12 Days of Fiction 2016 -11: Mutable Reality
Stella adjusted the VR goggles a bit.
“Is it OK now?” she asked.
“Let’s see,” the technician answered. The goggles flicked on. “What do you see?”
“A green hill, with white and yellow flowers. Blue skies. Ha, this is ‘Sound of Music’!”
“Ha ha, darling. I told him to do that,” Stella’s dad said.
“Very funny, dad. Have fun there and don’t record any of this!”
“You bet!” her dad said.
“I’m going to send impulses to your uniform,” the technician interrupted. “Tell me where and what do you feel, please.”
“Light touch in my right hand… left hand… on my head. Ouch, that hurt!”
“Sorry. What did you feel?”
“Like a punch on my right arm. And it didn’t hurt that much… Oh, tickles on my feet!”
“Everything seems to be running green over here, Ms Tyler. We’ll start as soon as you’re ready.”
Stella took a deep breath.
“Go.”
She fell. She felt like falling, and she knew she wasn’t really falling, but the simulation was really well done. A weird display lit up in front of her eyes.
“Ms Tyler, we’re falling.”
“I know! Who are you?”
“Oh my, it seems you’ve experienced memory loss. You call me Jeeves. I am the AI governing your battle armour.”
“Battle armour?”
“Yes. But we’re running quite low on energy right now, Ms Tyler. 10% power only.”
“How high are we?”
“I cannot tell. the radar altimeter is not working.”
“Eh… do you have auxiliary power? Er… reroute to… motion and steering? And let me see something, please?.”
“Excellent idea, Ms Tyler.”
Stella saw herself falling. Down below, still far away but closing quickly, was a large mass of water.
“Rerouting power,” Jeeves said.
But nothing happened, and Stella felt dizzy. Perhaps not seeing would have been better, after all.
The sea kept getting closer.
“Jeeves.”
Closer.
“Jeeves!”
“Power on.”
Stella felt as if three horses kicked her on her back and feet at the same time, but there she was.
Flying above the ocean.
She screamed in joy.
“We need to find a power source, Ms Tyler,” Jeeves said. “Auxiliary will last only thirteen minutes at this rate.”
“Can you give me a scan of the surrounding area? Er… search for transmissions of, ah… nearby vessels? Anything we could turn to to… replanish power?”
“Certainly, Ms Tyler.”
“And call me Stella.”
“Oh my.”
+++
Alexander Tyler watched his daughter’s body, wearing the tight-fitting neural interface lattice, as she floated inside her pod. A myriad tubes and cables connected her to the device.
“Mr Tyler?”
“Dr Huang,” Tyler said.
“The procedure is finished. Stella will remain in her pod for as long as she lives.”
He stared at the physician, then went back to look at the pod that contained her daughter’s body. As to her mind…
“Is she all right?” he asked.
“Our monitors perform continuous full body scans. In fact, the physiological functions are easy and were quickly dealt for in the initial stages of our reasearch, as you know. As to her brain,” Huang pointed at one particular screen, “that tells us right now she’s having fun. We can identify which parts of her brain are being used. We don’t know exactly what she’s doing, but we can tell what she’s feeling. For all we know, she may be enjoying her own VR show inside ours.”
“You don’t know what she’s doing?”
“Not exactly, no. She asked for that specifically. The VR simulation is running in free mode, and it will remain so. We proud ourselves on respecting our customer’s desires. She will be living her life the way she wants to, and the world around her will move at its own pace.”
“And we cannot do anything? What if a cure is discovered?”
Huang sighed.
“Mr Tyler, I understand you. Believe me, I do. I don’t mean I can understand how you feel; I have no daughters, but I can… rationalize it. Decades ago, people who suffered from incurable diseases chose to freeze themselves until a cure was available, and a handful of companies appeared to cater for their wishes. Do you know how many people have come back, as they say? Zero.
Our approach is different: patients here live the rest of their lives in their own immersive VR, while their physiological needs are tended for. They feel no pain but the one they may receive within their simulations. We provide the best treatment possible for their bodies, while we keep their minds busy.”
“I still can’t believe she chose… she chose that. She has always been a fighter. That… it’s like giving up.”
“On the contrary, Mr Tyler. She could have taken her own life, and that is indeed the easy way out. Or she could have lived on here, with us, and see herself wither and die. She could have seen you suffer as she went away, slowly and painfully. She chose differently.”
“I’ll never hug her again,” Alexander said, slumped over the window.
“But she will. To her, you’re in there, in her world. There, she’s fine and healthy, and she will be able to hug you as many times as she wishes. It seems to me you’re a good father. All good fathers I know put their children’s happiness before their own.
Stella is happier this way.”
