Year: 2032

Dr. Richard was sitting comfortably on his chair in a large office on the top floor of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA. He had short black hair, a handsome clean-shaven face and light-brown eyes. He stood at good 6 feet 2 inches tall and had a gentle aura about him. A gamer at heart, he was excitedly browsing the internet looking up any information on the virtual reality game: Conqueror. Boasting a mind-boggling 99% realism rate, it was naturally the talk of the whole world as the next closest virtual reality game had a measly 25% realism rate. Naturally, Dr. Richard was no exception as he could hardly wait to play the game which was scheduled to release in 3 months time.

Apart from the extremely high realism rate, Conqueror was also able to capture so much attention because the makers of the game, Cyber Illusions, claimed that there would be no separate servers for the different countries, instead everyone who wants to play will play on a single server. Language issues? Cyber Illusions announced that they had made a unique universal language software that will translate any spoken works of other players/NPCs into the language chosen as default by a player in real-time. This meant that a person speaking Japanese and a person speaking French would be able to understand each other comfortably as if they were speaking the same language!

Giddily reading any information that he could find about Conqueror, Dr. Richard felt as if he were a small kid again impatiently waiting for Christmas to come so that he could get new toys! Chukling to himself, he was about to click on a link detailing news about the upcoming Beta test for the game when he was abruptly interrupted by his door opening and a nurse running inside with an extremely worried expression!

"Sandra! What's the meaning of this?" asked Dr. Richard annoyed at being disturbed during his break. Noticing the expression on her face, he added "Is something wrong?"

"Doctor! There's someone here to see John!" the nurse almost shouted at him.

"What?!? How can that be?! Is it a relative?" asked Dr. Richard while jumping out of his seat and putting on his white coat anxiously hurrying out of his office, with Sandra following behind.

"I don't know! 3 official looking people just came in and asked about the doctor in charge of the patient in room 306 as they wanted to speak to the patient!"

"Speak to him?!? Are they crazy?" Dr. Richard was now clearly baffled as to why someone would even think about speaking with John.

He could still remember it like it was yesterday, the day he realized just how cruel humans could be. 9 years ago, a family of 3 arrived in an ambulance as a result of a car accident. Apparently, they tried to run a red light and a jeep slammed into the backside of the family's car. The parents, who were in the front had some minor injuries and weren't in any danger whatsoever; however, the same couldn't be said about the 7-8 year old boy. He was unconscious and covered in cuts and bruises while nurses and doctors hurried him to the Emergency Operation Theater trying to stop his bleeding.

Dr. Richard was in charge of the emergency shift that day and ended up being the doctor in charge for the little boy. After cleaning the boy's wounds and stitching him up where needed, they were about to do further tests to check for internal injuries like X-rays etc. when everyone operating on the boy stopped. They had been busy cleaning him up and getting rid of the dried blood on his skin, and now that he was clean they could see a horrifying sight. The boy's body was covered with bruises, and they could see only a few of the bruises were fresh, the rest were all old. His body was thin, extremely thin! All his bones were sticking out, clearly visible under his pale white skin. His face looked like it had been used as a punching bag, with his nose and jaw broken in many places with varying signs of healing indicating that he had suffered constant injuries throughout his life.

Everyone present was trained enough to know what these signs pointed to: child abuse! Dr. Richard had seen some cases of child abuse, but nothing even close to the brutality visible on this boy. After somewhat coming to terms with the sight in front of him, he ordered all the staff to continue the treatment and keep a close eye on the boy. He then turned with fury clearly visible on his face.

He briskly walked back towards the entrance of the Emergency Room and demanded to know where the two parents were. Everyone present was shocked at the anger which Dr. Richard showed, as he was usually a nice and easy-going guy.

After finding out where the parents were, he was about to confront them with some physical abuse of his own when he stopped because there were policemen present around the parents, questioning them. Dr. Richard found out that both the mother and father, named Mary and Will respectively, were high on drugs and drunk to the point where they had no idea where they were.

What he learned later was beyond his wildest imaginations. The parents, completely unaware of where they were and what they were saying, readily answered any and all questions about the boy. Everyone present was shocked to learn about how the boy was abused, about how he was used as a drug-tester, about how he was kept barely alive by giving him the minimum amount of food needed. When asked what the name of their child was, the father simply answered "Hmph! Why waste a name on a brat like that? All we had to do was call him brat or little shit and he knew he was being referred to. Hahahaha!"

At this point, unable to control himself any longer, Dr. Richard punched the father so hard that he immediately lost consciousness! The policemen restrained him from continuing his beating, but didn't arrest him as they themselves were completely disgusted by the parents.

Naturally, the parents were put away for a long, long time while the boy stayed at the hospital, still unconscious. The boy, called John Doe now because of a lack of any name, had suffered a severe trauma to his head and was in a coma.

9 years had gone by and the boy hadn't woken up yet, and Dr. Richard still had a hard time understanding how humans could be so cruel.