Prologue: The Virtual Reality Simulator (VRS)
The day was noisy with heavy traffic above the old city streets of New York. From the newly designed dystopian freeway above the old and now unused city streets, the flying cars of today flew by in between the towering futuristic skyscrapers as they made their way to their destination.
The year was 2055, and the future was here. The Age of Invention, the Age of Expansion, the Age of Progression, the Age of Peace, the Age of Union; what ever you wish to call it, it was here and it was full fledged. The world had finally found a sort of temporary peace, nations finally have united, and science and exploration had gone completely out of control. Left and right humanity came together and started creating, inventing new devices, tools, and new ways to use them, making humanity the advanced dystopian civilization they are now. However, now that humanity had gotten so advanced, progression was slowing down.
Humanity has begun to run out of ideas. They have rid themselves of disease and sickness with their advanced medicine. They advanced themselves in their weaponry, security, and defense to the point that none dare start war. They have already begun to travel and conquer the stars with their spaceships, interstellar drives, and terraforming technologies. They have more power than they will ever need thanks to their newly developed and environmentally safe power cells. They would never go hungry due to their advances in farming technology. They have never had any trouble economically thanks to their new and improved economic system. And they will never have to wait long to get anywhere with their new methods of transportation. They only three things that humanity had not succeeded in was creating life, discovering immortality, and finding alien life, but all were considered in the realm of impossibility. Most of humanity now believe that the age of invention would soon be only reduced to finding new ways to make something as trivial as a toothpick.
However, there was still one man who believed otherwise. One who believed that the age of invention was not over yet and that he was going to be the one to rekindle it. This man was the man down below the new freeways of New York wearing a business suit, pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of his place of business, waiting impatiently for a friend who said he would stop by an hour ago. This man was known as Jack Manster, owner of an entertainment company known as Manster Games. He believed he was onto something big, an invention that would change the entertainment industry forever. Eric, his best friend from collage, was coming to help him test this new piece of entertainment's future sometime soon. He couldn't trust anyone else with this, despite how peaceful today's society today, people were still known to steal ideas and Jack would be damned if he ever let anyone profit off his idea. So Eric was the only person he trusted to test this thing.
"Ug, where is he? He should have been here an hour ago!" Jack muttered to himself, his impatience was growing. Despite the fact Eric was his friend, he always wanted to strangle him for always being late as he is when he requests him to come at a certain time.
Jack was about to check his watch when he finally heard the familiar sound of Eric's car flying from the sky. He then saw the familiar red flying car descend from the sky and park itself next to the sidewalk near Jack. The driver side door opened and Eric stepped out. Unlike Jack, he was wearing casual clothing, he wore a simple light brown pants, a light blue button up shirt, and a plain brown leather coat. His hair was brown just like Jack's hair was, but he also sported a light beard unlike Jack and his eyes were brown as compared Jack's green eyes. Eric approached Jack extending his hand in greeting.
"Hey man, what's up?" He asked, extending his greeting.
Jack accepted his hand with his own and shook. "Not much, been waiting for an hour for you to get your ass over here." Jack replied.
Eric looked at his watch and noticed the time and that he was an hour late. "Damn, I didn't think it would take that long to get over here, sorry man. Hope you didn't give up the test run to someone else yet." Eric offered as an apology.
Jack gave him a reassuring smile. "No worries, you will still be the first to get to test this new toy out. Now, lets get going inside and I'll show you the future of entertainment." Jack reassured as he turned and began to enter the building behind them.
"Alright." Eric replied simply as he followed his friend in.
They entered the main lobby where they both walked up to the front desk. The lady at the desk looked them both over, she recognized her boss right away but eyed Eric suspiciously. Jack assured the lady that Eric was with him, she nodded and punched a few buttons on the screen in front of her and a elevator labeled "Offices" at the far left side slid open. Both the men made their way into the elevator and waited for it to start moving. The doors slid closed and the elevator started going up, extremely bad elevator music playing the entire way up.
"All I can say is that this thing you are going to show me is one-thousand times better than this cheep ass elevator music." Eric commented. Both shared a chuckle on that comment but Jack didn't reply otherwise.
The soul tormenting music came to and end as the elevator finally stopped and released it's bored prisoners from their torture. They left the elevator behind and made a few turns down several hall, passing employees every once in a while who would greet them as they passed. As they continued to walk Eric's mind began to wander, he was curious about this machine that Jack wanted him to test. Jack never really told him much about it when he initially called him over, he merely said it would make all videogames look trivial to him once he tried it. Although Eric wanted to ask more questions about it, he decided to hold off until he actually got to see the thing.
Finally after countless turns the men find the door to the room they were looking for, the door to Jack's office, the place in which he kept his prototype. Both men walk into Jack's office, Jack simply walking off to the office without a care in the world while Eric took in the environment around him with awe. The office was huge, almost big enough to be considered an rich man apartment, it had an great view of the beautiful dystopian city, and it had beautiful (and expensive) art decorating the entire room.
Eric let out a whistle in emphasis of his surprise. "Quite a place you got here, Jack." Eric commented.
"Yep, benefits of having a good job. Come along now, I am sure you don't want to miss the chance to try out the VRS." Jack replied, waving Eric over.
"VRS? Now what does that stand for?" Eric asked as he came over to stand next to Jack. They both now stood in front of an object covered in a sheet. Jack reached his hand forward and proceeded to pull the cloth off the object. With the cloth removed, it was reveled to be a smooth chrome looking chair with different sorts of contraptions.
"This is Virtual Reality Simulator." Jack Replied proudly.
"Virtual Reality simulator? HA! Are you sure this is not an electrocution chair?" Eric joked.
Jack was not phased by the bad joke as he simply passed Eric an annoyed look. "No, it is the VRS. The first ever entertainment device to put the user itself directly into the action. Basically, this device puts the user into a virtually designed of realistic detail world where they can do whatever the hell they want." Jack explained.
"I see..." Eric simply replied as he walked around the chair, examining it for any further details. In the end he found nothing else significant about it besides for the fact how it worked was not immediately apparent. "So, how does it work? Unless this is some really sophisticated gaming chair, I really don't see how it works." Eric then asked.
"Simple, it works by psychologically linking the user to the machine where they can then access the system and functions. From there they can jump themselves into any sort of world they want as whoever they want, take for example, you can be the fearless super soldier master chief as he fights the Covenant to save earth or role-play as your favorite custom character from any sort of MMO like World of Warcraft!" Jack rambled on.
Eric continued to stare at the machine, he was a bit unsure about what he was being told. Jack said that the machine psychologically connected itself to the user, and something about that didn't sound safe to Eric. "Yeah, okay. So it places you in videogames. That is cool and all, but it is safe? I mean no offence, but psychologically linking yourself to anything, whether it be alive or not, seems like something a mad scientist would try to achieve. I am not going to end up with something like brain cancer or anything like that if I try this thing?" Eric asked.
Jack merely shook his head at my concerns. "There is nothing about this machine that can hurt the user, it has all already been tested and proven safe. Hell, I even tried it once myself." He said confidently, he was pretty sure there was nothing wrong with his machine. However, Eric still looked at it with doubt, the thing looked like an execution device to him, he still didn't entirely trust it. "Oh come on Eric, I wouldn't have asked you to come over if it wasn't 100% safe." Jack tried to convince his friend.
Eric looked at the device for a few more seconds before sighing in defeat, he did want to see what this thing could do and he didn't feel like making this a wasted trip, so he figure he could take his friend's word for it and that it was safe. "Alright, I'll do it, but be warned. If this thing fries my brain, I will come back and haunt you ass and this office building for as long as you both of shall live." Eric said jokingly as took a seat in the death chair. He didn't laugh at his own joke as he began to wonder if he was going to regret this.
"I'll keep that in mind, now lay back in the chair and I'll walk you though how this works." Jack instructed. Eric did as he was told and waited for Jack's further instructions. "Good, now, I am going to put this helmet over you head and turn on the machine. After it is on, all you need to do is relax and let your mind go blank. Once you are in the system, you will be in a small square room that will act as menu screen of sorts. You will see one program that you can access, it will appear in the form of a book. This program will be the game you will be playing during this test, it will be a simple shooter that you will recognize immediately, but I'll let you figure it out. To play it you will simply place your hand on the book's cover and wait for it to bring you in, this will put you into world where you can screw around all you want. When you are done you can leave by simply saying "VRS Menu" and then "VRS Exit", it should wake you up and we'll be done." Jack explained as he placed the helmet on Eric's head and prepared to turn it on.
"Alright, got it." Eric said.
"Now, if you somehow forget how to exit for some god unknown reason or suddenly decide that you want to live there forever, I will pull you out after a couple of hours. So a two hour trial is all you get, spend it wisely." Jack added as he finally turn on the machine.
The machine didn't produce much more noise than a butterfly as it came to life, Eric hardly noticed a thing. He followed Jacks instructions, closing his eyes he let his mind go completely blank. He did this for a minute before wondering how long this took, and then he realized that he probably screwed it up by thinking this. With this conclusion, he allowed his eyes to open and was about to ask his friend how long this would take. However, he stops as he realizes that he is no longer in the same room. He was in the room this Jack described in his instructions, just a plain white 12x12 room.
"Wow, now that is trippy." Eric commented to himself, his voice echoing around the room. He was fascinated by what had just happened, he just suddenly went from lying down in a chair to standing up in the room without feeling a thing.
Looking around the room Eric finally notices the book Jack told him about in his instructions, in this book was the game that he was suppose to play for this test. It was an odd looking book, it looked like a story book that had a weird emblem of an unicorn on it. Eric walks over the to book and picks it up to examine it further, the unicorn emblem and the book itself looked to be very old. Eric didn't pay much mind to how strange the book was, he just assumed that it was how Jack designed it as he opened the book to a random page. What he found inside was a strange picture with a dark colored unicorn and a light colored unicorn both with wings, they both seemed facing each other off. Below that was what appeared to be something written in a foreign language that Eric could not read. Eric looked around the room one more time wondering if he had picked up the right book, but upon the second scan of the room, there was no other book to be seen.
"Well this certainly doesn't look like any sort of first person shooter to me, what the hell is this suppose to be?" Eric asked himself as he flipped randomly though the pages, finding nothing but more pictures and more words he couldn't read. With a defeated sigh he simply closed the book and placed his hand on the cover, deciding that it was probably just a place holding texture for the program that would be changed eventually. He kept his hand on the book and waited for it to pull him in just as Jack instructed. A few seconds past as nothing was happening, after a minute of nothing happening he removed his hand from the book. Eric looked around again thinking he had grabbed the wrong book, still no other book could be seen anywhere.
"Hmm, that's stra-" Eric started. However, an arc of electricity shot out from the book and incinerated Eric before he had time to react. His ashes were then violently sucked into the unicorn emblem as if it were a black hole. The book itself then faded from existence.
In it's place another book appeared, this one looked to be originally a part of the room itself.
***
It was a beautiful day in Ponyville, the weather was perfect, only a few clouds in the sky, and it was generally a good day to do just about anything. Some ponies found it to be a good day to shop around town, some ponies found it to be a good day to play outside and have some fun, and, for some reason, one pony found it to be a good day to read while walking through town and end up running into a wall. However, a certain pony known as Rainbow Dash found it to be a great day to take a nap on a cloud high above Ponyville, putting off her duty to clear out the rest of the clouds until the last second.
Rainbow Dash had been working on making the weather this great all day today and felt that she deserved a small nap before finishing the job. However, Rainbow Dash's "small nap" has turned into a full out heavy nap that has been dragged out a few hours longer than intended. She was so deep in her sleep that is was likely that she wouldn't wake up for anything...
*BANG*
Well, anything that didn't sound like a sonic rainboom going off. Rainbow was immediately woken up by the sudden explosion and she began searching for the source. She scanned around in the sky above her, looking for the shockwave and the lousy prick that would ever think of trying copy her move. However, she was unable to find the shockwave or its source, confusing her immensely. She gave the sky one last scan before spotting something falling over the Everfree, she couldn't tell what it was until she quint a bit, it was undeniably a pegasus. She immediately assumed it was the prick trying to copy her.
She was in the middle of debating what she should do to the little douchebag that just tried steal her trick before she realized that the pegasus had not stopped falling. "Uh, should of he pulled up by now?" She asked herself as she continued to watch the pegasus continue to plummet towards the Everfree. As the pegasus was reaching the trees was when she finally put two and two together. "Oh my Celestia!!! He's in Trouble!" was her only thought as she launched off her cloud and toward the Pegasus as he fell into the Everfree.
Author's Note
And so it begins...
I hope this little introduction has managed catch your attention. Let me know if you enjoyed by leaving a like and/or a comment and let me know of you want me to make more.
Thank you for reading.
PS: Eric is not a brony and MLP doesn't not exist in his reality.
