Virtuality part 1

Virtuality

By

Mike Keeble

Part One

Ben

Chapter 1

Ben did not use Virtuality much. That is he used it, but only in a functional sense. He did not stay in his bedroom all day and stare at the walls, but he did not use Virtuality as others might; spending all day in the Virtuality room socialising or playing.

When he was young in his adolescent quarters, bombarded as he was with educational worlds, Ben had much preferred those worlds that dealt with life as it had been, and as it might have been. He became horrified by the damage that mankind had done to the real world, and the pressure that it had put upon itself to develop. The System pulled no punches when it came to explaining the rationale behind Virtuality, and the severe and irreparable damage that mankind had done to his own and other creatures’ environment. Ben often wondered during these adolescent times what life must have been like without the System. He found himself dreaming of the Outside as it had been before it had become uninhabitable. The apparent variety of birds and animals and the colours of trees and plants fascinated him. He would watch history films from the ancient television system. Some of these would show strange creatures in strange habitats unknown to Virtuality, while others would depict scenes of violence and sex, not dissimilar to some of the worlds in Virtuality.

In all cases, the world depicted was one that was totally different from the one in which mankind now lived, and had lived for some time. His history lessons at school taught him that the air and climate Outside had become impossible for mankind to live in and increasingly, people had moved into blocks that were more or less self-contained. Computers managed the functioning of the building, and telecommunications allowed people to work from their living quarters. Developments in Virtual Reality technology had allowed people to work in a virtual environment, and still retain social intercourse with their peers. Further developments in technology had allowed computers to manage not only the building, but also the life support systems of the people in the blocks.

Telecommunications had long since created a developed world that was ungovernable by national governments except in particularly local issues. Global corporations carried on trade internationally, and increasingly work was organised on a global scale. Major corporations managed their own markets according to what was known as “market forces”, although in reality, they controlled vast numbers of the people of the world simply by dominating the buying habits of the population. As a result, an international currency had developed which, unlike the previous tokens in coins and paper, was purely electronic, and involved no tokens, but a system of credits, which were allocated to people on the basis of work done. These tokens were exchangeable for goods and services offered by the global operators, and soon came to transcend the currencies offered by national governments.

Without a national currency, national governments themselves became obsolete, and the systems set in place by the global operators took over the governance of the people. In order to live in the environments created in the blocks, and to benefit from the virtual environments and comforts afforded by them, people had to conform to the rules set by the system. This was generally considered to be favourable to living in an unbreatheable atmosphere in a direct sunshine that would burn a pale Caucasian skin inside five minutes.

The System became the only way to live, and in time became the rules by which people lived. The System provided everything to those within its purview. It was benign and allowed freedom of movement, together with the choice of whether to work or not to work. It provided housing, food, cleaning services, comprehensive health care to age 100, education to age 20, and enough credits to live on whether you worked or not. The alternative did not bear thinking about.