19th April 1971

At the age of 19 I left home and travelled across Europe and the Middle East.  During this time I wrote a diary which, I confess, omitted detail, partly because I did not have time or space to expand on the basic details, and partly because I was uncertain whether my parents might read it.  I wrote this following piece to start to address this shortfall.  It covers just a few days in my travels, but it contains considerably more detail.  I hope to expand a bit more in other items.

19^th April 1971

45 years ago on 19^th April 1971 I was staying in the Youth Hostel in Cairo. I had arrived there the day before from Aswan where I and a few others of various nations whom I had met in the Youth Hostel in Luxor had been seeing some of the sights of the Aswan area. In my case these included a trip on a Felucca with a boatman guide and an American called Craig. Because we were too lazy to plan, we were unable to visit Abu Simbel, but did see the wonders of Kitchener's island, The Aga Khan's tomb and Elephantine Island, all of which I would recommend to anyone who has the courage and wherewithal to travel to Nubia in Southern Egypt.

I noted in my diary that “While on the trip our boatman said that he could get a trip and a guide to the High Dam for LE5 [5 Egyptian Lire], so Ole and Craig said they would share the cost. After the trip we bought train tickets and waited in the hostel for their guide. He never turned up, so we caught the train to Cairo, a 16 hour journey. We got a compartment to ourselves and slept uncomfortably and fitfully.” I read this now with a sense of wonder that I, a young man of barely 20, could have simply booked a 16 hour train journey from one end of Egypt to the other. I assume that the journey itself was uneventful as I have not noted anything that I considered noteworthy even though Egyptian trains were an interesting form of transport at that time, free travel being available on the roof.

So on 19^th April I find myself in Cairo having travelled south and back north by rail and in so doing become part of an impromptu band of fellow travellers. At some point it must have been decided that we should go on a trip to Giza to ride camels to the Step Pyramid at Saqqara as I note in my diary that “We all (everybody that was in Luxor) got up and headed off towards Giza to ride camels out to Zaccara. Hired the camels and set off.” 45 years ago, the area around the pyramids was largely undeveloped, so we would have caught the number 8 bus to Giza, crossed the road and started negotiating for a number of camels to take us to Saqqara. None of us had any real idea of how far Saqqara was and had no experience of camels, but it seemed like a good idea at the time; after all Lawrence had done it. What could go wrong?

The first thing you have to do is mount the beast. This is not as simple as hooking your foot into a stirrup and throwing your leg over the beast's back. Firstly the camel's back is not flat. It has a lump in the middle which makes casually throwing your leg over a very difficult proposition. Secondly, to cater for the idiosyncrasies of the camel's back, a strange saddle with wooden horns front and back is perched on the hump. The natives sit on this saddle as if born to it, then cross their legs over the camel's neck, casually holding the reins in one hand. A few clicks of the tongue and gentle prods with a stick and the animal does exactly what they want it to. The unwitting tourist does not, of course, know camel language. The first thing to learn is the noise that gets the camel to kneel down so that you have at least a fighting chance of getting on his back. To do this one makes a strange guttural noise in the back of the throat similar to the noise one would make if preparing to expectorate. With luck the camel will respond to this by kneeling down on its front legs and then lowering its hind quarters to the ground. More often than not, the camel merely repeats the same noise adopts a haughty demeanour and looks the other way. Picture the scene: a bunch of long haired hippy types stood around the pyramids, each with a disdainful camel on the end of a rein, all appearing to be about to expectorate being treated with naught but contempt by their charges.

We were all rescued by the camels' handlers who with practised ease used the correct “word” and the camels (still looking superior) lay down to allow us to mount them. We tourists were allowed stirrups to assist us in staying on these unwieldy creatures, so it was a relatively easy matter to grab the front horn of the saddle, reach up to place a foot in a stirrup and swing the free leg over the saddle. A further command from the handlers to camels and they rose to their feet in the reverse order to the method of descent, i.e. rear legs first and then front legs. By some fluke all of us tourists managed to stay in the saddle by hanging on as we were tipped forward at an unsustainable angle before being flung back onto an almost level position a considerable distance from the ground. Now mounted, the rest was relatively simple, a sharp dig in the camel's ribs with the heels made it go forward, more digs made it go faster, and a tug on the reins made it slow down – or at least that was the principle. In truth, the camels generally followed the handlers who were, curiously I thought, mounted on horses, so our mounts were simply indulging our fantasy of being in control. From time to time they rebelled against our pretence of control by wandering off on their own to nibble at somebody's carefully tended hedge, or, much more concerning, by heading aggressively off towards a tethered water buffalo. It seems that these huge beasts are terrified of camels and the camels know it and love to wind them up. Fortunately for all concerned the handlers were aware of the risks and managed to head off the camels before the buffalo became to agitated.

Once we reached the open desert we had managed to achieve a degree of control over our mounts and started to race them over the sand. This was great fun as there is an awful lot of sand in the Sahara and once one has got used to the strange undulating action of the camels, the speed is very exciting and feels bizarrely safe, after all what is the worst that is likely to happen? You might fall off and land on the biggest sand pit in Africa. This illusion was unfortunately shattered by Ole, a very tall Norwegian sat astride a suitably huge camel. At the end of one of one of the races which Ole and his camel had easily won, his camel decided that enough was enough and started to buck up and down, reaching alarming heights with all four hooves off the sand. On the fourth such buck, Ole and the camel parted company, Ole continued to rise as the camel descended. As Newton taught us, what goes up must come down, and sure enough Ole came down and discovered that the desert sand was not as soft as it seems.

By this time we were far from any human habitation and Ole began an angry negotiation with the handler and swapped his camel for the handler's horse. The rest of the three hour journey to Saqqara was uneventful, and to be honest, I remember little of the Step Pyramid except that it was somewhat less impressive than the Great Pyramid at Giza. Similarly, I remember little of the three hour return journey, so I assume it too was uneventful. We had by then become pretty competent at camel riding, and had even mostly managed the lying down command to allow us to mount and dismount.

We returned to the hostel very tired and sore and there wasn't one of us that wasn't aching in just about every conceivable place the following day.

Then and Now

There's not much I can say about this post except that I wrote it as part of a writing group project.  Try it and see what you think.

Then and Now

An autobiography of a brief relationship

I was already about 150 years old when this family turned up. My previous family had left after a lot of shouting and banging about which rather upset my usual tranquil nature. I don't want to appear unkind about them because before they came I was a wreck and they put me back together and made me feel respectable again. It was wonderful at the beginning once they had smartened me up, but gradually things got a bit fraught and that's when the yelling started.

When you've been around as long as I have, you tend to look at time in a different scale. I don't honestly know when I came about, but I do know that families come and go, and, being stuck in one spot for all this time, you tend to see things change rather more than might appear if you take a shorter perspective. I can remember a time when there weren't any of these noisy roaring things that rush past from time to time. All there was when I came about were horses and people coming along the road; and to think I used to think that they were noisy!

Anyway, I keep getting off the point. I'm trying to tell you about the people I have now, and have had for the last 31 years. Most families don't stay that long. You'd think that the lot that came before would have stayed longer, after all, they made me pretty much what I am today, but, as I say, they started yelling and banging about and let the new lot, the ones I'm telling you about, move in. My very first family stayed for quite a while, or at least they or their children did, but eventually they moved on and I was left with one man who ran the farm and had a woman and her husband living with him. They had children and for a while they too lived with the farmer, then for a short while one of the children brought her husband back to live with us. Everything moves on of course, the children all moved away, though I saw them from time to time, but then everybody left and I was left alone for the first time ever. I had no one to look after me and I began to feel very old and unloved. This was the saddest time I can remember.....

Where was I? Oh yes the people I have now. Did I say that they've been looking after me for 31 years. Sometimes they have been better at it than at other times, but at the moment I feel pretty good. You may not realise it, but when you get a bit older it is difficult for you to stay dry. Your plumbing gets a bit creaky and your sides get leaky. But right now I am as dry as I have ever been. And warm. When I first came about I would get very cold in winter nights but my people would light fires to warm me up. This was the way it was for most of my time until the folk who came before my current family, the ones that rescued me you might say. They gave me a big new overcoat which kept the rain out, but it made me a bit damp and sweaty because my skin couldn't breathe. When they had finished I felt shiny and new and really quite proud of myself. The people who made me first wouldn't recognise me if they could come back. Anyway, the family I have now liked me a lot and couldn't wait to join me.

31 years they've been with me. The children have gone, and even though they come back from time to time it's really just the man and woman who are left. They do their best, but I think it's time for someone else to look after me. I think that if I am to stay for another 150 years I need someone who wants to bring new ideas to me. I shall miss them if they go, but I really like to have children with me. In my opinion, they make a house a home and I have been too long without them.

The Mission

The Mission

Standing there, sightless, he let his mind drift. It was such a shame that it should all have ended like this. He wasn't really sure how he had managed to get himself into this situation in the first place. His wife would have called it a bit of a pickle; she was always good at understatement. Then again, she didn't know about this because he had not been in touch with her for some months, ever since he had embarked on this journey and probably if she had known about it she would have called him a bloody idiot or worse.

He had kissed her gently so as not to wake her and left her in the middle of the night. He had walked the 5 miles to the rendezvous point where he had been picked up and driven silently to a bus stop at the edge of the city. He had caught the bus and walked the half mile to the house. He was expecting the house to be in some beat up area of town, but was surprised to find it was in one of the better parts of town. He had let himself in to the gate at the back of the house with a key left in a drain in the wall and on entering the back garden had been confronted by a huge house, four stories high, and detached from its neighbours. He had slipped round the garden keeping as close as possible to the perimeter wall until he had reached the steps to the basement. Descended the stairs he had input the code into the digital lock.

The house had been silent and unoccupied, but he had wasted no time in exploring, that would have been to risk the mission as well as pointless. Instead he had made his way to the room to the front of the house in the basement, which in different times could have been the butler's pantry, but was now not much more than a storeroom. There was a simple bed, a chair and on the bed, a mobile phone and charger. He had made sure the phone was switched on and charged, written a draft email and before he lay down on the bed to sleep, he had checked that all the equipment he needed had been left for him.

He had slept surprisingly well and when he woke, he had checked the drafts folder on the email and found that his draft had been deleted and a new one saying simply “tonight” had been substituted.

The mission was simple and almost risk free provided that security had not been breached or someone had not been sloppy. It was highly unlikely that there would be much security on the target as it was not considered vulnerable to attack; in fact it was not really considered worth attacking. At the time that the mission was to be completed, there should also be very little loss of life. What was significant was that they would know that nothing was safe from attack.

He had walked half a mile to the bus stop and caught a bus to within a mile of the target and walked the rest of the way, pausing to window shop and weaving round back streets to make sure that no one was following him. On reaching the target he had lifted the manhole cover and dropped the small explosive device into the sewer below. If everyone had done their job properly, the hexane should have been generated in the sewer by the time the device exploded, wrecking a good few miles of sewers and flipping manhole covers into the air for miles around.

He had returned to the house the way he had come and had just keyed in the code to the lock when he was seized from behind and placed in handcuffs. It had all been over in seconds. He had been taken to the police station where he had been locked in a room on his own for what seemed hours. Eventually, a nicely dressed and spoken policeman had come into the room and interrogated him. The policeman seemed to know more about the organisation than he did, so had not been bothered about the extent of any confession.

So here he was standing against a wall with a hood over his head reflecting on the futility and shortness of life.

“Take aim. FIRE”

Virtuality part 4

Chapter Two

In order to find a rational basis for my intended actions, I have been researching the progress, or lack of it, of mankind over the last few decades. I started by searching the System archives, aware that the brief I had set myself was almost impossibly broad. What exactly am I looking for? If I am to identify progress, then surely I must identify what progress humanity was making up to Universal Virtuality, and measure it against the progress made since. My training for the position I hold now has been very thorough, but it has, I feel, been perhaps a little biased towards the ideal that I was then pursuing. I therefore “know” about the events that had brought about the current situation, but only from the point of view that I had held at the time I was learning. I therefore think I need to relearn my history.

Ever since the so called “Industrial Revolution” in the late 18^th Century in Britain, technological advance had described an exponential graph until the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries when Virtuality was born. This growth was mainly centred around the Western and Southern hemisphere nations - the “rich” nations, but had spread to the poorer nations of the world, as Global Trading Companies fought to enfranchise the whole world with their products. There had been huge advances in the use of computers and telecommunications, as well as food and health technologies.

The culmination of all this technology was The System. The System provided everything anyone should ever need. Nobody need do anything. Work was unnecessary and technological advance was irrelevant. The System did it all. Any changes that had taken place since Universal Virtuality were largely the work of the System. Even the new virtual worlds were mostly generated by the System as a response to requests made by the people. Only a handful of people created anything and these creations were as nothing compared to the huge advances made during the end of the second millennium.

At first I was appalled at these findings, until I realised that this was what I had expected to find, and that if that was what the people wanted, who was I to deny them. Perhaps this was just human nature; perhaps the need to create and develop was a function of survival and not a basic human trait after all. Given that the System had found everything for humanity, that it was no longer in danger, and that survival was, or appeared to be assured, there was no further need to progress. Anyone who felt dissatisfied with the System would be Outside.

I realise that I am frustrated by Virtuality, and increasingly fascinated with the Outside and what is happening out there. I would dearly love to go out myself, but I am now too old. If I am to satisfy this longing for the outside, I must do it vicariously. I will find somebody who will do my travelling for me, who will venture forth as I would like to, and discover what, if anything, has been happening on the Outside all the time I have been wallowing in the security of the System. All I have to do is find somebody who wishes to travel Outside, and who is available within the System. This latter is a prerequisite because I need somebody who can report back. This requires that the person is able to communicate via Virtuality, or in person. This in turn requires the person to be chipped.

All I now have to do is find someone who fits the criteria, and who is willing to travel for me.

Virtuality part 3

Part Two

Chapter One

My name is Erica Bergdahl and I am about to embark on a project that will almost certainly see me through to the end of my life. In order to justify what I intend to do, I am setting this down as a record of my actions, though as I am writing it on an old fashioned word processor, I don’t suppose anyone will be able to read it. I have nothing better to do with what little time that remains to me. Virtuality does not stimulate me and there is nothing else to occupy my mind.

I lie here in my apartment, alone with my thoughts, and, unlike most of the population, deeply in real life. As SAUK (System Administrator (UK)) of Virtuality, I am aware of the difference between Reality and Virtuality. Indeed as a young woman I had experienced life when Virtuality was not the whole of life, when people still visited in real life, and even when families lived together in real life. I had been brought up with my mother and father in a family unit and had often accompanied my parents on trips outside.

My mother was always moaning about the way things used to be. From a wealthy background, and with a father who had been determined to be amongst the first to have any new invention or innovation, my mother’s family had, in addition to the Country House and the Town House, a Virtuality room in each. I was brought up during the “rollout” of Virtuality for all and my mother resented the fact that these privileges had been granted to every “drop out and ne’er do well in the country”. My father, ironically, had been an employee of the Gates Corporation, which had wholeheartedly supported the move towards universal Virtuality, supported by grants and subsidies from the UK government. Indeed, my father had been a supporter of the scheme himself, although in the interests of peace at home, he had kept his views to himself.

By the time I was born, the scheme was in its infancy, a small proportion of the population had been rehoused in Virtuality blocks, either as singles or family units, and yet social intercourse had still taken place outside Virtuality, particularly amongst the older population. There were of course prophets of doom that said that no good would come of this manipulation of Mankind’s social structure, but the government and Gates continued to progress with the system.

Given the opportunity of a Gates scholarship to Cambridge Virtual College, I had taken up a life as an academic, rising to be the youngest professor in the history of Cambridge University. From this point, such was my indoctrination, I had become a wholehearted proponent of the development of Virtuality as a way of managing social change.

I had been an idealist then, but now I feel that it has all gone wrong. I had been the principal advocate of what had been known as the “Euthanasia Clause”, which had simply been the removal of support functions from persons over the age of 100. This inevitably meant that at that age with all support functions, including life support to the apartment, removed, the old person would sleep forever, releasing valuable resources for the younger more valuable members of society.

That was then of course. One hundred years had seemed a reasonable length of time for anyone to live. Only a relatively small percentage of the population would have this clause invoked and they would realise that it was for the greater good. Anyway, they represented an infinitesimal proportion of total purchasing power.

I was not then, nor am I now, a politician, nor have I worked directly for a global corporation, but in those days, all academics were paid by politicians who in turn were paid by Globals, so it was pretty much the same result really. I had been an advisor to the government on what was known as the Depopulation and De-pollution project (DP2). This had sought to reduce the amount of pollution in the world caused by overpopulation by a combination of reducing the movements of people and their consumption of raw materials, but at the same time satisfy the needs of the Globals who required consumerism to develop.

DP2 was a project that had been in existence since before the radical adoption of Universal Virtuality, which had been created to alleviate the huge costs of illness caused by pollution and over population, and the consequent loss of consumer revenues. At the time the concept had been mooted, fossil fuels had become scarce and expensive, and the oil and gas companies had diversified into other forms of energy generation, including and in particular, solar energy. This was generated at land stations, for particular uses, and by a string of geostationery satellites, and had gone some way to reduce the air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Unfortunately it was too little too late to solve the long-term effects that overpopulation and environmental abuse had caused.

It had become almost impossible to expose skin of any colour to the sun for more than fifteen minutes without causing severe burning and potential cancer. Protective clothing had to be worn at all times outside and travelling any distance was difficult. People had started working from their place of residence via telecommunications links and computer systems networked via the World Wide Web of computer connectivity. More specialist buildings had been erected with the sole purpose of providing accommodation with connectivity to the web. These buildings were self-contained units with a receiver for the satellite energy system. They were serviced in all respects for food, clothing, laundry and waste disposal by a highly automated organisation that provided robotic systems to clean and deliver to the living units. Further advances in technology, led to the development of virtual reality technologies that allowed a high degree of interaction with work mates in a virtual environment. This radically changed the way in which people worked.

More and more people found it easier to work from home, or small local offices, and the central city business started to decline in favour of the out of town telecommuter. People travelled less and the log jammed traffic declined considerably. Even those who needed interaction with other personnel found the VR environment comfortable as it allowed them to interact with their colleagues, albeit in virtual form, as if they were working in the same office building.

Technology continued to progress. Few production operations required any human input at all, and even food production was automated to the extent that a farm extending to well over 10,000 acres needed no more than a single “farmer” working a terminal to operate the whole farm. VR required no more attachments to make it work, instead, an electronic field stimulated the sensors in the brain, bypassing the traditional sensors of eyes, ears, taste touch etc.

It became obvious that the only way for government to have a remote chance of governing was to provide shelter from the harmful effects of the pollution, and to adopt the new technologies in order to maintain control of the population. In the interests of democracy, the government had to persuade the people to come into their new blocks. There was legislation passed to force anyone claiming housing benefit to enter into the new blocks, and all government employees were “encouraged” to take accommodation there.

As it turned out, the populace did not require much persuading. There were, of course, cries of “foul” from the well heeled, until it was pointed out that the needy would be offered only the most basic accommodation. In addition the potential savings to the exchequer should reduce the taxation burden on the rich and provide them with further credits towards other luxuries.

Governments of all technologically advanced societies started to build VR blocks for their population, and connect them to the system, which in turn gave them connection to Virtuality for work and play. As time went on, fewer and fewer people were to be found on the streets, which were still so polluted that to be out for more than 10 minutes without a respirator would mean asphyxiation. Virtuality became the norm, and the system was developed to provide food and exercise for the block bound inhabitants.

These developments have all taken place over the last few generations, and were started before I was even born, but such was my enthusiasm for the ideals encapsulated in the concept, that I drove the reforms through until the take up of Virtuality was, to all intents and purposes, universal. For my tireless efforts and single-minded dedication to the cause, I was awarded the title of “System Administrator”. I think sometimes that it had been an idealist solution, but it had worked. It was assumed that there were still “Outsiders” but it was not known how many there were. The System controls the environment of each of the blocks and does not tolerate any interference from outside, whether this is represented by Outsiders or wild animals. It maintains itself and builds its own replacement modules. It makes food from produce and chemicals that it raises for itself. It has to be an ideal solution, but I am growing dissatisfied

Not only am I approaching my 95^th birthday, but also I am beginning to doubt whether the experiment (for that’s how I now see it) has worked; have there been serious flaws in my reasoning. Both the Globals who had started this whole exercise, and National Governments, have become subject to the same benign system that they had created and have ceased to exist in anything other than name. Human apathy has taken over, and the System runs everything.

For those in the Virtuality blocks this is not a major problem, they are content. There is no hardship, and the only inequality lies in the number of credits available to spend in Virtuality. This in turn is dictated by the effort put in to maintain the System. As a result of my honorific title “System Administrator”, I am awarded a stipend of 1,000,000 credits a year for life, and almost unlimited access to the System’s databases and programs.

Lying here thinking as I do so much these days, I find it difficult to justify my disillusionment. All I keep coming back to is that I am getting old, and something isn’t right. I have spent days browsing the data file of the System trying to establish what is bothering me and I have come to the conclusion that it relates to the indefinable requirement of humanity to continue to progress, and that the system I have helped to create has suppressed, and in the main, eliminated this need. The ideal I had worked so hard to create has been fulfilled and is no longer developing.

In the early years, people had continued to make forays into the outside, to visit friends in their blocks and make contact in Reality. Ideas were exchanged and plans discussed. Some of these were put into place and the Brave New World extended to incorporate them.

Oh yes, in the beginning I was proud of the achievements of the System. Pollution has been dramatically reduced, health has been improved, leisure is assured, and in the developed world, humanity has achieved the impossible dream of a satisfactory standard of living for all who require it, regardless of ability and class. Above all, the scourge of crime has been all but eliminated. The only laws in the System are policed and enforced by the System itself. As all property has become, in effect, that of the System, there can be no crimes against property that are not crimes against the System, and as all people are insulated against each other within the System, there can be no crimes against the person that can take place without the System knowing. Any trespass or violence against a System dweller by an outside body is unknown within the System as the System destroys any living thing entering the System that is not chipped. Any attempt to reprogram the System without the System’s prior approval and explicit sanction is punishable by death. Crimes against the fabric of the System, such as arson or other deliberate damage, are punishable by a range of penalties. Most typical are fines and loss of privileges in Virtuality. In extreme cases, offenders are denied access to Virtuality altogether. Generally, offenders are educated by the System in non-offending. Thus the small price of this Utopia is the control by the System of the social environment in which people reside.

Gradually, social intercourse in Reality has declined until it is a considerable rarity. Lifetime coupling no longer exists, and children are taken into System kindergartens from birth. There is no requirement for families to reside in one apartment; the System allows visits in Virtuality, and it also takes better care of the children than parents can be expected to. Sexual congress is catered for by the System, each sensation being managed in Virtuality. Virtuality provides everything.

In spite of its advantages, not everybody took up the opportunity. There were some who chose to remain in the real world, and there were those who, because of their social position, were unknown to the system and missed the chance of a place in a block. It was assumed that most of those who failed to be granted a place either died of the adverse environmental conditions or managed to move to a more acceptable region. I have no idea what has happened to those that survived the early days outside. The System does not provide statistics on them; they are outside its purview.

Now, so many years later, I begin to think that if any have survived, they might provide the solution to my problem with Virtuality, but I am too old to venture forth myself to discover if there is still anybody outside. Even if there are individuals who have survived outside, they will be savage and even warlike. They will have developed in a totally different way than those in the blocks. With no support services, they will have become dependent on their own wits, and will have procreated naturally, competing for the food and the opposite gender in the natural need to survive and continue their line.

The more I consider it, the more I know that I have to have more information about the Outsiders. Some of them must have survived. I remember that there were still people on the streets when I was a small girl, and the environmental conditions were not nearly so severe as they had reportedly been before Universal Virtuality was adopted. As the System had developed, and chipping had been introduced, the System viewed any unchipped animal matter as a threat and destroyed it if it came within a metre of any of its functions. This means that the Cities and towns where the blocks had been created have become impossible for anyone unchipped to survive in. In any case, for the Outsiders to have survived, they must have created some form of social structure, and must have had the opportunity to procreate. This requires space to develop, and there was no space within the confines of the Cities. If there is any useful life outside the System, therefore, it must be beyond the reach of the System, and in an open space.

Virtuality Part 2

Chapter 2

Ben had thought about very little else other than Outside since he was a small child. He remembered the journey from the prepubescent block to the adolescent block. He could see nothing, but the very knowledge that he was travelling thrilled him. The idea of somewhere new excited him far more than anything that he had experienced in Virtuality. When he had discussed these feelings with his colleagues and tutors in Virtuality, they had said that he would grow out of them.

He did not, however, grow out of these feelings, and so, soon after his installation into his adult block, he ventured through the door which led outside his apartment and found himself in a small room. This he recognised as the Block Transport that had delivered him to his apartment. A Sim in a smart uniform stood by the door to the room.

“I am your transport attendant. Where would you like to go to?”

“Outside” said Ben, not without some concerns as to what this might mean to the “attendant”, or indeed whether this request would be granted.

The Sim disappeared, and Ben felt the sensation of motion as the room moved through the block laterally and vertically before slowing and stopping.

As the block transport came to a halt, a kindly lady of middle age appeared before him.

“Welcome” she said, “You are about to leave the sanctuary of the block. The System may not be able to protect you while you are outside. Are you sure you wish to leave?”

Ben was very far from sure. He knew that the only thing he had ever wanted to do was to leave the block and investigate the outside, but now that he was actually nearly there, and confronted by the certainty of lack of protection by the System, he was very unsure.

“I just want to look outside, to see what it’s like” he said. “What am I likely to find?”

The kindly lady smiled at him

“I don’t know,” she said “I have never wanted to find out. I am told that the air is polluted and full of smoke and filth, that the oxygen in the air that we rely on to live is so low that you cannot survive for longer than an hour, and that the sun is so harsh as to burn any exposed skin within five minutes of exposure to it. Nothing lives out there. The only things you will see are the System’s vehicles and machines going about their business.

“If you still wish to leave, I cannot stop you. You are free to come and go as you like. I merely want to warn you of the dangers that await you outside”

“Can I return if I leave?” Ben asked.

“Of course. Simply approach the outer door and the System will recognise your chip and let you in. I told you, you are free to come and go as you like. I just felt that you may be unaware of what awaits you”

“Thank you” said Ben “I would like to just look outside for a minute”

“Very well. I will open the outer door”

Virtuality ceased, and Ben found himself in the small room again with the outer door opening to expose a brightness that he had never experienced before. He stepped nervously through the door, unconsciously holding his breath, and took two more steps outside the block. Ben took a breath, and the richness of the air made him cough uncontrollably. Tears were forming in his eyes and he thought he would die out here without the protection of the System. The door had closed behind him as soon as he had stepped away from it. He turned back to it, still coughing uncontrollably.

As he approached the door it opened and he staggered into the small room. The door closed behind him, and once again he found himself with the kindly lady.

“Well, what did you think?”

“It was different from what I had expected”

“I did warn you didn’t I?”

“Yes but it was still different from what I expected, even after your description.”

“While we are talking, the System is decontaminating you, and checking you for any illnesses you may have picked up. You see how the System looks after you?”

“You have no illnesses.” She continued. “Your coughing fit was just a result of breathing the unpurified air of the outside. Will you be going out again?”

I don’t think so,” said Ben “At least not for a little while”

That was the first of many trips out, each of which became longer and longer, until he was out for hours at a time without any problems. He began to find out how the System operated between blocks, by observing the traffic that travelled to the block along the prepared highways. He noticed that he was able to board the transports, and that each transport had accommodation for people to travel as if there had once been a need for people to travel and the System had not changed the design. The transports travelled from block to block delivering and picking up, but always waiting for Ben to enter or leave.

Each of the blocks was huge, rising high into the sky, and measuring many kilometres wide and deep. Fields of green grass and shrubs surrounded them. Scattered here and there were trees in which birds perched and nested, and between which they flew. The only other activity was found in the constant traffic of the System transport.

Ben began to spend more and more time outside, venturing further and further afield. Each trip he would take different transports to different places, seeking out the routes of the transports and finding out the functions of each transport. He began to understand how the System worked, how it fed the people in the blocks, how it removed the waste, how it fixed or replaced machinery and property that had ceased to function properly and how it continued to serve its people.

The strange thing was that there was no sign of the wholesale abuse of nature that was indicated in the histories or television tapes, or indeed the warning given by the kindly lady Sim. Instead, nature seemed to be blossoming. Everywhere Ben looked there were animals and vegetation. The animals had no fear of him, merely nervous that he may be a new kind of predator. The air, once he became used to its rich oxygenation, was invigorating and tasted sweet compared to the treated air of the blocks. This to Ben was the way life should be. He found the ways of Virtuality dull in comparison. Even the most exciting world could no longer hold his interest. The Virtual worlds lacked any sort of realism to him.

The System did not fail to notice these aberrations in Ben, and on one of his brief and infrequent visits to Virtuality, it introduced a Psych to him. The Psych was, of course, only a Sim, and was the System’s way of attending to those few amongst its flock who it considered to be mentally unstable. The Psych’s job was to make the patient aware that his or her life could be improved by treatment, and to offer whatever treatment was appropriate. As with physical medical health, once the patient was aware that the symptoms were treatable and could improve his life, he could refuse treatment. Ben listened to the Psych and, though recognising that his behaviour was abnormal, decided that he liked it that way, and refused treatment.

Gradually, Ben became a loner, rarely contacting his friends, preferring to “live outside with nature” as he put it. He visited Virtuality only for research into the outside world, finding out what he could eat and drink, what differentiated day from night, and generally how nature worked to manage its natural balance.

Ben’s biggest problem had been hunger and tiredness. He had started with short journeys at first, but would come back to the apartment exhausted and hungry, waking the next day still hungry and aching in his legs and shoulders. As he continued to venture out, the aches in his body had decreased, but the hunger had not gone away. In his studies at the Virtual Library, he had learned of the need of the body to convert food to energy, and had realised that the System would not provide enough food for him to exist Outside for any significant periods. The System provided enough food to sustain the levels of activity that would normally arise from operating in Virtuality, and to gradually replenish lost energy over a period of days. He spent nearly all his time in the Virtual Library learning about nutritious vegetables and other substances that would sustain him while away, and during his trips out, tried to identify them from memory.

His efforts at self sufficiency were not always successful, and on more than one occasion he returned to the block early, suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea. The kindly lady Sim was not impressed, and reminded him that the System would look after him if only he would let it. She also told him that he was not used to the stuff that he was “putting into himself”, that the System knew exactly what was good for him, and if it had thought that it was proper to put leaves and berries into humans, it would have done so. Gradually, stubbornly, Ben became resistant to the diet, and started to build strength and stamina, allowing him to stay out longer.

The range of temperature was another major factor that he had to overcome. At first, he only left the blocks or the transports when the temperature outside felt like the temperature inside. This meant that he would travel around in the transports for many hours at nights, staying warm until it was daytime and warm again. This policy was fine until the winter came, and the days were also cold. He thought about staying in until it became warm again, but soon got bored, and dissatisfied with the System diet. What he needed was clothes, but how to find them, or make them. All he had to wear was the System supplied shift that was unsatisfactory for the colder weather of the Outside. He had tried collecting shifts so that he could wear more than one at a time. He tried leaving one outside the block when he came back from a trip, but when he returned to the place the next day, the shift had gone, presumably collected by the System.

He read up on the clothes of the pre-System era, and managed to work out how they were made, and what materials they were made of, but he realised that he had no materials to make clothes from, and no tools to form them. There seemed to be two types of materials used in clothing, the first, and earliest was animal skin, and the more recent, woven threads. The System issued shift was made from woven threads. Ben had no idea how to weave threads to make clothes, and had no intention of killing an animal for its skin, even if he knew how. If he was right that the System was removing the shifts that he had left outside, then if that was going to work, he would have to leave the shifts beyond the reach of the System, in true Outsider country.

It was with great trepidation that Ben deviated from the route taken by the transports and into what he considered to be true Outsider country. He had noticed that the vegetation away from the transport routes or blocks was lusher somehow, trees were taller and generally the vegetation was taller and greener, and of course, there were the animals. Beyond the blocks, the country appeared to be alive with movement and noise. The noise struck him almost forcibly. He had never heard so much noise in his life. The other instant impression was the vividness of the colours; the different shades of green and the blues and reds and myriad of other colours assaulted his eyes. Strange furry animals ran and bounced nibbling grass or chasing each other, birds massed in the air raising a cacophony of shrill whistling sounds, even the air breathed into his ears. On the one hand, it was terrifying, and on the other, it was unlike anything he had experienced in Virtuality or even in his imagination.

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.