Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Jim's PoV (Point-of-View)

Jim was filling his trusty box with all the things at his desk. He silently chuckled to himself. He had been canned. It was an oddly liberating experience. The major breakthroughs were made because of him, yet it was he who was heading out the door.

Tending to be a bit of a lone wolf, he usually kept his ideas to himself until he worked out all of the bugs and kinks. After locking himself up in his office for the past two weeks, a mountain of bugs and kinks had been destroyed. Thankfully he had been canned before he divulged his awesomeness.

With his box filled with a bit of company property, he started heading out of the office whistling on the way. It was going to be a good day!

Passing through Jim saw through the large window in the hall where the showroom lab was set up. He could see Charlotte schmoozing with the investors while the demonstration was being worked on by her subordinates. The observatory that overlooked the lab was slightly elevated, so he could easily see the fake smiles plastered on all their faces.

Jim was a little surprised he wasn't being ushered out by some big goons. They had plenty of security personnel but it might have slipped her mind when she got ambushed with this demonstration request. Technically it was a request but when it came from the people controlling the purse strings, it was actually a demand.

With box in hand he figured he might as well see the fruits of his labor in action. He gazed through the hallway window as everything was finished being set up. Well, at least the old version. That made him mentally chuckle, if only they knew what he had been working on. His version made this setup look like child's play.

Charlotte called down "How is everything? Is it ready?"

Terry the stooge, at least in Jim's opinion, called up "Yes! Everything is good to go!"

Jim really hated the guy. Not an original bone in his body. He was the kind of guy who had checklists for his checklist. If you were doing something that was not on his checklist, you would be written up. Jim being a very anti-checklist kind of guy, they didn't get along very well. Mentally Jim shrugged and quietly started watching the demonstration.

A blindfolded man was sitting in a comfortable chair and had on what he dubbed 'The helmet'. Other people referred to it annoyingly as a Neural Interface Signaling and Receiving Device but his insistence on calling it a helmet seemed to have won out. Some people tried calling it a 'NISARD' but it sounded ridiculous and was laughed at.

But he totally never childishly said 'is a tard' under his breath whenever the acronym was used. That was definitely 3rd grade humor and Jim being a professional adult would never utter such a term. Oh, someone overheard him say such a thing? How sad was it that cell phones were banned in the office? It was too bad they couldn't prove it. So sad, too bad.

The one sitting in the chair was a younger man in an expensive suit, so that obviously made him an assistant to the investors. He would be the neutral test subject to ensure the demonstration wasn't staged.

Jim thought it was incredibly dumb to send an assistant and not do it yourself. Seemed really sloppy, but the investors probably saw putting on a weird helmet beneath their dignity. Utter nonsense in Jim's opinion. How can you accurately judge the worth of something from a secondhand account?

On a massive display was a still picture of a tiny bunny in a cup. It was so cute! Jim had a weakness towards cute things. It was his kryptonite. Especially baby animals. Distractedly Jim looked at the picture instead of the people running the demonstration. Through strength of will Jim struggled against his kryptonite in the form of a cute baby bunny and looked back to the target audience.

The investors in the elevated room seemed to be a little confused and that caused Charlotte to clear her throat while glaring down at Terry. He finally got the point and started the presentation.

Terry said "This is what the team likes to call a 'NISARD'. It stands for Neural Interface Signaling and Receiving Device. Currently we can send and receive pictures directly to the brain. These pictures are not seen through the eyes at all, but directly placed and taken from the brain. Soon we expect we can do much, much more! As you can see the subject is blindfolded and facing away from any of the monitors. It is impossible for him to see anything right now."

The athletic man in the tailored suit interrupted and said "My name is not subject. It's Donald."

Terry blinked in confusion and then took a second and corrected himself saying, "The subject Donald can not"

Donald interrupted again and said "It's Donald. Not subject Donald. Just Donald"

Charlotte got on the microphone that was connected to the upper room and said "Can the subject please stop interrupting. You are wasting important peoples' time."

Terry said a bit smugly this time "The subject will be given images passed through our device and directly into his mind. We are about to send the first picture over."

Jim hated to see that. It was one of the reasons he really disliked the man. Terry addressed anyone less important by job title and not their names. A few people told him stories about working with the man for years yet were always addressed as 'lab technician' or 'assistant'.

And even worse is that the guy is still calling the helmet a 'NISARD'. Hopefully the rest of team helmet would push back against the term now that he was gone.

Terry gestured to a person manning the computer. The tech typed a few things in, clicked something with his mouse and then made a thumbs up gesture. The man in the chair gasped and said "I can see a baby bunny in a cup!"

Terry said smugly "Very good subject. As you can see there is no possible way for the subject to see this image. Not only is the subject not a member of our team but he is also blindfolded. Even if he was not blindfolded, he would not be able to see the image from where he is currently sitting. We can repeat this demonstration on any of our distinguished guests if they wish to give it a try. Next image!"

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The next picture was a group of ducklings following their mother. The man promptly said that he saw the ducks following their mother. This continued for a few more pictures and then Terry said "We can also pull images from the mind with this device. Subject, please think of a picture and we will tell you what we see."

Soon the monitor was filled with a scantily clad beautiful woman. Oblivious Terry asked "Are you thinking of a small brunet woman in lingerie?"

Jim could see in the image there was a diamond ring on the woman's left ring finger. He could also see that the man being tested also had a wedding band. Oh boy this was going to be fun!

Donald tore off his blindfold and stood up to see the picture being displayed behind him. From the anger glowing off the man he was obviously looking at his wife. His scantily clad wife which was being displayed to an entire room of technicians and his work colleagues.

The suited man slowly turned back and was looking daggers at Terry. Soon the image on the large screen changed and was displaying Donald choking Terry with his beefy hands around the little guy's neck. The next image that flashed on the large display was Terry's crumpled dead body on the lab floor.

The image looked cartoonishly proportioned with Terry's completely crushed neck. Terry looked up at the large screen and went pale. A few people rushed in and restrained Donald while Terry ran away. Someone must have hit something because soon a conversation could now be heard over the speaker.

The investor's voice could be heard asking "So far it has only been pictures. What else can it do?"

Charlotte responded a bit nervously and said "Just pictures right now, but soon hopefully we can get full streams of video and audio as well as full sensations."

The investor looked at Charlotte and with a blank stare and asked "Why would people buy this when I can get pictures just fine on my damn phone. Do you have any idea what this costs? We have spent a lot of money on this and we need to know how we will get a return on our investment. So far all I have seen is a neat party trick. An impressive party trick, but that won't pay the bills."

After a short pause another investor picked up where the last left off and said, "You have one week to produce a satisfactory report on how we can market this in its current state or satisfactory progress on something that can be marketable. We can't continue spending this much with no plan on how to recoup the losses. You have my number. Good day."

The look of stunned disbelief on Charlotte's face was priceless! Jim couldn't help it, he burst out laughing. Charlotte saw him with his box and gave him a furious glare. That only made it funnier! Man, things were looking up. Chuckling with a huge grin on his face he exited the 3D Tech building with a little bit more than he should have.

Jim got home with his trusty box and laid out the contents on his floor. One helmet, one PC and finally his new toy that he built, a loading module. He actually made a number of breakthroughs and he couldn't wait to try his new project. Seeing how stupidly the investor reacted to the demonstration, he was so glad he got fired before he reported his new successes.

Morons couldn't see the obvious potential. And that potential was realized in his work. Instead of just still images he could see full streams of video, not only that but he figured out how to interface with all the sectors of the brain for sound, touch, smell and even taste. In addition he made the discovery of a lifetime.

He figured out how to install software inside of his own head! That was what his final toy did that he 'borrowed' from the company. Of course they had no idea what it did. The possibilities were limitless! But he already had a possibility he wanted to explore, and it should be a hell of a lot of fun!

One of his favorite games when he was a kid was Final Fantastic 3. It was an old style 16 bit top down RPG. Your characters were all pixelated messes and you navigated through the 2D world and leveled up and found weapons and fought monsters. Entire cities were represented by small little square tiles you could walk on and then it would expand to a full town.

His young mind was so impressed at this pixelated world that was all interconnected together. It had heroes and villains and everything in between. For a solid month as a kid it felt like he had a new adventure to go on every day. And if everything worked out how he expected, he would be playing a massively updated version of it! He had all the elements to make it happen, he just had to put them together.

The hardest part was creating the software that would convert 2D pixel objects into real life 3D objects. One thing that he found interesting about the human mind was the massive processing power.

He ran a couple tests and all of them indicated the potential processing power was literally off the charts. Supercomputers were about to be obsolete. So instead of rebuilding the game world by hand, which would have taken years, he just created a little program.

The program would interact with the game's original files and try to create an accurate representation of the world. He uploaded a number of databases including a ton of pictures of architecture, animals and people for his program to fill in the blanks from. In theory the program should draw from the database and look for images that seem to match the best. Not only that but it would use clever interpretation to mix features.

So instead of just a pure one-to-one copy paste of people and architecture in the databases, the program would actually blend features together to make an accurate representation of the original pixelated object in the game. Since FF3 had many objects that were all identical, all non-unique objects would generate new random features based on the original. Or at least that's what he hoped would happen.

Do this process a few hundred million times and it should create a 3D space with a very faithful reproduction of the Final Fantastic 3 world and its people. Jim wanted it to be as lifelike as possible so he also included many scientific databases as well as databases from other games just to spice it up. So the game should still be very similar to the original, but not everything would be exactly the same. It would be like playing a massively modified new game plus version!

Jim put the helmet on and connected everything up. With his new toy he uploaded the databases as well as the little program that would create a modern replica of the FF3 world in his mind. Hitting the start button on his little program he sat back and hoped for the best. Either he would be playing a kick ass version of FF3 or else he was about to become a vegetable man.

He anxiously waited as his program worked. There were no progress bars to tell him how long it would take to install. Sweating a little, he wondered if he should have added a proper installation screen.

There was just an icon that would show it was still working, that was all. Jim didn't think he would look at the term "Blue Screen of Death" the same way anymore. What the hell would happen to him if he blue screened his brain? It took a little over two hours but finally a prompt popped up in the corner of his vision!