1 Prologue: Downfall of Humanity

Prologue: Downfall of Humanity

I am sure everyone in this world thought maybe humanity would go extinct due to the extreme differences in human greed. I guess in a way we were right, but I am sure no one ever thought it would be such a slow demise.

Throughout the history of our planet, we watched it being slowly drained of everything as we strangled all the essence from it.

The way the world would breathe was being held in a chokehold by us the people we finally hit a time where there was no turning back. Even knowing this humanity did not slow down in order to save the only place we had so the world began to change. The atmosphere began to thin, and the heat of summers began to become elongated becoming hotter, and the cold blizzards of winter reached places it had never been to before on the world.

In early 2122 geologists and oceanologists all over the world warned their own respective governments of the consequences of their actions and projected a scary outcome for the world in the coming years if everything stayed the way it had. The governments seeing this data finally gave in and began their own projects to protect their own citizens by hiding their findings from their competitors.

Across the globe, many governments came up with different regulations and objectives for their people, but still the world could not take humans living on the surface for much longer. With these realizations, underground cities were now in progress across the globe as these large projects were hidden away from opposing superpowers.

Millions of workers were hidden away and taken by their respective governments so as to not alert others of the start of their large-scale projects. For years these people who were from the bottom of society from all over the world were worked to death to build these mega cities underground. Apartment buildings, towers, universities, and water facilities were all constructed among thousands of other structures by these workers who were given only the daily necessities by their respective governments to survive.

This went on for years as many superpowers eventually found out about each other's projects and the atrocities they were committing but no one exposed anything as it was seen as being for the greater good of humanity.

The annual conference of the United Foundation of the World was held in 2140 in order to unveil to the general public that their own governments were working towards an answer for them to survive. At this conference, all the countries of the world were in attendance even the few countries that were at constant cold wars with each other due to the slow loss of natural resources in their own regions.

Thousands of representatives of the world attended this conference in order to give a presentation that showed the demise of the planet and how their own countries' governments had the best living conditions for people. But, in one of these meetings, it was drawn to a consensus that the world would not survive another 50 years at its current loss of resources and pollution. This presentation was given by an unknown presenter and set off a huge chain reaction across the globe as the general populace and news corporations of the world began to dig into just 'how long they had left.'

Not long after the conference ended the general population figured out what all their governments had been hiding and one by one the large megacities came to light showing the hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost constructing them, but this light was shown for only a small amount of time. As quickly many people began siding with the governments of the world as they recognized the workers as doing their part for humanity by settling with the governments by just requesting their families be compensated for their loved ones and that a statue for the workers be constructed in every constructed city.

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June 2141

In a large boardroom, there were several global government officials sitting in a single room all looking up at a single name written in red marker across an old out of date whiteboard. On the board was the name 'VRMMORPG: Ashen Eclipse' in bright red letters.

"My fellow people of the world today I come to you with the idea of a brand-new game like no other before it. Everyone knows that soon the world's different governments will move everyone underground to live out the rest of their lives. Many of you might wonder how I would know such a thing. Right? What does this have to do with coming here today? This is what you should really be thinking about. It is about reducing the consumption of earth's resources."

The tall middle-aged man with his button-up shirt and blue jeans pointed towards the red name on the board.

"This is where we step in. The world has had several large gaming advances in the last 50 years with the implication of virtual reality gaming. This has brought across many large hit games such as Stellar Earth, Utopia of Rhemia, and even Flora. I am sure every single person in this room has played at least one of these games before or has a loved one who has spent their time playing. If you know these games, then you would know that we would have to put on virtual reality helmets that would connect to our sensory system through microchannels allowing humans to feel like they were experiencing something new that was outside their daily lives. This is the basic ideology of VR or virtual reality gaming. It is all about taking the user out of their daily lives and showing them a new and beautiful reality into which they could escape into. Something like this is what I think our world needs but with a new upgrade." He looked across the room and watched as everyone in the room seemed to be engaged with his words so far.

Continuing on, "We here at ETC have upgraded the virtual reality experience to feel as if you yourself were stepping into another world. We have created The Archways or TA for short. This new technology allows us, humans, to step into a new world where we can live our lives growing and living inside. It is a space that works as if a large network system where everything is data and numbers, but you all may be thinking how is this any different from those ancient games where you could connect and play online? Well, the difference is we allow people to become data as well. Allowing them to move through that network crossing thousands of miles in seconds as the game will be able to connect the people of this world as TA will allow for quick travel across the globe using the passageways. I know this is a lot of information so to show you we have prepared a video for all of you today." Smiling he raised a small remote clicking a button causing a large holographic screen to display from the ceiling of the room as the lights in the room began to slowly dim. An image began to project across the screen showing the name 'Ashen Eclipse'.

"This is the future of Earth and the blindfold the people will need as our governments of the world save the planet."

Clicking another button, a video of a large archway came into view as the camera panned to a young man standing in front of the water-like substance that was inside of the archway.

* "Test subject number 0034, you may now crossover. Let the record be shown this is cross over number 124." *

The men and women in the room had their eyes glued to the young man before the archway watching as his body seemed to step into the liquid-like substance slowly disappearing from sight.

A whole minute went by as the room stayed in silence staring at the screen and before anyone could say anything about the lack of evidence the video suddenly recovered.

A couple of gasps could be heard in the room as they watched the video feed change. The new view changed to the viewpoint of the young man's eyes who they had seen before. It now showed the picture of a large busy market with people of different races walking through the streets talking with each other as they bought things from different street stalls.

"This here is the new technology we were able to break into thanks to a new AI created by our company ETC that runs directly in conjunction with TA to make this whole thing possible. The AI overlooks the entire world and creates quests and NPCs inside the world. To put these two things into easy terms then if TA is the world, then the AI is kind of like a god that makes everything in the world. Saying that this game is entirely self-sufficient as it is not controlled by us at any point, we the host company merely now do maintenance and upkeep on the main AI system and do not touch the world of the game. What each of you are seeing here is the current state of the game as it is always progressing as each NPC and creature in the game is alive and thinking much like each of us in this room are. This point is another thing that separates our game from any other game on the market or one that could ever join the market. Our world feels real and is real."

Many still had their gazes glued to the screen as the young man they were watching through the holographic screen was now talking to a pretty woman with pointed ears who was standing behind a wooden bar handing him a small cup of red wine. Taking the wine, he then in turn placed two small shiny coins onto the counter.

In the room, a couple of the representatives were looking at the presenter seemingly in deep thought as they thought about the possibilities. As the presenter watched the representatives, he noticed a single old woman sitting wearing a blue uniform suddenly raise her hand.

"Yes?" Acknowledging the woman, the presenter asked out.

"We have been watching this for almost a minute now, and you talked about saving resources what did you mean by that?" the woman spoke out dropping her hand back to her side.

Smiling to himself after hearing the question from the woman he turned back to the board only showing his back to everyone to hide his smile.

"We have created a way to immerse not only your mind in the game, but for the first time ever we have figured out a way to connect to every part of your body. The TA will allow our AI to get a full body scan of the individual fully pulling them into the game as there will be a multitude of small transmitters that will fully immerse themselves into the individual's body allowing the individual into the world. Allowing them to feel not only the full experience of pain such as getting your hand cut off from fighting but also the full experience of pleasure that many search for in their daily lives now."

Motioning back to the screen the sight of the young man could now be seen in a room alone with a different woman. As he laid back on the bed all that could be seen was the woman slowly unclipping her blue dress it dropped to her ankles. Walking over her unblemished brown skin came into full detail as it seemed to highly complement her flowy black hair that dribbled over her shoulders perfectly blocking out the view of her most precious of parts. Now appearing before the young man, the woman could be seen slowly lowering herself to the floor sitting on her knees before the young man's leather pants as she began to slowly untie the strings that kept his pants together.

The view being shown on the screen began to tremble as the pants could now be seen flowing downwards showing the blue underwear hugging the young man's skinny white legs. The woman's face covered heavily with makeup was now slowly using her tongue to lick up the thigh of the young man tugging on the edge of the blue underwear with her white teeth. Before anything else could be shown, the screen went black, and the video cut out snapping everyone out of their own dazes.

"What was that? Why did it shut off?" An older man sitting in the back of the room loudly grumbled.

"That was the AI shutting our view out to protect the user. We were only able to see so much before because the other was an NPC conducting their job. Like I said before the AI is independent and has its own rules that are followed which keep the users safe but what does this have to do with saving resources you may ask? Think about this your hundreds of millions of citizens never being here in this world but are in another world living their everyday lives as the AT will feed them nutrients as needed while inside. With this people who stay in the other world constantly will help reduce the number of resources this world needs to consume and allows us to let our planet regrow."

Hearing these words, the old man could only grumble to himself as he noticed that his earlier words were getting him some unexpected looks from the other representatives in the room.

"Furthermore, unlike other games of the past, the race system and class system are almost unlimited and created by AI. This allows for endless combinations of possibilities for our users and millions of biomes and situations to live in. Now, this is the stopping portion of our preview. Any countries that are not interested in joining us as we move forward into tomorrow, then you may exit now." Looking around the room the presenter could see all the people looking at each other as they remained in their seats trying to gauge if any others would be leaving. After a couple of minutes of sitting in silence, he began to speak again.

"Good we will now hand out a contract to each of you allowing all of you to see the terms going forward. That way we will become not only business partners, but we will also become family uniting the societies of the world. Together we will look over the best interests for this new technology and the future of humanity." The presenter clapped his hands together as if signaling for someone.

A short man with black glasses seated against the outer wall stood up from a small chair and began to hand out paperwork to all the people seated around the larger conference table. The many different people began to read over the contracts and began to step out of the room to make calls.

30 minutes went by before everyone returned back to the room and many of the people began to sign the contracts. Only a very small few handed the contracts back and walked out of the room.

"Good now that there is only family here. We will now talk about the future and how we will take over the world's way of life saving our planet."

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The governments of the world worked tirelessly to make their deadlines as the lives of humans began to take drastic turns as many ecosystems and biomes were slowly lost in time. Natural disasters began to become more frequent and more extreme as they would wipe out small above-ground cities overnight killing tens of thousands of people.

The environment slowly began to affect human everyday lives as farming and crop raising began swiftly deteriorating on the surface of the earth. This directly created an instant increase in certain foods around the world and the deaths of thousands of animals that would regularly graze on these crops started dying away. A couple of years ticked by as the world was placed into a state of full government control as they tried to keep markets from crashing until finally the underground cities were completed where new crops were created and being housed for the people of the future.

The year 2145 was a rather historic year being taught in all new classrooms around the new world no matter the nationality of the individual. This was the first year the people of Earth finally could not live on the surface of their own planet and began large migrations down into the megacities. By the end of the year, billions of people moved their lives and businesses underground and into the new reality of Ashen Eclipse as a means to keep foreign exchange and escape from their dull lives stuck in such a dark place only lit up by the large hanging lights that shone over the cities.

The year was 2146 and a new law was passed worldwide striking at the ever-growing human population. This law stated that the individual may only have a single child in their lifetimes in actual reality, but this law did now hold in the virtual reality of Ashen Eclipse. This was because children formed on the other side were not actual people but were just forms of data much like an NPC.

This affected many new families and divorced individuals as no matter if your child passed away in infancy or if you remarried another individual, you were only allowed a single child unless it was on the other side. This law prevented the population from moving at a trend that was unfavorable to their new ways of life underground.

More and more people started moving all forms of their lives to the other side as all the governments of the world started placing all forms of currency together to allow Ashen Eclipse to hold the future for any single person or large corporations to grow. As people moved into Ashen Eclipse that world become more realistic as people fell into it as if it was reality seldom ever coming back to their lives living underground.

Just like this, the large megacities millions of people died to create became bare wastelands that were only good for holding the archways.