Virtual World

Paul was born and raised in a small village a few miles from Salisbury in southern England. He was an only child and not a particularly good mixer so spent most of his childhood alone with no one he could really call a close friend. He was happy building and adapting computers and could write decent programs by the time he started secondary school, a bus ride away from home in the city of Salisbury. This trend continued through his five years at secondary school although he found a girl who as coincidence would have it also lived in the village, only two roads away from Paul`s home, but despite living so close together, they hadn`t met until they started secondary school, and who also shared the same interests and ability with computers so they tended to spend quite a lot of time in each other`s company despite there being no special attraction on either part. They were friends and that was that, with the idea of taking things any further completely alien to both of them.

The girl, Rita, expressed an interest in going to college when she finished secondary school to study neuropsychology which she thought might enable her to continue working with computers and hopefully merge the two together, but to what end she was still undecided. As they were the same age they would leave school together after taking their final school examinations and she persuaded Paul to also apply to go to college, to which he agreed as long as he could do advanced computer studies and programing. They were lucky in that they both got accepted for the further education college in Brockenhurst in the New Forest which would work out quite well as Rita`s father worked in Lymington, only a few miles further down the road and he agreed to take Rita and Paul to college each morning on his way to work and if their times in college coincided with his work schedule, would bring them back home in the early evening. On days that they had activities or extra lessons out of normal college hours, they would catch the contract bus operated by the local bus company in Salisbury. Brockenhurst was a popular choice of college for students from the Salisbury area so the bus was well patronised. In college as they were doing different courses they only met up in the college canteen at lunch time and were invariably busy working out programs or other similar computer things just eating small meals to keep themselves going, being far more interested in their own studies and experiments than eating. Both of their courses were for three years and due to the nature of what Rita was studying, her tutors recommended that she apply for a university place when she completed her college course.

Paul said he had no intention of going to university but gave Rita his total support in her quest, helping her to select the universities she preferred and what her expected grades would give her admission to. Their courses were two thirds over when Rita began looking in earnest for a place at university and finally opted for Exeter as her favourite place, and after a couple of weekend visits was pleased to be accepted in her first choice university, for a further three years. Paul decided that he would try and remain at college and study medical physics as he had ideas that he could use his by now considerable computer skills to aid his ongoing research and experiments. As he had proven to be a model student the college at Brockenhurst allowed him to enrol in a relevant course for a further two years. Both he and Rita had proven so adept with the computers in college that the college tutors often came looking for either or both of them to assist with some computer problem that they couldn`t get their heads around and usually it was Paul who sorted it out with a few clicks of the mouse and by entering some command codes that even the tutors didn`t understand. Both he and Rita were sufficiently savvy with the machines that they talked to the machines in a variety of computer languages which made their life much easier but almost without exception had the tutors stumped. In fact several tutors told Paul that whereas it had taken them a long time to learn even basic programming, here was Paul at eighteen years old, writing programs in languages they had barely heard of, let alone write anything meaningful by using them. Paul was the sort who didn`t need to write down what he was programming, simply knowing almost by instinct what was required and writing something to make the computer carry it out.

His reputation with the computers spread rapidly round the college and many other students came to him with problems or in several cases with requests to write them specific gaming programmes which Paul found he quite enjoyed and it became a bit of a challenge to produce games that no one else had produced. His reputation spread outside the college and he received an offer from a gaming company based in Southampton to design a new generation of games, for the machines they also manufactured and distributed. Paul agreed to give it a try and so started working for two days a week in the company`s offices and computer laboratories in Southampton designing a completely new range of games and software. The company paid him well for his expertise, and it was enough after only a few months for him to take an intensive driving course and even funded a small nearly new car.

Paul`s research led down the road towards virtual reality, a branch of gaming that the company he worked for, hadn’t even considered before but were really excited about the prospects this might open up for the company, a market which so far had been cornered by the big US or Japanese conglomerates. As his new course progressed Paul began to realise that the virtual reality gaming he was working on might also have a place in the medical world but as yet was unsure of where or how he could apply this to medicine, so this was an ongoing project that he worked on mainly at weekends when he could bounce ideas off Rita. She was now settled in university down in Exeter and Paul drove down to see her most weekends, and they spent the entire time they were together trying different programs and procedures to make the dreams into reality. A boy on the same course as Rita had taken a shine to her and followed her around like a lovesick puppy, much to Rita`s annoyance and at weekends when Paul was down in Exeter he was not happy and kept trying to interfere with their work with comments and snide remarks on social media and it was only when Rita finally lost her temper and told him in no uncertain terms to get lost did he cease his activities.

All through university and college both Paul and Rita had boy and girlfriends but nothing serious developed for either of them despite indulging in sex with the respective partners, both decided that sex was okay but was not something they couldn`t live without so as a consequence when the partners started demanding and wanting more than just a casual affair, the relationships soon fizzled out and neither of them were particularly bothered by that.

When Paul finished his second course at Brockenhurst, a whole year ahead of Rita, he started working full time for the company in Southampton who were now paying him a large salary that during his school days he had only dreamt about and it was easily enough for him to be able to put down a substantial deposit on a house on the outskirts of his home village. The house was large enough to provide him with decent living accommodation as well as having space for a workshop and another large room he could turn into a laboratory which he planned to ask Rita`s advice with, as regards fitting it out. The workshop was amply large enough to manufacture computer hardware as well as developing software and he spent several thousand pounds on equipping the workshop. There was also a large garage attached to the house plenty large enough for his small car and garden equipment to manage the fairly large well established garden of around one acre. The living accommodation consisted of a large L shaped lounge, a well-appointed modern kitchen, a separate dining area, a utility room and a small toilet with its own wash basin downstairs while upstairs there were two decent sized bedrooms, both en-suite, and a separate large bath / shower room. He was lucky in that the property was well decorated and maintained throughout and the previous owners had also employed an elderly gent from the village to maintain the garden for three hours each week and Paul decided to retain his services as he didn`t really want to spend time working on the garden or house when he would much rather be working on his various computer based projects.

Virtual reality was still a dream and the ultimate goal, for the many hours Paul spent in the workshop or recently equipped lab trying new techniques and writing new software programs. Rita had also passed her driving test now and she had managed to scrape enough money together to get a car on HP from a local dealership in Exeter so she and Paul alternated their weekends regarding travelling either to Exeter or the village. When Rita arrived late one Friday evening after a bad journey from Exeter, due to numerous roadworks and diversions she found the house in darkness and the doorbell went unanswered, and she was just about to give up and go to her parent`s house, knowing that they wouldn`t be there either as they were currently on a cruise ship travelling around the Norwegian fjords, but she had a key so wasn`t worried about not being able to get in. As she walked back down the driveway of Paul`s house to her car which she had left parked on the grass verge outside, a light came on in the hall of the house and seconds later the front door opened and Paul called her name.

“Rita, hang on, sorry I didn`t hear the bell but I was busy in the workshop. When I came out a minute a go, I saw the doorbell indicator flashing and it looks as if I`ve just caught you”.

“No worries, I was just going up to mum`s place for the night. They`re away cruising in Norway but I`ve still got my key”.

“No need, you can stay here as usual, the spare room is ready so come on in”.

“Thanks, that was a terrible journey with roadworks and diversions which sent me right up to Taunton and then via Shepton Mallet. Got any coffee on”?

“Soon will have, are you hungry? I`ve got a big lasagne in the oven cooking which mum bought down earlier and I`ve got salad or chips if you`d rather have that”.

“That sounds great, I`m bushed”!

While Rita freshened up from her journey, Paul completed their meal and after about twenty minutes called up the stairs that dinner was ready. They had opted for the salad to go with the lasagne and he had prepared a large bowl of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and sweet corn, and there was a freshly opened bottle of chilled wine on the table. Rita looked a lot fresher than when she had arrived half an hour previously and over their meal Paul described his latest program which he promised to show her when they`d eaten. He had a dishwasher so once the meal was finished he simply dumped everything in the machine and let it get on with washing the dishes. Paul led Rita through to the workshop and invited her to take a seat on one of the big easy chairs he had in one corner of the room.

“Bear in mind this is still a trial version but I think it`s got real possibilities. As you know I was working on a program that might have uses in the medical world and I think this might be it. You`re the one with the more advanced medical training so you`ll probably want to change it a bit but that should be fairly straight forward. I read somewhere that the main difficulty when treating strokes is keeping the brain alive and active hence the reason doctors say the first two or three hours following a stroke are the most critical. I had the idea that I might be able to harness virtual reality to keep the brain active while it heals, for whatever period the doctors think fit. This system I`ve designed works through small headphones so no invasive surgery or anything like that and it can be set up in minutes as all it needs is a CD player with the program loaded on a disc and the headphones. I was taught in school that your school days are supposed to be the happiest time of your life as being a child, you don`t have any external worries which you accumulate as we grow up. I thought if I could get the brain to believe it was still in a child`s body, then I could simulate happiness and a carefree attitude which in turn I think would aid healing. Another advantage is there are no potentially harmful drugs to worry about, and it`s all down to my program. I`ve tried it on myself and the results are extraordinary. I`ve put myself through this quite a few times now and when I wake up it`s as if all my troubles and worries have been wiped away, leaving me feeling peaceful, relaxed and content. The program can be run for as long as required and the longest I`ve put myself through is around twenty minutes. I`d really like it if you would consider letting me put you under with the disc running and then get your comments and suggestions later. When I say put you under that`s probably the wrong choice of words as it sounds like hypnosis and its nothing like that. It would ideally be used on an unconscious person but relaxed or asleep is just as good. This trial program takes a person back to the age of ten but that can be easily altered to suit the situation, by a few simple keystrokes on a computer. For long term use, I can program the computer to span many years in virtually any environment”.

“It sounds fantastic, what do you want me to do”?

“Nothing really, just make yourself comfortable in one of the chairs and I`ll set it up. Try and make your mind go blank and just relax, it doesn`t matter if you fall asleep and after the day you`ve had, that is quite likely”.

“Okay, impress me”.