-= Fiction =- The Virtual World Society and Reality

Imagine if you will, a future society based on it's technology. Mankind had developed the virtual reality world to the point where a persons biological needs could be maintained by machines while the person remains in the Virtual World. This society eventually fully retreated into the Virtual World, as this was a much nicer, cleaner and easily maintained world than the real world. In reality, the world had begun to suffer from neglect, and mankinds obcessive development of it's technology. Huge factories were built, pumping pollutants into the atmosphere, that powered the massive computer systems and the tubes that sustained mankind in it's "little slice of heaven".

Life was good, once society had retreated into the Virtual World. The world followed guidelines that were clearly established, but could be changed if something dire went wrong. Generations were born and died within the Virtual World, without ever having exited to view the real world. Unlike "The Matrix", this was not a prison, but a self imposed exile from reality.

But as all systems do, eventually this one failed. Mankind had lived within the Virtual World for a thousand years, with the real world being simply an old story, or even a myth told around camp fires. One day, however, mankind woke from it's nighttime slumbers to a terrible, new reality. This was a reality of dark, dank factories, where tubes were inserted into various orifices to maintain their existance. The terror of waking up within a glass tube, feeling the uncomfortable sensation of tubes inserted throughout your body and in various orifices. Many people could not cope with this terrifying, strange and uncomfortable world, and lost their sanity. Some people hurt themselves, or hurt others, in their quest to escape from this "unreal" world that they never knew existed. Ultimately worse, however, were the tubes of people that didn't wake, those killed outright when the system fatally crashed. Some of the survivors thought of these people as the lucky ones.

Mankind floundered. Few had the skills to work with, what were now archaic designs. During mankinds time within the computer system, they had continued their quests for knowledge, but generally on paths of pure knowledge, and not practical solutions. With everything catered for them, mankind saw no reason to change their existance, and so had not developed any type of practical skills.

Months passed as the remnants of humanity attempted to repair the failed computer systems. Knowledge was gained slowly, and painfully. Many died, either through refusal to accept the new world, or through mis-managed attempts to bring the "real" world back online before vital repairs had been conducted. For many, all that sustained them was the promise of their leaders that ultimately the Virtual World would be restored to humanity.

While the majority of the survivors eagerly awaited a return to their real world, within the computers, the leaders of mankind had realised that this existence would ultimately doom mankind. But they were powerless to prevent the return of mankind to, what the had come to realise was simply a self-imposed prison. If they proposed remaining in the real world, very few, if any, of the survivors would accept this. They had had enough of this strange and hard world, where they had to fight simply to survive. They wanted the sheltered reality that they had grown up in. Additionally, few people, even after months in the real world, had anything like the skills to survive and rebuild society to it's former levels.

Finally, a bizarre plan to salvage humanity was born. The majority of the survivors would reenter the world they had left. However, the leaders and some of the scientists who understood the issue would remain behind, building some safeguards into the computer systems, and building mechanical minders for the machines. They would also implement the major portion of the plan, that would ultimately take the rest of their lives to fine tune and complete.

They would build a seperate Virtual World, imitating the real world in every details. All laws of physics and similar would be hardcoded into the system, and the Virtual World would work exactly the same as the real world. This system would be unchangeable from within, but could be altered from without, at least initially. The Virtual World was fed all the history data and information that existed, and would initially recreate the beginning of the 20th Century. Sophisticated Pseudo Intelligences (PI's) would be created to exist within the world initially, but later retreat out of the Virtual World and exist in the bcground of the world, monitoring it for any signs of anomolies.

Into this world would go all the new born babies that were created in the system. The vast computer system had a sophisticated way of managing human procreation, essentially monitoring sexual intercourse and, based on a formulae, if pregnancy ensued, would take the appropriate genetic material from each parent and "tube" the resulting embryo. Ultimately, the baby would be inserted into a full tube, which it would grow into ultimately, and inserted into the Virtual World, and grow up in the 20th Century created world.

The idea behind this was to give mankind a second chance, and allow it to develop the skills it had lost again in a safer environment than the true world.