A Second Chance: A Short Story on VR
Abstract
In this short story, I bring up the possible risks to a society built around VR. In this world, Society has given up on making the planet a beautiful and green place and instead looks for places to avoid the unsafe and unhealthy outside world. With this, a company named CRYengine created the new gaming console and experience through their new technology: the CRYhat. In this CRYhat you can access “Utopia,” consider it as the home screen or lobby to a massive amount of VR games from educational games for kids to horror games for adults. Much like the beloved book and movie “Ready Player One,” but this story takes on a different possibility to VR gaming, a small, but life-threatening risk to all players.
Part One
The rattled subway to New Jersey always kept Shrink up at night. Every 20 minutes the ground would shake and the sound of an old 21st century subway would fill the quiet, but bright New York City skyline.
“I don’t know what I am gonna do about Gumora,” Shrink says to her friend Sandy on the phone and another hand on her forehead. “The thing that made her a vegetable is what’s keeping her alive. I haven’t had a good conversation with her in weeks,” A tear falls down Shrink’s right cheek.
“Maybe you need to talk to her,” says Sandy.
“And talk to her about what?” Shrink asks. Sandy pauses,
“Talk about the things she loves, video games.”
“Yeah you’re probably right, i’ll see what she’s up to.”
Shrink ends her call with Sandy and slowly stands up on the cold concrete floor. She walks through the hallway and towards Gumora’s room. The eggshell white door opens automatically.
Gumora is laying on her bed, with her CRYHat on, staring out the window looking at the NYC skyline. She is not blinking, not moving; not a single thing about Gumora makes it look like she’s alive.
“Mora, you know you’re gonna have to go to sleep at one point honey… it’s almost 1!”
“I know mom,” comes out of the speaker on Gumora’s night stand. “I was just finishing up a mission in Utopia.”
“Oh yea, what the mission tonight?” Shrink questions.
“I was just going to do a simulation of the military operation dad was in.”
“Oh you mean the one that..”
“Yes mom, that one” Gumora Interrupts.
“Sounds good sweetie, don’t stay up too late with your friends, I want you to get some rest before school tomorrow.”
Shrink shuts the door, feeling guilty for saying such a lie and a void of silence encapsulates the light gray colored hallway. She leans on Mora’s door and thinks to herself, “How could Virtual Reality do this, and how would her father Dan have taken care of this.”
Gumora did not care about much. In fact, Her room didn’t have any posters on the walls or plants. Instead, she just has a great big window, a mattress with no bedframe, a bright, orange, empty milk crate as a nightstand, and her CRYHat. Gumora plays her video games all day to escape home. Her CRYHat is her helmet to see a new reality, a better reality.
“I wonder where my clan is tonight?” thought Gumora, “maybe they would be cool with joining the operation with me.”
Gumora tightly grasps her CRYHat on top of her night stand. She unplugs the charger and says “Hey Alexa, Remind me when it’s 5 am,” before putting her helmet on and lies back on her bed staring into her ceiling.
“CRYHat, Initiate,” Gurmora states.
*Body Scanning*
*Project Rebuilding*
*Scanning Assets and updates*
*Creating Utopia*
Gumora spawns in a white, plastic 8-walled room and each wall has a different portal. A sign at the top of the portal in front of her says “Utopia.” She stands beside Grace, an AI created to help users in the complex world of Utopia.
“Good Morning Gumora, lovely weather we’re having.”
“Its always the same weather in Utopia Grace, come up with a better joke next time.”
“What will we be doing today?” Graces questions intuitively.
“I’m thinkin’ we just go straight into Operations,” Gumora says, “Have my friends started the operation?”
“From what I see… yes, your friends are already waiting for you!” replies Grace.
Gumora immediately goes for the portal to her left that is labeled “Operations” and she is sent through hundreds of miles of wire and joins her friends in the field.
Part Two
Operation Black Trout 21:43:26 May 5th, 2045
Gumora is spawned inside a support helicopter circling a firefight between her clan and the computer generated and controlled enemies. Snow-capped mountains encircle the entire fight. The night is clear, and the Flashes of bullets fill the sky. The enemies are hiding in the trees of the landscape on the east side. Gumora’s clan has taken only a single bunker and has minimal cover from incoming bullets and rockets. Gumora looks up as the battle is just as fierce in the sky as jets fly over to drop missiles on incoming tanks.
“We are going over the dropzone in t minus 8 seconds!” Screams the pilot. “No territories have been taken yet!”
The energy of this operation has been everything Gumora has looked forward to today, and just as a smile grew in her right cheek, a rocket is sent from the enemy ground troops and hits the rear propellor of the helicopter.
“We’re losing control, I’m dropping the heli to the crater here; Good luck Gumora!”
Gumora jumps out right before The helicopter spins uncontrollably and hits the ground at 45 miles per hour.. The pilot despawns from the firefight.
“You will not die in vain,” says Gumora in guilt.
Just as she can pick up her custom m4 carbine from the ground, a squad of enemies create a semicircle around the crater, looking down on the helicopter and Gumora. Shots are sent and Gumora dives to cover behind the helicopter.
“Andy! Are you there,” Gumora screams in terror through the radio.
“Yes I’m here, where are you?”
“Two clicks north west of the main bunker, I’M SURROUNDED!”
Andy adjusts his walkie talkie dial to speak to HQ “I need a personal Airstrike at the location of Helicopter Alpha, 4, 5, 6, Tango… ASAP!”
“Enroute Sergeant, “ HQ responds.
“I just called in an airstrike on the area… get the hell out of there Mora!”
Gumora rips a grenade of her chest armor and pulls the pin. She holds the grenade for two seconds before throwing it so the explosion will cover her escape and distract the enemies. By the time Gumora reaches the outskirts of the crater, she is too late. A precision strike hits all the enemies behind her, but she is thrown 20 feet into the air and lands on her neck. She becomes unconscious.
Gumora suddenly wakes up, her body is stuck. Her eyes open and she is back in her New York City room and the rolling sound of the subway fills it. She lays there, in silence. Her eyes darting back and forth, hyperventilating. She had never felt something like this before, a force so strong and uncontrollable that she cant move a muscle. Her anxiety starts to build, and her hands start to sweat. She thinks to herself, “Why am I here?”
The speaker next to her repeats, “Why am I here?”
In an instant, she is back into operation Black Trout, and Andy is on top of her with a ventilator.
“Damn, you were out cold for a few good minutes… we got this south west quadrant under control. From the looks of it, the majority of the enemies are hiding in the bunkers, so an ambush is impossible.” Gumora stands up with agitation on her face. She looks around and back at Andy, “Are you okay Mora?” Andy questions with a concerned look. “Let’s just finish this okay, I need answers… right now.”
Gumora picks up her rifle and takes out the magazine to see how many bullets she has left while Andy bats off dust in her armor. “I know something is up Mora,” Andy says, “But I trust you, and I know you trust me… so if something just happened with Shrink or something we can talk about it.”
“That’s not it Andy,” Gumora says as she reaches for a new magazine. She waits until she cocks her weapon’s new ammo and says “I think I’m in a coma.”
Part Three
It has been two hours since Gumora said those dark words, and Andy is still shook by how serious Gumora looked when she said it. The clan successfully took out every enemy in all territories except the leader. Gumora and Andy stand in front of the entire platoon as they enter the enemy home base. 6-foot thick wood doors, the size of a two-story house open to the fireballs of corpses that fill the ground, as well as fill the night sky with light. The smell of blood rushes into all the soldiers’ minds and they start to look around in disgust.[1] Andy shoots off any stragglers still being burned alive and Gumora opens her radar to find a single heat signature 40 meters to the left of them, inside the armory.
“I’ll take care of this,” Gumora said with rage in her voice. “What’s the leader’s name?”
“Lieutenant Dan Taylor,” Andy says with a skip in his step.
“What?” she says, “no no no no no no no, that can’t be true.”
“Why what’s wrong?”
Gumora looks at Andy’s intel computer to see a photo of a handsome man with bright blue eyes.
“That’s my dad,” says Gumora as her legs start to tremble and she falls to her knees, staring into nothing. A single tear drops from Gumora’s face and she feels numb. She thinks back to when Dan’s partner came to their house to bring the news. How shrink cried for days, how Gumora, only being just a child, couldn’t fully understand. All the emotions of that moment all came back at the same time for Gumora.
“He’s dead,” Gumora questions in between her cries of sorrow. “They can’t do this… THEY JUST CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!” Gumora screeches. Andy finally builds the courage and sits next to Gumora. “You don’t have to do this Mora, I can do this for you, all these soldiers can do this for you.”
“No Andy, they can’t, I’m his Daughter, he could never kill me.” Gumora puts both of her hands on Andy’s knee, looks up to him with a small grin and helps herself up. She wipes her face of tears and moves toward the armory.
Gumora reaches her right hand on the door and whips it open, quickly bringing her rifle up to the ready. The armory is filled with ammo and grenades, easily enough to take out the base. At the end of the armory is a desk flipped to its side for cover, with Lieutenant Dan Taylor on the other side.
“Don’t worry, I got all the grenades I need,” Threatens Dan, “I have enough to stick one in each and every ass out there!”
Gumora subtly giggles “You always knew how to lighten the mood huh Daddy?”
A small pause in Dans breathe springs him up to his feet. Gumora and Dan stare at each other. Dan, in shock, see’s how much his daughter has grown up without him. Gumora, finally being able to look into her father’s ice blue eyes, without a photo or her imagination. The Purist moment between a Father and Daughter seeing each other after so long is broken. “What happened to you, You’re dead, dad,” Gumora questions with a sense of grief.
“Oh honey, I’m not dead… but I’m not real either,” explains Dan.
“Dad my brain hurts, can you explain… they said you were killed in action.”
“I was actually doing what you were doing,” Says Dan as he picks up a fallen chair to sit in. “I was in Utopia, doing an operation simulation. I was shot in the back of the neck from an ambush. What they don’t tell you is that every avatar in Utopia has a chip in the back of their neck, and when this chip breaks… you go into cardiac arrest in real life. “A risk in Utopia,” is what the developers call it. Anyway, When this chip breaks, CRYHat has an emergency procedure to save all the data in the occupants brain.[2] this data is everything in our brain and is put into an intermittent reality… one in between the real world and Utopia, a reality inside the CRYHat itself… I like to call it hell” Dan looks down to the floor, regretting every decision he made to be at this point. “I can still go to Utopia, but when I want to go home… I go to hell.”
Gumora looks at her father filled with misery and asks “So dad, is there anyway to get out of this reality, out of this hell?”
“A completely destroyed one like mine, yeah I’m stuck there. But if it’s just damaged you can get yourself out of it,” Dan says. “Why, what is it, I can see something in your eyes Mora, like you’ve been there.”
“I think I am there dad,” says Gumora. “I fell on my neck earlier and when I was, when I was unconscious… I, I, I woke up and I could move my eyes, but my body was stuck and this speaker… this speaker said what I was thinking.”
Dan rushes over to confused Gumora and he says, “baby, you were in your real body, that sight you saw… that was reality!”
“Baby all you have to do is distinguish between reality and hell, All you have to do is remember.. remember our crappy New York City Apartment, remember your friends, your past homework assignment, what you ate… REMEMBER MORA!”
she starts to cry, Mora wants to live so badly, but misses her father just as much.
“I don’t know how to do it dad, I’m scared, I don’t… I don’t remember,” Gumora falls to the ground again, but her father catches her fall.
“Just think about that subway baby, think about how you have really been spending all your days; You may think you went to school, you may think you had pizza last night… but just think Mora, what have you really been doing all this time.”
“I’ve… I’ve been doing nothing, I’ve been staring at nothing, I am nothing.”
Dan puts his hands around Mora’s face, she looks up to him.
“Yes baby, you’ve been doing nothing… stuck in your CRYHat.” A void of silence Encapsulates the room “Where have you been doing nothing baby, where have you been staring!”
“I’m staring at you dad, the six buildings outside my room look just like-,”
Gumora is gone, Dan’s arms are empty and he is alone in the armory. A tear drops to where Gumora once was, and Dan says to himself “My Mora, my baby Mora.”
Part Four
Gumora wakes up. Her eyes dart back and forth, but this time she is able to move her hands. She is able to touch her own thighs, doing this turns on her senses and can smell Shrinks morning coffee. In front of her is the New York City skyline, outlining the chiseled face of her father. She sits up and takes off her CRYHat, followed by 8 feet of uncut, black hair. She rips off the tubes of the IV next to her and walks over to the kitchen. Shrink doesn’t notice, she is reading the morning news and listening to her favorite song. Gumora comes out of the darkness of the hallway and Shrink looks up in her chair, dropping her coffee.
Gumora has the CRYHat in her right hand and asks “How long have I been stuck?”
“Two years,” Shrink answers.
They both look at each other wondering what to say next, Gumora did what her father would do. Gumora lifts the CRYHat.
“You wanna get two bats and destroy the hell out of this thing?”
Shrink chuckles, “That would be a dream sweetheart.”
