Dreams of Jupiter

Virtual Insanity

Unfortunately what was awaiting us was the Rift.

A few hours after my capture they came for us: creatures in black synthetic suits that looked like bio-hazard gear. One at a time they pulled us out and took each person out of sight. It wasn't long after that we began hearing screams of pain and fear echoing through the enclosure.

After the fourth or fifth person to be dragged from the pen it was my turn. I thought about resisting when the black suits stepped into the pen and came towards me. But the blood on the concrete floor from the guy that had struggled when they came for him second, spilled by a quick shot in the face by some sort of slug thrower, convinced me otherwise. They had dragged his limp body out and we heard screaming anyway a short time later, despite thinking he was quite dead.

So I let them take me by the arms and lead me out, my mind swirling with fear and anxiety. The trip through the corridors was a blur, lost to the chaos that filled my mind. Then I was being put face down onto a bloodstained table. The coppery smell snapped me back into the present and I found myself staring at a massive puddle of dried blood right under my face.

Terror filled me and I felt the scream come scrambling up out of me before I could stop it. It never had the chance to get out. A hard push against the back of my head was quickly followed by searing agony at the base of my skull as something drilled into me.

I blacked out from the pain then, finally overwhelmed as my ears echoed from the screams that finally managed to escape me. When I awoke some time later, I had a neural port embedded in my head and I could almost Feel something spreading through my brain even though I knew that was impossible.

By this point I was completely immobilized, unable to do anything other than blink. They lifted me up, put me into a giant tube and connected me to a food and air supply. The black suits then filled the tube with a viscous fluid that held me suspended before plugging something into the neural port.

The tube faded and, with a swirl of color and light, I was in the Rift. I found myself standing in the middle of a sidewalk, a street beside me and tall buildings on all sides. I could feel the ground solidly beneath, a breeze tousling my hair, weak sunlight providing the illumination, a full sensory immersion. It was as I marveled at how real it felt that the first beast, with its rending claws and dagger-like hurled itself out of the shadows at me, signaling the beginning of a long waking nightmare.

I don't know how long I was in there. Only that there wasn't a minute that went by that didn't find me running or fighting for my life. Then with a hard jerk the Rift disappeared and I was standing naked and shivering as a dozen white coated people stared at me.

They said they were doctors and I had had an accident, forcing them to put me into VR rehab to recover. I remembering screaming at them in incoherent rage and fear. Accident? Rehab? No! I was being tortured!

But none of them believed me. That was when the so-called therapy sessions started with smug, smirking shrinks that tried to convince me that the 32 years I had lived before was a false memory, implanted into my brain by the VR game they said I was playing when the accident occurred.

"I see by the expression on your face, Mr Bennett, that the idea of going back into VR doesn't appeal to you," the face dryly noted, his words pulling me from my reverie. I fought off the desire to spit at him, something that had earned me something they called 'aversion therapy' in the past. Aversion therapy: a fancy way of saying punishment via electrodes strapped to neural clusters all over my body and getting shocked.

So, instead of earning more aversion shocks, I just shook my head.

"Then accept that you're living in delusion," the face said, leaning forward with his hands clasped over the pile of documentation. "Renounce your adopted persona and embrace our efforts to make you better. Doing that will save you from being returned to the sensory depro tank to get jacked in."

I stared at him, my mind whirling as I once more considered my options. Renounce the life I remembered living, along with everything that made me Ezekial Atlas. Or go back into the Rift where countless horrors waited to tear me apart over and over again. Was it truly worth the pain, real or virtual, to continue clinging to a life that was destroyed by invading aliens anyway?

Then something abruptly occurred to me: why would I remember the forced jacking in if I was supposedly playing a game? From everything that I understood about VR gaming, which admittedly wasn't much, I should've jumped right into the scenario without any kind of connecting to a system. Unless, of course, such a connection was necessary.

"Remind me, doctor," I began, keeping my voice tired-sounding as if I no longer wanted to fight. "What kind of game was I playing at the time of the accident?"

The face frowned, confused at my change in attitude. Then he was pawing through the stack of documentation.

"I believe it was ..." He paused to quickly scan the page in front of him. "Right; first person shooter, engaged in repelling an alien invasion," he said, tapping the page with a fingertip.

"Engaged?" I repeated. "Like I was actually fighting?"

The face nodded, his expression confirming that he thought I was an idiot, asking questions with obvious answers.

"Of course you were fighting, Mr Bennett. You were the commander of the defenses, in charge of repelling the invasion single-handedly." The face smirked. "A very popular scenario apparently. No wonder you picked it for your study break. It would make an excellent diversion from the tedium."

"Sooo, I was a soldier," I pressed, earning me another look of barely restrained annoyance. I quickly gestured that he didn't have to answer. The look was confirmation enough.

It certainly was plausible: university kid picking a first person shooter to game a little for a study break. Hell, they even got the part about the invasion right.

Except I wasn't a soldier in my memories. I was a journalist. I was on the battle field as an observer, not a participant. So why would they have documentation that said otherwise?

I looked down at the table as I mulled that over. Why had this little detail escaped my attention until now? Why had I suffered through several days of therapy before my brain finally began noticing something like that? I was a journalist, damn it. It was my business to notice the details.

It was as I was silently castigating myself that I saw it. The top document on the face's pile. As my eyes scanned across it, the text changed color from black to blue before flickering back to black.

Now I had to fight the impulse to stare, forcing my eyes to continue to scan past the stack instead. What I had just witnessed should have been impossible. There was only two possible ways it could happen: I really was going crazy.

Or I hadn't left Virtual Reality.