VizAR
- 19 minutes read - 4028 words“VizARs on, people.”
James pushed the button on the back of his neck and the three screens slid into place over his face, sealing his head inside. Cameras embedded in his armor fed the images before him, gradually brightening to give his eyes time to adjust from the darkness within the personnel carrier. On the left screen, a readout of systems displayed their status, scrolling as they came online, always green, the shade varying to distinguish the text from the image before him. On the right, a small window was tucked into the upper corner displaying the wall of the vehicle behind him from the mirror cam embedded in the back of the suit. On the bottom, numbers displayed the current composition of the atmosphere outside of their suits, which compensated as needed.
The other members of his team were all highlighted in green, their armored bodies unchanged by the system. Their surroundings, however, had filters applied, edges clearly drawn, the cameras, thermal sensors, and radar working in concert with one another from everyone on the team to give an accurate picture, regardless of light levels, camouflage or distortion. Rick, their team leader, pulled up a quick map of what the structure was like when it was built, showing them where they would be entering. It was an abandoned shopping mall, the Vixers loved large open spaces, especially when co-ording, working with one another at the same spot. Anything for a fix.
James was a runner, he had to get as far inside as possible, dropping beacons for anyone who might be trapped inside, giving them a way out. Rick nodded at him. Their vehicle spun around and began accelerating in reverse. All seven of them braced for impact, backs straight against the bulkhead.
They slammed through a barricade and then through the old doors of the shopping mall, sealed long ago. James slammed the release as the doors opened, the back of his suit disengaging from the wall. The atmosphere reading changed as soon as he jumped from the vehicle, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide spiking, not a good sign. James already had his path chosen, he had to get to the center of the mall, where a large round plaza had once been the center of activities, drawing people past the shops.
The vehicle behind him lit up on his mirror cam, the beacon being activated by the driver. The beacons were universal, immediately seen by any person in any Augmented Reality system. His team had already begun tending to several people near the vehicle, who had been trapped. Before him, the corridor stretched, his screen highlighting the edges of the hall, the different doorways for the old shops, the floor and debris scattered across it. The problem was that it was rudimentary until more data was fed into the system.
Each person’s suit was equipped with its own radar and sensors. The beacons themselves had even better sensors. As James came to a crossing corridor, he pulled a baton attached to his back, clicked the button so it extended in each direction and slammed it into the ground. Upon hitting the ground, a spike embedded itself through the tile and into the underlying concrete, and the beacon activated.
The sensors from the beacon immediately updated his surroundings, giving a much cleaner perspective of the area. James noticed a few people lying still, likely already dead, against some of the walls. The system itself would have highlighted their forms if it knew they were alive. Either way, that was for his team to figure out, he had to move on.
Sprinting forward, James made his way toward the main interior corridor. These old malls had been built onto time and again, weaving around and back and forth, as they took up the space of old parking lots, the garages around them getting higher and higher. When he hit the main corridor, he slammed another beacon into the ground, the sensors activating, the beacon showing the direction back toward the previous one. Corridors extended in each direction, two of them already engulfed in flames. James turned right, running around kiosks now scattered about through the middle of the main thoroughfare.
Passing yet another intersection, he slammed down a third beacon. The halls leading left and right were also on fire. Continuing straight he finally emerged at the plaza. The thoroughfare leading away from it opposite of him was already engulfed. The larger store to the right was also completely on fire. People were all around, scattered about, some in piles upon one another. Running to the center of the plaza, James jumped up onto a raised stage and slammed a beacon into the ground.
Upon activation, the beacon pushed a siren though his ears and lit up brightly, pointing toward the previous one. The sensors within fed him data, highlighting everything around him, especially the feedback loops from the Vizors others wore. No one moved.
James breathed in deeply, looking down at the atmospheric readouts. No one was breathing the air in here for long, and the fire was spreading rapidly. The scanner showed all adults surrounding him. Where would their children be?
The GM must have begun the raid somewhere. The beginning of the raid. Running back toward the beacon, James shouted into the comms, “Command, isolate the feed from someone that was on this co-ord raid.” Someone had to be streaming this for others to watch. “We need to know where they started.”
“Copy that,” crackled into his ears.
The fire had now consumed the intersection where the previous beacon had been placed, but it still worked, they were nearly invulnerable. James ran through the fire to the next beacon and, instead of going left back toward his team, he ran straight ahead.
“We found it,” they reported.
“Drop me a beacon and light my way.”
“Done.”
A small map appeared in the lower right of his screen, showing where the raid had begun. A faint golden trail of dots appeared on his screen leading him to the far end of the mall. As he passed another intersection, he slammed another beacon in place. Anyone left alive would still need a way out, including himself.
There was another plaza at the end of the mall, where Command had placed his beacon, a good gathering spot for the Vixers to begin. There was no doubt in his mind that the mall had been used for this purpose time and again, a way for people to escape the monotony that had become reality for the vast majority of citizens. Sure, there was little crime, no starvation, but few people actually seemed to live fruitful lives, anymore, either. People escaped the boredom in a variety of different ways. Vixing was one way.
As he approached the plaza, the store he was passing exploded, knocking him across the corridor. Steadying himself for a moment, he watched as the suit ran a systems check, verifying its integrity. The entire area was filled with smoke, but his sensors overlaid the area with lines, showing the plaza. A large rowing skiff, decorative art, hung from the ceiling. There were two other corridors leading away from it, left and right, and another large store capping this end of the mall opposite of him. No one appeared on his screen, though.
The doorways leading to the store reflected the radar, slowly moving, wavering. James pushed himself up and ran through the plaza. He thought about slamming down his last beacon, but given the fires he had run through to get here, he thought better of it. Plastic sheets draped down from the doorway of the store ahead of him. Running through the plastic, James found the store empty, completely dark. The sensors highlighted two escalators in the middle, leading up to the second floor.
Running up the archaic once-mobile stairs, James realized the atmosphere here only had traces of carbon monoxide, it was still breathable. Once at the top his screen lit up. An enormous semicircle of people sat facing the right wall. They were all children, all of them wearing VizARs, none very large at all. Focusing on one of the children, the GNID appeared above them.
“Command, tap GNID I’m sending you, emergency authorization, feed me.”
A screen replaced his rear mirror, showing him what the child was seeing. They were all together, watching a movie quietly. The A.R. was actually in an outdoor park, where the movie was being played on a screen. Even the sound was made to emulate speakers behind the screen, broadcasting across the grass, instead of the audio from the movie simply being fed into each user directly. Looking at the status, the system would allow the children to stand and stretch, but not wander off.
Looking behind him, James realized smoke was starting to make its way up the old escalators. Straight from them was a blocked in doorway. Checking the map, he realized it led the second story of a parking garage that had been attached to the store.
Running toward the door, James shouted into his comms, “Command, need exfil, second story parking garage near me.” Having his VizAR scan the room and count the children, he continued, “157 children, still alive, frozen in AR. Smoke beginning to fill room.”
The children might panic, especially if his beacon interrupted their session. As he made it to the door, he told himself, one step at a time. Reaching back, he grabbed the aXe from his back and slammed it onto the center of the cement blocks encasing the old doors. Cracks in the blocks radiated out from the center in an “X’ just before the blocks crumbled and fell away. A few more hits and the hole was more than large enough for them to leave in an orderly fashion.
Pulling up the shared AR movie, James grabbed its number. “Command, grant me root access AR session ID 71732567923. The outline of the screen turned green and James jumped in. Scrolling through some prebuilt options, James quickly created a train station in the parking garage and a small terminal with a roped line leading to it. Donning the reserved fireman’s skin, he made his way toward the movie screen. On the way, he dropped some additional fireman NPCs that would lead the children to the train station.
Stopping the movie as he walked in front of the screen, he shouted across the park. “Hello, everyone, I am Lieutenant James.” The fireman skin was reserved for emergency personnel, it was not useable by others in any AR system, so it was immediately recognized by the children. “We are sorry that we have to cut the movie short, but we are going to make it up to you with a train ride that will take you back home.”
The children clapped and some even shouted. The movie might not have been bad, but being confined wasn’t fun for anyone. Modern day parenting left a lot to be desired. Pulling up his main screen, he diverted his voice to the other channel. “Going to move the children to the garage, have vehicles line up, check the feed to see the train overlay.”
Swapping back to the park, he continued, “Now, when I say, everyone please stand up and begin moving in an orderly fashion toward the train station.”
A few of the children began to cough toward the back, but they would be fine.
Command came through the comms, “Vehicles on route James, arriving in three minutes. We have taken control of the session. The children will be released in order and guided to the train.”
Looking around, James spotted additional fireman and the NPCs he had setup were now manned by Guardians, emergency personnel specifically trained to handle situations in augmented reality environments. They had placed a traffic light in the lower right corner of everyone’s screen within the AR.
“Okay, we are going to be moving in a minute. When your traffic light turns green, please stand up and follow the path illuminated for you to board the train.”
Lights began turning green, the children calmly getting into line and moving toward the train station, some of them clapping their hands. One of the younger children was having trouble walking, his legs having fallen asleep from being stuck sitting for so long. James ran over, grabbing an older kid on the way, and had him help the younger child along.
“Good, everyone is doing great,” James shouted, across the park.
The front of the train appeared, overlaying the first of the vehicles. They began loading the children in and driving away. James was not sure how long they would remain in the AR, but it didn’t matter once they were safe. He faded the session to nearly transparent and returned to the escalator. Smoke was sill coming up slowly, but the store they were in had yet to go up in flames.
“Command, how’s my team, do they need me?”
“Negative. Team is evacuating. Fire suppression team arrived not long ago, but it looks like they’re going to let it burn, too dangerous to try and put it out.”
“How many did we get?”
“Only three, and one of those didn’t make it to the hospital.”
James slammed the last beacon into the ground and walked down to the bottom of the escalator. The fire was raging on the other side of the plastic sheeting that was keeping most of the smoke out of this store. He could see his beacons highlighted on his hud. Their sensors were registering temperatures his suit would have trouble compensating for. The atmosphere was unbreathable. No one was left alive.
“James, Rick here. We’re coming for ya. Your idea worked so well the Guardians have even had time to overlay our vehicle with a caboose. See ya soon.”
Walking back upstairs, the line had dwindled, only a few children left in the store, all the others having passed through the hole he had made and transported safely away. Brightening the AR session, James looked around. Meticulous work had gone into its design.
His team pulled up and he jumped in the back. All of them were tired, he could tell from their body language. No one’s suit had left the scene without scalding of some sort.
“This was planned,” James said.
“How can you know that?” Dan asked.
“I ran through the whole thing, the point was to trap all those people inside, with no way out. Most were already down from inhalation, before we even arrived. Still not sure if whomever did this wanted to save or kill those kids, though.”
“It is the only part of the mall not burning,” Rick pointed out. “Smoke would have killed them if you had not found them, though.”
Checking the status of the last beacon he placed, at the top of the escalators, he found the atmosphere was now unbreathable. “Yeah, they’d all be dead in a matter of minutes.”
Arriving back at the station, they were driven into decontamination. The water was on before the doors opened, smoke pouring out with the squad. After being sprayed down, they were moved to another room, where they were allowed to remove their VizAR helmets. It was always strange coming out of AR, even one that simply enhanced your perspective instead of replacing it entirely. Reality seemed a little less smooth, less refined.
As the water trickled off of them, attendants came in to help. The armor went on quickly, but would not come off without a great deal more effort. There were sacrifices involved in what they did, all of them had to shave their heads just to be able to use the armor, even Amy and Bethany. Now they would have to sit through an hour or so of having the armor removed. Some times, it was easy, but only if they never entered a fire. The heat changed the suits, permanently, as it protected the wearers.
“You really took a beating, this time,” Todd informed James.
Looking down, the entire right side of his body’s armor had been fractured into a web of octagons, expanding out slightly from one another in steps, as the armor had reacted to the explosion. The heat of the fires he had run through blackened and polished the surfaces, expanding them ever so slightly, encasing the connectors that had snapped them into place to begin with. They would have to be cut off. James nodded at Todd, as he spun up the saw.
GlobalNews played in the room, covering the story of the burning mall far better than the smell of their smoldering armor. 781 people had perished. Not all of them had been there for the co-ord raid, some had been living there, wasting away from a toxic combination of drugs and AR. Some of them had escaped, others too doped up to move were not so lucky. Nearly everyone in the AR raid had perished. The number would likely a climb a little, the count came from the number of VizARs going dark when in the mall and not everyone wore one.
News drones showed footage from above as the mall continued to burn. Then, quickly, footage shifted to the session that had nearly entombed the children. James hated that GNews had such quick access to the footage. “Hero Runner Saves 157 Children,” emerged on the bottom of the screen. The caster began to tell the story of how James had built the train station and the Guardians took over his plan to escort the children the safety.
The crew clapped as his avatar was viewed from a child’s perspective, coming on stage and interrupting the movie to tell them all about the train ride.
James shook his head, frowning.
“What?” Bethany asked. “Be proud, that was pretty clever.”
“Yeah,” Rick continued, “Without you, the Vixer’s children would surely have died.”
“Freaking Vixers,” Dan said, shaking his head. “Guess it’s a job at least.”
“That’s right, Dan. It’s a job. A job that those people out there don’t have. A job that those people could use. And, instead of giving the people jobs, the government just keeps them subdued with AR.”
“What’s with you, James?” Dan said, standing up.
“You sit here, acting like you’re so much better than these people. The reality you come from is not the reality they live, they don’t come from money. They got nothing but AR.”
“It’s just the next opiate in a long series,” Amy said.
“It’s a tool, a way of life,” James continued. “None of us can escape it entirely. I’m sure when Dan here goes home today, the AR built into his vehicle erases out the Vixers along the streets, crowded around power pillars for juice.”
“Damn right, I don’t need see that,” Dan said.
James stood up.
Dan sat down abruptly, recoiling from the look on James’ face.
Sitting down himself, James nodded and Todd spun up the saw again.
After he washed up, James sat in the office. Pulling up feeds from Recovery, he watched as the teams went in to some extinguished areas to look for people. It was not likely anyone had survived, but occasionally there were miracles. On a second screen, James pulled up the same feed and swiped away the AR filter.
“Why do you do that?” Rick asked. “Remove the filters?”
“I feel it’s important, to see reality, even the ugly parts.”
“Even that?” Rick pointed to a corpse being dragged out with an A.R. rig melted into the face.
“Yeah. Even that,” James said, nodding. “I think it’s very important for us. Well, for anyone, really, that uses AR as a tool. You need to understand how the filters affect reality, so that you can better use them to your advantage. Our AR enhances the scene, allows us to see in the dark, see through the smoke. But, it’s important that we know the smoke is there, understand that the radar is not perfect at picking up debris on the floor.”
“We have all taken our share of spills before.”
James nodded. “When I was young, I recall laughing at a video clip my father shared with me. The clip was from before AR, before VR even. The video clip was when smart phones first came out, it was security footage in a mall much like the one that just burned. A woman was walking and texting at the same time. She came up to a pool of water in the mall. You know, one of those with a decorative fountain in it?”
Rick nodded.
“She bumped into it with her legs. Without even thinking, she just pulled one leg up and stepped over, tumbling right into the water, phone and all. When I laughed at that clip, my father simply pointed to my new AR rig, a birthday gift, and said, ‘Always know where you are.’”
“Yeah, I get it. Look, though, Dan might be an entitled prick, but he’s good at his job.”
“I can respect the job he does without respecting who he is,” James replied.
“I suppose that’s enough. Look, the detectives are going to want a full report, I am sure they are already scouring the raid footage itself to see who the GM was, who built it.”
“Not a bad idea,” James said as Rick left the room.
James swiped the recovery effort off to a tertiary screen and pulled up a list of those on the AR raid. Looking through the list, he spotted some of the more veteran players and pulled up their feeds on separate screens. The raid had been high fantasy, the players of different races and classes working together through a goblin dungeon looking for a dragon. When someone died, they could be resurrected, but with so many people, some were left behind, even after they had been killed.
He recalled the people he had run past, laying against the walls. Pulling up the programming for the session, he found that when killed, the AR actually froze the wearers, much like the children watching the movie, giving them the option to watch the raid as it progressed from third person. The AR session had been complete, it was not simply an overlay, but an entirely alternate reality.
As the raid progressed, they found the dragon and charged into the fight. The dragon had been too strong, though, wiping the entire raid, freezing over 700 people where they died. At this point, the GM should have reset the AR session and either ended the raid or given them another shot. But, the GM was gone. By the time of the wipe, the fire had been raging in the stores around them, smoke filling the main hallways. Before they even realized it, most of those in the raid had likely succumbed to inhalation. The dragon simply continued to breathe fire over them, again and again.
GlobalNews was playing something on the side, looping it a couple of times over. Pulling it to the screen in front of him, James raised the volume, giving the reporter voice. “A group has stepped forward, taking credit for the mall fire. Here was the video that lured players to their deaths.”
“You seeing this,” Rick said, walking back into the room. “You were right, it was set.”
A video clip played, showing the dragon that would have to be defeated. The clip promised both real and virtual rewards that players could earn, but warned them that they could also lose everything. To most people, this had meant whatever they had brought the the raid, the virtual armor and weapons they had earned. Text came across the screen as the video ended: Real consequences. Real rewards.
“They had no idea what the consequences were,” Rick said.
The next video simply showed the dragon stepping over the fallen raid, toward the camera, the room on fire all around it. The dragon spoke. “These people were already dead, they just didn’t know it. Open your eyes. Abolish AR.”
James shut off the feeds.