100 - 500: future

Tadiwanashe Mukombedzi


James has been through the same exact conversation with the same 12 responses. It didn't

take long for him to get depressed after being forced into this world. He never learnt anything

new, he was stagnant. He couldn't decay into 0’s and 1’s like the rest of them did. He

couldn't go into binary heaven, he was just a player in this large expansive world which didn't

feel like anything to him. Everything would reset the next day anyway, so why did it matter.

Into the Karoline’s Coffee shop, James sits down next to a non-playable character. He’s

seen the model so many times before, old guy, cane, grey jacket, deteriorating features.

They didn't have names either, so whenever James met a new person, it would just be

talking to himself or rather programmed code. It was then someone new entered the shop…

“Can I get two lattes, and make it quick?” The dialogue of this character was different. Never

in his twenty years being here did he ever hear someone say that.

“Hello…?” James tried to speak to the woman who was fairly young.

“Hi…?” She responded.

‘Wait, this can't be?’

“What’s your name?”

“Uhm, Adriana.”

James got off his seat staring down Adriana as she waited for her drink ready to respond to

her.

“Here's your drink.”

“Thank you!” Adriana swiftly left the coffee shop without hesitation. Her avoiding James

made him more curious about her. She looks behind her and sees him running. Adriana tries

to do a light jog that turns into sprinting away from this suspicious person.

James craved human contact. He ran as fast as he could in this digital domain to achieve

that moment of humanity again. She ran fast, but he was faster.

He cornered her into the side of a building.

“You’re a human?”

“We’re all human, uhm” she tried to look around for anywhere she could get help

“Please help me” James drops to his knees begging Adriana to take him into the real world

away from this meaningless AI world.

“Come with me.”

A 45 minute drive to the furthest point of the map James and Adriana get out.

“Where is this?”

“The alpha zone.”

“But there's just broken landscapes, floating houses and glitching people. Just a broken

simulation. Why am I here?”

“Well there's a reason I brought you here. I wanted to show you the new developments of

this world… We’re adding-”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘developments?’” James challenged her.

“You see James, you’ve done some terrible cyber crimes. Remember 2054? All this time you

thought you were free to roam earth but no. You’re just a virtual prisoner who is binded to

this system until the end of time.”

“But-but I thought they were expunged? What happened?”

“Well, the developments went so good, that we decided to keep you here as a test subject.

Your real world body is safe being fed day in and day out everything is taken care of.”

“What does that leave me with?”

“I guess you have virtual infinity” Adriana said before she disappeared into a bunch of code

leaving James alone in the world again.