Tales of the Gemsmith

by Jared Mandani

  “Holy crap!” He looked down at his own body, raising his arms in front of his face as he saw that he was a slightly glowing humanoid shape, naked, but also featureless.

  “Mr. Winters, can you hear me?” Marcy was saying, speaking low and close beside his ear. “I guess you’ve just noticed your avatar. It’s a body image. It’s non-populated by images or memories by the machine, but it obeys what your mind remembers of your body. That is why you are the same height.”

  “Okay,” Dean breathed, turning completely around. He half-expected to still see the Odge logo floating behind him, or perhaps a sort of glowing window back to his physical body. My real body, he had to remind himself.

  Instead, he found that he was in a featureless room with white walls and ceiling, and a soft blue carpet.

  This is called the staging area. Every VR project has them. It’s where the machine calibrates to your neuro-map before you enter any virtual environments, and also where you can store notes, data, that kind of thing,” Marcy said loudly. “It’s what I wanted to show you. Your visualization should be starting any moment now…”

  As if summoned, a shape gradually grew from a pinprick of light to a large and solid shape, floating in the center of the room. It was a giant ball of solid green.

  “Okay…” Dean said, feeling slightly confused. “What do I do – walk into it? Does it take me to the game?”

  “This IS the game, I’m afraid, Mr. Winters.” The distant voice of the nurse laughed. “This is a manipulation simulation. The texture and features of the ball in front of you can be adjusted, changed, pulled, torn … whatever you like.”

  “Great. So… What has that got to do with my health?” Dean frowned inside his helmet-visor as he reached out to touch the floating green ball. It was slightly warm to his touch, and soft. He poked it, and its surface dented.

  “Let me tell you an exciting fact, Mr. Winters: the brain sees no difference between a dream and a waking moment. Isn’t that interesting?” Marcy called loudly.

  “I suppose so,” Dean considered. Spreading the fingers of his avatar’s body wide, he pressed hard against the ball, and saw the shape of his hand depress a few inches into it. It still felt a little warm, and his hands felt strong.

  “You see, since the nineteen sixties, there have been neuroscientists running scans on human brain activity, and here is what they discovered: that it doesn’t matter if you are experiencing real pain, or are dreaming about pain, your brain responds in the same way!”

  “That means that what you do in dreams, your brain thinks is real. And that is why the Manipulation Sim, or Mani-Sim as we call it, is going to make you get better, quicker. You are going to use your avatar’s hands and fingers to manipulate that floating ball, and you will be re-wiring your brain’s nervous system as you do so. Our studies have found that virtual doubling of physical therapy can sometimes cut down recovery rates to half or even a third of what they were previously.”

  “Only, no pain,” Dean said, this time punching fingers into the floating ball and dragging them back out. He could feel the resistance against his hands, he could feel the need for the ball to return back to its original shape as he wrenched, and he felt no pain whatsoever.

  “Exactamundo, Mr. Winters.”

  There was a muttered few words from outside that Dean couldn’t hear, but he imagined that it was probably Paul with his ‘no pain, no gain’ mantra.

  Well, screw that! Dean thought. He would much rather not have the pain as he pulled and stretched the ball into new and fantastical shapes. It felt good to have his old range of movement back, as he teased a tendril from the ball between his glowing thumb and forefinger. The substance was like slightly harder plasticine, he thought, and he could feel it any time his virtual avatar body came into contact with it.

  “This is really incredible,” Dean said, pushing a spike back into the ball and then trying to flatten the entire side into a square.

  “We think so. As I say, we’ve had some very good recovery rates owing to the VRM, so I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t expect the same from you,” Marcy said, as Dean continued to play.

  There were more muttered conversations from outside, but Dean couldn’t make them out, and he didn’t care either. In here, he was starting to feel as though he could have his old life back again. He was so engrossed with his new imaginary hands that he didn’t hear when Paul left, or what he said on his way out.

  Chapter 3: You’d Make a Killing

  As it turned out, however, there’s only so much you can do in a square featureless room with a floating green ball before you become soul-crushingly bored. Dean Winters got to that point about exactly five days after being introduced to the Mani-Sim.

  “Just another session, Mr. Winters…” Marcy said from her perch by the hospital windows. She had in her hands a checkboard on which she was noting down various facts and diagnostics of Dean’s physical recovery, as Dean tried to once again argue that he didn’t want to go back into virtual space.

  “But I can do everything and anything to that thing!” Dean protested. “You should see it – I’ve broken it apart into separate shapes, I’ve remade it into a statue, I’ve built shelves out of it, blankets… You name it.” Dean groaned. “The problem isn’t what I can do with my virtual hands in there, it’s what I can’t do with my real hands out here!” Dean said, wondering just when he had begun to sound so much like Paul.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have dismissed him so easily. Dean felt bad about that. He hadn’t heard or seen from Paul since the introduction of the VRM to his life. Dean himself hadn’t tried to pick up a phone or get one of the nurses to send him a message or anything.

  I guess I’ve been too busy inside the Mani-Sim, he thought, only now even that made him feel bad. How could he have dropped his friend so easily for a virtual dream of having his hands back?

  His thoughts rose unbidden: because they are my life. The daily reminder of their mangled and misshapen state was a slap in the face. Not that they weren’t getting better. He could now open the physical Manipulation Ball and had since moved up to more complex rehabilitation toys – contraptions that buzzed if the little tool in his hand wavered, or ones with various interlocking parts that needed to be unpacked and connected.

  But I’m still a long way off from being able to fashion gemstones and gold again, he thought miserably. A long way off. His hands were no longer in casts and bandages, but instead he wore padded gloves, which supposedly aided the circulation as well as supported the delicate re-attaching tendons and muscles within.

  “You can show me, if you like.” Marcy looked at her patient over her glasses. “You do realize that the VRMs are network-compatible, right?”

  “What?” No, Dean hadn’t considered this at all.

  “Only we have the wi-fi switched off for the medical units. But it wouldn’t be a bother for me to get my headset and a USB cable…” She shrugged, yawning as she clipped the pen to the board and set it on the chair. She grinned and said, “Wait here a minute.”

  “Har. Har.” Dean rolled his eyes at her as she left the room.

  *

  When Marcy returned, she was carrying a much more worn and battered version of the VRM with a selection of large nylon stickers plastered over it. Dean thought he could see a few band stickers, and some anime characters.

  “Shush, you. I bought this with my own money and I bring it in to help my clients…” Marcy frowned. “Not playing games on my lunch breaks at all, no siree.” She winked and sat down on the chair next to the bed, unravelling a rather tired and long USB cord. “It’s a VR Discovery, the older model from Odge, but I’ve patched it up so that it can run all the latest games,” Marcy said proudly, taking off her glasses and setting them on the small bedside table as she clicked the cables together, and then slid her own headset on.

  Dean looked at the young woman for a moment longer, noticing how nonplussed she was in
this situation, before he put his own helmet on, and the Odge logo flashed and spun in the dark.

  “Let’s see how good you are then, shall we…?” Marcy laughed, her voice not muffled at all but sounding as though she were standing right beside him.

  The light faded away once more, leaving the blue-floored room with the floating green blob. Only now, the blob was a lot smaller and pushed over to the corner, as Dean had torn off many, many hunks of the stuff to make slowly spinning, whirling jewelry, all in the same matte green. Some pieces were stylized and flowing, others simple, and there were some that looked somehow ancient, with knotwork and curlicues.

  “I can’t do anywhere near as good a job without my tools, but you get the idea…” Dean managed to say as he heard an intake of breath behind him.

  “These are … beautiful,” Marcy said, and her voice was sharp and so clear that he turned in surprise to see…

  Not Marcy.

  Instead, standing just behind him was a woman just a little bit smaller than him, with skin that was soft and the color of light honey. Her eyes were wide and almond-shaped, and her ears were gently tufted at the ends. This almost-Marcy still had the gallons of tumbling, frizzy red hair, but it floated around her as if upset in a gentle breeze. She appeared fey and unusual, like a creature out of one of the films that Dean liked to watch.

  But even that wasn’t the most surprising thing about her. That would be her dress – or lack of it.

  “Uhm…” Dean managed to say.

  Her skin was the same pale honey all over, and he knew that because she was wearing very little indeed. Her ample bosom was tugged tight with wraps of cream linen, and secured with strange metallic swirls like hasps, and she wore nothing else on the top half of her body aside from heavy leather gauntlets, and a long, ragged green cloak attached by a fine golden thread across her collarbone. Dean’s eyes wandered over her toned, odd-colored body, seeing her belly button and the slight swell of her abdomen.

  “I mean, ah…” Dean said, embarrassed. At least she’s wearing trousers, he thought, before he realized that what those things were called were breeches. Large, almost baggy canvas pants drawn together at the front with cord, and with a thick, tight leather belt, from which hung two long, thin scabbards of inky black, set with moonstones.

  “Oh crap. Have I gone and done it again?” he heard Marcy say – and saw her lips say as well, right there in front of him. “I’m still in my Aldaron skin, aren’t I? I’m sorry…” The strange elf-Marcy looked embarrassed, clasping a gauntlet to her forehead in embarrassment, before hurriedly crossing her arms over her mostly bare midriff.

  “You’re what?” Dean said.

  “Aldaron. It’s a MORG, or a VMMORPG, if you want to be exact. A Virtual Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game I play online. Sorry.” Dean watched as the elf-like woman shook her head and looked off to one side. “If you look down-right, it pulls up your personal staging area,” she advised him as her form blurred, froze, and then was replaced by another luminous and featureless body, just like his own, Dean was sad to see.

  “Oh, really?” Dean tried it, turning his avatar’s head down and right, but nothing happened. “It doesn’t work on mine.”

  “That’s because we’re already in your staging area, silly,” the luminous Marcy said. “There, how do I look?” She twirled her new body.

  “Boring,” Dean couldn’t help himself from saying.

  “Ha. Yes, well… I have to say that all of this is, compared to Aldaron.” The avatar moved to the first of the floating green pendants, picking it up and turning it over. “This is really good work, you know.” She nodded, releasing it to once again float freely in the air. “You could make a fortune in the King’s Markets.”

  “The what?” Dean said.

  Amazingly, the avatar managed to look embarrassed—it was in the body movements, Dean saw, rather than the expressionless face. “Oh, another Aldaron thing. You know, witches and wizards, swords and sorcery. That kind of thing.”

  “I love that kind of thing,” Dean muttered, before batting at one of the amulets in the air, bending it into a grotesque mockery of what it had been.

  “Hey! Don’t do that – this is all really good work!” Marcy exclaimed.

  “I used to be a jeweler.” Dean shrugged. “Back in real life. This is nothing compared to what I can do with the right tools.”

  “Or the right bitrate,” Marcy said musingly.

  “Dean looked at her.

  “The medical VRM that you’re wearing here is top-of-the-line, but the hospital connection isn’t great, and your headset is only running the basic sim package,” she said apologetically. “If we got you upgraded and connected up to a proper hotspot, then – man! I think that you would be amazed at how lifelike you can get these.”

  “They already seem pretty lifelike to me,” Dean said as he plucked another pendant and squished it between his fingers. He could feel the pliable resistance, the slight tackiness of its surface.

  “Oh boy, then you should see what the VMORPGS can do these days!” the nurse said excitedly. “I mean, you can feel the carpet underfoot, right?”

  Dean nodded.

  “Out there in Aldaron you can smell the cook fires and the fresh salty tang of the air off the Mula coast. You can feel the breeze, you can taste the rosemary on the grilled Hydeck fish. It’s amazing.” The nurse-avatar paused. “The only thing that isn’t so hot is the pain sensitivity – but you can dial that all the way down. Ghost-pain, we call it.”

  We? Dean thought.

  “The VRMs have a safety feature built in that they don’t activate your pain receptors, none of the wave calibrators focus on those parts of your brain, but still – even though it’s all images in your mind, the appearance of pain can trick your body into feeling it,” she explained. “It should be impossible, but there are some really interesting studies done on amputees where people can actually feel their missing limbs if they visualize them in virtual space. Mind-boggling when you think about it…”

  Dean nodded; he was indeed boggled by the thought. “But it doesn’t work the other way? When I spend hours in here, my fingers and hands don’t start to hurt out there in real life, even though I know that they do…”

  “No. The ghost sensations don’t appear to work towards the physical, it’s all still in your head – which is fascinating, don’t you think?” Marcy considered, plucking at another of the multi-stranded, curling pendants. “Can I keep this one?”

  Dean didn’t understand how that was even possible. “Uh. Can you?”

  “Sure,” she said excitedly. “You have to approve of the transfer, and usually, if we were connected through wireless then a window would pop up for you to agree to send me this over your secure protocols – in Aldaron that is all done behind the scenes – but as we’re all physical USB…” She looked up at him. “You just have to say yes.”

  “Yes.” Dean felt a wave of embarrassed pride. He was touched that she would consider his hallucinations worthy to keep in her own virtual world. A world which is far more advanced than this one he thought as he looked back at his inner realm with boredom.

  “Well, I think it’s safe to say that you’ve progressed through the virtual rehabilitation surprisingly quickly,” Marcy said. “Although, I’m afraid that we’re going to have to keep you on the virtual manipulation sessions to encourage the sympathetic healing in your fingers.”

  Dean flexed his luminous hand in front of him.

  “I mean your real fingers, silly.” Marcy laughed. “Now, as soon as we get the paperwork sorted out, I’m going to put you forward onto the community care program, does that sound good?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “My knee…” His real-world knee was still in plaster, and still shattered. It took a long time to fix a kneecap, apparently.

  “Oh, we got things for that too.” Marcy managed to get her avatar’s face to smile. “We need to get you up and on
your feet anyway. We’ll do a trial run tomorrow, a supervised visit back to your home, where you can collect clothes and sort out whatever you need to do, but we’ll be collecting data on how you manipulate your environment in real time.”

  Dean looked back at the room full of fantastic objects. Probably not as well as I can manipulate this stuff, he thought.

  Chapter 4: Dangerous Environments

  “Erh… Dean? Dean!” Paul’s strong voice managed to break him from his paralysis.

  Dean Winters wobbled outside the door to his tiny apartment, eyes slowly refocusing on the notice stapled to the door and the heavy bar wedged against the doorframes.

  “By the order of the Landlord, countersigned by the Office of the Mayor, San Maria.” Dean’s eyes read the opening words again.

  “For the immediate attention of Mr. D. Winters, Apartment 27b, Willis Building, Jefferson Avenue.

  ‘“We regret to inform you that access to this apartment has been curtailed due to insufficient funds. Although I have taken steps to contact you, and awaited confirmation of alternate payment channels, I have received nothing. It is with sadness that we have to conclude our business relationship.

  ‘“As per regulation 23, subsection 4 of the Housing Act, we will hold your belongings in lieu of the remaining payments for a period of three months, after which time they will be confiscated and sold to allay your debts.”

  Dean said a very bad word.

  *

  “But what am I going to do? I’ve got nothing. Nothing!” Dean said once again to the two rather worried faces looking at him.

  “You were in hospital! Surely there has to be some leniency for that?” the nurse fumed over her glasses. She was still dressed in her scrubs, but a large and patched aviator jacket had been thrown over it, as well as a woolen beanie over her hair.

  “We’ll talk to the city council. They’ll have some specialist fund or something for this kind of thing I’m sure!” Paul kicked the locked door with a grunt. “I guess that you’ll be wanting to stay at mine then?” he said, rubbing a hand over his eyes.