Bourn - Virtual Perfection: Technology has drawn everyone into Virtual Reality, but what will happen to humanity if no one can get out?

VIRTUAL PERFECTION

VEILED DESTINY Series

Book 1

Technology has drawn everyone into Virtual Reality, but what will happen to humanity if no one can get out?

by Jason Bourn

Copyright 2019 by Jason Bourn

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

Classification: Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

From: President of the United States of America

To: Chief of Staff of the United States of America

Subject: Head of the Office of Predictive Analytics

Priority: Code 1: Utmost Impact to the United States of America

This memo is for your eyes only. I want you to personally handle the following. Absolutely no-one is to know about this.

I received a memo from my friend, Dr Jessica Landry, whose job has been to assess the most brilliant minds coming out of our educational system. She has identified someone who is the highest rated candidate ever recorded a savant, who looks like he could be more intelligent than Einstein. His name is Elijah Tariato. He has just completed college at Caltech one of the top technical schools in the world receiving a doctorate by age nineteen. All the professors agree he has the top mind they have ever seen. His area of expertise is Predictive Analytics. He is able to take huge amounts of data in, using artificial intelligence algorithms he generated himself that no one else understands, and determine in advance what is going to happen. Essentially, he can, given sufficient data, predict the future. Everyone agrees it is almost uncanny.

Based upon this stellar recommendation, I want you to do what it takes to install him as head of a new position, the Office of Predictive Analytics what I consider the most important assignment in the nation. The purpose of this job will be to make high confidence predictions of transformational changes to our country. This will allow us time to develop plans and contingencies for the future. Give him whatever budget he needs out of my POTUS account so no one can trace it. Again, absolutely no one is to know anything about the position or any of its findings. Any reports or any information about the existence of this position are to be sent For Your Eyes Only, and only to me and to my counterpart in the next administration at the end of my term.

Classification: Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

PART 1 VIRTUAL REALITY

CHAPTER 1

The view looking up through the domes transparent top was absolutely breathtaking all the stars having a reddish tint due to Mars dusty atmosphere. Just then, the sun rose slowly over the horizon, glinting off the domes shiny surface, which caused Calaes to shield his eyes. But Calaes didnt care he was more excited than he had ever been.

A smile played across his face as he gazed out at the huge circular dome floor, large enough to hold several football fields. It was rapidly filling up, as nearly one hundred passengers disembarked from the shuttle. The shuttle, one of many, had just landed, bringing the latest raw recruits from Earth, including Calaes. Calaes had gone through the airlock door first, anticipation burning in his veins, wanting to experience everything at once. The immensity of the view sent shivers down his spine, with the wide panorama showing many similar domes, each showing tiny figures moving within them. The soft red of the soil reflecting off the thin Martian atmosphere made everything seem somewhat macabre with its slightly reddish tint.

As more figures passed him exiting the shuttle, Calaes gaze shifted and he chuckled to himself, watching everyone walking with that peculiar long-strided gait, so naturally adopted in the lower gravity of Mars. Everyone was wearing the same jumpsuits required of new recruits gray with a small green Earth-shaped emblem indicating the raw nature of the recruits. All seasoned crew-members wore the same gray jumpsuits, but theirs were adorned and proudly worn with the larger red Mars emblem. Calaes hoped to earn the right to wear that cherished red Mars emblem one day, but he knew that only a very few were chosen and the exact criteria for being chosen was a closely guarded company secret.

Calaes had just started the simulation adventure-game called Martian Survival Challenge, the new Mars self-sustaining colony game that came with his new Mark IV Virtual Reality gear. His anticipation had reached Himalayan heights, and as so many before him had said, the reality of the simulation far outstripped the hype. He had heard it was impressive, but what he experienced here was heads and shoulders above any other VR environment that he had ever seen or heard of.

It wasnt the detail work of course that was flawless but that was becoming almost standard with all the really good VR simulations. The real difference between this and any other VR environment Calaes had experienced or heard of was its vast scope. There were not just a few rooms with full detail instead there was full detail in every aspect of the simulation, covering many buildings and hundreds of rooms, each with full painstaking detail. It would take years and years even with a large staff to generate this. Even for a company large enough to produce the Mark IV, this was quite impressive and extravagant.

Well, Calaes wasnt going to complain about the wealth of detail he was going to thoroughly enjoy it. At fifteen years old, he was confident that he was one of the younger participants, but based upon all the other adventures he had recently participated in he was sure that he was not in over his head. In fact, lately he had been taking the lead role and he had enjoyed it. As he liked to say to his friends, I am green in age, not in experience.

He had just signed in from his home and started this adventure. The sign up and authentication was much more formal and rigorous than any other simulation that he had ever participated in. They really wanted to ensure you were who you said you were. There were hundreds of other people that were in this simulation, and this was only one of many simulations being run simultaneously by the company. This was so much beyond what any other company ever did their support for their product by sponsoring and organizing these adventures was legendary. That was why almost literally everyone was trying it. They even had a slogan that was in every ubiquitous advertisement:

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has to try it. Yes, YOU have got to try it, TODAY!

The next level of this simulation could be entered by strict invitation only, and very, very few were invited, from what Calaes could find out. It appeared that the invitation rate to the next level was far less than one in a thousand, but the company was extremely secretive about the exact numbers. If you didnt make it on the first try, there were no second chances. No one had ever made it to the next level if they didnt get invited back on their first attempt. Calaes would have to truly do an outstanding job in this free trial to get an invitation to proceed to the next level.

There were only two rules that the company required of every participant. The first was no one was allowed to share any details of the simulation with anyone else outside the simulation. The second was no correspondence of any kind outside the simulation with anyone they met in the simulation. Anyone who broke either of these two rules would be excluded from entry into the simulation forever. Calaes had only heard of this happening a very few times and knew the company strictly enforced its rules. The simulation was so good that essentially no one broke the rules it just wasnt worth it.