EIGHT PEOPLE were running through a dusty landscape. They moved in twilight between cliffs in a rocky desert valley, in the first hour of the twelve hours of the ancient Egyptian underworld night. But they weren’t in Egypt... ‘Virtual Eternity’ fiction. A journey through ancient Egypt’s underworld
They
were totally immersed inside a new virtual reality simulator called ‘Virtual
Eternity’, built by mysterious tech organization, The Sirius Research
Corporation.
Each
person, invited under the strictest secrecy, bore a tag – Sage, Robber, Scribe,
Prophetess, Gamer, Soldier, Priest, and Neophyte.
Sage
ran at the head of the party. She’d been assigned the title ‘Sage’ or ‘wise
one’ as an associate professor of Egyptology specializing in mythology and
funerary beliefs, despite her youth.
One
of the party ran past the others to catch up to her. It was Gamer, a compact
young Korean-born game designer.
“This
place is unreal, huh?” he said.
“It’s
real enough for me.”
“That’s
what I’m talking about. It’s so real… it is unreal. I always wanted to design
an ancient Egyptian VR game, but this, hey, I can’t fathom it out. One hundred
percent immersive. Three sixty-degree landscape. Perfect resolution. No lag.
All sensory input and inner-ear thing of real movement. Forces on body, real
muscle sense. Even sweat and fatigue.” He gave the Egyptologist a quizzical
look. “You have the inside story? What is this place all about? Is this a
role-playing game, or just an ancient Egyptian environment? What are we
supposed to do here?”
“Just
experience it and survive,” Sage said. A tall woman, Sage wore a dark blue
T-shirt and light khaki trousers and archaeology boots and she cut a lithe
figure, running nimbly and easily. “You heard the announcement like a god’s
voice cracking over our heads at the start. We’ve got twelve hours to reach the
end of the underworld before dawn, surviving the dangerous guardians, gateways
and demons of the journey along the way, or we die. Virtually die, one hopes.”
“That
is the beauty of game worlds,” Gamer said. “Nobody dies. You just keep coming
back for more. Over and over again. You learn from your experience.”
“That’s
reassuring. But in this dead and dry landscape, dying seems as real as living.”
