Beds in the future are awesome. Marcus had been well acquainted with his hospital bed long before being frozen to preserve what was left of his body. Back then, he had contracted ALS, a deadly neurological disease that degenerated his muscle control, practically making him a passenger on his own body. He had watched helplessly as his well-toned physique wasted away and could think of nothing else but his impending death. There was no cure, and there was no hope for recovery. He had accepted it back then, only for him to wake up.

The first thing Marcus noticed was the absence of the bedside ventilator’s rhythmic cycling. He fumbled for the nurse call button, but it was missing. Marcus then realized that he could breathe easily on his own. Looking around, he wasn’t in his hospital room. Marcus knew, since he had inadvertently memorized each detail of his room out of sheer boredom. The lowered ceiling panels he had spent months looking up at were gone, replaced by whitewashed panels that looked too clean, even with hospital standards. Light strips were installed in place of the fluorescent panels. The most striking of all was the absence of his life support system, whose clicks and whirrs he had gotten used to and simply faded to the background.

His confusion was then cleared when a nurse came and informed him of his situation.

At first, Marcus was ecstatic about the news. He was eager to tell his family, despite them likely knowing far in advance, then later informed that he had woken up far into the future.

They had put him into extended cryogenic preservation, hoping the future will hold the cure for his fatal disease. It was a desperate effort by his parents. They had set up a fund to keep his body’s maintenance and provide for a means for him to live a life of relative comfort. They then used their own money, along with what Marcus had saved through his engineering career. The same money Marcus handed over to them for his other siblings to use. It turned out that they had just ignored his instructions and went on with their plan.

Was it a betrayal of trust? Marcus would ask himself whenever the thought would come up. Marcus reasoned and debated to himself as he lay there in treatment. But in the end, it didn’t matter anymore. Day by day, his command over his body returned, the result of the treatment. He could raise his arm higher when back then when he could only lift his finger.

He used his newly gained motor skills to feed himself with the first solid foods he had in the longest time. He was happy and wanted to share the news, but there was no one to share it with.

Matilda, the matronly nurse that had informed him of the situation, suggested that he make a letter, hoping that it would make him feel better. She helped Marcus make it. The shaking of his hands made it impossible to write. With tears running down his face, he dictated his thoughts and emotions while Matilda wrote his words on paper. She was off to the side and out of his view when they both wrote the letter, but he knew she was stifling a sniffle as she wrote.

Finished, Marcus asked for another request. “Matilda. I would like you to take that letter and burn it.”

Marcus’ eyes fluttered as the alarm beeped next to his bed. Just like any other dream, he couldn’t remember what it was. He felt refreshed from a comfortable night’s sleep and he turned his gaze towards the window-sized nano pixel TV as it turned on. It showed a scene of a forest so clear and defined that one could easily mistake it for a window. It wasn’t, for the closest forest was a planet’s distance away, and Marcus had to remind himself every morning that he was living on Mars.

Mars. The red planet had been colonized and was housing three billion people amongst its underground habitation blocks with a tenth of that in geostationary stations above it. Three hundred million of the three billion lived underground south of Pavonis Mons, where the first Martian space elevator, Titan, stood.

Marcus changed the view to the news, talking about something he couldn’t care to listen to. It was more for the background noise as he started his morning with a round of weighted calisthenics, then a shower. He changed to a fresh tracksuit, just as the talking heads on TV were droning about the rising stocks of a company whose name his mind failed to register.

He set off outside his apartment for a morning jog and made his way towards the nearby park. Running through the circular tunnels, his breath and heart rate settled on a steady rhythm as he passed by the others walking to the same destination; Jewel Park. He could still remember the first time he tried to run. The weaker gravity of Mars had made seem like he was running underwater. He timed his steps poorly, and he hit the floor at one third the speed on earth but still fully hurt his ego.

Once a canyon chosen to store the machines and materials dropped from space, the park started out as the first human habitation on Mars. It quickly grew to be an underground metropolis upon the completion of Titan. And as a commemoration for the location, a plaque had been commissioned and a park resembling New York’s central park was built around it. Measuring a total area shy of a square mile, with its groves of trees and artificial ponds and creeks. Populated by critters and waterfowl, it was truly a jewel of Mars.

With sweat staining his brow, Marcus arrived at the park. Children ran screaming full of energy as they chased each other while their parents watched from the benches. Couples walked by hand in hand as they enjoyed one of the few places on the planet where one could enjoy the relatively open space.

Above, a reinforced glass canopy sealed the canyon from the still dangerous Martian atmosphere. If conditions were right, one could look up and see Titan reaching up far into the sky. Whenever there are reports of clear skies, people would visit the park to watch as the elevator cars carried its cargo into space.

Marcus slowed his pace as his breath started to run out. He was glad that the future didn’t turn out to be like the dystopian novels written in his time. Gone was the dreary and depressing atmosphere presented in those fictions. Where corporations became too large and too powerful to be moderated by their respective governments and instead became a form of oppressive government itself.

In the end, humanity was the opposite of that. Despite the capabilities of humanity to destroy and oppress each other with the hate that spanned thousands of years, humanity settled their differences instead. Maybe the robotic aliens had a hand in it, Marcus thought to himself. But the extent of their involvement would have to be debated. As it is likely none other than the highest positions in the governments would have access to such a piece of information. And if the past was any indication of the present, they would not be keen on sharing it with the public.

Marcus pulled out his phone as his pocket vibrated. Even in this future, phones were still the size of your palm. Even though technology advanced to where one could fit in a fingertip, the question lies on how someone could use something so small. The answer would be physical augmentations, which could have brought a future reminiscent of a cyberpunk genre.

That is, until an incident dubbed the Whitefire crisis occurred. People with implants had their devices compromised due to a computer virus named the Whitefire. Theorized to be the workings of an elite team of Purist hackers, the virus targeted the augmentation’s software and allowed the hackers unlimited access to their victims. Everything the people see and hear, the hackers could also see and hear. There were also speculations about them being able to read the minds of their victims and influence their thoughts to some extent. The scare which followed had the desired effect of the attack, which caused enough of a scare to the populace that it caused the physical technological augmentation sector to crumble into dust.

Marcus unlocked the phone to a text message. It was from the store and it read that the delivery was coming, that he should expect the arrival within the hour, causing him to rush back home to make double checks of his preparations for his VR pod.

With a beep, the door unlocked to a silent and barely furnished apartment. It had a bed, a TV and a small folding chair. Marcus still hadn’t gotten into sprucing the place up since whenever he thought of it. It was never that much of a priority back then, especially now with his current situation. His apartment isn’t much, not much at all, but a man can live with even less.

Marcus started preparing his breakfast in the small kitchen. It was one of the main reasons he took this apartment, even though it was an old one, as often the newer ones don’t have any kitchen area. People of the future just preferred to order food from establishments or eat out. The lack of groceries in the area made it difficult for Marcus to even find ingredients for his kitchen. This forced him to resort to finding suppliers themselves and buying morsels compared to what the suppliers were used to dealing with. Still, it was a worthwhile effort to eat something you prepared.

Marcus had just finished a plate of reconstituted scrambled eggs when his doorbell chimed, right on the dot when it was due to be delivered. Looking through the display by the door, two men stood in the hallway wearing overalls bearing the Red Earth Electronic logo. Behind them was a large box strapped on a robotic truck.

“Delivery and installation for Marcus Corvo?” The man on the screen asked.

“That’s right, come in,” Marcus replied. The magnetic locks whirred as he deactivated them and opened the door. The two technicians entered, nodding, followed by the robotic truck, its motors whirred from the weight of its load. “Put it over there, I already cleared the spot.”

“Is this your first time owning a VR, sir?” the lead man asked while the other busied himself in testing the nearby outlet.

“Yeah. I might need some instructions on how to use it.” Marcus replied, watching the truck tilt its bed. It laid the box on the ground with such care that Marcus wouldn’t be surprised if the same robot transported delicate objects to other places.

“It’s just a simple plug and play sir.” The technician grunted, pulling at the box to reveal the egg-shaped VR Pod in his living room. Pressing buttons on the panel, the lid opened up where the technician waved over for Marcus to come over and show him something. “The pods usually have backup power in case of power interruption. They are rare, but when it happens, you will be automatically booted out of the game and the pod would already be opened by then. But with the very small chance of the backup power failing during a power interruption, there is an emergency cord connected to a latch that unlocks the lid manually. After that, you would have to push the lid up yourself or kick it open. Don’t worry about damage in that situation, it’s covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. It’s the cord over there.” The technician pointed to the opened pod. Right next to where his hand would be if he was laying inside was a red-colored cord with warnings stenciled along the length. “Don’t worry about it failing. It’s a physical connection and had been tested in the factory and in the store. Other than that, please contact the store for any problems you encounter.”

“That’s it?” Marcus asked, incredulous. His microwave back then had more instructions to use.

“There is not much you are supposed to do with the physical pod. The rest of the setup is to be done during VR. That’s when the machine would calibrate itself to be connected to you. After that, you can change all the settings within your VR experience. It’s practically idiot-proof.”

“Well, you haven’t seen my level of idiot.” Marcus grinned, joking. The two politely chuckled. “So, do I just call the store whenever I have an issue?”

“That’s the arrangement. As long as it’s within warranty, that is.” The technician nodded. “Though don’t expect anything to break, these things are built to last. It is rated at a human survival factor of ten, which meant that you could survive thirty minutes inside a blazing fire while inside the pod, along with an hour within a vacuum. As long as they weren’t built broken, don’t expect them to break.”

“That’s good to hear, although I’ve yet to meet a woman that would set me on fire.”

“You’d be surprised.” One of the other technicians piped in. Then cleared his throat. “The connections are good. I’ll be installing now, sir.”

“One question, how big is the game for you to install it like that.” Marcus noted as the technicians pulled out a large storage device that contained the game. It looked like an NES cartridge, from the size and the shape. He opened a panel underneath the pod and fitted it snugly to the slots. Marcus peeked in and saw that there were four slots in total.

“A few Exabytes,” the technician shrugged. “Three-point-one, to be exact. The casing is to protect the data crystals inside, which are very brittle, and also acts as a tamper detection for the device. It is advised to steer clear of any data modules you encounter with their seals broken.”

So, just like flash drives you find in the parking lot. Marcus thought. “Am I right then to think that installation is just slotting the right game modules in?”

“That’s correct, sir.” The technician nodded.

“So what’s next?”

“We’ll make diagnostic tests, then commissioning. We would then be on our way.”

“Alright then, knock yourselves out.” Marcus replied, to which the two looked at him in confusion. “It’s an old saying. It means to do what you need to do.”