Virtual Perfection: Technology has drawn everyone into Virtual Reality, but what will happen to humanity if no one can get out? (Veiled Destiny Book 1)

by Jason Bourn

  Normally the discretionary budget of the President was on the order of several billions of dollars – certainly not small, but there were limits as to what that kind of money could do. However, the search his persa had performed had found an anomaly where, ever since the virtual suit and virtual room phenomena had reached such huge proportions of the population, the President had acquired vastly more discretionary budget. The dollar amount was astronomical – well over a trillion dollars a year.

  This had not been publicized and had gone virtually unnoticed since the overall national spending had actually gone down, thanks to the economies of scale of the virtual rooms – even with the vastly larger discretionary budget.

  The question that Hayden had to address was where all this money was going to. Again, it bothered him that none of the top leaders in the USA nor abroad had any idea where the money was being used – their AI replicas would have found that out immediately and passed it to Hayden. This was far too much money for Hayden to not know about – and what it was being used for. Knowledge was power and in this case someone else had that knowledge and the associated power and Hayden didn’t.

  Now Hayden had two issues that he had to deal with, including the previously flagged searches across the globe for the “next” simulation following Flight Simulator.

  Deep down in his heart he felt that there was a good chance that these two items might be interconnected. If that were the case, it could be dangerous for him to not know everything about them. He needed to learn more about both – and quickly!

  – – –

  Calaes awoke slowly, still enmeshed in the lazy dream where he was being fed grapes and fanned with palm fronds. “Hmmm,” he thought to himself. “Where had that dream come from?”

  Calaes luxuriated in his ultra-comfortable bed. Stretching and rising, he wandered slowly into the shower. He still marveled at the luxuriousness as all the sprays massaged his muscles in all the right places. He thought back to the last few days. He had successfully brought in all eight of his new candidates. He was feeling very comfortable with his assignment. Training was going well – Calaes had nothing to complain about. Smiling broadly, he decided to stay in the shower for an extra ten minutes.

  Feeling thoroughly relaxed, Calaes thought of the day ahead. He was running a bit late, thanks to the wonderful shower, but he could hurry through breakfast and still make it in time for his new candidate.

  Joanna Chao had been a Chief Officer, the same rank as Calaes had been in his last day in the sim. Looking at the data, it showed she had managed to save even more of the crew than he had. That was impressive – up to that point Calaes’ death toll had been the lowest of any of the candidates. He looked forward to meeting her. She had finished the sim in about four and one-half years, also quicker than Calaes. She had gone into VR at a very young age – he wondered if that was one of the reasons why she had done so well. They were going into VR earlier and earlier while the youngest were, of course, born in VR – getting their virtual suit at birth. He was really encouraged that, contrary to what Samantha had said, the younger generation might actually see some benefits of starting VR earlier and being in VR longer.

  Calaes was able to get to the city she was located in on time. He was getting used to the format for the meeting building. It was always about one km away from the virtual room building, plus or minus a half a km, and there was always an adjoining room where he could watch the candidate’s progress on the vid screen. The candidates normally left their room between one and two hours before the meeting was to take place.

  Eagerly awaiting meeting Joanna, Calaes waited as the minutes rolled by. No one had ever left with less than an hour to get to the meeting, however Joanna still was not out of her room with less than half an hour before the meeting time.

  Finally, Calaes saw Joanna leave her room about twenty minutes before the meeting was supposed to take place. This had never happened before, so he watched intently as she slowly went down the hall, hesitating at the elevator. As if finally making up her mind, she finally entered the elevator and went down to the lobby.

  Instead of rushing out the building, as Calaes expected since she was late, she paused again as if she couldn’t make up her mind.

  Hesitantly, she finally walked slowly through the lobby and exited the building’s front doors. She looked back and forth many times, but stayed rooted at that spot. Calaes could tell there was something wrong, but with someone so promising, he held his breath hoping that this was just a minor setback.

  After standing still at that spot for several minutes, she crumpled to her knees, put her face down in her hands and shook her head. She stayed that way for several minutes, then stood and rapidly went back into the huge building and back towards her virtual room. When she entered her room and re-donned her suit, he knew that the battle had been lost for this very promising candidate.

  Calaes couldn’t believe it. Here was a candidate that was at least as well qualified as he was, and she wasn’t going to make it out of VR. The shock hit Calaes hard. If this could happen to her, he could see how it could happen to anyone. He was starting to see firsthand that those who had been exposed to VR earlier in life were going to find it harder and harder to leave to join the real world.

  He felt sad at the opportunity wasted, but at the same time this was what she wanted. He tried to think if there was something that he could have done to change the outcome, but he realized that this was something that was out of his control. As he flew back to the training campus, he knew that he had seen first-hand what the future would hold. Those that made it out of VR would become fewer and fewer. It was like a disease with no cure.

  They had come up with an ingenious way to get people to want to leave VR, but it was becoming very obvious that this was not something that they could continue to rely upon. Calaes felt the weight of responsibility pushing ever more firmly upon him as he realized that they were not going to get a second chance at this. It was critical that he not mess it up.

  CHAPTER 13

  After that one strikeout, Calaes had successfully got on base every time after that. At least so far. He now had twenty-three candidates at the training campus. He still had a hard time getting over Joanna’s failure to get out of VR though, she had seemed like such a perfect candidate.

  He started reviewing the details of his next candidate. What he saw left him downright puzzled. According to the files, Harold Smitts was obstinate, crass, selfish, short tempered and arrogant. Calaes couldn't imagine how he could have become captain and finished the sim with those credentials. Joanna’s recent loss caused him to almost become bitter. How could someone with so little to bring to the table be invited when Joanna, with all her talent, was not going to be a part of the solution.

  Calaes tried not to hold a grudge as he settled himself down in the adjacent meeting room and watched the vid screen. He smiled a bit despite himself when Harold was late getting out of the virtual room, wondering if he, too, would go back to the VR life. Calaes had to give him credit though as Harold gamely trudged out the lobby, looked right and left several times as was normal, then settled in at a rapid pace towards the meeting building.

  It appeared that Harold might actually make it on time, when suddenly Harold looked past the meeting building and ran a half block past the building. Calaes could tell that Harold’s legs must have been in agony as he paused and slowly walked back to the entrance with a pronounced two-leg limp – more like a stagger. He looked in agony as he ascended the two floors’ worth of steps and burst into the meeting room about twenty minutes late. Calaes couldn’t wait to talk to this fine example of humanity, so he walked over to the meeting room immediately.

  “Hi,” Calaes said.

  “Damn, my legs are killing me," responded Harold. “Do you have anything to drink around here? I need to flush all that VR-chemical crap out of my system.”

  Calaes was flabbergasted by Harold’s rudeness. If anything, Harold’s personnel file was more k
ind than Calaes’ first impression would have given him. Calaes retrieved some water, which Harold gulped down loudly. “Well, it’s not as good as a beer would be, but I suppose that you don’t have a frosty brewster lying around, do you?”

  “No,” Calaes responded. He almost wanted to smile. This guy really had a pair. “Why don’t we get started. I have a few questions for you. First of all, what were your responsibilities prior to becoming captain?”

  Harold started, “Well, I was just a regular maintenance worker,” then he burped loudly. “I was minding my own business in the sim, see everyone leaves me alone – I like it that way. Anyhow, as I said I was minding my own business when the emergency alarms went off. Too loud if you ask me. They really don’t need to be so loud, you know they give me a headache. Anyway, as I was saying, there I was minding my own business when suddenly the ship starts shaking and bucking like a wild bronco. I managed to get myself strapped into my chair when all hell breaks loose. I had been having a sip of that hard stuff, the cheap whiskey – I can’t afford no fancy stuff. Anyway, the ship almost tore itself apart. It turns out that we had crash landed. The really pisser was that my last bottle of the hard stuff was broken. Can you believe that? Anyway, I managed to get up to the bridge – maintenance guys may not be the brightest light bulbs in the closet, but clearing debris out of the way and opening stuck hatches is right down our alley. So here I am, entering the bridge and everyone has checked out. Dead I mean.”

  Calaes couldn’t guess where this was going, so he just kept silent and slowly nodded his head.

  “Anyway, it turns out that all the crew has checked out and there are only the noncoms left – you know, the non-commissioned officers. No one is stepping forward to do anything, so I organize a group to figure out where we are, what is left of the ship and how we might make a go of this. You know, maintenance guys are good at figuring out how to make something out of nothing. So, with no one really taking the lead and everyone is going to die if we don’t figure out what’s up, I just declare myself captain.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Calaes said. “You just declared yourself captain? Just like that? Didn’t anyone object?”

  “Well,” Harold responded, “sometimes I can be a little pushy. No one else was doing anything, so I did. I always thought it would be kinda cool to be captain, so I just made myself captain. I figured ‘no big deal’, right? Anyway, a couple of people made some sniveling noises, but I just stared them down and they shut up. Anyway, we got as many people saved as we could and I got the ship’s air processor working again – it had broke during the crash. The sim ended and so here I am.”

  “So, you didn’t work your way up through the ranks? You didn’t take any officer’s training? You just decreed yourself captain?”

  Harold responded with a wide grin. “Yup, that’s about it. The main reason they kept me around as a maintenance worker is that I don’t take no crap. My job is to get things done and so that is what I do. Also, I never tell no lies. Some people beat around the bush or make up stuff. Not me – I tells them as I sees them.”

  Wow, thought Calaes, this guy was unbelievable. “How long were you in VR doing the sim?”

  “Oh, I’ve been workin’ in maintenance the whole time – going on eight years. I got into it real early, I thought it would be kinda cool.” He paused and said, “So kid, what’s your story? Why are you here playing judge and jury?”

  Calaes was taken aback. He had never been asked about his role or his qualifications – no one had ever questioned his authority or why he was here. He had always been the one with all the answers and everyone had deferred to him. “Well, I became captain – in fact, I was the first one,” Calaes began. He paused, and started again trying to decide how to explain how he had helped save so many people in terms that the maintenance worker would understand. Finally, giving up on trying to explain the details, he just said that he had helped the ship crash land and when the captain died, he had taken over.

  Harold interrupted him, “So, you’re just like me then. Oh, by the way congrats on being the first – did they give you some kind of ribbon or prize?”

  Calaes was taken aback by his statement. In a manner of speaking, yes, he was just like Harold. He supposed that being first was kind of neat, however he felt like he had earned it so much more than Harold had. But he supposed that in the big scheme of things they were really the same – they both had completed the sim as captain. “Yes, I guess that does make us the same. Congratulations yourself. Please make yourself comfortable.” Calaes went on to explain the situation and the next steps.

  Harold grinned and said, “Hey, this is kinda neat – this whole Mars Settlement thing and all. This building here is pretty slick too. They must have spent a lot of dough on it. Did someone have a rich uncle or something?”

  Calaes responded, “I don’t know the exact funding source, but I agree they didn’t spare any expense. Just wait until you see the training campus and your living quarters – you’ll fall in love with that as well.”

  “I think I’ll pass for a little bit – my legs are really killing me. By the way, who was that guy out there? I didn’t expect to see anyone at all.”

  Calaes blinked at him, astounded. “What guy? Where? What do you mean?”

  “Yeah, just as I was approaching this building, I thought I saw someone around the corner. I ran after him, at least I thought he was a guy, but my legs were burning up. Did you see him?”

  Calaes had never looked – he had just assumed that everyone’s eyes were playing tricks on them as they got out from VR. He thought back to his walk through the city – he could have sworn that he had seen someone, but he had really pushed it into the back of his mind, convinced that his mind had been playing tricks on him. Wryly, he thought only someone as brash as Harold would speak his mind on some half-seen presence. Calaes would have to check this out in more detail in the future. “Let me check into this,” Calaes responded. “I’m sure there is some logical explanation for this.”

  Chuckling, Harold said “You know, you sound just like all those hooten falutin officers I worked with whenever they didn’t know something. They’d always try to make everything fit inside their tidy view of the world. Well, good luck with that. I’m just a maintenance guy – and a captain!”

  With that Calaes told Harold where his quarters were and excused himself. He really had to think about this and what the implications were.

  CHAPTER 14

  Finally!

  Hayden was elated that he had finally broken the security of the President of the United States. He could now monitor the President’s network inputs and outputs, but what he saw thoroughly shocked him.

  He found a memo from the Office of Predictive Analytics, whatever that was. When he read about a detailed an effort to free a small segment of the population from their virtual suits, he couldn’t believe it. When he read that both the Martian Survival Challenge and the Flight Simulator simulations were intentionally created just to get key people out from VR, he knew that he had to do something, and quickly.

  The more Hayden thought about it, the more damaging this threat became in his eyes. It was bad enough that they represented a faction that was not tied to VR, so his control over them was vastly limited compared to those within VR. Worse, this group was hand-picked for their leadership, creativity and intelligence – each of those traits presented direct threats to his quest for power. The fact that this group of individuals would be joined together far outside his sphere of control made it imperative that he address the problem quickly and completely. This represented a threat to everything Hayden had planned.

  He smiled when he read that the “real life” adventure was an actual Marian colony – he knew that this was the key piece of information that would allow him to stop this threat. Hayden quickly set about de-fanging the building of the colony, causing delays and impeding construction. It was too late to stop the materials from being sent to Mars, that part had already been compl
eted. Also, construction of the environmental infrastructure had started, but there was a lot he could do to ensure that the rest of the construction was never completed.

  There were so many lower-level “grunts” involved that he couldn’t just quench the entire project. If he could get his AI replica in place for the President, then he could do anything, but he needed to record the President’s inputs and outputs for an extended period of time to get anything like a reasonable facsimile AI replica in place. If he tried to put one in place without this data, many people would recognize that it wasn’t the president, causing inquiries and investigations that might expose Hayden’s own exploits.

  He would have to walk a very fine line until he had full control of the President via an AI replica. He needed to squelch the budding colony work, while at the same time not drawing any attention to himself.

  In the meantime, he needed to find out more about these renegades.

  – – –

  Calaes was frustrated. He had paid special attention to the immediate area outside the buildings for many of the next candidates when they came to their meetings. He hadn’t seen a thing, nor had any of the candidates seen anything. Calaes felt somewhat foolish asking. They would always ask, “Seen anything like what?” He couldn’t very well tell them that there was someone out there – there may not be. And if he brought it up, there was a chance that he would be introducing something into their minds – like a false memory. These candidates’ minds were not the most stable given their recent stress of leaving VR, so that anything was possible.

  With no one reporting seeing anything concrete and no progress being made, finally Calaes decided to talk to Samantha. He hadn’t seen her since their first meeting about two months earlier. He arranged a vid call with her and when the allotted time came, he eagerly anticipated the discussion.