First in the Game

by Christopher Keene

  First in the Game

  A Short Story in The Dream State Saga

  Christopher Keene

  Future House Publishing

  First in the Game

  Future House Publishing

  Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com. Used under license.

  Copyright © 2017 Christopher Keene

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at rights@futurehousepublishing.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Michael Bacera

  Copy editing by CreelaBelle Howard

  Interior design by Hannah M. Earl

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  A Brief History of Malcolm Mirth, Winsor Wona and their LDC (Lucid Dream Computer)

  March 15, 2056

  It’s not every day that you get to meet your heroes, but I might get the opportunity to do so in the near future. First, let me give you a quick rundown of whom I’m talking about.

  According to New Scientist Magazine, Remington Mallett of the University of Missouri-St Louis was the first to experiment with controlling computers cognitively using lucid dreams way back in 2017. Five years later and still no one had connected his experiments with VR technology. That was until a game designer named Winsor Wona who once worked for Nintendo began exploring the limitations of VR gaming. He told Gamer Informer magazine in 2022 that without creating entire environments and tools to interact with, the experience was still limited to a visual component for the average household gamer without an expensive gaming treadmill and sensory equipment.

  Enter Canadian biochemist and neurologist Malcolm Mirth and his experiments with Galantamine. Used traditionally for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease patients, Malcolm posited that if a drug could increase a patient’s control over their dreams, one could gain a more realistic interactive experience with a game within a dream, so long as there was a solid input that the dreamer could interact with. After meeting Winsor Wona at a VR convention in Washington in 2031, the two seemed a match made in heaven. With Wona’s success in his own VR systems, Malcolm finally had the funds he needed to conduct his experiments. In 2038, while Winsor was designing game concepts that might work on such a system, Malcolm was conducting his first invasive experiments on live chimpanzees on an island outside of international waters.

  While the experiments achieved little success before animal rights organizations shut them down, the VR system itself was perfected to the point that invasive electrodes were no longer necessary in such experiments. There are records from PETA of some of the freed chimpanzees experiencing body dissociation after having played as human avatars in the later stages of the drug’s development. The key issue they found was not with the system, however, but the harmful after-effects of the powerful hypnotics used to allow them to interact with it on a necessary cognitive level. Apparently these problems have been slowly weeded out and the news from the Wona convention is that they are getting ready for the first human trials. This has left many VR enthusiasts very excited to put their names down to be guinea pigs for these beta tests.

  This is where your friendly neighborhood Brockodile comes into the story. Yesterday I had the great honor to hear Winsor Wona announce his new game system at the VRcon: the Dream Engine. After hearing the passion and resources being put into this project, I’ve decided to apply for the chance to take part in the later beta testing stages. They have confirmed for me the safety of these tests and I plan on continuously updating my experiences with the company on Lucid Blogging so you can follow along with me in this revolutionary leap in gaming technology.

  Fingers crossed I get in!

  Brockodile

  Wona’s Preliminary Tests

  May 20, 2056

  I got an email today and needless to say that my heart was pounding upon opening it when seeing it was from the Wona Company. Long-story-short, I got into the preliminary rounds. Now does that guarantee my place on the program? No. It says in the email that before anyone can take part in the trials they must first be tested for gamer adeptness. In other words my gaming skills are going to be put to the test. We’re talking baby steps here.

  After I confirmed my acceptance, I was couriered a demo disc of the game that I had to complete. For those of you who have watched my online streams, you’ll know that I am mostly skilled at both platformers and first person shooters. You can imagine I was pretty happy when realizing that the game was actually a first person platformer, a puzzle game similar to the ones Valve made back when VR was in its infancy. Knowing I was one of the first to experience this game, I didn’t hesitate to put my goggles on and get to playing. The game had very basic graphics. It involved running through a gorge that led into a dark cave, all the while goblin-looking monsters ran at you with short blades. You don’t have a weapon, but you could use the environments to defeat them. I eventually found out that the trick to winning was simply avoiding them.

  After I failed to complete it for a second time, I noticed the number 2 had appeared at the top of the screen. From in the instructions that came with the disc, I was to send back the game once I’d completed it. I assume the test is to see how many times I had to die to defeat the demo. Needless to say on my third try I was a bit more careful, and it only took me two more tries after that for me to get to the gateway at the end of the cave and complete it. I hope five attempts to complete it weren’t too many, although I have a feeling it was. Whatever the case, there’s no taking those tries back. They’re recorded onto the disk, and I doubt there’s a decoder out there that could change them. I’m just so used to having to defeat the monsters to get to the end!

  If it turns out that five tries is two too many, think of this as a record of my failure. They said I would get a reply within three months, so I should find out in September. In either case, I’ll continue to write updates on these new VR innovations. Wona truly is the next generation of gaming, and for a game enthusiast like me, a rejection isn’t going to stop me from getting the latest news.

  Brockodile

  Invitation to Visit Wona Laboratories

  August 22, 2056

  I got my reply today and good news everyone! I’ve made it through to the second stage of the trial. That’s not the only good news I got with the email; I’ve also been invited on a tour of Wona Laboratories with the other gamers who got through the demo stage. For me, that’s like being Charlie when he’s
invited to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. It states that we should get an opportunity to beta play the first game on their special VR machines, but whether we get to try their new dream induced games wasn’t mentioned so I don’t have my hopes up.

  The email came with an attachment of the day’s events and the speakers we will be listening to during the tour, including, drum roll please . . . Malcolm Mirth himself! I finally get to meet my hero, the person I have been following the career of since I started playing VR games, and at the time that he’s working with one of the biggest game companies in the world! In any case, the tour is going to take place next month and I’ll be sure to write a post on everything I see and do there.

  ♪I’ve got a golden ticket♪

  Brockodile

  Tour of Wona Laboratories

  September 14, 2056

  Whew, what a day! Although I was in a crowd of a few dozen people, seeing him on a stage, I was finally able to hear Malcolm speak in person. He was actually really funny. He kept telling jokes during his speech where he, get this, displayed to us all a Dream Engine prototype. That’s right. We were shown the first edition of what will be the greatest gaming system the world has ever seen.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Now a little description of the device: First, its appearance (we were made to give up any phones and cameras to stop us from taking pictures of it. Otherwise there would have been one at the top of this post). Unlike the usual goggles and glasses people have been using for VR games for the last decade, the Dream Engine was a helmet that covers the eyes as well as the head and goes all the way down to the top of the spine. He displayed how inside it were electrodes that stimulated the brain in concordance with the drugs the player would need to take to get into a trance state that the game needed. It also had a sensory flap that came down like a gas mask that, along with the electrodes, would help to stimulate all five senses. He claimed that the last step to gaining full immersion was a player’s expectation based on previous experiences. This would allow their brain to fill in extra effects onto the simulated settings.

  As a prototype, I wasn’t so surprised that it was much bigger than many of the VR systems I had seen in the past, and you wouldn’t either after hearing what it contains. For in this helmet was the world’s smallest and most advanced MRI machine designed specifically for the Dream Engine. For anyone who says technology hasn’t advanced much in the last decade, just listen to what this thing can do. Although the “Dream State” is going to be on a template created by the system’s stimulants to create the world, this machine will be able to interpret what you’re doing within the world and adjust the template accordingly and vise-versa, and this entire world is going to be online! That’s right . . . This will be the first machine in history that will allow people to see and interact with others online IN THEIR DREAMS!

  As excited I was to hear all this, I was somewhat disheartened during the Q&A session about how little information he divulged on the drugs and technological interface. How did these drugs get you into a dream where the stimulus could dictate the same dream for everyone? How would such a powerful narcotic affect the player’s mental state? From the vague answers these questions got, I can only assume there must be some bugs that still need to be ironed out. As impossible as it all seems, if anyone could achieve such a synchronization of people’s minds, it was Malcolm Mirth. Could you say I have too much faith that this man can turn fantasy into reality? From everything I’ve seen so far, that might be true.

  Of course, the tour didn’t end there. After Malcolm’s enthusiastic and funny demonstration, we were led to a dozen VR booths (think arcade driving game booths but for higher quality VR games) for our first chance to explore the first settings of the Dream State game. Although it was only for our eyes, we could interact with each other in an empty medieval town called ‘Galrinth.’ While there was not much we could do in the town itself, we were allowed to explore the grasslands outside. There were forests in the background that I aimed to explore but a window would popped up saying: “Widows’ Forest still in production.” At first I thought this was a little underwhelming, until I was given the information that those who finished the last trial would be hired on by Wona to design more areas in the Dream State.

  You might be asking, what is this last trial, Brockodile? Well, I’m glad you asked, dear reader. After we had tried out the second demo, we were ushered into a huge auditorium where Winsor Wona himself announced that, along with everyone else at that gathering, yours truly will be given the software and access to the technology needed to design our own levels in the Dream State game, levels that they might turn into actual dungeons in the game. Can you believe it? Not only will we be beta-testers, but also game designers, and those whose dungeons get in will be given a career to be a part of the company that will create the next generation of games in the years to come!

  The due date for our own dungeon designs needed to be submitted for evaluation after the Christmas holidays so needless to say I’m not going to have a lot of time to post on Lucid Blogging during that time, but I’ll be sure to give you all of the details on what I’ve created when I’m done. In the meantime, send me any ideas you have so I might be able to pass them off as my own. Who knows? Maybe in the future you might be playing a level I designed.

  Brockodile

  Dungeon Submission

  January 19, 2057

  I nearly killed myself in the last month of making this thing and I have a newfound respect for game designers. It took up all of my winter break, but I managed to finish designing my dungeon, and I’ve got to say, I’m pretty proud of it. I designed the dungeon to be based on a gravity-based platformer I quite like, but I tell you, as first person games go, as fun as it is, it’s pretty challenging.

  It’s set in a dungeon that’s like a 3-dimensional maze but at the points where you need to go vertical or horizontal, you’re given the opportunity to walk on the walls through options that appear on the block ledges. While finding your way through, you have to fight lizard monsters that walk on the ceiling and walls, and you have to find the right combination of ledges to jump off to be able to get to them. The idea is that these monsters drop items that allow you to access the main chamber at the end of the maze. In this chamber the boss lizard can change from ceiling to walls whenever it wants but each ledge allows the player to shift their orientation to whatever they need in order to fight it. Cool, huh?

  I want to suggest to Wona that when the dungeon is complete the player earns some kind of gravity ability, either to be able to walk up walls or to slow an enemy’s speed. Whatever the case, the level is complete, and I’ve packaged it away to submit it to Wona. Giving us free access to use their computers and arcade booths to test it out was a godsend. Some people I saw were there pretty much every day working on their dungeon, and I can only hope that there are a few that don’t outshine my own. I don’t want my whole vacation to go to waste, but on the bright side I did learn a lot about game design in the process. Winsor himself sent us instructions from time to time, and there’s nothing like receiving advice from a master.

  Even if I don’t make it, I hope my dungeon is of some use to them. The idea of being able to play something like that in a dream game makes me tremble in excitement. Even that other players might be able to, and interact with me on some level with it, is far beyond anything I could hope for right now, but what is the Dream Engine if not an engine to make dreams come true? Hah! Man that sounded way too corny.

  Brockodile

  Working for Wona

  April 1, 2057

  Guess who got another email from Wona today? I don’t even know what to say about this so I’ll just paste it here and let you make up your own minds.

  Dear Mr. Driver,

  We have played your submission with interest and have decided that it’s not quite what we are looking for in the Dream State project. However, we were very impressed with your ability to utilize the software we provided for you and f
eel that you would be a great asset to the continuation of the project.

  For this reason, we are happy to offer you a position on the Wona Company’s design team. We would like you to come in for us to give you the offer and see if a place with our company is acceptable to you. Once you have heard what we have to offer, it is up to you to decide if you will continue on with this new generation of gaming. If you agree to our terms, we will start by writing up a contract and everything you will need to work for us.

  To make our offer as clear as possible, even if you refuse the design position, the option of being a beta-tester will still be open to you. Congratulations.

  Kind regards,

  Winsor Wona

  (Wona CEO)

  So correct me if I’m wrong, honest reader, but I believe I have just been offered a job with the Wona Company ALONG with being a beta-tester. Granted, my dungeon won’t be used in the final product but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to be a part of the biggest VR production the world has ever seen. Do I really have to tell you that I’ve decided to accept their offer? Do I really have to explain to you that this is a dream come true for me? No pun intended. No, because if you’ve read anything I’ve written on Lucid Blogging in the last two years then you would already know this as self-evident.

  But what does this mean for you, my readers? Well, while I work for Wona, I’m also going to be writing on this blog as well, meaning you will get all of the updates and scoops from an insider in the company. That’s right. This is the one place where you can see an insider’s story of a VR fan being hired on with the company that will redefine gaming forever.