A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
A NaNoWriMo challenge (Chapter 25)
Part 6 3523 ATC —STEVE
25
“The thing about real VR, is that you can’t tell the difference between where the reality ends, and the fantasy begins,” the SID said, it’s voice accented because someone somewhere probably thought it’d help sell and move product. I didn’t care one way or the other. But with SID standing for Sentient Intelligence Design, you’d think they would’ve figured out the glitches by now. I mean, take care of that shit before hand, you know what I mean? I didn’t care if the thing spoke binary and I had to read a translator strapped to its chest. I’d already made up my mind before we even walked through the door.
It was deceptively large as kiosks go on the merch tiers. There were four chambers that seemed to disappear as soon as the door closed behind us. The room was dark and the lights came on slowly. The walls built up, surrounding us, and I looked down at Sandy beside me. She was beaming with excitement. She thought it was great as far as surprises went. She’d seen all the viddies coming across the feed and pestering me about checking it out since. It’s all the rage she said.
And indeed it is, I thought, watching the hexicrom the SID was holding up in the palm of his hand. It hovered about a tel’s width above its mech-hand. Each of the six faces showed a different age of man’s recovery and development over the last thirty-five hundred years. It was a storied history, I’ll give it that. It was more or less a case of picking your favourite war.
“That’s just one of the selling points; the selection,” the SID said, spinning the six sides so I could look at each montage of images for at least a minute. “And this is one of our most popular sellers,” it added, trying to appear casual by leaning back against the wall. I have to confess, I had a hard time not laughing when it leaned back and shimmered through the feed with a metallic ring.
I looked at Sandy and she looked at me in horror, before we both started laughing.
“What was it thinking?” She was still laughing, bending down and trying to lift it back up. It was heavy and she was having a hard time. I was still laughing.
“Not much, apparently,” I said, reaching down and helping her pull the SID back up.
“The funny part is, it stays here 24/7. You’d think it’d know what this place is. Dumbest robot ever.”
“I beg your pardon?” it asked me.
“You heard me,” I said. “You’re supposed to be sentient.” I looked at Sandy. “That’s what the ess in SID stands for, right? Sentient? That means it’s supposed to be smart?”
“Supposed to be being the operative word,” Sandy laughed.
“And what does it do, this sentient Design? It leans back against a wall that isn’t even there. You’re the only other physical thing in this room. You have never left this room. Not even for cleaning, or servicing. It’s easier just to junk you and buy a new one.
“What?”
It seemed shocked.
“It might be an implant in one of your processors. It’s possible it’s fucked.”
“Is that a proper diagnosis, Sir, or just an opinion?” the SID asked, brushing its checkered vest and then the sleeves of its white shirt. I hadn’t noticed the garters holding the sleeves up when we first arrived—things like that seem to stick out—and I wondered if it hadn’t somehow worked on the nano in my system. Wouldn’t be the first time a major company tried to steal someone’s identity. I powered up my Conn.
“Alison? Could you do a security diagnostic, and move to the appropriate frequency.”
“I think that would be an excellent idea, Stephen, although I don’t see how he could be declared sentient.”
“One of the mysteries of science ,” I replied. “Anyway, he seems harmless enough, but it could be a dupe. If I was a Slicer, that’s what I’d do.”
“You don’t know the first thing about being a Slicer,” Sandy laughed.
“I didn’t say I did. I said that’s what I’d do if I was one.”
I turned and looked at the SID. It was big and bulky. The clothes they put on it were totally out of place and wasted on it. It just made the thing look ridiculous. But it knew it’s stuff.
“Shall we go on?” I asked. “The Age of Cataclysm?” I said, and reaching forward pulled it up straight.
“Takes place in…” The SID turned the hexicrom over and looked at the holo-read that popped up in front of us. We could all see it. We could all read it; but I guess the SID felt compelled to read it to us anyway. I guess it was part of its primitive programming, but like I said, I’d already made up my mind before opening the door. It said it could hook us up so that we’d be able to come in everyday for an hour if we wanted—there’d be a short time for orientation—and when we were done, it’d feel like we’d been in the game for a month. That was the game’s biggest draw. One hour was equal to about a month. You could purchase smaller packages, where fifteen minutes was equal to a week. That was more for people who’d been involved in the game for months. They were just trying to stay alive in the game long enough to save enough money so they could go back in.
“What’s the story, in a nutshell, I mean? You don’t have to play the whole holofeed, I’ve seen them all, anyway. But you work here. You must’ve heard what these things are like? Even if you’re a SID.”
“From what I understand, ‘It’s amazing’,” the SID said, its voice changing to match that of, ‘yet another satisfied customer.’ “From what I understand,” and here he did another customer’s voice: ‘you can feel pain, but it’s not like it would be if it were real.’ It’s there to let you know that you need to find a place to rest. If you don’t get enough rest—or if you don’t power up—then your avatar will die. Your story on that timeline, will come to an end, and you’ll start up on another timeline. ‘It’s the same sort of timeline, only it’s different.’ And it is, in subtle ways. And it’s those little subtleties that makes the Elite system, so different from every other one out there. Some of the people you meet in the timeline you’re in, will become your allies, or else enemies. It depends on the package you buy. But if they die when they’re in your timeline, and you die as well, they’ll come back in your new timeline, but just long enough to keep your story going. They’ll die in your timeline, then move on and continue with their own story—in their own, different, timeline—and you’ll never see them again.”
“So you could go in with your partner, and both die, and come back on different timelines?”
“Unless you sign up for the Exclusion Clause. That’s where these other places get you. They don’t tell you that up front, and when it happens, they get you to sign up for the Exclusion Clause at an inflated price.”
“That seems rather unscrupulous,” Sandy said.
“It is, but here at Elite, we don’t do that. We tell you everything up front. We offer you the Exclusion Clause as part of the package. Some don’t want to take it. That’s because we give you something else the others don’t. We give you five lives. When you die, you come back in another timeline, your memory comes back to you in bits and pieces. Like your mind is giving you hints. Eventually, you do start to remember things, and the quest you’re on finally comes to light.”
“And what kind of quests do you offer?” Sandy asked.
“We have a combination of different choices, from different Ages. The Ice Age is a popular package.”
“Isn’t that a little too cold?”
“It’s the final years, during the Big Melt. That’s what Dwayne calls it.”
“Who’s Dwayne?” I asked.
“He programs the VR chambers. He often sets them up in peoples’ homes, but we suggest you do your first sessions here so you can be monitored.”
“Shouldn’t he be here?”
“He’s here in the morning. He goes out on calls, monitors games—”
“What does that mean?”
“I told you, he helps set up the AI in your house to monitor the system; that way you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Nothing like waking up in your own home after having endured a month avoiding flooding, rock slides, and collapsing walls of ice. All of our games are guaranteed, and well researched—”
“Guaranteed? Guaranteed what?”
“To be safe. None of them take place during the Ice Storm Wars. The Ice Age package takes place seventy years after the ice starts melting. The temperatures are temperate. No point in sending you into a time period where you’ll freeze to death in under a minute.”
“Which is why there are so many flash floods, mudslides, and walls of ice falling down?” Sandy said.
The SID turned its glass head toward her. I think it tried to smile, but only ended up tilting its head slightly. I could see inside its head though, and was as fascinated as always because the SIDs all have conical heads of glass, solid glass, and there’re reflections of light they say are similar to neurones in the human brain. Every flash is a thought, or a command, with so many coming in the flashes end up looking like solid light tracings, making geometric designs with every syllable uttered.
“You don’t die for real, though. Right?” she asked.
The SID moved closer without even moving; just leaned in and dropped its voice so that we had to lean closer just to hear what it had to offer. Conspiratorial? Or just the perfect marketing ploy to gain the customer’s confidence? I decided it had to be gaining the customer’s trust, because I could see Sandy was excited by the whole idea.
“You hear things, you know? There was this guy in a city once, years ago, and they said he had a heart attack while he was playing VR. It screwed things up for everyone on his timeline. He didn’t die on the outside, and while his brain was attached to the game still, he was in a coma in both the VR world, and the real world. They had to store him inside whatever game it was, in a coma for ten years. And the same thing in real time.”
“You mean he was stuck in the game?” she said. “And because he was in a coma in the real world, his avatar fell into a coma as well?”
“Exactly!” the SID said, slipping back out and making a quick pirouette before he leaned back in and went on with his story.
“They put him in his own little game. That’s why he was in a hospital for so long. They wrote a game just for him. They gave him a sone and sent him to live with his family. Father, mother, three boys. Maybe a dog or two, can’t have three boys, and no dog. You have to wonder how that one worked out. Because from what I’ve heard, the coma was put in a Pre-Cataclysmic scenario. Well, that’s what they say. I don’t know if any of it’s true, but it’s pretty doje all the same, don’t you think?”
“Doje?” Sandy said, laughing.
“All the kids are saying it these days,” the SID replied.
“Has anyone ever beat the game?” I asked.
“A few. There was an AP that used the game as part of her recovery program. I heard they had to operate on her extensively—made her more cyborg than Sapien—and went into the game while she lay in her hospital bad. Never died once and became a Time Guide. When you become a Time Guide you can go anywhere in the game, and do anything. Time Guides can either help you, or hinder you,” it added.
“So these other people you meet in the game? They’re just other players, the same as us? And if they die in my game, it just means they get to start another time line of their own? And if I die and start a new timeline, and they’re in it, they’ll die, because—in reality— they’re playing their own game now and are restarting on their own timeline?”
I turned and looked at Sandy, and she just smiled.
That was last week.
Since then, we’ve been locked in—lost in is a better description—but locked into the Age of Cataclysm one hour each night, for the past three nights. That’s the equivalent of three months of maddening adventure. I guess that’s why people have taken to calling the game Lost; once you get locked into the chamber, everything changes.
