Mirage

Virtual reality is just all a mirage.

Mirage (Language warning)

 

The intensity of the heat is unbearable. Blood pours throughout my extremities. My eyes pop out of their sockets, and my tongue shrivels up like pruned grapes. My body turns into one big oozing blister. I explode and implode as the colliding suns engulf me in its fiery infernos. I am now nothing but stardust.

 

Lucian popped out the lenses, went to his partner and said, “Wow! That was the most intense session yet. For a moment I feared it was all real. The pain and agony were excruciating. I melted into a puddle of goo. I died and turned to dust. It all seemed so terrifying and authentic. We’ll call this our ‘Slash and Burn’ episode. It just needs some tweaks, and then we’ll have a virtual reality device that’ll corner the market.”

 

“We need more than a few tweaks; we need to overhaul the whole system. This is just an interim device that gives us the opportunity to get to the next level,” said Micella.

 

“Patience Micella, I’m talking about enhancing the senses and making it interactive with two players, not making an array room like the holodecks on Star Trek. That’s not yet attainable. It’s a massive undertaking which requires technology we don’t have yet. Baby steps, we’d need loads of money, and a slew of super-computers and programming magic. In time, your dream will become reality, but first let’s test this device with some enhanced episodes that would give us a competitive advantage.”

 

I’m in the space stations kitchen. Plates of potato, eggs, and bacon frittatas are on the kitchen table. I smell the bacon. I’m cutting up a piece and taking a bite. Oh s**t! I can taste it. It tastes divine. I can see the earth in living color from the stations view screens. The view is breathtaking. Beethoven’s piano concerto #2 is playing in the background. This serenity program is perfect for guru geeks who seek nirvana through meditation and contemplation. But I think we need to make this pop with just a little more Zen pizazz. I’m coming out.  

 

 “Micaela, you’ve outdone yourself. It’s like being in realtime, but better. This is years ahead of anybody else. I didn’t realize you were this far along. Your dream of holodecks and array rooms doesn’t seem so farfetched. I’d give you a hug, but I know how you don’t like being touched.”

 

Micella smiled. She remembered when she first came here, she had a hard time shapeshifting into human form. It took her weeks to get rid of the spikes, scales, and intricate webbing covering her body. So, she feigned aversion to being touched. It also took her a while to get used to their hideous forms and musky odor. It didn’t matter now, she perfected the form and finally got used to their ugliness and smell. She’d keep up the charade until the time came when she needed to lie with them. But it wasn’t time yet for that phase.

 

“You’re a freaking super genius, you just did the impossible. You perfected the use of all five senses; you even enhanced them. This is a paradigm shift of epic proportions. How do you do it? Are you even listening? You seem miles and miles away. Lucian to Micella!”

 

Micella broke out of her reverie, Lucian was like a cockroach, cloying and annoying. Humans were such hormonal cesspools, she sighed and said,

 

“It’s about understanding mathematical probabilities intuitively, creating robust code and implementing the correct sequences. I’ve had some other breakthroughs. I figured out how to do group sessions with ten or more players. I also digitately created another species that interacts with humans in antagonistic or benevolent storylines. I programmed this species with sophisticated algorithms. They are self-programming.”

 

“Holy S**t, this is a game changer,” said a stunned and ecstatic Lucian.

 

……

 

Lucian Reality Enterprises mass produced and marketed their A.I. virtual game network worldwide. It was a massive hit. A paradigm shift did indeed occur. In time, the popularity and use of the game overshadowed everything else. Most of the world population rarely left their homes. They were plugged in.

 

……

 

Delakerion looked upon her world for the last time. It was once a beautiful oceanic world. Most of the cities on the ocean floor were littered with the dead, and the few Proclaxens that remained chose to die in their homes. Their scientific hubris led them to this extinction event. Their experiments with energy matter went totally awry.  Their world was in decay due to their moons falling off their axis by misdirected energy beams. Millions died. The ocean’s oxygen depleted; poisoned by the twin sun's radiation.

 

Ten ships blasted off planet. Twenty thousand Proclaxens took passage. A few thousand chose to embrace death with their mother planet. They traveled to Earth and settled somewhere in the Atlantic Oceans, Mid-Atlantic Ridge. They sent scouts to study the humanoid species that dominated. Their reports were not encouraging. Humans were violet and primitive. They were xenophobic. Given a chance, they would try to destroy the Proclaxens. Humanity’s science was hundreds of years behind. The Proclaxens needed to be proactive. Delakerion, their top scientist, came up with a solution. Shapeshift into humans, repopulate their race, and enslave and decimate humanity.

 

……

 

Micella’s reality device worked to perfection. Most of the population were now virtual slaves. The world governments and financial institutions collapsed. No one seemed to care. She ran them on ecstasy loops. Humans were conditioned to serve Proclaxens as reproductive clay, incubators, and a labor force.

 

Micella finally succumbed to human touch. Lucian was her first. She captured his semen in her vaginal cavity. He died smiling.  She transferred those reproductive excretions to human females. They became incubation vessels. Micella and fertile male and female Proclaxens repeated this process till their population quotas were satisfied. Humans became near extinct, but a new and stronger Proclaxen hybrid emerged.  

 

On the holodeck, Delakerion (formally known as Micella) smiled and said, “Beam me up Scotty.” 

 

 

 

Author's Note

let her rip