Story Idea: Lost in Virtual Reality

The small wrinkled green form of Yoda appeared before me. How many times has it been? A million? A billion? Who even knows any more. Time has no meaning here. “Here” has no meaning here.

Yoda cocked his head and was about to speak. But before he could I had cocked my leg and swing it forward planting the tip of my boot squarely into his chest. My toes compressed in the tip of my boot because of the impact and I swear I felt his small ribs collapse in his tiny chest. The force transferred and his body went sailing. I didn’t bother watching to see where is small form landed.

Now now, I know what you are thinking: How could you.. you monster?!?!.

Let me give you some context.

At some point, I realized this wasn’t real. Sure, seeing Yoda was probably a dead giveaway. But the Yodas didn’t start appearing till much later. How it started was innocent enough, and maybe somewhat believable for you. Virtual Reality is getting pretty good. Yes, yes.. we are all familiar with this trope. But my misadventure started when I went into a virtual reality inside of another virtual reality. This concept isn’t even that new. People are already building Minecraft within Minecraft. Games have games in them. So, I didn’t think I had much to worry about. Until.. I tried to leave.

So, how does one leave a virtual world? You simply pull off your headset.. set down the controls. But that’s making a pretty big assumption: You actually can. You see, you have your physical body.. and then an “avatar”.. the digital representation of you. Eventually VR gets good enough to where when your avatar touches the avatar arm it feels like an avatar arm. For example: You want to be able to feel the imaginary sword. If your avatar is a lizard person, you can feel your reptilian skin. But, alas, here is the problem. If your avatar gets it’s own avatar. Where is that headset? What arms are you using to reach for that headset? Let’s say you go four avatars deep?

So, I reach for the headset and all I feel is the medieval helmet I’m wearing. Sure, the lift of arms to a head should be universal.. it should be “close enough”. But it’s not, there’s a disconnect, and it could be miles away, or light years away.

Panic sets in. I begin flailing my avatar’s limbs.. thrashing.. maybe it’s moving my “real” arms somewhere? Eventually they’ll get knocked off.. right? Are my “real” arms even still moving? There is a disconnect.

In the Matrix users have no access to their bodies. But what if we keep access, but the signals in the brain just get.. confused. What if they are tricked into believing your arms are 20ft long? Or instead of fingers you have tentacles. It’s amazing how quickly are brains are tricked in VR. I remember after just a few minutes in the most basic of VR setups I was carefully walking around things on a mini-golf course. I knew there wasn’t a giant spider.. or that I wasn’t walking a plank hundreds of floors up. But alas, we are easily deceived.

And so, I was trapped. Was my only hope that I hungry or passed out? Was soiling myself somewhere?

…