SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1

by Joseph Heck

  “We?”

  “I think I’ll just tag along and keep an eye on things.”

  “Whatever makes you happy,” Zak replied. He took the cables and began plugging them into the terminals. As he did this, Aakil went to a monitor at the far end of the room and, after unsuccessfully attempting voice control, began poking at the keyboard.

  “I can’t get a feed on virtuality,” the tech said after several attempts.

  “The energy surges are probably interfering with the video and audio feeds.” Zak continued preparing the four workstations. “Virtual space seems to be intact though. I’ve already checked.”

  “But I’m not sure that the safety protocols are operational,” the tech argued. “There’s no response from the system’s safety timers. If the exit protocols fail, the system won’t automatically shut down.”

  “That doesn’t sound safe!” Harry’s voice was thin with worry.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Zak said. “Trust me, it’s what I do. If it comes to it, I can hack the system from inside. We’ll be fine.”

  Aakil gave him a doubtful look but said nothing. After Zak was satisfied that everything was set and everyone had been seated comfortably with headsets on, he ran a last check on the computer.

  “Okay, we’re good to go,” Zak said from his seat. “Aakil, you just sit back and relax. Most of the local controls seem to be working for these stations. Monitor our vital signs if you need something to do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, here we go.”

  20

  “Oh my!” Harry’s words echoed within the large chamber they found themselves standing in.

  The warehouse’s virtual setting was an elaborate contrast from the small dingy security office they had just left. A domed ceiling of stained glass crowned the room three stories above them, sending kaleidoscopic shafts of light shooting down from a sun that had been hidden from them in the real world. The cathedral-like setting was in fact a grand library. The high reaching walls were of rich dark oak, as were the tall archways and ornate railings of the upper lofts. Row upon row of tall oak bookshelves stood among red marble pillars throughout the expansive lower chamber and upper lofts. The strangest part of the virtual setting was not the elaborate architecture or the fact that the virtual building was so vast. Virtual scenes were often luxurious since the cost for the indulgence consisted of nothing more than the cost of programming. The truly overwhelming part of it all was the hard covered books lining the shelves. None of the group had ever seen so many printed books before.

  “I would guess this is the data storage area,” Zak said, enjoying the unfamiliar scent of polished wood interlaced with a musky damp smell of old paper. He wondered if this was how the ancient libraries had really smelled. There had been few books printed on paper over the last hundred years and what few libraries still contained them were now under restricted access in order to protect the aging volumes. Modern libraries stored only digital books and, even though some offered a virtual interface, few were anywhere near this extravagant. In fact, the majority of modern libraries didn’t bother offering any kind of virtual interface at all. Digital files were simply selected from an online directory and downloaded.

  “Why in the demon’s hell would anyone want this archaic look for their data area?”

  “Come now, Mashkkha,” Zak said with a grin. “Have you no appreciation for antiquity?”

  “Shouldn’t we have come in through the security portal?” Mashkkha asked, ignoring Zak’s comment.

  “Guess virtual security is down, as well as the firewall. This place was most likely used by administration, probably front office rather than the shipping office.”

  “Well, the real offices have been stripped clean, nothing fancy about them now,” Mashkkha said. “Even the computers are gone.”

  “It seems that virtuality has been affected by what is going on,” Megan interrupted. “There is a hint of red in the air. It’s not as intense as in the shipping office.”

  There was, indeed, a reddish hue to their surroundings. The effect reminded Zak of the dirty brown haze of pollution that hovered over all modern cities. But in this case it was a rouge-like coloration that hung in the air like suspended particles and it had no odor that Zak could detect.

  “Wherever we are, I feel no presence here like I felt in the office,” Harry said.

  Zak began looking around with more purpose. “I’d better check the network again before we go too far into the system and make sure the virtual settings are stable.”

  He attempted to make verbal contact with the computer system. Again, there was no response to voice commands. He searched for a keyboard terminal, which he was able to locate easily enough. He found it only a short distance away, at the head librarian’s desk. These terminals were made to be discrete, nothing more than ghost-like apparitions within the virtual world they populated until they were accessed. By law, all virtual systems were required to have both voice and keyboard access from within virtuality. Zak’s fingers quickly danced over the keys in an attempt to access the settings for the network as the rest of the group watched him expectantly. Each attempt met with failure, and with each failure he became more frustrated. After several attempts he gave up.

  “I can’t access any of the network controls from in here,” he said finally.

  “You said this would be safe!” Harry’s voice rose in near panic. “You said you could hack the system and get us out of here if you had to.”

  “Stop worrying!” Zak growled back at him. “I said I could get us out if I needed to and I will.”

  Mashkkha looked troubled. “So, there’s no way to tell if the Rules of Engagement are on?”

  “No,” Zak said reluctantly.

  “You did not check before?” Megan said in disbelief.

  “Rules of Engagement?” Harry said. “What are they?”

  “You’ve never heard of the Rules of Engagement?” Mashkkha asked in disbelief. “Man, what planet are you from!”

  “I study the paranormal,” Harry said defensively. “I don’t go in for all this high tech rigmarole.”

  “The Rules of Engagement are a set of safety protocols required for all virtual worlds,” Zak explained, making one more attempt at the terminal. “So no one can be seriously injured or killed due to something they experience while in virtuality. The rules were created primarily as safeguards for virtual gaming.”

  “What! You’re telling me we could die in here?” Harry’s concern contorted his face as he looked over at Zak. “But that doesn’t make any sense. All this...it isn’t real!”

  “No, it’s not,” Zak said impatiently. He gave up at the keyboard and turned toward Harry. “Without going into all the technical rigmarole, it’s because of the way virtual programs interact with our brains. On a logical level, we know that all this isn’t real. But the programming convinces the rest of our brain that it is as real as the outside world. All our senses...sight, sound, touch, smell. They all confirm that what we are experiencing is real.”

  “But I still know that it’s only an illusion.”

  “Only a small part of your brain knows it’s an illusion. But the program code is busy convincing the rest of your brain to suspend that knowledge and to accept the program data as reality. To those parts of your brain, the virtual world is no different than the real world. That’s what allows us to experience virtuality through our senses.”

  “Humans can thank the Elves for this virtual technology,” Megan said. “The original design for the neural net interface did not work. It was only when Elves developed the technology to reproduce the Transcendental Transference Frequency associated with mind activities that Humans were able to make their big leap forward with virtual programming!”

  “I don’t think so...” Zak began.

  “Well, I think so!” Megan snapped. “An Elf by the name of Sylvanian was the first to identify the Transcendental Transference Frequency in 5064. It took Dr. Sylvanian thr
ee years after his discovery to develop the technology to duplicate the transmission capabilities. Of course, Humans claimed the discovery as their own and renamed it with their fancy-dancy catch phrase Sub-quantum Modulation Frequency.”

  “Oh, no...” Zak tried to object.

  “Oh, yes! Check your facts.”

  “I’ve never heard of either before,” Mashkkha said, cutting them both off. “What is transcendental...whatever you said?”

  “Nothing more than Elf lore,” Zak said before Megan could respond. “Virtual technology uses the Sub-quantum Modulation Frequency to send data to the brain. Doctor Karl Adderson, a Human, discovered the phenomena in 5063, although he didn’t publish his findings until 5064. He also developed the virtual neural net which used the transmission frequency for the first time in 5074.”

  “You are an ass!” Megan said to him. She began briskly leafing through a book that she had found on the desk in front of her.

  Zak was pleased with her annoyance and it encouraged him to go on. “It was Dr. Adderson’s advancements in neural technology that allowed the virtual world to become available to us. He discovered a sub-quantum carrier wave that sends data to the brain, which he named the Sub-quantum Modulation Frequency. His experiments proved that these transmissions contained essential data that supplemented the grosser data our brains receive, which basically defines the way we perceive our world. It is like the glue that holds our reality together. Once he learned how to control the Sub-quantum Modulation Frequency and manipulate the data it contained, virtuality was born. Virtual programs send data over the Sub-quantum Modulation Frequency disguised as the normal supplementary sensory input the brain normally receives from its environment. Since the brain isn’t capable of questioning the validity of the data it receives on that level, it simply accepts it and creates reality within those parameters. That’s why we can sit on a virtual chair, smell a virtual rose and enjoy a virtual meal.

  “Unfortunately, that means the mind accepts negative input as reality as well, like being stabbed with a knife or being shot, for instance. While the physical body doesn’t actually suffer a wound inflicted by a virtual knife or a bullet, your virtual body does. And the brain believes the wound is real, causing the same trauma to the physical body as a real world wound would cause. If the shock is severe enough the body can die from its belief in the virtual wound. In some extreme cases, the mind becomes so convinced that the violence is real that it even causes the physical body to take on the wound itself, as well as the symptoms of the injuries.”

  “And this safety protocol you’re talking about prevents this?” Harry asked, still wearing a look of panic.

  “Early virtuality games caused a number of injuries and deaths,” Zak explained, watching Megan flip through the book as she sulked. Her quietly seething mannerism told him that she was busting at the seams to interrupt him, but she forced herself to remain silent. Her anger took nothing away from her attractiveness. As he continued his explanation, a part of him wondered why he seemed to enjoy antagonizing her. “There was a lot of talk about banning virtuality and particularly virtual gaming. But that wasn’t a realistic answer to the problem. Virtual reality had become too popular and too wide spread. In 5093 the United World Federation held the First World Conference on Virtual Safety. It was a two-week think-tank with all the biggest and best brains in the high tech communities around the world getting together to draw up guidelines that would make virtual worlds safer.

  “It was during that conference that the Rules of Engagement were first proposed. It took a while after that to actually develop the protocols. Since then it became international law that any virtual environment must include a prescribed set of safety protocols, which includes the Rules of Engagement. They essentially act as a buffer between our senses and virtual environments. They send subliminal messages to the deeper parts of the brain, letting it know that the experience isn’t real, even though the cognizant part of the brain is instructed to act as though everything within the virtual setting is real. The code and the science behind it are pretty complicated.”

  “And you’re saying that you don’t know if these safety features are working now?”

  “Nope, I don’t.” Zak shrugged. “I can’t verify that they are in place.”

  “Technically your explanation is incorrect,” Megan said, apparently unable to keep silent any longer. “The Transcendental Transference Frequency, or whatever you Humans prefer to call it, is actually a bi-directional broadcast network that goes well beyond simple transmissions to the brain. It is the communication system between the brain, the mind and Te Ente...the One Mind. It is within the mind that reality is created from external sensory data, not the brain. Creating a virtual reality is quite similar to sorcery in that...”

  As Megan was speaking, she looked up from the book on the desk. A bewildered expression replaced her annoyance and she obviously lost her train of thought.

  “Do you see that?” she asked. “Something is happening.”

  Zak was preparing his rebuttal to her Elvish biases when he noticed the same disturbance. Before he could react to what he saw, it intensified. The reddish tint in the air grew darker, now radiating in waves like heat off of asphalt. His surroundings went opaque, as his senses were suddenly denied any stimulus. It was as though he had been swept into a kind of limbo where total nothingness prevailed over all else. It was not black...it was not white...it was not anything that he could describe. He had no way of telling how long he lingered in this state of non-being. It could have been days; or perhaps only for the blink of an eye.

  “Good light of day!”

  Harry’s gasp of dismay was the first sensory input Zak became aware of.

  The suddenness of it was startling. Then his surroundings began filtering into his consciousness. They were no longer in the virtual library. A dense forest of giant moss covered trees now surrounded them. Streaks of sunlight permeated down through the thick canopy, rendering the forest in stark contrasts of light and shadow. The forest floor was carpeted in colorful leaves and broken branches, dispersed among clusters of lush green undergrowth. The entire setting was still filtered through the same reddish tinge that had been in the library.

  Concern for Megan pushed its way to the forefront of Zak’s thoughts. Then relief as she came within his line of sight. He checked to confirm that Mashkkha and Harry Mathers were also there. They were. And they all seemed as disoriented as Zak felt from the experience they had just undergone.

  “Are my eyes playing tricks on me?” Mashkkha asked, blinking and looking again. “I think I’m seeing double.”

  Zak saw it as well. The library setting remained, although now nothing more than an afterimage that had become superimposed upon their new surroundings. It hovered barely within visual perception, no more obvious than the red tinged air. Zak reached out to the faded image of the librarian’s desk, but this time his hand continued on through the image until it came to rest against the rough bark of a Giant Oak that now rose up through the center of the desk.

  “Zak, what is going on?” Megan’s voice was filled with apprehension.

  “I’m not sure.” Zak mumbled. He was beginning to experience his own misgivings about this virtual world. “It seems that there’s more than one virtual program running.”

  The air began to stir once again, their visual surroundings becoming more opaque.

  And again they became lost within the void.

  21

  The sudden shock of regaining his perception was not nearly as overwhelming as the shock of what Zak perceived. His mind struggled with the new sensory data. He, Megan, Harry and Captain Mashkkha were sitting inside the dingy security office in Tanner’s warehouse, sitting at the same computer terminals where they had been before entering the virtual network. This would not have been a problem for Zak if the virtual program had somehow shut down, allowing them to return to the real world.

  But that was not the case.

  He was curr
ently standing at the entrance to the security office, gazing over at himself sitting across the room at the work station. In fact, they were all there at the entrance. And they were all staring open-mouthed over at their respective counterparts sitting at the work stations.

  No one spoke. The others were obviously as confused as Zak was by what they saw. Their duplicate selves sat at the work stations, eyes closed and bodies slumped back in their chairs. Officer Kailin Aakil sat monitoring their vital signs as he had been when they entered virtuality. He seemed totally absorbed in the data on the computer screen in front of him. Suddenly the readouts on the screen began to spike, the screen flashing warnings on each of the group’s charts and Aakil went rigid with alarm.

  “What the frag!”

  Captain Mashkkha’s outburst caused Officer Aakil to turn toward the door. When he saw the group standing there, a look of shock spread across his face. He jumped up from his chair, nearly tripping and falling in the process. “What in the demon’s hell!”

  With that everyone became animated with excitement, as they all began speaking at once. In the midst of the confusion, Zak recognized the need to take control of the situation. After several progressively louder pleas for calm, everyone became silent once again.

  In the sudden quiet, Zak glared at each of them in turn. When he was convinced that everyone had regained some semblance of composure, he turned toward Aakil once again. Behind the young technician the computer monitor continued to display rapidly flashing warnings.

  “What’s all the commotion on your monitor, Officer Aakil?” Zak asked in what he hoped was a calm voice.

  Aakil turned toward the monitor as though it was the first time he’d seen it. “They... Your vital signs are elevated. It’s probably a reaction from... How can you be there and here at the same time!” He stared back at them with a look of disbelief.