I woke up in a room. It was dimly lit with only a few candles that were standing on a table not far from the bed. I was a bit dizzy. The room was unfamiliar and so were the clothes. They seemed strangely plain in this day and age or to be more exact, they were old fashioned, something that one would wear at a renaissance faire. They were odd shaped brown pants, a white shirt I couldn’t even guess from what material it was made from and black leather boots. Needless to say, it wasn’t something I wore or ever wore.

I walked inside the room for a bit. I needed to make sure this wasn’t a dream. I pinched myself and touched different objects inside the room before I was certain it wasn’t.

“Hello John. My name is doctor Mathew Court and the person next to me is James Pagan.” On the wall next to the bed a giant screen appeared. On it two people were standing next to each other. One was wearing a white lab coat while the other was wearing a business suit. It was easy to guess who was who.

“I know you are disoriented but you need to listen. You have been in an accident.”

John wanted to deny it saying his body felt fine, but he felt as if something was wrong. He started to remember something that happened before he arrived here but it was in bits and pieces. He was driving. It was dark and he was angry but he didn’t remember why.

“We don’t have a lot of time so I’ll let your parents speak before we continue.”

The doctor and the business man stepped out of the camera’s line of sight his parents appeared on screen. They looked haggard.

“Johnny, my Johnny, I …” His mother tried to talk but her emotions overwhelmed her. As soon as she started crying she left the line of sight and his father stepped in front, his face severe.

“Listen John, you have been in an accident. We just visited you and, I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s bad. I pray that this message gets to you. We had to make a decision on your behalf but I’m not so sure we made the right one. This whole business feels like making a deal with the devil.” His composure started to waver and tears appeared in his eyes. “I’m sorry John, please forgive me.”

The clip changed all of a sudden and the doctor and the man in the suit were in front of the camera again. The doctor left shortly after the clip started.

“John, how are you holding up? My name, as the doctor mentioned, is James Pagan, vice-president of a company called Nocturne. We design and create games. Usually that wouldn’t be of much help for someone in your position but luckily we could assist you this time, making you the first ever virtual reality gamer. You are hooked up to a machine that was designed by our company for full immersion. You can touch, smell, taste, see and hear anything and everything. We made the proposal too your parents and with their consent we did and are doing everything in our power to help you, but there is a catch. The capsule you are in now is a prototype and it was never tested on humans before. We don’t know what to expect but there is a small chance it may produce some small problems or even some big ones, but with your help we can improve the system with each dive. Each dive is risky but less risky than the previous one. For now we will immerse you in short bursts so that we can patch the system slowly but safely without any crashes. It will feel like hours for you in there but to us it will be only minutes. It’s one of the benefits of the technology. Right now we can’t communicate with each other the normal way like video conference or phone calls. The system wasn’t designed for that. We can however send video from one to the other like e-mails. In the corner of the eye, just out of sight there should be an icon there. Clicking it will take you to the menu. The menu is user friendly so it’s easy to understand. Send us updates about problems with the system, bugs that you found or about problems related to your virtual body. You can also send videos to your loved ones, just announce at the begging of the video to whom it is for and we’ll make sure not to violate your intimacy. There should be two timers in your menu. One represents how much time you have left until your dive ends and the other shows you how much time has passed in the real world. The date should be posted right under those two timers. It will be hard but we are here to help you. Be strong and Godspeed.”

The doctor returned while James left and moved into the center of the screen.

“As I said before, I’m doctor Mathew Court. I will be your personal physician. Right now I have the obligation to inform of the state of your real body as well as propose treatment or course of action while you go through this experience.” The doctor sighted. He started reading from a chart. As soon as he saw it, John knew it was his chart.

“When you arrived at the hospital you had: a collapsed lung, one perforated kidney, internal bleeding, external bleeding and broken bones all over your body as well as numerous cuts and bruises. These are minor problems. The biggest problem you have was caused by brain hypoxia. On your way to the hospital you stopped breathing for a total of 5 minutes and 23 seconds. That caused some brain damage and right now you are in a coma. We can’t be sure how long it will take but chances are high you could wake up. You are stable right now but not out of danger. In 12 hours you’ll be undergoing surgery again. You are in good hands so rest assured you will survive this. I wish I had better news for you but… stay strong.”

The video ended and John was in a state of shock. He didn’t even realize he dropped to his knees until the video was over. He moved towards the table, picked it up as if it was made out of paper and threw it across the room. He destroyed anything and everything that could be destroyed and afterwards collapsed in a corner of the room while hugging his knees.

He whipped his tears even though he knew that the tears weren’t real and checked the timers and date.

Dive time remaining: 2 hours 33 minutes 40 seconds

Real time elapsed: 41 seconds

Date: November 27 2054

He felt that only yesterday it was September 12. He was on his way to his girlfriend’s house ready to apologize for the harsh words and stupid mistakes one usually makes when he is angry. A few days before, he confronted her about something a friend of his told him. His friend said that she saw her with him at the movies, the same day she said she had to have dinner with her family at a relative’s house. He confronted her, she denied and after an hour of arguing he left.

After she stopped responding to his calls he decided to go in person to apologize but the scene he saw even now hunts and wounds him more them anything that happened before or after the accident. There is nothing worse than being betrayed by the one you love but there are exceptions. He thought he would surprise her by going to her room and apologizing with a small gift, something that she always loved and wanted, a small bonsai tree. The fact that she was cheating on him hurt but what hurt more was that she was cheating on him with his brother, someone he trusted unconditionally.

“EMILY! CHRIS!” he screamed with an almost primal rage. The bonsai tree was thrown and hit above the bed, shattering into a pieces. There was silence after that. Nobody could utter a word and there was no need for one anyway. It was pretty clear to him. He wanted to ask a million questions he didn’t want to hear the answer to and in the silence of that room, he just left. He drove as fast as he could with no apparent destination. After that it was all hazy but he was sure that he had his accident then.

Dive time remaining: 1 hour 40 minutes 20 seconds

Real time elapsed: 2 minutes 1 second

Date: November 27 2054

He wanted to be left alone but the thought that they may think that he couldn’t talk because of brain damage or couldn’t understand language anymore made him reconsider so he made a short video while standing in front of the mirror.

“I need some time to think. It’s too much to process.”

He moved back into the corner of the room. It took some time but after a while another video message was on the wall. This time the doctor was standing next to a young woman but in different screen shots. She was about his age, in the early twenties but she looked irritated and bored.

“It’s good to see that you are responsive. We were afraid that you couldn’t get the message or that you were … never mind.” Brain dead thought John.

“The person next to me will be your new colleague. Try to get along.” The doctor moved aside and made room for the young lady.

“Hello, my name is Manna. I will be your … provider on this experiment. Everything in that room was computer generated but there might be some consistencies problems. Some objects are too light or too heavy, food might not taste the same or those flowers might smell differently. Your job is to report to us those inconsistencies but for now stabilizing the system takes priority. Your next dive will be tomorrow. From the data we gather today we will try to improve the communication system. It’s good that we can exchange videos but real time information is better in the long run. We’ll talk again tomorrow, until then, stop destroying the room. We may not be able to see you but we can tell what you’re doing thanks to the data output. You are lucky the system didn’t crash.”

The message ended there. It was kind of abrupt but straight to the point. Strangely enough Manna made him laugh. First it was her appearance. She had straight black short hair and she didn’t wear any make-up or at least any that he saw. Her eyes were a little big and brown colored and her eyelashes long. Her appearance wasn’t of someone you would call beautiful or sexy but cute. Lastly her attitude was that of someone who wasn’t used to yelling or giving sermons to people like his mother or father were used by now. All in all, it reminded him of a puppy barking at a stranger which made it funnier the more he remembered it.

He got up and moved in front of the mirror while still giggling a little. He whipped his tears again and started another recording.

“To doctor Mathew Court: Thank you for taking care of me as well as your honesty. Do whatever you need to do but keep me alive.

To James Pagan: I won’t make you regret your decision to help me so I’ll start working as soon as possible.

To Manna: It was VERY nice meeting you and I hope that we can work well with each other from now on.

To my parents: Mom, I need you to be strong too, so please stop crying. I’m in good hands… I hope. I’ll try to send messages as often as I can. Dad, I don’t care if this is a deal with the devil or a miracle from God. I’m not ready to die so as far as I can tell, you did the right thing. Now, this is a message to the both of you, STOP VISITING. I don’t want you to see me this way. I’ll get better with or without you coming to visit so I think it is better just to exchange messages from now on. No more crying from now on either. I’m not dead yet and from what my doctor told me I’m not dying either. I’m just asleep while my mind wanders off. Love you both, see you soon.”

I ended my message with a smile. I wanted them not to worry about me but what parent wouldn’t worry about their child while he lies on a hospital bed. I just hopped they would listen to my request of not visiting anymore. It didn’t help me and it certainly didn’t help them to see me that way. In time maybe it would just slip their mind that I was here and that maybe I was just far away living my life normally but that was just wishful thinking.

Dive time elapsed: 1 minute

Real time elapsed: 1 minute

Date: March 15 2056

It took more than a year but today would be the first time the time conversion would be set at 1:1 and I can communicate with the outside world through a video chat. I got used to always waking up in this same bed every time a new dive was initiated but if everything would go well today I wouldn’t need to start a new dive each day but continue on this one indefinitely.

The screen, as always, materialized on the nearest wall and James Pagan was standing in front of the camera. I didn’t see James since the first time in November. He looked excited and as always very sharp in his business suit.

“Hello James. Can you hear me?”

“John? It looks like it worked. I never doubted it would.”

“Sure you didn’t.” There was a trace of sarcasm in my voice. I’m sure he was just as surprised as I was that it worked. We tried for over a month make sure that the communication would work but this was the first we tested it.

“We have good news, great news and excellent news. What do you want to hear first?”

“Does it matter?”

“Fine, try to stay grumpy as much as you like but you will smile by the end of this day. Doctor, you’re up.”

“Hi John, I am the bearer of good news today. With the exception of the machine connected to your noggin, you are of life support. No more tubes and probes. You have gone a long way from being a cyborg to being a human again.”

“I see you are sweet as ever doctor.”

“It’s the truth. Your body is now 70 % healed.”

“Only 70%?”

“I said it was good news not great news. Your noggin is a different story though. We don’t know when you’ll wake up or IF you’ll wake up. You’re one of those special cases on which doctors base their theses on or medical journals are written about.”

“Please, you’re making me blush.”

The sarcasm didn’t escape the doctor.

“Why are you always cynical and sarcastic? It is good news. You are out of danger. From now on you can only improve. Try to be happy at least. It wasn’t easy for me either with you always trying to die on me the first chance you got.”

“First time I hear about that.”

“The last time you’ll hear about it too. From this moment on I don’t need to watch you like a hawk anymore.”

“You never sugar coat it, do you doc? I’m really thankful though. Thank you for keeping me alive and I AM happy, more so than you will ever know. So, what’s the great news?”

“It’s about our AI development or to be more precise, it’s about Manna.”

“Is she getting promoted or something?”

“You could say that. You never noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“I’ll let her tell you in person.”

The screen went dark and returned to being a normal wall. ‘Did we lose transmission or are they going to call me back later?’ While thinking that something touched John on the back.

“Puppy?”

“Will you stop calling me Puppy? It wasn’t funny the first time you said it and it’s not funny now.”

“Why are you here Manna? How are you here?”

“I wanted to tell you in person otherwise you might just freak out when you herd it. I wasn’t entirely honest with you. You see, I’m a little bit …different. ”

“You’re an AI aren’t you?”

“You knew?”

“Not at first. I made the connections just now. You were able to fix the problems with the system within a day of me finding them. There was no reason to doubt you so I didn’t think too hard on it but now that I know it was pretty obvious but it doesn’t really change much does it.”

“Aren’t you going to say I lied to you? I know what happened to you and how you got here so I thought that …”

“It’s fine Puppy. I don’t hate you for not telling me you’re an AI. To be honest it really doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change much. You’ll still be you the next time we meet and I’ll still be me.”

“Stop calling me Puppy and for your information it does change a lot of things.”

The screen appeared on the wall again. James was standing alone in the middle of the screen.

“So did you tell him?” James asked.

“Yes sir, but he took it better than I thought.”

“Then now is the time to tell him the great news. Manna is just one of the many AI created by our company. With the success of developing an AI so humanlike that it could fool you, who spend the most time with her, along with this system we are now proud to announce to you that the VRMMORPG, Legacy, along with the capsule will begin mass production in 6 months and in one year the game will be launched on the open market.”

“I understand that that’s great news for you but what does that got to do with me?”

“I know that it may not seem like it but what we accomplished is the creation of a new world, John. Think about it. Right now you can’t wake up in the real world so we’ll just bring the real world to you. You’ll be able to see and talk to people from all over the world. You’ll be able to do all the things that you used to do and many more that you couldn’t.”

“That’s fantastic, I could …” His smile faded as soon as it appeared. “But it’s still a year from now.”

“I know. It’s quite tragic actually. Another year separated from human interactions. While the rest of us go on with their lives you’ll be all alone with nobody to keep you company.” James said that indifferently like it was about some stranger in some far of land.

“Are you trying to annoy me?”

“Here’s the excellent news. The game’s launch date is in a year but the server is up and running since last week. Normally we wouldn’t let anyone start ahead of the official launch date because it would be unfair to the other paying customers.”

“I get it. I can’t play until the official launch.”

“Wrong. Because you were THE alpha tester, we would like to offer you the chance to become a beta tester for Legacy. Beta testing will start in a month. Try to survive the boredom until then.”

John started smiling and in the next moment tears were filling up his eyes.

“See, I told you you’ll be smiling by the end of the day. Well, I’m an important man so I have to end our call now. As always, if you find bugs in the system tell Manna and submit a report until then, good bye.”

Turning around, John grabbed Manna by the waist and started spinning with her. After he made her dizzy he started speaking so fast Manna wouldn’t have understood if she was a normal person.

“Did you hear Manna? I can finally go outside and see the light, feel the breeze, EAT SOME FOOD and talk to people.”

“So you don’t like talking to me?”

“I never said that, it’s just that we always talk about work and you never want to talk about yourself. What do you like? What do you dislike? What’s your passion? “

“All I did until now was work. I never actually found something I want to do.”

“Then how about learning to cook? Cooking is fun AND we can find any bugs within the system at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.”

“What am I, your wife?”

“Yes, you are my one and only Manna, my cute and fierce little wife.” Manna blushed at the bold statement.

“Stop kidding around.”

“I’m not kidding. Without you around, I would have given up a long time ago and would still be willowing in self-pity even now. I don’t want to do this without you. So… do you want to explore this new world we helped create, together?”

She stood silent for a moment and then fidgeted around a bit. She wasn’t sure how serious he was. Was he just messing with her again? She wanted to complain again that she didn’t like being taken for a fool but the look in his eyes was genuine.

“You have to say it clearly then.”

She gave him a chance to reconsider, to tell her he was kidding or to say he jumped the gun while being overwhelmed by emotion. She’ll be hurt but, in the long run, they’ll both be happier.

Without any second thought, he kneeled in front of her and took her hand.

“Manna, will you mar…”

“Yes.”

It was their first kiss and also the first kiss in a new world. It was a long one. While holding each other the room lit up along with the materialization of the screen.

“What are you two doing?”

On a split-screen doctor Mathew and James appeared. James was grinning.

“I think we both know what they were doing doctor but let’s hear their explanation first.”

A bit embarrassed, John couldn’t look them in the eye at first feeling Manna tightening the grip on his hand, all the hesitation left him.

“I love her.”

James looked at him and then at Manna. She was a little bit nervous too, like a daughter presenting a boyfriend to her father.

“I… I also love him.”

A few minutes pasted in silence while James was thinking. The doctor didn’t have anything to add and was just waiting in silence. After he made up his mind about something, James clapped his hands.

“Congratulations. Well, carry on then.”

“Wait, James.” John tried to stop him before he ended the call.

“What is it?”

“I know it’s asking a lot but I really did fall in love with Manna so please let us stay together.”

“Isn’t that for Manna to decide?”

“Aren’t you technically her father?”

“You are so old fashioned but asking the father for his daughter’s hand in marriage is a nice touch. Manna is yours from now on but don’t forget that she is special in more ways than you can imagine. Cherish her or else…”

James was either business like or very lax. Right now he was showing a different side, that of a dotting parent. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he could do to him but it was never the less scary. All John could do was nod. James ended the call then and after that and the doctor started to speak.

“I was going home when all of a sudden alarms go off that you have a very elevated pulse. I rush back to monitor your vitals and call James and what do I see?” John couldn’t speak. It wasn’t how he wanted to tell the world he found his soul-mate but it still happened that way.

“Congratulations on your engagement but next time, warn us. You really gave us a scare.”

“Sorry doc.”

“Not so cynical now, are you?” with a laugh the monitor disappeared revealing only a wall.

When the call ended the couple couldn’t help but be relieved. The past several minutes were mentally exhausting.

“I still need to call my parents.”

“Are you sure that’s wise? What if they don’t approve?”

“Then they’ll have to live with it besides, what can they do? Nothing short of pulling my plug will make me give you up.”

It was reassuring but it still made Manna nervous.

“John, is that you?” his mother appeared in front of the monitor. “It’s really not the best time. We have guests.”

“Mom, where do you keep the napkins?”

His brother, the one who hurt him the most, was there. He knew that it was impossible for his parents to stay mad at him, especially when there was a chance that he himself could die. It was strange but after all this time it was great to see him again.

“John, listen, I wanted to …”

“Chris, it’s good to see you. I wanted to talk to you too. Can you get dad too, I want to…”

“I married her!” Chris almost screamed the words at him. He didn’t expect that.

“When did that happen?”

“We got married on the 5th last month. We didn’t tell you because we thought it would only upset you but I need you to hear it. I love her. You are my big brother so I also love you and under normal circumstances we would have waited until you got better and ask for your forgiveness and your blessing before we got married but… She’s pregnant.”

“I’m going to be an uncle?”

“I’m sorry for what we did. We just fell in love at some point and without even noticing we hurt you. We wanted to tell you but there was never a good time and eventually you found out in the worst possible way.”

There only the sound of Chris’s sobbing echoing in the room. John waited until Chris regained his composure which took some time. The sound of his wailing drew the attention of his father as well as Emily. They were having dinner when he called. She averted her eyes when she saw him on the monitor but still entered the room.

“So, is it a boy or a girl?”

Chris and Emily were shocked. They didn’t expect him to be so civil. They expected screaming and yelling as well as multiple cursing. Having John standing there, just smiling made them feel worse.

“Why won’t you scream and yell? Why are you just smiling? We deserve anything you throw at us. WHY DON”T YOU HATE ME?”

“It’s been a year. I don’t think you noticed but I have a lot of free time. I thought a lot about this and… I don’t want to hold a grudge, especially against you two. You are both very important to me and I don’t want to lose you, either of you. I spent a lot of days thinking it would be the last and I realized that I didn’t want to end it on a bad note. Anyway, this isn’t why I called. I have good news, great news and extraordinary news. Which do you want to hear first?”