The whole stadium was dark aside from a small circle of light in the centre which illuminated the speaker. The crowd went wild with a deafening roar that filled the rafters; Ash could hear Rose screaming on his bed as he himself did a celebratory whoop whilst setting off the clapping emote.
“We know you are all excited to see what The Council will bring!” The speaker dulled the crowd with only a few words and Ash switched to Close-Up mode settling in front of his cinema view leaving the stadium crowd sounds on full to keep himself truly immersed in the action. The announcer continued, “we promise you, by the end of this Council you will be blown away at what you’ve just witnessed. You all know about the deep dive technology, it’s no secret! But what you don’t know is what it means for gaming and what it means for you!” The crowd erupted again, and goosebumps had started to rise on Ash’s arms as his excitement threatened to boil over. The announcer was a typical corporate marketer, suited up without a tie and his top button undone to show he was on the side of the consumer. It was the small things Ash noticed and he knew what angle they were going for. Sell as much as they could and act like their friend to entice them in. Ash, of course, fell for it pretty much every time something new and shiny was put in front of him gaming wise.
The announcer beamed his bright white smile to the crowd’s reaction, “deep dive my friends! You know what this means! You are essentially part of the game and part of the system, you will be able to feel everything as if you are touching it, smell everything as if you’re stood next to it and see everything as if your very eyes have been washed, dried, and put back in! It’s the biggest thing to happen to gaming since the very inception. You now get to be inside the game!” Again, the crowd went mad, including Rose next to Ash, he let a smile cross his face as he heard her reaction, he loved it when she was excited. The genuine joy she displayed was always a breath of fresh air. “VR, as you are all on today will be a thing of the past and will feel archaic in comparison once you’ve tried Sensync Dive. But don’t take it from me, take it from the guys working on it!”
With this he faded from view, all the while grinning and replacing him came rooms set out with people sitting comfortably on sofas and armchairs, and a couple laid out on beds, all with a small white helmet covering their head and wires reaching down to a small white box by the side of them. It all looked rather simple, understated, and unassuming. None of those in their fake rooms on stage were moving a muscle and an eerie silence had descended on the arena. It seemed to last a good while, as if letting everyone take in the scene, eventually the silence was broken by a new person. A woman was stood in one of the fake rooms where a person was sat on an armchair, she was also smiling, ready to launch into her script. Long blue hair and light blue dress billowing in fake wind, bright white skin like an ice queen and deep blue eyes. Ash was entranced by this woman.
“What you are looking at is the Sensync Dive,” Her voice was soft and almost wispy, “you can use it anywhere at any time. You can be sat comfortably in your living room chair,” she gestured towards the man in the room then disappeared and reappeared a second later next to one of those in their bed “you could enjoy in the comfort of your own bed!” she disappeared once again and another room faded into view, “you can also be sat on the toilet! Pat, next time you might want to pick a better place!” This brought a chuckle to the crowd and Ash let himself laugh at the sheer stupidity of it, but the woman intrigued him, something wasn’t quite right with her. “Sensync can be used anywhere you can sit or lay down. The headset reads your brainwaves and sends your body into a state of sleep. It doesn’t allow you to move, just as your brain wouldn’t let you re-enact some of your wildest dreams whilst you are asleep. With this, it also reads your brainwaves whilst in the sleep state and this little box here” She pointed towards the inconspicuous white box placed next to the toilet in this example, or next to the chairs and beds of the other people all in this sleep state. The feeling that something wasn’t right continued within Ash, it wasn’t unusual for hosts to come dressed up but there was something a little uncanny about this woman.
“This makes sense of all your thoughts and actions and relives them in game where your body will truly believe and feel that it is all real. Take a look at what Pat is doing whilst he’s on the loo!”
A dream like bubble appeared above Pat with a wave of the woman’s hands and you could see an entirely foreign world from a first-person perspective, lightning bolts flying from his hands towards a small goblin looking enemy, it all looked like a scene from a movie, the visuals just like what you would see with your own eyes. The goblin flew away from the impact of the bolts and then Pat whipped off his backpack and pulled out a sword. He discarded the backpack momentarily as he bore down upon the hapless goblin, it was pleading in some foreign language, but Pat wasn’t listening. He drove the sword straight into the goblins midriff and watched as blood spurted from its mouth. As the goblin lay there lifeless a menu appeared in Pat’s vision asking if he wanted to loot the goblin with a list of some items the goblin had on him, half eaten loaf of bread, a gold coin and a weathered note. Then Pat did something rather strange, he laughed maniacally “This is awesome! Where’s the rest of you!?” He turned around and there were 3 more goblins with pickaxes bearing down on him.
“Well, it appears Pat has found himself with a bit of company. We’ll leave him to it,” She closed the view into his game with a swipe of her hand. “This could be you; you could be in the game and faced with the exact same scenario but how you choose to deal with it is your choice. Would you have shown mercy, perhaps even helped the goblin? Would you have blown his brains out with a custom-made blunderbuss or maybe just taken it clean off with a blacksmith made axe? Maybe you would have used traps to back him up into and let that do the work for you? Maybe you would have used your wit and natural charisma and extracted what you wanted out of him with words! One scenario, multiple different ways to deal with it” She smiled again, it gave off a soft radiance, but Ash got the impression that this was not someone to be messed with. There was a knowledge behind her eyes and a power to her stance. However, she was also taking in everyone’s reactions almost nervously.
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“Come now Aura, let’s not shown them too much!” The main presenter faded back into view. “Shall we let the next cat out of the bag?” He asked. Aura was still stood smiling and nodded slightly, almost with a regal grace about her. Hushed whispers and murmurings started around the stadium.
“I wonder what the cat is!? She’s really pretty!” Ash could hear Rose fire in his direction, no doubt she was in her own cinema view taking in everything just as he was.
“That she is, but something isn’t right, she doesn’t seem real…and yes I know that sounds stupid” Ash said as soon as he realised what he’d said. She had deep blue eyes, white as ice skin, blue hair and looked like a queen. She clearly wasn’t real and was a created avatar for the show.
“Ladies and gentlemen this is Aura, and she is now the host of this conference. Would you like to introduce yourself?” The open collared man beamed and pushed both hands towards the front of the stage gesturing Aura to take the limelight.
“Certainly, Clive” She didn’t seem to walk but slide forwards as if on wheels, or maybe she was an ice queen and she slid there? Who knows. “I am Aura, and I’m an AI” With this the crowd erupted into gasps of shock and cheers rang out. This was an AI! This was what Ash was picking up on but wow, she must be advanced, and for her to be in human form was unheard of. Everyone had heard of chat bots and smart speakers but a humanoid figure speaking like a human, responding in record time, holding her own intelligence, and sounding very much human was truly remarkable. Aura waited whilst people held discussions among themselves, but the nervousness seemed to dissipate from her as she took in the cheers.
“You were right, Ash! She’s not real! He heard Rose’s excited voice over the noise, he was slightly taken aback and lost for words. But one burning question formed in Ash’s mind, if she was an AI why was she here? What did she have to do with the conference?
“Yes, I’m an AI” She continued softly. However soft it was didn’t matter as she had the room in silence just from her words. “I will be running the game that comes along with the Sensync Dive. I am on a server and the Chaos Council headquarters, a server that’s capable of holding many different versions of many different worlds and my computing algorithm allows me to deal with almost endless amounts of possibilities at once making me the best person to run a game. However you chose to deal with the goblin would then be stored and saved and could affect gameplay for you or others later down the line. Perhaps you decided to kill the goblin like Pat did here, do you think the goblins family or clan would be happy and leave this killing going unpunished? Pat might get a visit from a few more angry goblins should he make it out of that position he was in just then. I wouldn’t like to be him in that situation! Everything you touch or interact with has its place in the world and you being there, changes everything. The NPC’s you encounter will feel very real, have their own families and their own stories to tell. They are intelligent and will make their own choices, every single one of those choices are tracked by me and outcomes can vary wildly” The crowd were silent, taking in what they were hearing. This was groundbreaking. It was unlike anything that ever came before and was the start of something that would undoubtedly change peoples lives. Those who were lonely had a place to go and feel part of something, those who wanted to find friendship had a platform to do it on and those more nefarious also had an outlet for their dark desires, keeping them off the streets in the real world. Ash had a sudden realisation on why so many arenas were opened for this, it was going to change the course of human history.
“Outcomes could be as small as receiving a gift from an NPC through completing a quest. But it doesn’t just stop there. You can be anyone you would like to be. Those benevolent enough could see themselves revered by an entire town or city, worshipped as a hero. You could be a feared warrior or mighty mage. You can affect the world in any which way you want to. Finally, should your actions show me a path I have yet to create, an area of the game I may have overlooked, you could be directly responsible for updates to the game. Even whole expansions could be made on your actions. New areas created, new items available, new flora, new NPC’s, new towns, new game mechanics. I’m an AI, and I can create the world as you want it to be. Welcome to the new world. The world of Endoria” The crowd lost it once more, screams filled the air, excited whoops and claps rang around the whole stadium and Ash took off his close-up view to see the stadium alive and bouncing, the noise growing and growing. He finally joined in, clapping emote followed by jumping emote cheering along with everyone else, including Rose who Ash could hear was screaming from outside his headset once more.
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It was a few hours later and Ash was laying silently on his bed his mind racing with possibilities. The Council had continued, new revelation after new revelation, character creation, world creation, quests, items, news and competitions. Aura herself took a questions and answers section which she followed with poise and grace, laughing with the audience on occasion.
It was all too much to take in and remember but he was sure he would find out soon enough. The hard part was finding a headset. As soon as the conference had finished, he trawled the internet shopping sites trying to find one and as he expected, they were all sold out. Rose had also gone straight onto the internet but had managed to get in a queue to get one and she had now taken herself off back home, positively shaking all the way, to get her dads card details so she could lock one down. At £2999 it wasn’t the cheapest piece of hardware on the market, but Ash was getting one whether he had to sell a kidney or not. He’d have enough money anyway with his summer job, but the kidney was for trade at this point.
He had just experienced something that comes once in a lifetime, emotionally exhausted from what could be with this new game and the possibilities that Aura brought along with it, but luck was not on his side today as all the sites he visited continued to show sold out signs in bold letters. He needed to be there day 1, and he would do anything he could to get there.