Shard smiled at Ezekiel. "Why don't you step on up, and I'll explain. It'll ask if you authorize the three credit payment; it detects what you say, and anticipates a future based on that."
Ezekiel sighed.. and stepped up onto the platform surrounding the podium. Almost immediately, a vibrant glowing image appeared over it. There was a menu, beneath it; but a question over the top covered it.
Eternity, Incorporated employee designate 'Shard 623' has offered to assist you at the rate of 3 credits per day, at a minimum of 3 credits. With your current credit balance and income, you can afford this indefinitely. You may cancel this at any time. Would you like to hire this individual? Note that 1 credit is good for 1 24-hour span of vacation time, and if you subject the employee to unusual duress it will automatically increase the pay rate, up to a maximum of one hundred credits per day. Yes / No
He blinked, staring at the menu. "...What sort of duress would increase it to a hundred credits per day?"
"Oh, torture, rape, abuse of various sorts, the sort of job that involves being eaten alive.... Someone who has to spend a few years at a particularly terrible job might get centuries of vacation time out of it; usually that sort of duress also comes with therapy."
"This... is sounding unpleasant. Why would I want to do that?" He frowned, looking at Shard.
"While most of the worlds accessible here in Eternity are real worlds, with real populations, there are a few hand-crafted to either the tastes of a prime, or to a corporation for sale purposes. Your records state that you were a major fan of the immersive VR game, The Shattered World?"
"Yeah. Especially once I got older, and I could get to pretend like I was young, healthy, vibrant again. I took some painkillers, put the headset on... and I was sailing a flying ship, fighting pirates.." He smiled. "It was great. What about it?"
"One of the crafted universes is an analogue of The Shattered World. It has been running for three-hundred in-game years, so things have changed quite a bit from when you were alive, but much is still recognizable about it. This world includes both the ordinary people living in it, the terrans like yourself who take on roles inside it, and also living players, creating characters, exploring. The dead often get roles like tavern wench, villainous gnoll, pet imp, and the like. The... 'game masters' use a variety of forces, including such summoned creatures, to keep the war going, keep it 'fun' for the players. The Imperium that rules the oceans should have won several times by now; but they keep kicking it back down."
Shade turned to Ezekiel. "Some of the things players do to these summoned creatures, some of the positions these game masters put them in... well. There's a reason they can earn a year's vacation in three days. Imagine what the most sadistic and depraved of your own world would do if they could inhabit an artificial body, and summon up a pet humanoid who was forced to obey them."
Ezekiel blinked. "Oh. That... why do they do that? Why not use AI for it?"
"The Primes prefer it this way. And, well. It helps make the company more money."
"..Okay. So where is Eternity? Where are we now?"
Shard pulled back the black mask; revealing a human, androgynous face. Ezekiel had no idea whether Shard was male or female; just a generic face the same tone as his own. "May I have permission to change our current scene?"
"Sure? Do you need that?"
Shade stepped close to Ezekiel; and pressed a button only he could see. Suddenly... the grey walls were gone. The floor extended only a few feet away from the podium; and they appeared to be floating in space, in the void. A star could be seen off in the distance; and below them... a metallic construct of some sort; made of a seemingly endless web of tubes, cables, and boxes, stretching out in all directions.
"That, down there, is Eternity. This is a dimension inimical to organic life, in that the chemical reactions in your brain can't occur here; muscles won't contract, you won't see, your heart won't beat. For a computer, however? It can run for, well. Eternity. Never running out of power, never overheating, never degrading. Every component here has been tested and re-test a thousand times, and rejected if it has even the smallest flaw. Right there..." One of the metallic boxes suddenly glowed, highlighted in blue.
"That is where your brain is. It's been altered; chips inserted, your neurons replaced. And here.." A different, massive, spherical object glowed. "Is the gateway. A path to another universe, the one where the work is done. This is where you think. Where the brain lives. Your body? Can be all sorts of other places. You could take on a new body, being summoned to another world. Possess a body of one of the natives. Go visit one of the many universes out there. Or, stay here."
The image vanished. Suddenly, it was the grey room again. "This is your home. A simulated space you can purchase furniture for. Walls. Floors. Fresh air. Thirty meters to a side, the only thing you can't change is that it must have this interface inside it, somewhere you can reach. You can invite others to visit, or connect it to the homes of others; many live in neighborhoods or even cities of interconnected homes. Take a look at your interface."
Ezekiel looked down at the pillar; a string of buttons had appeared across the top. Each of which seemed to have a drop-down menu to access further data.
Communications Banking Explorer Gateway Shopping Home Logs
"That 'Home' option there? You pick that, you can switch this with any of the free options. It'll also show you paid options, and automatically switch you to 'Shopping' if you pick them to ask if you want to buy. There are a few templates full of freeware options. Anything made by any brand-name company, you have to shop fore. The free stuff was either made by Eternity, or volunteers. Go ahead and pick Home, and Templates... and load a free template."
He stared at the menu for a moment; selecting Home, which brought up a new menu of options.
Return Templates Furniture Housing Landscape Raw Materials Animals Consumables
He stared for just a moment. When he picked 'Templates', thousands of options appeared; but at the top, a few dozen had the 'Free' label beside them; Generic Cabin, Generic Apartment, and Generic House were the top three. He blinked; and picked Generic Cabin.
After a moment, he was standing in... a single-roomed small cabin. He could hear the tweeting of birds outside, see windows, a bed; the place was full of simple, basic, wooden furniture, all of which seemed to be made of absolute purely brown wood; no wood-grain to it at all. It was all blocky, as if it were somewhat poorly rendered; and he stepped to the door, looking out at a simple grass lawn. The grass seemed... off. It was all uniform in height, and while he could see the forest in every direction... there was a subtle grey marker on the grass; a line through it.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
With Shard following close behind, he walked forward; and gently reached out; finding an invisible wall where the forest began. "This... it looks real, and yet not. Like a cheap CGI version of a cabin."
"The good stuff costs credits. The 500-credit version of this looks amazing; a package sold by IKEA, if I recall correctly. An hundred thousand credits buys you a nice chunk of land around it to wander in that you can permanently effect... and a smaller area around you, that lets you wander, explore, a procedurally generated wilderness, whose changes you make are only temporary, forever."
"Well, until you run out of storage space, or power."
"No. Literally forever; thats why the changes are temporary. The human mind will eventually start to forget things, blend similar details together, so its capacity is limited. I think you can get maybe a thousand years or so worth of really vivid memories, max. But you could buy a package and just start... wandering. Meet procedurally generated animals, walk through forests, deserts, jungles... and come back to your cabin when you got tired, or bored."
"Like Minecraft. Only real. Would I meet other explorers? See signs of them?"
"Only if you wanted to... and they'd passed there recently. If you cut down a tree to make a river, and someone else finds the same river next week, the bridge is gone."
He runs his fingers along the invisible wall. It doesn't feel like anything. As if his hand simply... stops.
"What would you recommend doing?" He turned to Shard, who was standing in the doorway, looking amused.
"Oh. I would recommend using as much of your credits as possible to buy more shares in the company. That'd put you almost to gold level, and generate a steady, passive, income stream from additional dividends. I'd also recommend getting a job or two. Playing the bronze-level game and see what things are like for people. Maybe spend a few credits to make sure your job isn't too crappy, but still earns you a few. And, of course, look up your friends after that. See if you can find your old family, so forth. Some people just forget about that, and start over fresh, others... well. They decide to go further."
He nodded, and walked back into the cabin, whistling to himself; and to the podium standing in the floor. It now looked to be made of the same almost-wood as the rest of the cabin; but the same menu appeared. This time, he selected 'Banking'.
Return Welcome to your 'Eternity' bank account, customer Ezekiel! Account Type Balance Value Eternity, Incorporated Shares 10 8173052.86 Credits 9875611 9875611 Shattered World Gold 500 5 Bitcoin 7 5.21 Dollars(American) 0.17 0.17
Ezekiel stared at the screen for a moment. "My... Bitcoins were worth hundreds of thousands, last I remembered. Its... less than a dollar each now?"
"Ahh, Bitcoin. That's one of those currencies that was dependent on processing power to acquire more, correct?"
"Mostly, sure."
"Early on, a group of Eternity technicians, back when it was still called Everest Technologies, took advantage of some of the excess processing power to... well. Corner the market on all of the currencies that used that methodology. The only value those currency have now is nostalgic."
Ezekiel chuckled. One of his friends had warned him that dollars would be worthless, the stock market would collapse; that he should invest in limited-quantity things... like Bitcoin and gold. "Thats amusing. I noticed a Shattered World gold count. I had thousands in that game. Why only five hundred?"
"Ahh, all of that was, for the most part, reset when they started the new world. Once it was shaped, they formed the empires, started the world... then introduced the players for the first time. They did award starting players bonus coins for what they had in the older version, up to a 500 coin maximum."
As he watched, the value of the stock shares, and the credit count, shifted. He gained another few credits, and the stock grew slightly cheaper. ".. These are updated in real time?"
"Of course."
"So... I've earned more in dividends than the current value of my stock?"
"You were dead for a long time. It cost over a hundred thousand dollars to bring you back. For most of the frozen people, that would be a hundred thousand credit debt. The typical frozen person who gets thawed out and fixed needs to work for a hundred years or more to get back into the positives. For you, it just meant you didn't start with quite as much."
Ezekiel nodded thoughtfully. "So. If I buy another ten shares, I double my passive income over time, and still have a million left. And can sell some if I want later?"
"Of course."
"...Can I see a chart of historical share prices?"
Shard laughed. "Its a decent price, now. If you hit return, you can open up Explorer.. its essentially just a web-browser... and surf the internet to your heart's content. Just search for eternity stock price."
Ezekiel chuckled. Here he was, dead, and still worried about money. He tabbed back to the main menu; and a web-browser popped up. Surprisingly enough, he was still able to sign in to his old google accounts and see an enormous email backlog; even after being dead for decades, he was still getting advertisements sent from the local hardware store. Ignoring all of that, he checked Eternity's stock value.
It seemed there had been a recent dip after the latest news report; some country he'd never heard of had banned the company from operating in its borders for religious reasons, and ordered any of its citizens who were... chipped? To remove the chips, or face imprisonment; or execution. Many of them were choosing suicide, and a civil war was brewing.
He blinked. "What is 'chipped?"
"Oh, most people get brain-chips built-in as they grow up. They record their brain-waves over time, and after a few years, form a complete enough picture to bring them back here. Much, much cheaper than analyzing a corpse, which, itself, is cheaper than analyzing a -frozen- corpse. Became really popular about... twenty years ago."
Ezekiel nodded... and saw that the stock was already starting to rise from its earlier dip. He backtracked; and used the 'Banking' application to buy ten shares; and saw his credit balance drop to just barely shy of 1.8 million.
Almost immediately, the total ticked up slightly, crossing that threshold. He chuckled. "Okay. So I'm doing well, and as long as I don't fuck up, should be doing well for a long time to come. You said I should take a job?"
"Exactly. You can try Shattered Worlds, if you like, since you're familiar with that universe, and have a bit of starting gold. But getting experience living and dying a few times, dealing with what the people of the worlds deal with, will really help you out, going forward. Some of the silver and gold players who don't need to work get out of touch, waste their credits on something ridiculous, and end up trapped in a bad situation. And since you've paid for the day, I'll be able to talk you through things at first."
"Would that be the... Gateway tab?"
Shard blinked, as Ezekiel pressed at the buttons to return to the main menu. "Well, yes. You could start it right now. But don't you want to customize your house, contact your friends and family? Some of them might be waiting for you."
"Ehh. None of them really cared about me, by the end. I spent most of my last few years in the game. The idea of getting to feel it, as a real world, with a real body... I would've given anything for that. And now..."
He tapped the 'Gateway' button. Amusingly enough, likely thanks to his gold count, Shattered Worlds appeared at the very top of the list; showing an image of a floating island, and some sort of insect-person wielding a spear, with the ocean far below. He remembered those insect-people. A fun playable race; you made a tough, slow, 'queen' of sorts, and had a swarm of pets you hatched that did most of the work. One of the many rebellious races of the islands, fighting the might of the Triakan empire.
Most of his friends had been more boring. The game hadn't started with any human-analogues at all; and had only added the blue-skinned human-like folk in the first expansion thanks to popular demand, in the hopes of drawing in more players; they'd all switched to those almost immediately, making him the most powerful member of their guild for... well. The entire rest of the time he could remember, actually.
There'd actually been a running gag, thanks to the uncensored nature of the game, that the blue-skinned humanoids couldn't use their magic while wearing much clothing; far too many players wandered around in scantily-clad female forms until it became time to fight.
He smiled, thinking back to all the quests, the joys of playing the game... thats where his real friends had been the last few years. He selected the option. He was ready to go back.