Chapter 2: The Beginning of the Project
I have been trapped in this darkness for who know how long now since there is no sense of time here. I guess I died and this must be the afterlife. My family and Veronica will probably be devastated. Then Veronica will probably be pissed at me for her first boyfriend to die on her. Well this royally sucks.
Suddenly a flash of bright white light temporarily blinded me.
As I opened my eyes all I could see was a white room that looked similar to a clean room.
???: “Did it work? Hey Chris can you hear me?”
Chris: “God is that you and is this heaven?” I replied groggily.
God?: “It’s good to hear your voice again son and you’re not quite dead.”
The image of a handsome blonde man started to digitally appear in the room as I sat up on the floor of the room.
Chris: “Dad!” I exclaimed happily looking at the man I thought I would never see again. “So what happened to me?”
Robert: “Well as far as we can tell you were mugged in the parking garage. I found you not about 10 minutes after you were supposed to leave with your wallet emptied of cash and sitting on your chest. Fortunately he didn’t take the real version of this.” He then handed me the little ring box that contained the ring meant for Veronica. “Don’t worry the real one is safe at the house.”
My eyes teared up as I realized I may not ever be able to use it for its intended purpose.
Chris: “If I’m where I think I am now, just how bad was I hurt by the mugger dad?”
I looked at my dad to see a sad look on his face.
Robert: “To give you the short version, you’ve become trapped in your own body and lost access to all of your senses, at least in the physical world. The good news is that your brain isn’t damaged just cut off. Hence the reason you have a perfectly functioning body in this “world”.”
Chris: “Then you finished the prototype of the VR pod, nice job dad. So what’s going to happen now?”
Robert: “Well you and the volunteer are going to become the test subjects for Project O.I. aka Original Intent.”
Chris: “You actually got someone to volunteer for Project O.I.? Who would be crazy enough to willingly risk their life and mental health for this project?” I responded in a surprised voice.
As soon as I said that I got a hard slap against the back of my head before a very familiar voice responded.
Veronica: “What a way to describe the person who has been worried sick spending a month in the hospital next to you. Geez you can be really dense sometimes.” The blue haired vixen said while pouting a little.
I turned around to see Veronica looking ragged as if she had been crying for the full month it took to finish the special prototype VR pods we had been building in the Ghost Tec lab. I gave her a big bear hug and short kiss since I thought I would never see her again.
Chris: “Before I forget, let me take care of what I was going to do during the date I missed.”
Veronica looked at me with a puzzled expression as I got down on one knee and offered the virtual version of the little black box and the ring it contained to her.
Chris: “Veronica Simmons, will you marry me?”
She started to cry as she hugged me around my neck.
Veronica: “Yes I will marry you, you lucky idiot.”
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A 27 year old man with short green hair stood looking at the adopted cousin, who he considered a more of a brother, floating in the specially designed life support version of the Project O.I. VR pod. Shawn Ghost looked at the identical pod next to the one that contained Chris and knew that at least his cousin could have some happiness even if the project failed.
The Ghost family had lived together ever since the accident that took the life of Shawn’s mother and Linda’s unborn child, ability to have children and ability to walk.
The smaller commercial version of the Ghost VR pod, that was as an interface to the virtual space holding his “brother” and “sister-in-law”, opened and a blonde man who Shawn looked similar to stepped out.
Shawn: “So how did it go Uncle Robert, did she say yes?”
Robert Ghost had a big grin on his face as he responded.
Robert: “Yes she did, just like we thought she would.”
Shawn: “I’m glad just Chris didn’t die so we can use Project O.I. to give him a second chance”
As Shawn said those words he had a very odd and slight chill that quickly passed. He and his uncle then left the small lab and locked it behind them so the two inside could enjoy their virtual honeymoon. There was still lots of work to do for Shaw the other lead programmer to do during his cousin’s break of a month when the Chris and Veronica would start the first phase of testing of both Project O.I. and of Grand Frontier.
xxXxx
Robert Ghost was visiting the visual and graphics design department of Ghost Tec to visit the head of and most skilled designer of the department. He knocked on the door to her office and then walked inside.
The black haired woman sitting in the wheelchair looked up to see her husband’s smiling face. She was tired and felt miserable ever since the attack on her adopted son Chris who was the same age of the baby she lost in the accident that caused her to have to adopt a child to have one.
Linda: “I lose my son and most skilled designer in the same month to your freaking project, so why do you look so freaking happy?”
Robert had been waiting for Chris to tell Linda what his plans were for Veronica after Veronica had said yes. Chris had made him promise not tell her unless he gave him permission which he had gotten a few minutes ago.
Stolen novel; please report.
Robert: “Wait, are you talking about your son and new daughter-in-law who just started their virtual honeymoon a couple of minutes ago?” He was chuckling internally when he saw the surprised look on her face.
Linda: “Daughter-in-law! How long were you keeping Chris’s plans to propose from me?”
Robert: “When he swore me to secrecy 2 weeks before the attack when we went to pick out a ring.”
Her miserable expression quickly changed to a happy smile while she started crying tears of joy due to the addition to her family and that the first part of Project O.I. had worked. She would be able to talk and see her son again, even if it was currently only in virtual reality. Robert went over and hugged the woman he had started working on Project O.I. for 25 years after the car accident that had scarred Ghost Family. It took her 2 years before she was finally over the tragedy that they went to the orphanage and saw Chris.
Linda: “I wish I could have been subject number 1 for Project O.I. but I guess it’s good that Chris isn’t brain-dead and can take that spot”
Robert: “Now I even more of a reason to complete the project I started working on back then”
xxXxx
Project Original Intent overview:
Ghost Tec, the leading production and Research Company of cybernetics, prosthetics, and cloned and artificial organs, plans to create a working replacement body/brain so that humans who have become paralyzed or gone into a vegetative state can once again interact with the world with a perfectly good body.
Needs:
1. 2 to 4 test subjects with 1 to 2 in vegetative states with minds still working, and 1 to 2 able bodied humans. Subjects must preferably opposite gender to account for different brain patterns between males and females.
2. Virtual reality pods equipped with full life support systems to keep the occupants alive and in virtual reality indefinitely. They will also require medical scanning equipment to monitor both brain and body activity. Subjects will also need cybernetic implants in the brain, spinal cord, and major areas of nerves and organs to help ease stress from long periods in a virtual reality with sped up time.
3. Virtual reality environment that will have the subjects experience almost every type of experience possible for accurate brain activity mapping.
Goals:
1. To completely map brain activity based off of actions taken while in the virtual world. This will help with building a “cyber-brain” a bio-mechanical replacement brain and bio-android body (with working bio-engineered reproductive functions) to give them a new body and life as though they were never paralyzed in the first place.
xxXxx
Robert was looking at the basic overview of Project O.I. that he had come up with 25 years ago to allow his wife to walk and keep people from having to pull the plug on their vegetative loved ones like what happened to his sister-in-law. Ghost Tec was and still is able to replace almost any organ or limb, but not fix any form of paralysis due to issues with spine or brain.
He looked at the adopted son he loved so much and wished he was instead working on his comp finishing the virtual reality environment needed for the project, or even at his apartment with his fiancée.
He hoped the project worked because for the initial test subject it was a one way road once they were hooked up to the virtual reality hub also known as the white room. His son would still leave a legacy because Chris and Shawn were the ones that had inspired the virtual reality environment be a VRPG fantasy game instead of a simulator of everyday life like he had originally planned. Soon everyone able to afford the VR pods designed for players of “New Frontier” would experience the world his son had helped create. While he might not have bodies for everyone paralyzed or disconnected with their senses, this would give them a fully working body until Project OI was finished.
Robert got in the hub interface pod to let his son know his month long honeymoon was over and that they could both work on the game in the hub. He also needed to let his son and daughter-in-law know that they were the very first virtual OI’s which stood for:
Virtual Organic Intelligence
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Authors note: Let me know how y’all like my futuristic tech based reincarnation story. I originally wanted to do a FF based off of Ark but based off of some other FF the idea morphed into this story. I know I’m not the best writer grammatically (run on sentences, improper usage of commas, etc.) but let me know if those types of errors affect the story enough to make it hard to read and I will work on it in future chapters. Next chapter will have the first steps into the game, and hopefully also some tables.
Changed the age he was adopted to 2 instead of 4.