Carl gazed down from the top of the hill. The lion looked exactly the same, and yet it was different. It wasn't scary at all.

This had just turned into a video game. A ridiculously expensive one, certainly of the best quality ever made, which Carl was playing for free.

He was beside himself with joy!

He glanced at the measly combat knife in his hand and then at the massive beast. This wasn't going to be easy by any means, since the purpose hadn't changed – go through a vivid nightmare and try to disregard it, holding on to your perception of what is real, and what isn't.

And yet, he smiled frenziedly.

“This'll be fun!”

He run down, his heart racing – but merely from anticipation. The feline noticed him quickly and froze, seemingly hesitating.

“Wow, this AI is incredible!”

Indeed, the beast behaved very differently this time, reacting accordingly to his aggressive approach. It observed the incoming intruder quietly, while gradually lowering its body, ready to pounce or flee at a moment's notice. It waited until the very end, before swiping its claws at Carl, who decided to outright yolo this attempt and go directly for the big, wide open eyes.

“So fast!”

He stood no chance of avoiding the strike. The large limb's momentum was enough to throw him off balance and even broke his frail hand, knocking the blade aside. The lion then exploded like a loaded spring and bit down on Carl's shoulder, before the whole mass collapsed onto him and pressed him into the ground.

There was no pain, so he still had his full strength at disposal, but there was nothing to be done. The knife was lying too far to reach it with the other hand, so he just tried to gouge the eye, but when wrestling a giant, it was futile. It was constantly moving, its claws pressed against Carl's other shoulder were in the way, and even if his finger found the eye, the feline would simply close it and shake its head at most.

Despite feeling perfectly fine, he could sense that the damage to his body was impairing his mobility and his arms were losing vigor. That disparity was pretty unrealistic and irritating. It was like being in a lucid dream where you wanted to run, but your legs were so heavy you could barely move.

Because of Carl's resistance, the lion clamped down hard on his shoulder, crushing bones and choking the life out of him until blood burst out of his mouth. Again, he couldn't breathe, but it wasn't uncomfortable at all, as if his lungs had unlimited air no matter what.

Eventually, his hands fell down limply and he couldn't move any more, but he didn't eject just yet.

“Come one, get this over with! I want to go for another try.”

The beast took its time, though. It dragged him off a short distance, before dropping him down in some bushes and munching on his shredded arm. Carl couldn't believe that crushing bones was so loud, now that it was the only sound he was focusing on.

This was so weird and gruesome …

“Erm, are you alright?” Jin asked suddenly through a microphone.

“No worries, I'm fine. Can you tell it to kill me faster so I can try again?” Carl said in his thoughts.

This ability of the new, cutting-edge interface was just phenomenal. On the surface it was almost identical to talking in full-dive VR, with one minor distinction – just send the same inputs to your body you normally would, only without moving your mouth. And yet, this tiny nuance eluded engineers for over a decade. The divide between motor movement and its mere intention was apparently so vast, that the latter seemed almost indistinguishable from background noise in the brain scans. As it turned out in the end, it wasn't fundamentally a technical problem, but one of user training. And now that linguistic thought formulation methods were finally mastered, true implant-assisted telepathy was possible at last.

“… You know you can abort, right?” Jin's voice indicated his confusion.

“Yea, but I want it to kill me. That final moment is the most intense part,” Carl pointed out.

“Okaaay …” Jin was taken aback yet again, “give me a moment”. The boy didn't cease to impress him.

“Oh, never mind. I can move again,” Carl corrected himself.

When he realized he still had some strength left, Carl burst forth with all of it, flailing with his intact hand and kicking, expecting the lion to finish him off. The feline first stomped on him and shifted its weight to keep him immobile, then bit savagely on the hand Carl used to attack its head, crushing it to bloody bits.

“Gah! You still there, Jin?”

“Yes, I just–”

Jin didn't get to finish, because the beast lunged for Carl's throat. The boy's vision darkened and faded out completely until he woke up in the virtual cabin, which was currently opening, revealing Jin standing beside it.

“Oof, that was rough,” Carl confessed, energetically getting up as soon as the stabilization frame released him, and doing some exercises to feel his body. He then saw Jin's strange expression. “What?” he asked the young scientist in bewilderment.

“Nothing, it just amazes me how you ignore those terrifyingly unsettling stimuli. This software was specially designed by Cybercore for their newest game to maximally engage one's senses, and the version they gave us is a dedicated supercomputer iteration for experimental purposes. We might just have the best visuals, audio, physics, sensations and AI in the entire world, resulting in some 98% realism. Even with the pain turned off, I shudder at the thought of trying it myself. Watching the subjects squirm scares me enough. It feels far too real already. How do you filter it all out?”

Carl paused for a while.

“I don't know, it's just a game,” he shrugged indifferently. “Maybe your subjects are too old?”

Jin choked and stood there with an open mouth for a moment, before shaking his head in denial.

“I have to admit, though, the feeling of teeth sinking into my flesh and crushing bones at the absence of pain is so …” Carl searched for a proper word.

“Disjointed?” Jin offered.

“I guess so,” Carl agreed. “I wanted to say surreal. Illogical, either way. It destroys the whole experience, making it hardly any different than playing games on max performance settings.”

“Oh, I assure you it's not,” Jin snorted with a stifled laugh. “You might feel like it after going through hell in your first run, but we were testing people this way long before we switched to full realism. And not just us, such studies were conducted for decades, practically since the dawn of VR, and for a good reason. That's because the results have always been palpably clear – healthy individuals react very badly when their senses are overwhelmed with disturbing stimuli and they have nothing to fall back on, like another person holding their hand throughout the ordeal and talking to them. Adults and children alike, even those raised on e-sports.

Why do you think VR products that incorporate violence and trauma have to jump through legal hoops to get a certificate of approval nowadays, which inadvertently compromises their immersion and forces costly workarounds? Certainly not due to moral issues. Pfft, not in this rotten world. If they can sell it, they'll stuff all the filth they can in it and have no qualms about it.

But no business can afford the liability of physical or mental damage to their customers, so they have to continuously remind the users of the fake nature of their experience and prevent the formation of subconscious acceptance. In other words, they have to keep the users with one foot firmly planted on the ground, so to say. And not just for the sake of the psychotic kinds, mind you. That too, obviously, but I'm talking about healthy individuals here. Even they can lose their grasp on things with enough conditioning.

Have you heard of an old classic “The Matrix”? They got it mostly right there, though not quite. A person can indeed flatline after going through a realistic virtual death, but its a small percentage, and they can still be resuscitated. That, however, is unacceptable for a commercial application, so the immersion has to be purposely ruined if tests show a potential risk. Developers got good at doing it subtly, and they call those mechanics 'glitches in the matrix', which are often consciously ignored signals, that the unconscious picks up and associates with an unrealistic scenario, remembering its only a game. This allows players to deeply enjoy themselves without succumbing to the traps of the subconscious mind.

Now, it's one thing if you shield your subjects from burdens they can't bare, but another one entirely if you do the opposite and confront them with true despair. When we sever their connection to reality and then dump a ton of false, yet realistic information on them, they just can't help but partially believe it out of reflex. Particularly in our tests, everyone was critically influenced, and most ended up panicking and ejecting. Some fainted, and some even had to be briefly hospitalized. No casualties, luckily, though we might have had some if we didn't immediately treat them.

That's why we opted for hardened veterans and preliminary screenings – it was proven beyond doubt, that a person can die from sheer horror, and we didn't want to take any chances. Still, we had to reject most of these alpha males without even giving them a taste of the main course. Turns out Cybercore VR systems are in a league of their own.

Yet here you are, acting as if you have fully adapted to the experience after one try, when the baddest and toughest guys we had took multiple attempts stretched across many days to achieve a comparable level of serenity. And they were all so much braver than you to begin with. None of them struggled as much as you did the first time around, not even remotely close. They decisively run at the lion like you did on your second attempt – but then their troubles began. It was too real for them, and their subconscious couldn't handle it.

Now, the subconscious reflex cannot be rapidly trained. It takes intensity and time to do that, with the latter being far more important, since you need a lot of rest and recuperation in between. If you tell me that you've adapted already, I just won't believe you. It's impossible, unless you have a defective brain – which you don't. Honestly, it boggles my mind as to how you're able to detach yourself from what you experience so easily …” Jin elaborated in detail.

The youth in front of him was a monster in human skin. Terrifying and astonishing to the extreme. As a devoted researcher, he had to get to the bottom of this.

“Hmm, I'm not sure that's the case. Don't get me wrong, I can't deny what my senses are telling me, but it's like … it's super easy to face it head on?” Carl clarified, before continuing. “I mean, when there's no threat of discomfort. Pain is definitely scary, and my next attempt with sliders at max might still be challenging, we'll see. But maybe those people had weak faith? I don't know. I'm a spiritual person and I believe this reality is only temporary. I've been thinking about life ever since I was little, and all I want is to fight. The prospect of death doesn't intimidate me, only the agony that leads to it. I'm exposing myself to it in order to gain some immunity.”

Jin was immensely content with Carl's answer. He was now convinced that he needed to hang on to the boy and get him a free pass for further testing, no matter what. Faith and spirituality, and their link to Conti's theory of everything, was exactly what they were investigating here, and Carl provided a spectacular example of what ironclad beliefs can achieve. What motivated him so much, that he beat all those hardy men? Who would dare say that they lacked conviction?

“So are the readings fine? Can I go again?” Carl pleaded tentatively.

“Knock yourself out. With the pain fully suppressed, I don't see any danger to your health. Heart rate elevated, but nothing special,” Jin approved with a nod.

“From excitement,” the boy grinned happily.

“I can tell,” Jin smiled as well. “I have stuff to do, so I'll give you the controls. Just don't touch the more complicated ones or you might mess up. I'm locking the pain slider so you don't get any ideas. Invoke 'call Jin' if you're in trouble. I'll be keeping an eye on you from my tablet.”

“Awesome! At what time do you leave?” Carl rejoiced at the freedom he was given.

“At eight. Do you have permission to be out this long?” Jin once again admired the boy's enthusiasm toward getting mutilated.

“Nothing to worry about. See you later!” Carl said his goodbyes and disappeared into the cabin, cutting their conversation short. He then woke up standing atop of the familiar hill.

“Alright, let's see. Controls!” he commanded with intent aimed at the system AI, calling up a translucent interface, similar to those he was used to, but way more polished. Upon browsing all the available options, he found a word that stood out like a lone nail.

“Weapons!”

Immediately, a very clean-cut list of arms was displayed before him, prompting a whistle of stupefaction.

“Woooahhhh …”

Forget rocket launchers and flamethrowers – among the myriad armaments, there were even sci-fi laser rifles, plasma guns and beam cannons, as well as empowered blades and projectile launchers, not to mention the various magically enhanced items producing fantastical outcomes, like molecular disintegration, freezing, spontaneous combustion, telekinetic manipulation or ultrasonic explosion …

Obviously, the devs were people too. Who wouldn't want to have some fun when they had such assets at their disposal?

Carl felt like a little kid at a toy store. He just didn't know what to grab first. He continued to peruse all the accessible items with an open mouth for a long while, repeatedly being shocked and dazzled each time he thought it couldn't get any better. Eventually he became numb to any more elation, since he was already in a state of perpetual euphoria. He couldn't take it any more and sat down on the ground with a dumb grin.

“What did I do to deserve this?” he sighed blissfully.

Then, he remembered why he was there in the first place. He turned to the distant lion, which was programmed to wait for the test subjects to make a move.

“You are so dead …” Carl commented on the beast's fate with childish mischief, “like you wouldn't believe!”

A passionate laugh suddenly tore the tranquility of the simulated space.

“Alright, time to stop fooling around.”

Getting the excess emotions out of his system, he rubbed his hands and prepared to make a final choice of an appetizer, when a thought reminded him of what he really wanted, deep down.

He loosened up and calmed himself, before looking solemnly at the feline one more time.

“Count your blessings while you still can. Soon, it will be my turn to spill your blood!” he proclaimed with assurance and dashed down the hill, firmly holding the weapon he picked.

A lowly combat knife.