James Moriarty (names changed to protect the innocent) hopped in his Jeep and backed out of the garage of the remote country ranch. The old Cherokee lumbered its way down the gravel driveway and pulled onto the main drag, heading for the Interstate. Today was sim-time.
He had discovered the Institute several years ago through a work contact at the engineering firm. Quite simply, it was a group of scientists who worked together on developing the perfect virtual reality simulator. Most of them had been on the project five years or more, and all of them were the best in their fields previous to working at the Institute. Initially, they focused on the visor setups where visual, audio, and even olfactory input only partially immersed the subject into the virtual world. Their main problem with this was when the visual input was so real that the eye could not differentiate between false movement and real movement, extreme motion sickness would result. The inner ear of most subjects could not tell what the hell was going on when they did not detect movement but the eye was sending messages that the body was plunging down a waterfall or riding a rollercoaster. Today, they would change all that.
Moriarty had been one of the major testers of these simulators, mostly dealing with fighter and tank sims, with the occasional game mixed in. Every Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. he would subject himself to whatever fantastic ideas the scientists had been working on the previous week. He had to hand it to them -- they were a creative bunch. He was pleasantly surprised every weekend, and sometimes even totally astounded at what the Institute had come up with. His favorite so far was the MacLaren sim. He sat in there for five hours, crunching the pedal to the floor and cruising along the specially constructed Autobahn at just under 300 miles per hour. Of course, the motion sickness would get so bad that he would often have to take breaks, usually every 15 minutes or so. He could control it for that long, but not for more. Most people just put the damn thing and almost heaved. And that was what was so frustrating to the scientists. 15 minutes was just not enough for VR.
So, they had postponed his sessions for almost six weeks until they could come up with a solution. He got a call Wednesday at the office -- a curt voice, one he didn't recognize, told him to show up an hour early on Saturday. The Institute had slipped his mind since the last session so long ago, and so was quite unprepared for the news. He mulled it over for a second, and then said he'd be there.
He pulled up into the parking lot he knew so well, and parked his Jeep in his reserved parking space by the door. The building was one of the more interesting he'd seen -- and being an engineer, he had seen many -- and was probably one of the most intimidating. It was one of those typical glass structures, but not like a skyscraper -- more like an army bunker with a center spire and clawlike projections gouging the sky at regular intervals along the top of the perimeter. Maybe a castle’s battlements. Or a fortress. The glass was really what made it creepy. It didn't reflect light -- it was coated in a substance which was transparent but absorbed most of the visible spectrum as it hit. It was almost like a black hole, not just dark but actively sucking in the light from around the vicinity. He shivered. Dark, but one bad-ass chemical engineer must have come up with that one.
He entered the front door, said hi to the secretary, and showed his pass to the guard in the hallway. He had never understood why they made him do that, they were just testing sims for some game company, right? "Oh well," he thought, "I guess that industry is pretty secretive as it is." He slipped the pass back in his wallet and ascended the stairs to the second floor, entering the "authorized personnel only" section and typing in his keycode. Sheesh.
"Hey, Wally, how are the kids?" he asked pleasantly to the scientist who usually administered the "tests."
"Doin' fine, doin' fine. Gwen's finally got her SATs over and done with."
"Aww, that's great. Great kid."
"Yeah, but I think we're both ready for her to leave. She’s tired of us, we’re tired of her being tired of us…you know the bit."
"Whatever. You know I was smart enough not to have kids…or a wife. The last one was giving me this ‘high-class’ image, and then I find out several months into it she was the opposite what she seemed. You know, a typical woman. I've found that upgrading 'Girlfriend 1.0' to 'Wife .9 beta' is always a bad idea."
They continued the banter for a few more minutes while the tech finished setting up the gear. This time, it wasn't the typical visor and helmet, or even a strap-in console like the car racing games at an arcade. This time, it looked like a hearing aid.
"What the hell is that thing? Gonna make me feel like some chick is tickling my ear?"
Wally chuckled. "No, not quite. This puppy is gonna take care of that little motion sickness problem we've been having."
"Whoa. I can't wait. Total immersion this time?"
"Right on. See this little probe? It is so precise that it can actually manipulate the hairs in your inner ear, in the cochlea. See those little fibers there?" Wally pointed at the end of the stalk which projected off the earpiece, the part that would enter the ear. "Those will extend far down into the ear and then based on the visual input from the simulator, will manipulate the ear to make it think it really is moving. A guy wearing one of these in each ear will be absolutely immersed."
"Wow," Moriarty thought. The respect on his face clearly shone, and it pleased the tech. "So, what's the scenario?"
"Well, we're also trying something new there, to go with the total immersion. We've had our programmers on this day and night, and I think you'll like it. It's a full-scale battle zone, with you as commander. Specialization of abilities, weapons, the whole bit. It's gonna blow you away."
The scientist led Moriarty out of the prep room and down the corridor to a section of the complex he was not aware of. The building was misleading as to its size – there was apparently there was a lot more here than he had originally been made to think. They entered another prep room, this one with some medical supplies as well as observation gear to record the goings on of the room which was visible through the large pane of glass. The pane formed an entire wall of the room, complete with a sealed door.
"Take a seat on that table there."
Wally let Moriarty look at the room while he started configuring some of the observation gear and medical supplies. Inside, there was a large mainframe, probably to run the sim, and a small headset that almost looked like a crown, but with a strip across the top which went from the forehead to the back of the skull. It was solid polished metal, with a thick cable running from the side over to a port in the back of the computer.
"Hmm. Looks like quite a different setup tonight." The excitement was obvious in his voice.
"You bet it will. Now roll up your sleeve."
"Eh? What for?"
Wally turned around from the table holding a syringe with a pale green liquid inside.
"This one's gonna be really different! In order for our total immersion to work, you're going to have to be unconscious while the computer gets in synch with your brain transmissions. That way, when you wake up, you will REALLY believe that you are in there. No simulation for you. It will seem like you're really in the thing. This was tested by another subject and he crapped in his pants when he was done. Literally. And that was only in the preliminary stages. We've got it perfected now. Now lay down on the table, this anesthetic takes effect pretty quick."
Moriarty trembled with excitement. This could be history! The first total reality simulator. What luck to get involved in something like this, all on blind chance, from a work contact! Wow. He was overwhelmed. He didn't even notice the needle slide into his bicep.
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