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My New Year's resolution is to write a short story a day (when possible) to help improve my writing. I don't intend to post them all, because that would be like... yeah... but I'll post one every once in awhile and what better place to start with than the first one, that is today's. See I made the new years resolution a little late, so sue me.
Years spent in front of either a computer monitor or television screen had rendered my eyes a permanent bloodshot red. They were naturally green but looking at them, it was hard to tell. Playing Halo or Super Smash Brothers felt more natural and fluent than driving, and I would often catch myself commenting on how good the graphics were before I realized that I was looking at the real world.
This is what most people would call an addiction. I, however, prefer to think of it as a way of life. I thought, ate, slept, and even breathed video games, but that doesn’t mean that I’m addicted. I can put down the controller any time I want, I just don’t want to.
Video games have allowed me to escape who I really am, maybe I don’t like myself, I don’t know. All I know is that when I stare at the game screen, all my problems melt away and it doesn’t feel like there is a controller in my hands any more. I move the character on-screen as if I were he, the controller just allows me to.
Enough about me, though; this story isn’t about me, its about a game. Not just a game, the game. See, after Nintendo went under in 2017 Sony and Microsoft found some sort of common ground to collaborate on a project. For years all we knew about it was that is was supposed to revolutionize gaming in a way that Nintendo’s “revolution” (read as Wii) never could. The release date for this new console was February 17, 2022, and I was the first in line.
Me and several million other gamers knew that this game was “the one”. I’m not sure how we knew, but we did. Details weren’t revealed on the nature of the console until a scant three months before release. Which was right around the time that people started camping for it. What’s the reason for such a reaction? Two words, my friends: Virtual Reality.
Sony patented the technology that let them start work on it way back in the “single digits” which is what people called the time between 2000 and 2010, but Sony couldn’t handle an undertaking like this alone. People were going to have to be able to get right up next to objects and other people in the game without having their suspension of disbelief ruined by blocky graphics, so Sony signed a deal with Microsoft to collaborate on this project to create the most sophisticated graphics and physics engines this world has ever seen.
I’d been camping since early December, along with about twenty other people, two of which are close friends of mine. On release night, the line to get one stretched back farther than I could see, but I didn’t care; I was first.
“Alright people, five minutes until we can start selling them, please stay in a single file line and purchase your product in an orderly fashion.” The announcement was made by way of a speaker; all it did was cause a surge through the crowd as people’s initial excitement was renewed.
Five minutes went by like nothing and before I knew it I was back at my house, opening my new equipment. The console itself was relatively small, about half the size of the Gamecube. The peripheral device, which used a neural interface, rested on the ears with four metal strips that went over the head. They had white plastic for aesthetic purposes on the side facing away from the scalp. The instructions said to put the bands underneath my hair, so as to have them as close to my scalp as possible, for maximum signal projection. After a bit of work I managed it, and concluded to myself that I needed to either get a buzz cut or shave my head to make this easier in the future.
The first game of the three that I bought was called “Coliseum”. It consisted of a series between you and either one or more than one animal or person. The opponents faced were rumored to range between Master Chief and a Tyrannosaurus-rex. Given only a melee weapon of the player’s choice, they were challenged to proceed until they had beaten all the opponents and conquered the game.
Now, I won’t lie to you, I was expecting borderline retarded A.I. and Doom 3 graphics. What I got, however surprised me. The first thing that I saw upon turning the system on was a black screen asking me to think my name. I did and the system repeated it back to me, asking if this was right. I thought “yes” and then proceeded to fill out the rest of the system information in a similar manner. I was then told to wait as it recorded my neural map for optimal performance. It took about thirty seconds and then I found myself in a roman style coliseum, with a small array of weaponry in front of me. The graphics were absolutely flawless. It looked exactly like the real world except with an intangible dramatic feel about it. I chose a sword for starters and my first opponent appeared.
It was a lion, my first thought was how cliché that was and how easy a fight this would be. I was proven wrong by the context of the fight; the lion’s A.I. was just as flawless as the graphics and sound. If you have never seen a lion up close, they are a lot bigger than they look on TV. The only thing that I could think throughout the fight was that this was somehow real and that I was going to die, however the sword proved to be a good choice, because I won.
I can’t accurately put into words the feelings that my victory brought, but I can tell you that winning that fight seemed like the proudest moment of my life. To hear the crowd shouting my name, whistling, and the like was simply amazing.
Over the next few days I couldn’t get enough of any of the games that I bought, and apparently neither could anyone else. The news coverage of the mass unemployment from people quitting their jobs was startling. I had been surviving off of a sizeable inheritance for the past six years so it didn’t matter to me, at least not at first. About seven months after the launch of the console, one of my friends showed up at my door, begging to be able to live with me. He told me that he quit his job some time ago and had been keeping his apartment by selling his stuff, at least when he wasn’t playing the game anyway.
In the years following, the work force dwindled dramatically. The feeling of teetering on the brink of something bad permeated the air, almost choking some people, and something bad did happen. The remaining group of people willing to work seemed to have gotten so small that the entirety of them was able to organize a plan to alleviate their unbearable workload. They refused to work until the people who had become addicted to the game got jobs and worked as well. Hence society collapsed.
The gamers rationalized their actions, as people often will, and demanded to know why they had to work. They began their own protest, saying that with all the tax money that they had paid, the government owed them a living. As will always happen, a few crazy people took it too far. Someone organized the gamers into a literal army. They declared that the government changed things so that they could play their games in peace or they would take the white house by force. The government officials didn’t have access to the means to do something like that, however and prepared to defend themselves. No one, not even the gamers, know how or when they got access to nuclear weapons, but it wasn’t long before they were being supplied and threats of nuclear assault were issued. I don’t know where this will take us, but I do know that in my time spent as a gamer on the side of the workers, I have come to the conclusion that human beings can’t handle an escape from reality as dramatic as VR, as it’s come to be known.
Maybe society is just so bad than anything that lets us escape from it is looked upon as almost holy; or maybe people are just inherently lazy. No matter why they would decide to do something like this, the fact remains that the threat is there, and I’m not sticking around to see how it happens. The problem is pretty much localized in America, so some buddies and me are fleeing the country tomorrow. However things turn out for you, the best of luck, and may God Ble-
Transmission cut.
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