always remained a mystery and many believed it to be a hoax and a propaganda of the government and including him, he just never had the time to think about it.
As far as he knows, he has a Nerve Gear Compatibility of Point-9 and had been a full time gamer selling in-game items to support always-hungry stomach.
Now that his daily cycle had been interrupted, he just hopes that the game waiting for him really does exist. Whether he will die or not, at least he can rest knowing his mom and brother will be supported by the government.