A young man named David has been in the hospital for about
a week, undergoing a variety of tests, treatments, and recovery
processes following an open-heart surgery. The year is 2017.
David has had a lifelong heart condition known as aortic
stenosis, which recently became so severe, he required a valve
replacement in order to prevent his heart from failing. The
surgery was successful. In order to help David deal with the inevitable
pains that follow open-heart surgery, he is given cocktails
of pain medications each day. A few of these medications,
however, make David horribly sick, delirious, and ultimately
worse off. David experiences horrible nausea and vomiting, which begins
to pose problems on his healing sternum. His reactions are so
harsh; he has to stop taking many of the medications. This eliminates
his reactions and reduces his vomiting, but the pain of
the recovery becomes far worse. In order to help the situation,
David’s doctor tells him about an alternative, nontraditional method
of pain reduction that the hospital has recently started
offering. He tells David it’s a program where patients
can use state of the art virtual reality equipment after and in
between treatments, which has shown to help reduce patients’
pain. At first, this sounds pretty ridiculous to David. He’s
heard of virtual reality before and knows what it is, but is completely
dumbfounded by the idea that it could possibly help with
his pain. The doctor tells David that it won’t actually eliminate
or even reduce the pain, but that it should help distract him
from it. David decides to give it a try. It couldn’t hurt.
In the following couple weeks, David spends a portion of
each day with a virtual reality headset on in a room with other
patients doing the same. To David’s surprise, he actually feels
much better during this time. Not good, but better. He visits
the moon. Goes deep sea diving. Builds cities. Visits beautiful,
natural landmarks. Plays games. And mostly forgets about his
pain. It’s amazing. Soon, David’s condition stabilizes enough
to return to his normal life, relatively speaking. He returns
home to his job. His family. His friends. His routine.
Within a few days of leaving the hospital, David decides to
purchase his own virtual reality setup to help with the
lingering pains that will persist in the following months of the
recovery process. A couple years go by. David has long been
fully recovered from the surgery. At the end of each night,
however, David continues to use virtual reality, escaping
to many of the same locations, games, and applications that he
spent time at in the hospital and during his recovery thereafter.
He has more or less formed a habit out of it. It helps him forget
about the stresses
of his day-to-day, and David finds it very enjoyable, just how
one might enjoy a video game or their favorite TV show at the
end of each day. Several more years go by. The year is 2022.
A newly emerging tech company by the name of Replieka
comes out with a revolutionary virtual reality product known
as Replieka Virtual World. The product is revolutionary on account
of its new lens technology that breaks through the limitations
of previous display methods and synchronizes with the
functions of the human eye using a stable, 360 degree lens device
the size of prescription glasses. With this device, a
real-time interactive, full resolution, and completely functional
virtual world can now be accessed and inhabited.
Of course, David purchases it as soon as it becomes
available to the public. He receives it, opens up the
minimalistic package, puts on the glasses, and loads up the
default landing map; a city street filled with other people,
traffic, buildings, trees, birds, and so on. Immediately
disoriented, David takes a second to realize what he’s looking
at. Unlike all other virtual reality products, apps, games, and
platforms that he had previously used, where the trees never
really casted believable shadows, the grass didn’t move right,
most of the animals and people were all a bit off, and the
motion and controls never quite felt natural, this virtual
reality looked and felt like reality, reality. So much so that
David actually takes a moment to mentally adjust to the idea
that it isn’t. As David begins to acclimate and realize what
he’s experiencing, an ecstasy flows over him. It literally feels
like he has been reborn into a new world with endless new
possibilities. He spends the whole night exploring. Like the camera was to film and TV. Like the
personal computer was to the Internet. Like the Internet
was to the smartphone. Like the smartphone was to social
media. David experiences the next massive breakthrough
in technology and entertainment that would change everything
forever. A breakthrough so potent that he could feel
it; a sort of disorienting and overwhelming elation, where
a sci-fi concept of the future suddenly becomes real in the present.
A couple more years go by. The year is 2024. Virtual
reality, in general, is no longer just popular among fringe
users, like David, but has become fully accepted into the
commonplace of culture and behavior. Just like how in the past,
the norm would be to go home and watch TV or go on the computer
after work or school. Or how one might spend time on their
smartphone while waiting in line at the grocery store, now,
individuals spend their spare time engaging in the Replieka
platform, bringing their glasses with them wherever they go,
turning them on whenever they have a spare second, and using
them to provide a spike of dopamine at the beginning and end of
each day. As a result of this now global phenomenon,
many new companies begin developing within the virtual
and augmented reality space. Companies focused on virtual
entertainment, applications, data, advertising, events, maps,
games, securities, currencies, virtual land exchange
and so on. David becomes obsessed. Instead of going out to
social events, he engages more frequently in virtual social
events. Instead of traveling much or going to museums and landmarks,
he visits destinations and learns about things virtually.
Instead of creating art with physical materials and consuming
it in physical places, he makes, shares, and enjoys
art through virtual mediums, galleries, shows, and so
on. He soon even begins making his living virtually, buying
and selling virtual land properties, advertising space, and filling
jobs and roles that assist in virtual needs, all without
ever needing to leave his couch.
Flash-forward to the year 2058. Replieka releases a
software update that provides a fully mapped and augmented world
that integrates entirely with the physical world. In other
words, the Replieka Virtual World can now layer on top of the
real world, rendering the real world virtually interactive,
linked with apps, medias, games, functions, entertainments, and
so on, at all times. David, along with essentially everyone who
hasn’t isolated themselves from the modern world, can now jump
between the virtual world and the real world, and a combination
of both. Even the most tedious things of daily life
are now covered with media, games, and modifiable experience.
What had once merely been a means of assisting his pain
during his time in the hospital so many years ago, now makes things
like grocery shopping pleasurable and rife with entertainment.
The technology quickly becomes easier. More well
integrated. More passive. More entertaining. David experiences
new realms of personal experience as the ability to see out of
others people’s perspective becomes an option. David experiences
the perspectives of celebrities, athletes, and other public
figures that upload and monetize their visual data. David, not
unlike everyone else, never leaves the house without his
glasses. He wears them to bed and only takes them off right
before falling sleep, if at all. As soon as he wakes up the next
morning, the first thing he does is put them on. He wears them
essentially at all times, feeling completely strange and naked
without them. It’s not really considered addiction, because
everyone’s doing it, but nonetheless, David is not in control.
As the future unfolds more and more, life spans increase
with the development of better medical technologies and higher
levels of information. As a result of increasing life-spans, the
demand for new virtual worlds, improved augmentations, and
software updates that offer better qualities of entertainment
and novel experience also increases. In the year 2122, Replieka releases a product
that allows individuals to undergo a simple procedure,
which modifies the retina in the human eye, connects it the Replieka
data Cloud, and allows the human eye to function just
like the lens devices of the past. It requires some control from
a pocket-sized remote device but otherwise, requires no physical
hardware or wearable technology. Not long after its release, infants
are given this procedure almost unanimously within 48 to
72 hours of birth, completely out of their own control, somehow
born into this time of history in which they are swallowed hole
by technology, with no choice but to engage or completely opt
out of society. Reality and virtual reality essentially merge
and become indiscernible from one another.
As the world delves deeper and deeper into the virtual
dimension, the human brain loses more and more of its
orientation and ability to properly form a singular sense of
self. Anxiety levels and the sense of alienation increases
rapidly and there is even more demand for higher-levels of
entertainment and virtual immersion to help distract people from
their growing problems. People can just reverse the procedure if
they want, but they don’t want too. The technology is too good,
and if they don’t keep it, they’ll be left out. The demand is
filled as more and more money is thrown at it. Globally, people
become sick, mentally disoriented, and suicidal. People can
virtually go anywhere and do anything, yet they feel lost.
People can see and know anything in an instant, yet they feel
numb and brain dead. People can be friends with millions of
other people from all over the world, yet they feel isolated and
lose track of who their real friends are. The year is 2141. David hasn’t had to think
or feel in years. His memory of his prior life and self
have faded into the distance of 1s and 0s, blended and overridden
by the characters and worlds he has formed and lived through.
Like how the opening of inebriate asylums occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries in
order to combat prevalent drug and alcohol addiction, a new category of medical and addiction
treatment centers develop that are focused entirely on virtual and technological addictions,
ailments, and mental conditions. After attempting to off himself, David is
administered into a treatment center. He’s in bad shape, experiencing
a psychological problem known as Virtual Dissociative
Disorder, with only his original user name, David_Greenwood,
connecting him to his earlier self. As means of treatment,
David goes
through a number of software updates, augmentation adjustments,
and so on. They all make him worse off. Around this same time, a doctor specializing
in the field comes out with a brand new technology that
proves to be exceptionally effective for people in similar
conditions to David. The doctor is seen as revolutionary
and regarded as the leader of a newly developing medical practice.
David, along with innumerable amounts of other people, is sent
to this doctor. David finds himself in a massive hospital
lobby, with a huge grouping of other people in similar states.
One by one, they are brought into this doctor. Eventually,
David is brought in.
The doctor explains the technology to David as best he can.
Once he finishes, he proceeds take out a pair of glasses. He
hands them to David and instructs him to put them on. David puts
them on. Immediately disoriented, David takes a second
to realize what he’s looking at. He sees the doctor,
the chair that he’s siting in, a counter top, a sink, and blank
walls, one with a weird painting hanging on it. Alarmed, David
asks, “Where is everything? Where did all the apps and portals
and files and icons go?” “There gone. The glasses take
them away.” Replies the doctor. David begins to panic a little and
quickly removes the glasses. The doctor tells David, “David,
I need you to trust me.
I’m going to give a few moments to sit here alone and try them
again. I want you try your best to relax and just observe for a
little while and see how you feel. Ok?” The doctor gets up and
leaves David to himself. Confused, David waits a moment and then
puts the glasses back on, again revealing the empty, still room.
For the first time in decades, David sits completely with
himself. No apps, no games, no entertainment, no virtual worlds
to jump to, no people to experience through. Nothing. He looks
around the room and down at the chair he’s sitting on. Out of
habit, he swipes at the arm of the chair with his finger.
Nothing happens. He sits and does nothing. It hurts.
After a couple minutes that feel like days go by, some
fragmented parts of his original self start to scramble across
his consciousness, like faded memories of a previous night’s
dream sprouting up in the middle of the next day.
Soon, the doctor comes back in. “How are we doing?” he asks
David. “I don’t know. I feel weird and anxious. Like I don’t
what to do with myself other than to think about who I am or
what I am or why I am. It kind of hurts and I think I want to
take the glasses off again.” “Ok, David. You’re welcome to take
the glasses off if you’d like.” Replies the doctor. David takes
them off. Confused, David asks, “I don’t get it. How would these
help? They don’t do anything.” “Correct... That’s the treatment.”
Replies the doctor. “Huh?” David grunts with further confusion.
“How would that help at all?” David asks. The doctor pauses for
a moment, puts on his own glasses, and looks David in the eyes.
“That anxiety you were feeling. That weird sense of what it
means to be you in this empty room right now with nothing to do
other than to be you in this empty room; that’s still there with
or without the glasses on. You’re sick, David. We’re all sick.
These glasses help us see how sick we really are.” “Why would
anyone want that?” replies David. “No one would.” The doctor
answers. “but what we want isn’t always what’s good for us. We
can fill our life with all the games, apps, new worlds,
entertainment and whatever else. You can escape into other
people’s perspectives, pretend you’re not you, come up with new
versions of you, and whatever else, but you’ll always be you
with your perspective at the end of it all. You can take the
glasses off right now, and leave them off. You can go back into
the world where everything is setup perfectly to distract you
from you, exploiting that desire to escape yourself. Or, once in
a while, you can put these glasses on and face yourself and your
sickness. You can sit with it. Think about it. And try your best
to deal with it and make it ok.” David asks the doctor, “But
then what? What about normal life? What about everything and
everyone else without these glasses?” “There’s nothing wrong
with taking the glasses off. There’s nothing wrong with all of
the screens and augmentations and games and entertainment and
everything else, but if you’re always there, you’re inevitably
going to forget what’s real underneath it all. That you’re
really alone in this empty room. If once in a while, you use
these glasses to remind yourself of this, then, whenever you
take the glasses back off to reenter the world of noise, you
might still have a little bit of yourself to hold onto. A little
bit of truth. A little bit of strength.” In the following weeks, David spends a portion
of each day with the glasses on in a room with other patients
doing the same. To David’s surprise, he actually feels
much better during this time. Not good, but better. He looks
at the walls and notices the little subtle bumps in the paint
on the drywall. He observes the patterns in the wood of the chairs.
The speckles on tiles of the floor. The lines on the skin
of his hands. He talks with the other patients in the room. They
laugh together. They suffer together. It’s amazing.