Red Reality

Summary:

In a not so distant future the rapid progression of technology has changed a lot of things but, for the most part, the world still looks the same. You live your life as the average highschool student of the time. You hang out with friends, go to school, and play videogames that are realistic as life itself. However when a tragedy is discovered at the end of the day the blurred lines between fiction and reality suddenly become clear.

Red Reality:

Monday, March 17, 2042, 8:00 AM.

            There was the sound of a loud buzzing on the side of your bed and a voice telling you to wake up. It’s hard to get up after spending the previous night at a sunny green park somewhere on the other side of the world. People would call this jet lag, but most people don’t use that kind of transportation to simply see new places anymore. Besides, a plane wouldn't be able to get you very close to any desirable locations anyway. You didn’t mean to stay up so late, but it was easy to lose track of time with friends and the sun in the sky. After getting in bed, you must have only slept three hours last night.

            You peer through your heavy eyelids and throw your hand through a hazy red light you recognize as your alarm clock. Your hand disrupts the hologram projecting the time, and the alarm stops. “Time to Wake up,” you hear a voice say. You throw your hand through the clock again in hopes of shutting it up. Instead, you end up knocking over the clock’s base, letting the beads that form the clock's display fall to the ground and spilling the projected red light across the nightstand and bed. “You've used up all of your snoozes, and it is time to wake up,” the voice says. You pull the covers over your face but can still see the red light slightly flickering through the sheets with each word. “You have school in an hour, and you need to wake up,” the voice continues.

            You attempt a rebuttal to the voice from under your covers, but it simply replies with, “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Can you say that again?” The voice sounds just like yours except for when it trips over certain syllables. This would be Conscience, a popular A.I. companion and personal assistant. This assistant is supposed to learn everything about the user to best cater to their needs, but it just seems like an annoying voice in the back of your head most of the time. You can’t imagine someone who wants to hear their voice repeated back to them all day, but it does its job, and, right now, it’s doing its job to get you out of bed in time for school.

            The alarm stops, and you pull the sheets off your face to repeat what you said, only for Conscience to drown you in yellow fluorescent light the second you open your mouth. “I heard you the first time. I just needed you to get out of your covers,” it says. You groan and set up the clock turning it upright and dropping a new set of foam beads above the base. You watch as the clock buzzes to life and slowly starts to project the time in a glowing red text as the beads and light move in unison. The clock reads 9:15, this whole endeavor has wasted fifteen minutes, but you are just about up.

            Sitting up, you slip on a BCI headset; it slips on like a headband. You reach to your side to pick up a stimulant card and plug it into the side of the headset. These brain-computer interfaces have various applications, from reading certain actions in the brain to tampering with minor brain functions. These functions are beneficial for virtual reality and augmented therapy, as well as good times if you manage to get a nicotine card or other form of neural suppressant. The whole plug-and-play concept seems outdated and inconvenient, but it’s safer than giving a whole computer access to your mind, as limited as that access may be. As one may imagine, these headsets can be costly, costing up to several thousand dollars, but when you don’t need to pay for things like cars, it becomes more affordable. The card you use is an adenosine suppressant, also known as electric coffee. Using these kinds of cards is not allowed at school, but it is enough to get you out of bed and make a real coffee.

            You walk into the kitchen and turn on the coffee pot before proceeding to make breakfast. It’s just cereal, nothing special. There isn’t anything else really, which is strange because your parents said they were going to the store last night. You open your laptop to look at the news, but Conscience stops you, “You should study your geography for first-period. Besides, there is never any good news.” You heed the advice and close your browser. As you study the PDF from history class, the scent of dark coffee fills the air. You get up and grab a cup of coffee using what little milk is left in the gallon jug. A wave of drowsiness washes over you as the stimulant card is removed from the BCI, and you stuff it in a pocket. You sip at your real coffee. Despite the added milk, it still tastes bitter and unpleasant.

            Your breakfast is interrupted by Conscience telling you that it is time for school, 9:00, and school is starting. You dump the cereal into the sink and rinse out the one-gallon milk jug. You leave everything in the sink, except for the coffee. You’ll be needing it later. Plugging in a new phantom sense card to your headset and logging in, you step into the beautiful green world.

Monday, March 17, 2042, 9:04 AM.

            You arrive at school four minutes late, it didn’t take long to get there, and there was no need to walk. Even though you are late, there will be others who are later. There always are. The teacher probably won’t start class for another three minutes, so you are in no rush. You sit next to a wall and peer out the window. It’s a perfect spring morning: freshly cut green grass with stray clippings strewn on the side of the white pavement, beautiful soft white plum blossoms amongst vibrant purple leaves, streams of the early sun fall in between the leaves casting dancing lights on the ground of the courtyard, the sun can almost be felt pouring through the window onto your skin. It’s so much better than the view from your apartment.

            The teacher calls attention to the front of the classroom. They are starting the lesson. Blue holographic tablets appear above all of the desks, and it appears to be some sort of interactive presentation. Your teacher requires the class to select where they are on a scale of mental health and complete a warm-up. You grab the tablet. Even though it isn’t a physical object, you still feel haptic feedback on the tips of your fingers whenever you touch it. When dropped, you can hear it land on the desk despite being made of light. A soft thud as the tablet hits what is supposed to be wood.

            After a couple more minutes, the teacher instructs everyone to start the test. The tablet floats up, forming a display, and a holographic keyboard forms on the desktop: it radiates the same soft blue light as the tablet. You look out the window then around the room. You can see the displays from the other desks, and you can hear the faint sounds of the others typing on the fake keyboards. Despite being able to see everyone’s displays, you cannot see what’s on them. No one can see what’s on your display either. Everyone can only see their own test. There are almost no options for those who haven't studied. You turn back to your display and start the test.

            Suddenly silence falls, and everything is dark. You can’t see. Everything is pitch black except for a faint red light that appears to be glued in between your eyes. Everywhere you look, all you can see is that glowing red dot. After about ten seconds, everything isn’t so dark, nothing can be seen, but now there is a slight grey luminosity to the room and the red dot. Things stay like this for a while. Eventually, the room returns, everyone continuing with their test. Some of the elements in the room take time to flicker back to life, but you continue as if nothing ever happened. It was probably just a power surge or something. Besides, you have a test to finish.

Monday, March 17, 2042, 10:20 AM

            First period is over, and you have ten minutes to get to your next class. The halls are illuminated with what appears to be LEDs emitting soft white light. There are no lockers, just students, teachers, and the clean tiled floor. You walk past some of your friends from other classes and ask if they experienced any issue with the power, but they all say no. Sometimes you forget how far apart you are.

            After these short interactions, you head off to third period. The campus isn’t that big, so it’s not much of a walk. You step out for a moment to drink the coffee from the morning and continue to the classroom. On the walk, you pass by students who linger and hear whispers of some terrible event that has occurred. Not having read the news, you don’t know what they are talking about. Whatever it is, it’s got everyone worried. The whispers stop once the bell rings, and everyone starts to walk back to classes.

Monday, March 17, 2042, 11:45 AM

            It's the start of a lunch break that will last longer than an hour. The school does this partially to promote socialization and partially to allow people to work out any technical difficulties there may be with the constantly replaced technologies that schools have come to rely on. You hear the teachers complain all the time about how they switch things up once they get used to the new stuff. You are going to use this time to rest after staying up all night.

            You find a quiet place and return to the red reality. You spend lunch break there even though you don’t have to. The Conscience says that it isn’t good to spend so much time in such a terrible place. Others say that the world is a much better place to be. That was the green world, but this is your red reality, and it feels like home.

            You find yourself inside a closed-off, dimly lit apartment. The living room, dining room, and kitchen are all in the same space. The kitchen is built into the corner of the room, with an island counter that sticks out in an L shape. The counters are topped with yellowed and stained tiles. White cabinets with gummed up and peeling paint accompany the kitchen. Past the counter is a worn wood table, its paint scratched and scraped, revealing the color of a light woodgrain. The room is clean but not tidy: there are papers on the table, a mug on the counter, dishes in the sink, and some other materials strewn about.

            A streak of red light stretches across the floor from a window on the wall opposite of you. You walk over and draw back the light brown curtains to reveal a sky that is a darker brown. As the light spills through open spills through the window replacing the unpleasant fluorescent lights with dim orange sunlight. The orange light makes it feel later than it should. It makes you feel drowsy. You run your hand along the surface of the counter. It reminds you of how realistic virtual reality can be. You can’t even tell what is real and what isn’t anymore.

            They call it the red reality because of how dark it is here. This place is the result of some sort of apocalypse. Despite many people being here, disease and abandonment have left others seldom seen. As this world was ending, people took the easy option and ran away, leaving the world to rot. Somehow leaving did some good as a disease couldn’t spread when there was no one to get infected. You don’t spend enough time in this place to know all of the details; all you know is that it is safer to stay inside.

            You take a step back from the window and sit on a faded old couch. A few stray springs can be seen pushing against the material, leaving elevated points on the otherwise flat cushions. You grab a pillow and rest in silence until Conscience says it’s time for the next class.

Monday, March 17, 2042, 3:00 PM

            The bell rings and the class is dismissed. The quiet kid in the back is gone, no one watched them leave, they're just gone. You expect they left to someplace not so different from your red reality. Other than them, everyone else siphons through the one door in the front of the class.

            Quick travel can’t be used on campus as it is blocked, similar to how most stimulant cards aren’t allowed to be used on campus. So everyone tends to walk for a bit, you decide to walk too. Even though you can be home instantly and there is nowhere in particular to walk, you end up walking for a while. You walk down clean streets on white sidewalks going nowhere. All you can see is green grass in front of nicely kept buildings. It looks too perfect, insincere, and almost plastic. The fact that it’s all for looks removes the delusion of grandeur that this place gives off.

            On a street corner, there is a baseball field with digital advertisements strewn across the fence.

            “Try static smoke, the same feeling and smell without any of the chemicals.”

            “Tired of waiting for fast travel? subscribe to the GreenWorld Hiperque and always be on time.”

            “Not able to sleep? Try Digital Dream stimulant cards. Now with programmable times.”

            Underneath the advertisements is someone at a table with pop-up holograms. They are selling modded BCI clients. Such things are unsafe, not to mention illegal. Clients like that can bypass the plug-and-play system on the headsets letting individuals pirate stimulant cards virtually. You could get lots of free stuff that way, but nothing is scarier than losing cognitive function due to unwittingly putting a computer virus in your head, or so goes the cautionary tales. You pay no attention and just push on and continue walking through the perfect rows of endless houses.

Monday, March 17, 2042, 4:30 PM

            Returning home, you tidy up. You pick up the papers off of the table and move your coffee mug that has been sitting on the counter all day. Moving over to the sink, you notice that your dishes are the only ones in there. Once you notice the dishes, you realize that nothing has been touched since the morning. You ask Conscience where your parents are at. “They left for the store,” Conscience replies. That’s strange. They went to the store last night. You ask Conscience when they left.  “8:48 PM,” it says.

            “What,” you exclaim.

            “Your parents left at 8:48 PM,” Conscience repeats. In a panic, you pick up the phone and dial your mom’s number, then your dad’s. Both go to voicemail. That horrible event you heard whispers of earlier, could it be your parents? You go for the laptop left on the counter from the morning. You hastily open it and look for the news. There it is, quarantine at the supermarket. You quickly scan through the article, looking for information. 9:15 is the time they called the quarantine, shortly after your parents would have arrived on foot.

            You reach for the remote and turn on the local news channel. Live footage of the quarantine is being broadcasted. White interconnected pop-up tents form fortresses that dominate the otherwise empty parking lot in front of the store. All this visible from a bird's eye view as the news drones pass over the sight. The quarantine looks so foreign it almost seems alien. Doctors look like astronauts in their hazmat suits–the clean white tarp contrasts against the dirty rooftop of the market and the unkempt streets.

            Your parents can’t be there, can they? Something else must be keeping them, right? Or they could have gone out again for something really important. But no, on the left side of the screen, there is a list of names; and there they are, the names of your parents. They are locked up with everyone else, and they will die there. Those structures aren't meant to protect people. That’s what the hazmat suits are for. The tents were for keeping the contaminant in and nothing more.

            You've heard of this happening to others, but it has never happened to someone you know. It’s always someone else’s family member who dies, people always say. But now that it’s happening to you, it puts some things into perspective. Your parents were the only real thing in your life, and now they have been taken away. It feels like it’s all ending, everything is dying, and there is nothing you can do about it. It was nothing like one of your apocalyptic virtual reality games. This was real life. In shock, you stand in the middle of the room.

            After a minute, you yell at Conscience. It kept this from you, and this is why it didn’t let you look at the news. “I look after you, not your parents. That is my purpose,” Conscience says. “I didn’t think it would be healthy for you to worry,” it continues. You could have seen your parents if it had told you, but now it could be too late. In anger and frustration, you unplug the modem, shutting off the internet to your house. Disconnected from the internet, Conscience can no longer do or say anything. You just walk away and slump into your bed.

Tuesday, March 18, 2042, 1:15 AM

            You get out of bed, put on a jacket, and head for the door. Everyone says it’s not a good idea to leave, but you have to see it yourself. Either way, there is no one to stop you. Suddenly you are back in the red reality. Taking a step forward you are in an empty hallway lined with doors. The hall is uncomfortably narrow and is lit with flickering fluorescent lights. A cold breeze from an open window from the end of the hall chills your face, thin and yellowed curtains blowing with the outside wind. Some foul stench from somewhere distant stings your nose. Pulling on a mask, you notice that the BCI is still on. It must have been left on after all the commotion from the news. It’s not doing any harm so you just leave it on. Besides, you could use the electric coffee at this hour.

            The elevator is out of service, so you take the stairs. It’s a spiral of faded paint and chopped wood. As you descend, the few lights near the top of the shaft grow dimmer and dimmer. You try to touch as little as possible as the rail looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years. Once you make it to the ground floor, you walk past seldom used mailboxes and push through a heavy door. You are first greeted with a black sky, smog hiding any sight of the moon or stars. Next, you feel the cold. With few objects in the streets to disrupt it, cold wind barrels down the street. The chill and byte of the wind can be felt through the jacket and mask, a feeling you're not used to. You cross your arms and start your trek to where it happened.

            The downtown store district is a strange sight. Dotted paths on the sidewalks for lines of nonexistent people, Roads for unused cars transformed into one-way streets, making room for businesses that don’t operate. Out here, you can really see how the disease has taken a toll on this world. Everything is abandoned, all the stores have been thoroughly emptied, nothing left behind as things shut down for the long haul. Every once in a while, a window is broken. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was a ghost town.

            As you walk past the empty storefronts and under the yellow street lights, you hear a faint voice coming from an approaching ally. The voice grows louder as you approach the alleyway. It mumbles, mumbling and slurring as it trips over words. Until this point, you hadn't noticed anyone else. As you step in front of the ally, the voice stops, and you can feel the gaze of the stranger and can’t help but look back.

            “You,” the voice says and trails off. You should not have looked. “That... on your head… Give it to me,” the voice struggles to say. They have noticed your BCI. you quickly look away and pick up the pace. They must have noticed that you were trying to flee because a loud sound rings down the alleyway and echoes through the empty streets. You feel the sound through your whole body. Reflections on flimsy windows dance with the shock of the sound. You don’t feel the touch, but some force pushes you back.

            The figure has a gun! You try to call out for help but can’t. You’ve already been shot. The shock from the pain prevents any words from escaping your mouth—no health bar, no pause menu, no game over, just the pain. Trying to take a step back, you fail and stumble around the corner stopping in front of an empty storefront. The only thing stopping you from stumbling over is the empty window. You clench the bullet wound and cry out for help. You wonder if anyone will hear you, and if someone does hear you, will they even come to help? People tend to avoid physical interaction unless absolutely necessary. How would they react if they knew your parents were at a contamination sight? They wouldn’t even touch you with a six-foot stick. It’s hopeless.

            As you yell, the footsteps of the figure can be heard increasing in speed. You hug the building while attempting to run away. At the end of the street, you turn a corner and hide under a wood structure built in front of what used to be a restaurant. The footsteps are still approaching, but you're not sure how far you can get with the wound. Sitting under the wooden counter with some yellow street light, you get a look at yourself. The bullet got your stomach. You move your hand and see the street lamp reflecting in the liquid, making it look bright ruby red. You’ve never seen your own blood before. Looking at it makes you feel sick, but the pain alone is much worse. Suddenly you see a tattered glove grab the railing next to you.

            The figure approaches and blocks out the light. Despite standing over you, they are unrecognizable with a mask and hood obscuring their face. Some people will do anything for a chance to escape their red reality. For the poor, it’s drugs and alcohol. For others, it’s virtual reality. For some, it’s both. But this person was ready to kill for an exit ticket. Gun still in hand, they reach for your head. You fight back, but they quickly threaten to shoot again. They remove your mask to get to your headset, and immediately you can tell that alcohol was their escape, it’s heavy on their breath. It must have been enough. Once they have your BCI, they proceed to take your phone and wallet, then leave you to die.

            You were on your way to find your parents, who are most likely dead, and now you yourself are dying. You didn’t even make it halfway.

Tuesday, March 18, 2042, 3:06 AM...

            This is your date and time of death, a date and time that no one will remember. The news of your death is dominated by the news of the event that killed many more. Even the news of the contamination was forgotten as it is only one in many incidents that added to the massive death toll. Just another family gone leaving an empty apartment that no one will even notice is vacant.

The end.

Background:

"Read Reality" is a twelve page short story I wrote as part of a senior thesis about the development of the sci-fi genre. My writing uses the same techniques as science fiction stories that successfully depict the future. It acts as a commentary on events and developing technologies of the time: Covid-19, virtual reality, and the excessive capitalism s showing up in games. The story depicts virtual reality at the extreme of being just as realistic as the real world. In this future, VR is used so often that people neglect the world they already live in, "Green World" shows the kind of anti-metaverse capitalisms could create, and the “Red reality” shows what could happen if the Covid-19 pandemic is not handled. The end of the story shows everything shut down indefinitely because people tried to make accommodations rather than closing for a short period. “Everything is abandoned, all the stores have been thoroughly emptied, nothing left behind as things shut down for the long haul” (AshCruz).

My story acts as a commentary on both current and personal events that have happened in my life. This story talks about the social distancing and social isolation that resulted from the pandemic. This is shown by downtown being deserted and by the idea that it is not safe to leave the house. The story also talks about the unbelievable technologies that are already being developed, like advanced virtual reality systems and brain-computer interfaces.

“Red Reality” story is inspired by the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, the movie The Matrix, and a little bit of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. However, most of the story is based on my personal experiences from my 2020 summer break. During that summer, Covid-19 was at its peak, and everyone was stuck in their homes. During that time, I did not get to see anyone outside of Zoom and Discord calls. Virtually reality offered a unique solution when it wasn’t safe to be with friends. Even though the application I used, VR Chat, was just another chatting client, it had the ability to make me feel like I was in a room with others. I would say that I spent more time than I would like to admit in virtual reality over that summer.

Most of the terminology used in the story comes from VR Chat and other video games. For example, fast travel is the act of traveling from place to place at near-instantaneous speeds through a game world. A topic that the story goes into more detail about is based on a joke in the game that your only upgrade is your hardware, meaning that the way to make the game feel more realistic was to get better VR equipment or by illegally modifying the game client. Expensive hardware and modded clients are both talked about in my story and are both things I have experience with. When the only option to be with people is in a virtual world, it is a slippery slope to try and make that world as realistic as possible.

Like the works of Ray Bradbury, this is not a prediction of the future; it is an image of what can happen. “Red Reality” depicts a world that was overtaken by disease due to people who can’t adapt and do the right thing to help everyone else. Once things get bad enough and the world is barely inhabitable, they decide to hide and ignore it instead of making the necessary changes. The same people who are too stubborn to give up their way of life for a short period of time end up just rebuilding their lives in a fabricated world. This is what could happen if people don’t do the right thing to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Unlike other science fiction stories that predicted the future, mine doesn’t have to. Hopefully, people will do better, and the “Red Reality” won't have to become our reality.