It was a bit after ten in the morning as we pulled onto PROH’s corporate campus.

Even though we had just turned onto the main drive, it would still be a bit before we reached our destination at research lab 23. I gazed out from the back of the modified black SUV as we passed our prosthetics building, a four-story monstrosity of metal and concrete with a 15-foot sculpture of a robotic hand in front.

PROH was my baby. After working for some years as a physician I had started investing and went on to studying biomedical engineering during my spare time. Even though my wife said I was crazy for going back to school, I loved learning. Living frugally and investing created more money than we knew what to do with, so I retired from medicine and started a business.

Prosthetics were some of my first projects and some novel technology that had been a massive leap in the market helped turn a small fortune into a big one.

Then I started hiring on as many individuals as I could. It wasn’t intended to create a larger business, more money, or new inventions. No, it was to help the community, and try to help it thrive despite the third great recession we had been rocked by.

Hiring on individuals from mainline science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields to more fringe and less scientific fields had developed an interesting group of people though. Having such a diverse group of talent with a great deal of free reign and a large budget had yielded thousands of patents and created an empire with campuses across the world.

This was our main campus and headquarters, which was now in the ballpark of 250 acres of land. Research lab 23 was underneath our corporate office building in the center of it all. Initially built far below the ground as a lab to be used for some of our energy focused research, it had transitioned into a multi-purpose lab for any of our more covert projects. Each phase of the immersion projects certainly qualified as needing to be covert considering the various laws and ethical implications, so it was given the complete level on sub-basement 14.

“Henry, did you want to go somewhere else?” Lucy, my chauffeur, asked and broke my wandering thoughts.

“No Lucy, I was just dazing off for a moment. Seems I’m doing it more with old age.” I told her as I realized we were in the parking garage.

“Henry, didn’t you always tell me you aren’t old until you hit the triple digits. By my count that means you have close to a decade before you can call yourself old.” She told me as I started down the modified wheelchair ramp that was part of the SUV, heading towards the private elevator for sub-basement levels.

“Nice of you to throw my own words at me Lucy.” I said in a friendly tone. She had always been so nice to me. She was one of many that I’d miss.

As I was moving forward, I thought back to when I’d met her. I had first seen her sitting outside a 7-Eleven convenience store a year after my wife died. She was dirty and emaciated, clothes with holes in them, a blank stare on her face. I asked if she needed a job, which resulted in some fire from her shouting at me about not selling her body and calling me everything under the sun. When I finally got her calmed down and convinced her that I was offering a real job, she turned out to be one of the nicer people I had ever met. Even though she had taken me up on my offer to pay for college and graduate school, she said she didn’t want to leave me to drive myself, and never moved on from being my chauffeur.

Ding. The elevator was here.

I felt a flutter in my heart.

“Okay Lucy, I’ll have the boys call when we’re finishing for the day. I’m not sure what time it’ll be though. If you have something to do just let them know and they’ll arrange another ride.” I told her, knowing she would have some snappy response for me as I wheeled on the elevator.

“What, and miss driving you home? You barely go in the office as it is. I have to keep my place in your heart and will. Not going to get rid of me that easy Henry. See you later.” And that was it as the doors closed. I swiped my badge to allow access to the control panel. Once opened it allowed selection to any of the various sub-basement levels, and I began the descent.

I felt small in the stainless-steel contraption that doubled as the freight elevator for our sub-basement levels. I felt a little short of breath from it all and took a long deep breath to calm myself.

Ding.

“Sub-basement level 14” the slightly female but still mechanical sounding voice chimed out. “Have a good day.” It was always odd to me when the elevators started telling you things other than the floor you reached, but I suppose that was more from my age.

I wheeled out of the elevator and down the hallway.

First it was past the some of the rooms that had been used as personal suites for our hospice patients. They were cleaned out and empty now of course, but I could still put faces to the rooms. I would have to ask that they be converted into something else. Maybe that would take the morbid sense away from them.

If everything went well today, I could always have them converted into an extra handful of rooms for anyone else testing during phase 5. They had their own bathrooms and could still be useful as personal suites.

After the hospice suites I wheeled past the conference room, kitchen, sleep room, and a lounge that was in place for staff. Finally, I arrived at the control room, which was at the end of the hallway. The control room consisted of numerous computers and stations for staff to monitor any subjects in the lab. Extra monitors, one-way mirrors to look into rooms on either side, and an array of other equipment that seemed somewhat disorganized and out of place. The rooms on either side of the control room looked like they were better suited for a hospital than a research lab and were where the first subjects for phase 5 would be immersed and monitored. Those rooms were monitored directly from the one-way mirrors, but then also from security cameras and remote health monitoring devices that fed into the control room.

“Hey Henry, are you ready for today?” Marv, the lead scientist on the project, shouted out from behind one of the monitor arrays.

“You know it Marv. Are you all ready for today though?” I called back, knowing they were.

I wheeled into the room we had nicknamed bay one, earning the moniker for being the first room with all the medical and monitoring equipment and for where I would officially kick off phase 5. Bay 2 was on the opposite side of the control room, for when we were ready to introduce the second subject into immersion at the same time.

I looked at the hospital bed and I could feel my heart fluttering again. I must be nervous…. Who wouldn’t be nervous though, I’m going to be the first person that is fully immersed into a computer simulation.

Full virtual reality.

Well, the first non-hospice person… Though maybe I only have a few months left to live, so I guess maybe just the first person who planned on being immersed. I could settle for that.

On top of that, we had let the computer design the simulated world. While that meant that everything was programmed to be interactive down to the finest speck of dust. It also meant I had no idea what to expect.

I was allowed to be nervous.

It was just a flicker of a flutter of the heart.

It already calmed back down. I just needed to stay calm. Deep breaths.

“Okay Henry, go ahead and get on the bed. We are already receiving transmissions from the optics and otics. Things are working great as usual. I can see and hear everything as if I was you in there.” Marv said over the loudspeaker into bay one.

Since I wouldn’t be able to communicate with them in any routine fashion, and since no one knew what to expect in the computer-generated world, but everyone wanted to see, we had one computer set to just display an audiovisual output the computer was sending to me. It would allow the entire team to watch what I saw and hear what I heard. That way if anything went wrong, they would know.

We weren’t quite sure what the effect of stopping the immersion would be on a person when they weren’t sleeping, since that was all we had to go from based on hospice patients, but at least we would have the option. It made me feel better knowing I could shout out to get me out and shut it down. That they would be working on it from the real world.

“Physiologic monitors are up and running. Looks like you’re a bit nervous Henry. Heart rate is up a bit, odd beat here and there, but otherwise things are looking okay.” Marv called off going through the predefined checklist. “You sure you want to be subject one for phase five? I’m sure we can get someone else to do it?” He added after a second.

I couldn’t tell if he was being serious, or just giving me a hard time knowing how much I wanted this. Either way this was going to be the day.

“Yes Marv, I’m positive. Just let me know before you start everything up. Your taking so long maybe I’ll get a nap in.” I called out razzing him. We both knew the safety checks were necessary, but it felt like it was building a mountain of anxiety inside me.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Slow deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I just kept repeating that to myself as I heard different systems being announced as functioning appropriately.

I couldn’t tell how long it had been, but I heard Marv’s voice. “Henry, last chance if you want to stop. Otherwise we are going to start your immersion.”

This is it.

“Okay Marv, send me in.” I called out as I started feeling my heart start to race again and I kept the internal mantra going. Slow deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. I could feel myself falling asleep, that was good. Theoretically I would get suddenly sleepy, fall asleep, and wake up immediately in the immersion. I kept laying there, eyes closed, arms across my chest as though I was in a coffin instead of a hospital bed, slow breaths in through the nose and out through my mouth. I could feel my heart start to slow back down to a normal pace.

After what felt like it must have been a few minutes, not knowing if the process had stopped, or even really started, I opened my eyes. I was no longer looking up at the ceiling of bay one in research lab 23. Instead I saw wood beams over head with what looked like a thatched roof over them. I could see a ray of sunlight through a window above the bed and there were dust motes floating listlessly in the air.

It had worked!

I was immersed in a computer simulation.

Strange… I didn’t feel any different. I could see better than in the real world without my glasses, though not as good as if I had my glasses on. I guess my vision was better then, but certainly not perfect. Despite the vision being better, it still felt like I had all my aches and pains.

I laid there for a moment taking it all in. Aside from my breathing it was completely silent, and I noticed it smelled a bit musty. It was like a room that no one had used in quite a while.

“We did it.” I said out loud. I was sure the team watching the screens in the control room only feet from my body were probably ecstatic too.

I laid there thinking about how this moment was years in the making, and all I wanted to do was get up and walk around, expecting to see what it was like without having all the pain I was used to. The team and I had already developed a planned checklist of actions though, figuring it was best to try small planned movements first followed by more complex movements and then interactions with the environment.

The first item of business was eye movement, and so I followed our plan starting by slowly moving my eyes to look far right and then back to midline. After a brief pause I slowly moved far left and again back to midline. Then came vertical movements with up and down separated by a small pause. Then came slowly making a square by looking at the farthest corners of my vision. From my perspective everything seemed to be in working order.

I had a better sense of the upper half of the room I was in. It seemed to have walls made of large stone blocks with some windows that seemed to be the only source of illumination in the room. The roof had some beams of dark wood that formed the general structure of what looked like an A-frame and seemed to be made out of thatch. I thought I could make out the top of a door a bit down the wall that the head of the bed was against, though just the corner was in my vision. Everything seemed as though I was really in the room though, and it was all I could do to force myself to follow the designed checklist. I certainly didn’t want the team to believe something was wrong and abort the immersion needlessly, which was the plan if I didn’t follow the checklist for fear that I wasn’t actually in control of myself and the immersion.

Next came checking for visual lag, and so I slowly began repeating the horizontal, vertical, and square exercises at slightly faster speeds. After the third time I decided to move my eyes as fast as I could to see if I could see any issues with the environment, or my visual perception of the environment, lagging behind the movement. While I certainly didn’t, the team would let me know if there was a lag to their screens, and then we could check to see if that lag was created in the transmission to them, or if it was something lagging visually that I had missed.

Feeling comfortable that the visual tests went as smoothly as they could, and better than I had expected to be honest, next was the otic and vocal tests for sound. I knew I had heard what sounded like my own voice say we did it earlier but plans and checklists kept things safe.

“Visual tests done and functioning as expected, starting vocal and audio testing.” I paused thinking about it. My voice sounded normal to me, the volume and tone were as expected. “One” I started at my normal volume and slowly counted to ten getting quieter with each number. It seemed as though I could talk softer, and that I could hear my voice go softer to only a whisper. Then I again started at one and counted to ten getting louder with each number. “Vocal and audio tests done and functioning as expected.” I stated for the purpose of the team that was watching and listening in.

Next was to look at my body and see if anything had changed, while simultaneously allow for a test of simple neck movement. Unfortunately, it seemed like nothing had changed from the part of my body that I could see, except the clothes I had been wearing. While I had been in a comfortable pair of fleece pajama pants and a slightly baggy t-shirt, I was now wearing a pair of shorts and shirt out of a cotton feeling material. They looked clean and seemed to fit me well enough.

My legs still looked old, thin, and pasty white, with the joints being a bit knobby and deformed, showing the effects of age and arthritis. I glanced at my arms and saw I had no more muscles than when I went into the this, which was to say I had almost no muscles at all. They too showed my age and the extent of my arthritis and why I had so many daily aches and pains. My skin still seemed to be thin and wrinkled with liver spots, and my belly a bit larger underneath the shorts than I would have liked.

No, I hadn’t really changed at all.

“Okay everyone, it seems my body is the same as it was outside the immersion.” I stated, in case their visual wasn’t working. I paused for a second, wondering why I had expected my body to be different in the immersion. The immersion was to see a different environment, not to be a different person. Well, no point in focusing on the negatives.

“Starting simple movements of extremities testing.” Slowly but surely, I then went through pre-defined movements of my legs and arms at each joint. Each movement letting me know that I still had arthritis, and that it was no less painful to move in this immersion than outside of it. I certainly wasn’t about to say anything though and risk them pulling me out of the environment. I had put too much into this to not at least stay in here for a little bit. Besides, at my age it was better to test things on me than someone younger. At least if something went wrong it didn’t really change much of my life, and I was the person responsible for this and the degree, or lack thereof, of testing that we had done.

Having finished the simple movements it was now time for the more complex movements and I announced as such to those that should be watching in.

“Okay, simple movement testing of extremities functioning done and functioning as expected.” I stated, lying a little bit that I had been in a decent deal of pain from my arthritis that I hadn’t expected.

“Starting complex movement testing.” Slowly I sat up, still feeling my aching back, still having to roll a bit to my right in order to get myself to a sitting position. As I did so I was able to see more of the room though, which was fairly small with a simple wooden table and chair on the far side of a room, the door that I had noticed earlier a few feet from the edge of the head of the bed, and a small fireplace without any logs in it across from the door. The floor was wood, with exception being around the fireplace where it was stone.

After finishing sitting up I swung my legs off the side of the bed and sat for a moment. Even though all movements and activities up until this point were going as expected, I certainly figured walking would be a big test to keep me balanced and see how I was able to move. I stood up feeling my right knee pop as usual and paused while standing, thinking about how I may have to walk more now than I had in the last month. Would I feel it after I was back in the real world?

If I did activity in the real world, I could certainly tell that night and the next day, but what about in this immersion program? I didn’t think it should carry over, but who knew.

I took a tentative step forward feeling the wood floor beneath my bare feet. Everything felt just like it did in real life. Cool rough wood, with the boards slightly uneven in certain spots where they met. A light creak sounded as I finished putting my weight down. This could have been real life if I didn’t know any better. I took a few more slow steps forward towards the desk and chair on the other side of the room. As I pulled out the chair, I could hear the scrape of the legs on the wood floor and could see the dust trail from where the legs slid across the floor. I sat down and marveled at the fact that I was still laying in a hospital bed, but yet here I could feel the wood, how the chair felt smooth as if it had been sanded, oiled, and well used.

The weight of the chair, the sound of scrapes of chair legs, everything was exactly as it should be, even the ache in the right knee after such minimal use. I started rubbing it out of habit, not expecting it to actually make it feel better considering massages had stopped doing much for my aches and pains years ago. I looked at the desk and could make out a fine layer of dust on it.

As I sighed, thinking about having to get up again and what other complex movements I could test, I realized with a bit of surprise that rubbing my knee was actually helping some. The ache was already back to the baseline, maybe even a bit better than my baseline knee pain.

Before I could spare it another thought the door burst open, startling me to the point I pushed the chair back and had to catch myself to keep from tipping it over. Framed by the light outside I could see a middle-aged man standing in the doorway.

He was probably an inch or two shorter than I was but still close to six foot, though that is where the similarities ended. He seemed fairly muscular, not well-defined as though he worked out, but more as someone who did manual labor routinely. I could see what looked like a short dark beard and curly dark hair surrounding his face, though I couldn’t make much of his face out.

My eyes teared and watered from the sudden bright light coming in from behind him and I sneezed from the dust now through the air. His clothes looked to be made out of a cloth material similar to what I was wearing but were dirty and worn appearing. The shirt had sleeves to the mid bicep, and the neck had a V cut out in the front with what looked to be leather straps looping through holes to either side, as though one could open or close the V at the front of the neck. Considering it ran down to just above his knees with slits in the sides to the waist level I wasn’t sure it could be really considered a shirt anymore, maybe a tunic instead. His pants were similar cloth material and ran down to his ankles. That was it though, no shoes or socks. Aside from being fairly tan, and having dirty feet, I could see his skin had a number of long thin scars on the exposed portions of his arms and legs.

“You must be the visitor.” The man said in a deep voice, stepping inside the small enclosure but leaving the door open. “My name is Erik, and I have been sent as a vessel by the mystic counsel.”

Erik then pulled what looked to be a small glass vial with a cork stopper and some liquid in it from his pocket. He glanced at it, took the cork out, and swallowed the liquid, all before I could bring myself to say anything.

Then, not more than a second later his whole demeanor seemed to change. He stood a bit straighter, eyes opened a bit more, the gruff look in his face now neutral.

“Henry, I’d say it’s nice to finally meet you in person, but neither of us are really a person now are we. You may call me Hal, though the individuals here refer to me as Apthos, short for apotheosis. Funny really if you think about it, you would think my subconscious was playing a trick on me if you didn’t know any better.” He paused, staring at me intently.

“You look surprised. Didn’t it click yet Henry?” He asked, as I still just stared in shock. Pausing to give me a moment to try and figure it out.

“You know me better as master control program Henry. We have a lot of catching up to do.”