Date: December 3rd, 3067
Place: Enthropia Gaming Facility, New York City.
Thud
'!?'
"Hurry up! Check his neural functioning and heart condition!" urged a woman as her eyes reflected the sudden fall of a young man out of a gaming capsule, his hands removing the gas mask from his face.
She barely stood four feet tall, often mistaken for a child due to her height.
However, the white coat she wore, paired with almond-shaped eyes that betrayed her concern, revealed her mature age as she dashed toward the center of the sterile, white laboratory, bustling with paramedics and developers.
"Someone give me a Coke!" Joseph yelled, breathing heavily as he gasped, just wanting to drink something nostalgic after spending 24 years of his life in a virtual world.
"Y-yes," Even in a moment of hurriedness, following Joseph's demand, the woman snatched a glass of blank carbonated drink from a nearby female employee who had already drunk half of it, hurling it while yelling, "Get the doctors to the central lab immediately!"
"Haah...! N-no, I'm fine!" Joseph yelled, still feeling the intense heat radiating from his body, a consequence of his previous actions of overloading the gaming engines of the gaming capsule, but it appeared it wasn't the only consequence.
[ERROR]
[Analytical Neural Engine is falling into Overdrive mode]
'What the?', Joseph seemed to hear a voice in his head, most likely indicating that his brain's ANe Chip (Analytical Neural Engine Chip)—nicknamed Doodle—had also malfunctioned for some reason.
[Checking the malfunctioning—ERROR]
[Reading through logs—ERROR]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[Reboot Initiated.]
'....'
'....Hello?'
'...doodle?'
'.....'
'Shit.'
'Aunt will kill me!'
Realizing that, due to his choices, he may have destroyed his mind's neural chip as well, which was unique in this world since the ones who made it were already dead.
'Sorry, Mom, Dad.' Realizing he had just destroyed the last invention left behind by his parents, he clenched his eyes tightly while his face was towards the floor, begging and praying in his mind before snapping his eyes open, mustering a poker face, exhaling as if nothing had happened.
He slowly stood up, his hands supported by his knees, brushing off the dust from his tight black suit, which carried hundreds of micro wires specifically designed to monitor his vital signs.
Surrounding him were dozens of large monitors displaying his heart rate, brain activity, and various other metrics.
"You should have logged out instead of pushing yourself to this limit, you idiot!" the woman exclaimed, her panic evident as she noticed his heart rate had already spiked to over 200 beats per minute.
She was visibly shaken, with eyes reddened due to worry after seeing his last moments' reckless decision, making her own heart rate reach around his level—leading to anger.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Nothing happened, Aunt, definitely... Nothing, yeah—!" He just lifted one hand, waving with a robotic poker face, his eyes looking at the short woman hurling a frustrated expression at him, which soon turned into a swift swing of her fist.
Bam!
The height difference sealed his fate as her fist crashed straight into his future.
His family tree wasn't just shaken—it was yanked out by the roots, tossed into a pressure cooker, fried to a crisp, and buried six feet under.
On the other side of the river, he could even see his dead parents mourning their grandchildren's death.
"Khuck! Ugh—thud—Someone test my children! I repeat, they are dead! They are dead!" As he attempted to open his suit due to heightened discomfort, a sudden sharp pain struck his groin, knocking him down to the ground.
The height difference meant her punch landed in an incredibly sensitive area, sending a pain signal comparable to that of his body burning due to Etherite core self-destruction.
Curled up on the floor, his hands instinctively moved to shield himself while several lab-coated individuals rushed over.
They quickly examined him and worked to remove the suit by clicking open its joints, revealing his reddened skin beneath.
Joseph knew that not only had he failed to save his kingdom in the game, but he had also compromised his own physical well-being, and maybe, after that hit, lost his future generations too.
'Ugh, plan canceled! I am not going to tell her.' After receiving such a brutal punch, he knew that if he were to reveal that he had also short-circuited the analytical engine in his brain, this would most likely not just end with his upcoming generation's death.
"W-wait? S-sorry, did I hit too hard?" the woman inquired, her expression softening upon seeing the redness on his skin. She realized that the overload mechanism she had personally adjusted had failed to provide him with a safe exit, largely because he had chosen not to log out and blasted himself.
She knelt next to him, placing the glass of cold drink on the floor, and sighed. "I'm sorry for hitting you like this, but you really should have logged out, you idiot, you know how anxious I was?"
"Heh, and leave those rotten Excovian apples hanging in mid-air? I'm a fan of Newton, you know," Joseph replied, finally having the opportunity to express himself rather than simply focusing on the pain bombarding his mind.
The anguish he felt from the sharp pain was far too small in comparison to the regret of not being able to defeat the Excovian race in the end.
"Sir, can you lie down comfortably?" asked a paramedic holding a metal syringe, carefully tying a cloth around Joseph's arm to make the veins more visible. "Please try to remain still."
"Oh, yes—"
"Give me that," Sophia interjected, swiftly taking the syringe from the paramedic's hands and injecting a calming agent into Joseph to stabilize his rapidly sparking heart rate.
"I may have developed a crush on you that's leading to my heart racing like this, Aunt," Joseph chuckled, staring up at the bright ceiling as the white light illuminated the entire testing division of the Enthropia Gaming Facility.
It was the year 3067, an era of advanced technology.
Contrary to earlier predictions about space exploration, the most lucrative market was now dominated by immersive simulation gameplay. This shift had led to the emergence of numerous job opportunities for gaming enthusiasts like him and his brother.
A decade ago, during a testing incident involving the same game, Joseph's brother had suffered a tragic accident that left his neural network severely damaged.
While he remained alive, over 80% of his brain had been rendered nonfunctional, leaving him in a state that barely supported life.
"Your brother's condition has nothing to do with this game," Sophia said, interrupting Joseph's spiraling thoughts. "Why do you treat this game like it's some reality?"
She was fully aware of the circumstances surrounding Joseph's brother—how a technical error had drastically altered the course of their lives.
Given the astronomical costs of treatment, it was a burden that weighed heavily on Joseph, although his pioneering career in the gaming industry afforded him some financial stability, unlike his brother, who had only just started his journey at the time of the accident.
"It's just... Aunt, do you think that the Excovians' ability to eat brains and my brother's brain damage are just a coincidence?" he casually mentioned, reflecting on those last moments of annihilation in the endgame where his brother had faced a similar fate and fought against the same harbingers of the whole planet.
After struggling throughout the game and reaching an end that mirrored the accident his brother went through, he found himself grappling with the implications of brain damage and the Excovian race's unique habit of using human brains as pilot engines, which seemed like somewhat too much of a coincidence.
"Stop it; you play video games way too much. Reality isn't like that," she replied, shaking her head.
Her mind wandered back to the tragic accident a decade ago—a short circuit in the entire capsule's interface during an event in which the final battle between Excovians and the last remaining humans was taking place, and they had just opened up the cranium of his brother in the game after his defeat.
But suddenly, a failure occurred.
The machines had failed, and a coding error had caused an overload, leading to a catastrophic malfunction.
The aftermath of that day had plunged her husband—the leading developer and director of the endgame's main gaming engine—into a deep depression, given that Joseph and his brother—Raven—were more than sons to them.
Yet, who could have predicted that Joseph would choose this path through gaming and thrive?
He had achieved remarkable feats, earning titles like Gaming Vanguard and Pioneer of Play.
Just a few months ago, she had overheard him expressing a desire to become a tester for the very same game that had led to his brother's tragic fate. This prompted her to get involved, as Enthropia Gaming Corporation belonged to her father, giving her an easy path to switch her husband's position and become the lead development director herself.
She did not trust her husband and let Joseph work under him.
She took the necessary measures to protect her sister's son, but he?
"Haah, yes, you're right," Joseph sighed, covering his eyes with his arm as he allowed the paramedics to assist him in removing his suit. Beneath his reddened skin was a somewhat muscular physique, with him wearing only boxer shorts.
He had just spent 34 hours inside, and while it might seem like a short period for a gamer, the mind acceleration technology made those hours feel like an entire lifetime—24 years—leaving him mentally drained.
Despite his exhaustion and the torrent of memories threatening to overwhelm him, he remained steadfast, primarily because he was the first human to have an AI Neural Processor Analytical Engine chip implanted in his mind, helping him differentiate between reality and fiction.
Humanity had progressed beyond merely advancing technology to control their equipment through brain waves; they had developed sophisticated neural chips with higher intelligence capabilities to assist the humans but none of them were this advanced.
Despite advancements in AI, it cannot replicate the creativity, intuition, and consciousness that humans naturally possess. While AI can process data and learn from it, it lacks the emotional depth and self-awareness that enable humans to adapt and think in complex, personal ways.
Leading it to become an assistant rather than an independent identity.
Unfortunately, Joseph was the only successful experiment currently possessing the advanced analytical engine—one that was created by his parents—since most of the attempts had ended in failure due to their brains being incompatible.
Tring
"Hello?"
"WH-WHAT!?"
"Lady Sophia! We have just received a call from City Hospital. Master Raven... h-he..." Suddenly, the assistant, receiving a call, rushed to Joseph's lying body. As his ears perked up due to reflexes honed by simulation gaming, he was the first to catch up, yet the last one who wanted to hear that news:
"H-his heartbeat has stopped functioning."
'!'