categories had come to appreciate a virtual life over their current existence.
The handicapped and terminally ill would attempt to go perma mode in the hope of obtaining new healthy bodies for themselves, however virtual. Some of the more computer-literate senior citizens took their places inside FIVR capsules looking forward to immortality, especially desirable when life is already slipping through your fingers. They were joined by those on death row. Star-crossed lovers, too, instead of hurling themselves from a cliff in one final embrace, chose a suitable world to get stuck in. Tolkien’s fans and historical reenactors with their dreams of being reborn as Elves, dwarfs and mages entered capsules in an ecstasy of anticipation. The statistics pointed at a growing suicide epidemic raging among the unlucky seventeen percent immune to the perma mode effect. They craved being digitized. The timing was fatally right.
Governments sounded the first alarms. New laws restricted the duration of full-immersion capsule time. The state monitored every game server containing even a single perma player. Official statements promised that such servers would never be disconnected.
No idea how I’d managed to miss all that hoo-hah. My fingers trembled as I kept digging deeper and deeper into the Internet. Cigarette butts floated in empty coffee cups after I’d rummaged the cupboards for a long-forsaken pack of Camel.
I met the morning by the open kitchen window, drawing on the last cigarette. My eyes watered. The coffee I’d drunk was now churning in my stomach. But everything inside me cheered at the news. This was it. This didn’t involve paying a king’s ransom for being deep-frozen like a drumstick. This was an honest-to-God hole to escape into giving the Grim Reaper the finger.
I still had a lot to do. There were technicalities to consider: which capsule would allow me to bypass the preinstalled timer restricting immersion type and duration? Numerous freshly-baked perma forum gurus recommended aiming for a week or two of full immersion, but how was I supposed to last all that time without food, water and medication? Lots of people had successfully answered those questions for themselves: all I had to do was dig for more info and process it wisely choosing the solutions that suited my particular situation. A dozen manuals and video guides were already downloading. The links to several dodgy sites that sold FIVR jailbreak chips were already sitting in my Favorites. Open browser tabs glinted with scary-looking pictures of multi-stage IV drips and saline canisters. Things had begun to cook. The technicalities proved doable, after all.
I still had to choose the world to go to. I had to decide who to play and how to do it. I had tons of sites and forums to peruse. If you set aside two weeks for the attempt itself, it left me with five to seven days to do the research. Way not enough. It was hit or miss. Time to bet on zero!
* * *
From Wikipedia:
AlterWorld is an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) first released in May 203X.
Number of players: 48,000,000, with an increase of 1,400,000 new players each month.
Connection type: 2/3D FIVR capsule. Immersion types: full/restricted.
World size: 552,126 square miles, with an increase of 4,633 square miles each month.
New territories, NPCs, mobs and quests are generated by an AI group controlled by AI Ray31.
World administrator: AI Crimson9
Deposit and withdrawal of real funds and virtual property sales topping $42 billion a year.
Chapter Three
The cooler fans whirred. Massage rollers stirred. With a hum, the seat heating kicked in. The FIVR capsule was waking up from sleep mode. The initial checks flashed before my eyes. Self-test. Operator connected. A 3D Desktop menu unfolded in front of me.
I mentally knocked on wood and started AlterWorld’s game client. A second’s delay as it ran an automatic upgrade. I fed my credit card information
The handicapped and terminally ill would attempt to go perma mode in the hope of obtaining new healthy bodies for themselves, however virtual. Some of the more computer-literate senior citizens took their places inside FIVR capsules looking forward to immortality, especially desirable when life is already slipping through your fingers. They were joined by those on death row. Star-crossed lovers, too, instead of hurling themselves from a cliff in one final embrace, chose a suitable world to get stuck in. Tolkien’s fans and historical reenactors with their dreams of being reborn as Elves, dwarfs and mages entered capsules in an ecstasy of anticipation. The statistics pointed at a growing suicide epidemic raging among the unlucky seventeen percent immune to the perma mode effect. They craved being digitized. The timing was fatally right.
Governments sounded the first alarms. New laws restricted the duration of full-immersion capsule time. The state monitored every game server containing even a single perma player. Official statements promised that such servers would never be disconnected.
No idea how I’d managed to miss all that hoo-hah. My fingers trembled as I kept digging deeper and deeper into the Internet. Cigarette butts floated in empty coffee cups after I’d rummaged the cupboards for a long-forsaken pack of Camel.
I met the morning by the open kitchen window, drawing on the last cigarette. My eyes watered. The coffee I’d drunk was now churning in my stomach. But everything inside me cheered at the news. This was it. This didn’t involve paying a king’s ransom for being deep-frozen like a drumstick. This was an honest-to-God hole to escape into giving the Grim Reaper the finger.
I still had a lot to do. There were technicalities to consider: which capsule would allow me to bypass the preinstalled timer restricting immersion type and duration? Numerous freshly-baked perma forum gurus recommended aiming for a week or two of full immersion, but how was I supposed to last all that time without food, water and medication? Lots of people had successfully answered those questions for themselves: all I had to do was dig for more info and process it wisely choosing the solutions that suited my particular situation. A dozen manuals and video guides were already downloading. The links to several dodgy sites that sold FIVR jailbreak chips were already sitting in my Favorites. Open browser tabs glinted with scary-looking pictures of multi-stage IV drips and saline canisters. Things had begun to cook. The technicalities proved doable, after all.
I still had to choose the world to go to. I had to decide who to play and how to do it. I had tons of sites and forums to peruse. If you set aside two weeks for the attempt itself, it left me with five to seven days to do the research. Way not enough. It was hit or miss. Time to bet on zero!
* * *
From Wikipedia:
AlterWorld is an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) first released in May 203X.
Number of players: 48,000,000, with an increase of 1,400,000 new players each month.
Connection type: 2/3D FIVR capsule. Immersion types: full/restricted.
World size: 552,126 square miles, with an increase of 4,633 square miles each month.
New territories, NPCs, mobs and quests are generated by an AI group controlled by AI Ray31.
World administrator: AI Crimson9
Deposit and withdrawal of real funds and virtual property sales topping $42 billion a year.
Chapter Three
The cooler fans whirred. Massage rollers stirred. With a hum, the seat heating kicked in. The FIVR capsule was waking up from sleep mode. The initial checks flashed before my eyes. Self-test. Operator connected. A 3D Desktop menu unfolded in front of me.
I mentally knocked on wood and started AlterWorld’s game client. A second’s delay as it ran an automatic upgrade. I fed my credit card information
Similar Books
The Night In Question
Tobias Wolff
Sally James
Otherwise Engaged
Arachnodactyl
Danny Knestaut
Sinful
Marie Rochelle
A Witch's Tale
Karolyn Cairns
The Knockoff Economy
Christopher Sprigman Kal Raustiala
Case File 13 #2
J. Scott Savage
Every Day After
Laura Golden
Kaleidoscope
Darryl Wimberley
Lady Scandal
Shannon Donnelly