LeeSki_SkiMore's SciFi Site: Future.Novel: Lev.UP, page 12

Back in the Twen.Cen, a back room, low level, government economist wrote a memo to
his section chief. A few hundred innocuous words that changed a world. Simple words
with numbers noting that with a cheap, ultra-reliable, electronic VR implant combined
with the planet-spanning optical data net that was already in place throughout the world
almost all, repeat: almost all material possessions and related resource depletion could
be replaced by virtual reality. All Earthkind provided for by the Almighty.Pixel. Data
manipulation would therefore become the ultimate commodity. Make a mandatory
product downloaded to mandatory VR eyeware and earware. A perfect product that the
customer actually demanded--see: Private Corporaton Market Testing Database/High
Resolution VR Implant Acceptance Test Series. A product that the customer could
endlessly customize making it potientially a rejection free product with a one-hundred
percent acceptance level.
Small changes that would make economic the gigantic consumption based welfare
state created by silicone and servo-mechs to continue.
Applied altruistically, the un-noticed, but brilliant economist noted that VR could
save most of the energy and resources that were being lost, rapidly rendering the present
demcratic supply-and-demand technocracy un-viable.

Late that same day, drunk, and amused, while sharing a booth in a Washington bar, the
economist's myopic section chief related the memo to a TelCo Rep.

The World TelCo's nets provided a world where any manner of visual and audio
fantasies could be brought to life. Where real had become the unreal. When it became
apparent that anyone could easily manipulate most images without detection, then
pictures could no longer be used as proof of anything. Identity based on digitized prints
of any variety, was just another alterable picture. Personal identification science then
developed the chemical 'fingerprint'. Importantly, the silicone nose wasn't intrusive. No
fingerprint sensor pads or retinal viewers to hinder or remind users of the identification
process. Extremely elegant, the chemical path to identification gave reams of
information not available in fingerprint or retinal mapping. The chemical sniff of the
Era of the Nose contained data that reported on user identity, user environment;
including where you were, who you were with, ingesting what, even level of exertion or
arousal. This information was combined with feedback from the VR fibersuit that had
been made mandatory wearware when in public. Add to all of this the information from
the VR circuits found in every product and the World
TelCo could track every bite, breath, and step on the planet.
Thus, the TelCo took control of the world by letting the world think it had taken over
the TelCo. To receive paradise in return.
Min.lev pixel density VR overlay of all non residential areas became required. The
wearing of, at least, a min.lev VR persona became required in public areas. Payment for
the pixels and processing required was provided for by the minimum guaranteed benefits
of the divi.dole.
To insure universal compliance with the law all citizens would have the VR implants
installed just after their birth. Photon powered, programmed and datalinked, the Six-D
eye implants and holo-stereo audio ear implants thus became the first E-Darwins.
Humankind altering itself to insure its survival with the power of its new silicone exo-
gene. In a blink of time, electronic evolution dethroned Nature's gift of millions of years
of C, G, A, and T.
As it was, most of the public had the implants before the VR laws were passed. The
implant experience had been pre-tested. Found to be popular by both the corporate and
entertainment sectors of society, implantable high-resolution virtual reality was
insurable, therefore economic. Plus, the implant technology had advanced to a video and
audio resolution that rivaled reality.
Using chemicals tailored to enhance the experience, VR had come to replace reality
for large groups of users. Some special user groups pooled their shares, private, public,
or both, to purchase enough self-contained computer power--'flops'--to run a totally
private net that was levup with the best fringewares. Pasters withdrew as much as they
could from the present to live in settings provided by history, myth, and legend. Sickies
tried to live hidden in their horrid little intranet worlds born of broken imaginings. And,
then, there were all those points between the extremes.
Only a small group of citizens rebelled against the World TelCo's forced VR
addiction. Rebels against the potential for VR to ensure the dictatorship of the digital
deity, they resisted the World TelCo's manifesto of simply keeping the unemployed
masses cheaply, quietly, and safely occupied. The Realies were scorned, hounded, and
persecuted. Then, the VR laws turned them off, and everyone else on. . .