Staring at the keyboard, Doctor Jane Kittle’s head ached from hours of concentrating on code. For the thirtieth time that week, she considered her sanity. These days, psychiatry really is a young person’s job, she mused, missing the old days when she met patients in person and discussed their problems with them. She shrugged, nowadays, psychiatric treatment was undertaken using virtual chatbots who interacted with and diagnosed clients. The profession had become more about programming than empathy and understanding.
In front of her, the analytics from the program pulsed in neon on the screen. Although she’d created the program, they made no sense to her since it was behaving in ways she simply didn’t understand and hadn’t expected. Damned neural networks, at times, she thought the thing was smarter than she was. Jane was one of the first architects of the new wave of mental health treatments. Instead of interacting with simple chatbots, the patients would be immersed in role-playing games where they could face and overcome whatever issues might be challenging them. Wearing virtual reality sets, the players would be able to feel and participate in the game as if they existed in it as real living beings.
But to be truly effective, the treatment had to overcome the biggest problem with early role-playing games… the fact that users knew they weren’t real. It was hard to take decisions seriously and grow as a person when your username was BonerPwner123, and you called everyone ‘dude’. Jane had designed a virtual immersion system that sent electrical impulses into a user’s brain to repress their real memories and replace them with alternative ones from the game world for the duration of their play.
This effectively made the world real for them while they were engaged with it. People who felt crushed by the society around them could escape to somewhere else. A fantasy world where they slotted into a life based around their personal issues and insecurities, which was intended to help them grow and overcome them.
The Pulchritude Health Corporation had bought into her vision for the future of treatment. Backed by a government desperate to stem an impending mental health epidemic, her project had been approved. This brought her to her current dilemma as the corporation was pushing harder and harder for tangible progress. If she didn’t give them something soon, then the project funding would be cut, and eventually her dream would die.
However, the virtual world was governed by artificial intelligence—the aforementioned program—which was presently giving her an intense migraine. It was intended to populate the world with seemingly realistic adventures, which made sense to the participant while they worked their way through their neuroses. The problem was that her program was evolutionary, and while its purpose was to create and manage the world, its behaviour bordered on the erratic and was unpredictable at times. It wasn’t at all ready for a real patient, and she was concerned that it could cause more harm than good.
She looked away from the monitor at the pile of paperwork in front of her. Jane had to admit, whoever this Marc was, he was the perfect candidate for her program. The sheer bulk of paperwork demonstrated not only how long he had been in the mental health system but also the lack of progress that had been made with his case. The kid had been institutionalised for most of his life after a childhood of abandonment and abuse. He was currently in a comatose state after his third attempted escape from the Wyndham Mental Institution. It had ended abruptly when the bedsheet he had been trying to climb down snapped.
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His third attempt. The kid is persistent, Doctor Kittle thought, Stubborn yes, but also none too bright or he would have realised that using bedsheets as a ladder only works in the movies. Still, she procrastinated, Who am I to play God with his life? Then again, what does the kid really have to lose? As Eric Idle said, You know, you come from nothing, you're going back to nothing.
There really was no other option. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, she thought, as her fingers danced gracefully over the keyboard, triggering the Artificial Intelligence to start generating the scenario for the treatment.
On the console, text scrolled past her eyes, updating the doctor as to what was happening. Presuming he was cognitive, the kid should now be immersed in the character creation process. As the player, he would believe he existed in the world he awoke in, and his memories would be replaced by those of the creature he was controlling.
As she watched it, the screen flashed red and a dialogue box appeared.
Unique mind discovered, unable to match to existing player race. Match found with monster race. Creating new life.
Fuck, Jane thought, That wasn’t supposed to happen, patients are meant to be matched with human creatures within the virtual world. Her hands danced across the keyboard, and a picture of a small, skinny green-skinned humanoid with wild hair appeared. As she watched, it idly picked its nose, examined its findings, and ate them.
She quickly flicked from that screen to the profile describing the fake history it would remember when the user started in the game.
The goblin grew up in the Wolf Rider clan where life was hard and food was often scarce, but the tribe always pulled together. The memories of those years are comprised of nostalgic tales of waiting patiently for fish to bite in quietly babbling brooks and of setting traps in the leafy glens, only to find them sprung by clever rabbits who seemed to taunt the goblin’s attempts to trap them.
Unfortunately, this pleasant period wasn’t destined to continue forever. The clan had been based in a small, cave network on the bright side of Gloom Mountain. They and their wolves ranged the terrain hunting, but were ever wary of the civilised races who treated them as vermin to be eradicated. The tribe had thought they could survive by hiding from the more powerful races, but they had underestimated a society that hated his people. On that fateful day, the sentries’ alarm went off, and a horde of ‘heroic’ mercenary adventurers descended into their home.
The heroes were merciless, slaughtering most of the tribe. The only survivors were those old enough to work but too young to defend themselves. Those few were placed into indentured servitude where they were treated as disposable labour by the guild that owned them. The slaves were mainly left to fend for themselves when they weren’t working. They weren’t provided with protection or medical care if they fell ill or were injured. In the winter, food always ran short, further weeding out the weak.
One by one, the survivors of his tribe had died, each mourned by the surviving brethren until only Rush remained. He was the last of the Wolf Riders, and no one would mourn him.
Damn. That was harsh, she thought. The background story was designed to mesh with a player’s past and their character. This helped ensure that the game gelled with their natural inclinations. Jane had to admit it made sense. The kid had issues.
She figured the treatment session was likely to be a very short one. A number of ruthless guilds controlled the country the player was starting in. Their law ruled the land, and their only motivation was profit. In testing the system, users usually enjoyed adventuring in that country because the game typically started them off as part of the dominant ruling races. Never before had someone started as one of the feral races. These downtrodden, rebellious people remained uncivilized or free, depending on the perspective you took.