Jim's PoV

Jim looked at the equipment he 'liberated' from 3D Tech and sighed. Charlotte was someone who always had to have the last laugh, so it wouldn't surprise him if she filed charges with the police. She would be in the right too, he was a thief after all. But he was the cool kind of thief, or so he told himself.

He briefly thought of going back to work but then dismissed it. Jim was honest with himself and knew the main reason he wanted to keep the technology to himself was selfishness. This technology was going to change the world, and when these dumb investors were looking at the seed of what was possible they couldn't even see its true value. The thought of soulless money driven idiots getting ahold of what he could do made him angry.

It was true that without the money to fund his experiments it would not have been possible, but it was also true that over fifty people were working on the same project and he was the only one that was making any headway on the big problems. So, selfish? Yes, but he thought he had at least earned some of the right to be.

Even if he did get charged with a crime, he felt like he had a golden get out of jail free card in his back pocket. If things got too serious he could always try to leverage his knowledge. As scummy as that scenario seemed, it felt like a calculated risk. Even in the worse case scenario he felt like he had an ace up his sleeve.

So with that decision made, it was time to make a plan before he got arrested. He would prefer putting off getting arrested for a few days, so his new operation he dubbed "Jim's Vacation."

On the plus side he could enter and exit his game world whenever he wanted even without the equipment. Everything was already installed in his head, so that meant no one could take it away from him. But if he lost control of his equipment he wouldn't be able to install anything new or make any of the needed changes he had in mind for version two.

Not to mention the hundreds of other things just waiting to be unlocked and fiddled with. But without the helmet he would be severely limited. That device would be the hardest thing to recreate.

The amount of miniaturization in the thing was staggering. Even with the schematics it would take years just to rebuild the thing. A lot of that time would be rebuilding the specialized tools, which there were tons of. All that work just to build the connection between a human mind and a computer.

Without that basic connection there wouldn't be much he could do with all the toys he had at his disposal. All his saved data and breakthroughs would be irrelevant if he didn't have access to the helmet. It would be like having the keys to a car that was locked up in a bank vault.

Both the key and the car were useless by themselves. Only when they were put together did they unlock their potential. His knowledge was the key and the hardware was the car. He really wanted to hold on to it so he could fiddle for a while.

One project he really needed to get started on was building a PC inside his head. There were so many advantages to having one in his noggin. The first and best would be that he would be able to make modifications within his own head without the ultra expensive helmet.

In theory it should be a simple thing with the knowledge he had, but still it was going to take some time to double and triple check everything. After all he did not want to become Vegetable Jim.

Also if he happened to get arrested he would have the most enjoyable stay at prison ever. It would be the equivalent of locking a kid up in a room that had every gaming console with every game ever made. On the down side everything would be single player.

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Without the helmet it was the equivalent of having a computer without the internet. Still not a bad way to spend a few years if that's what he wanted. But that hinged on him making the computer in his head before the men in blue found him, otherwise he would be playing the same game over and over. Very lame, he had work to do.

Jim packed his bags and supplies. It was time for a road trip! He figured if he could stay away for a week then his problems might be solved. By then Charlotte should have better things to worry about then what he was up to. Maybe it would be possible to keep his equipment if that happened.

Even if things didn't work out quite that well, he could still play around in his new yet old game. It was a much better outcome than spending years of his life trying to recreate the helmet for his personal use. He was happy with his decision and would own up to the fall out when it happened. Should be fun!

Jim took the closest interstate and started traveling. He always loved traveling on the road with the windows down. Feeling the wind hit his face as he thought about his next steps relaxed him. He loved driving in weather like this when he had a problem to solve.

The cool night air really refreshed him. He had some of his best ideas while gnawing on a problem while behind a wheel. Several minutes passed as he bobbed his head in tune with the music on the radio. Seeing his exit come up he merged right and exited the interstate.

With annoyance he felt something biting at his toe. Irritated that a bug somehow got into his shoe, he tried to wiggle his foot around to kill the evil little buggers. It still kept happening though. The biting continued. Little bastards! Jim violently started wiggling his toes but it was ineffective.

While looking down at his foot something weird happened. His right eye unfocused for some reason and he rubbed it. After opening it again something was wrong. His right eye was no longer seeing the same thing as his left eye.

The left eye was seeing his foot on the pedal in a perfectly good shoe, while his right eye was seeing a cute little wolf chewing on his toe. What the hell? He knew he had a nice pair of leather boots on in the game! Why in the world was he staring at a foot with no boot? After thinking about it for a second, Jim figured that was probably the last question he should be asking.

He glared at the wolf with his one eye and it looked back at him and let out a whine. Oddly the wolf didn't seem playful, nor did it seem aggressive. Jim tried to focus but unlike his world which was illuminated by lamp posts and headlights, the game world was pitch black. The wolf then looked at something in the darkness and put its ears back while hunching down in between Jim's legs.

The whine reminded him of the fear he saw in their starving parents before they had died. His memory replayed the older starving wolves' submission and death. Irrational guilt flashed in his mind. It was just a game, those wolves were not real.

Looking back at the wolf pups he realized it was not him that seemed to be the cause of this fear. That made him focus on the surroundings while the pups were hiding behind his leg. It took a lot of concentration driving while keeping an eye on the road and seeing through the game world with his other eye.

Jim adjusted his sight using the sense options he created and adjusted his sight to near max. Oddly he was doing the same movement in both worlds. While dragging the adjustment bar for sight he had actually hit the roof of his car. His vision pierced the darkness and instantly he saw something that didn't belong.

Not far away a raptor-like creature was hunched over and was ready to pounce at the cute little tormentors at his feet. The next moments seemed to slow down as Jim reached to the left and grabbed the raptors skull and crushed it in a single fluid movement. Glancing back down to the little wolf cubs he saw they were looking more relaxed and they started licking his other boot. Jim sighed as his eye adjusted back to normal.

Only then did he notice his left hand was still outstretched in a crushing fist, just like it had been inside the game moments ago. Jim was a little bemused as he looked up and saw someone staring back at him while he was still looking at his closed fist.

Damn, why are there so many street lights nowadays? There was an old lady who was on the lane to his right who was looking affronted. The old woman started yelling "Get off the road you pot smoking degenerate!"

He quickly dropped his hand and drove a little faster. Soon the old lady dropped from sight. What the hell was that?

He looked back down at his feet and the weird sensation took over his right eye once again. Jim looked at the corpse of the raptor. After a second of scanning he saw the two little wolves were on the other side of it chowing down. As he watched the wolf pups munch the now dead raptor, he was beginning to realize that something was terribly wrong.