"Hey, are you okay Takeshi?" the nervous voice was only asking to reassure themselves, as in the next 12 minutes they would have to convince 30 of the most powerful and influential people in the world why they needed funding for a videogame. The man in question was Jack Knix, a video game developer who for the last 10 years had been putting everything he had into research and development into technology on full dive VR. However, this dream was cut short by the logistics and the painful process that was transporting a human unconsciousness into a virtual world, which proved to be a nearly insurmountable task. after the first 2 years, he started the doubting, in 5 he had begun believing that it was just a few more years of research away, and after ten years he had all but given up. But ever since he had met Takeshi by chance at a wine party for influential scientists that he had tagged along for, they instantly became best friends, albeit with the help of translation tech that was developed by Jack's friend.
With the theories that Takeshi had proposed to him, he had finally gained hope in his old project finally being able to be realized, with the help of souls. Initially, there was skepticism from Jack, however, after a couple of nights of convincing, Jack began working on his old project again, this time with the help of Takeshi.
They reached breakthrough after breakthrough, allowing Jack to create a machine that could transport a human's consciousness into a virtual server, and then project it onto any processing unit that they wanted to. However they ran into a problem, Multiple consciousnesses cannot be projected onto the same server without the corruption of both souls. This was discovered midway through an animal stress test on the systems, which resulted in the animals becoming lifeless dolls that died after about 2 minutes from lack of breathing.
Safeguards were made, however, the project was once again at a near standstill, with only one potential idea that changed the future of the world forever.
"Ok, we got this. No, we have definitely got this. Do we have this Takeshi? Cmon man say something I'm freaking burning up here!" Jack was nervous. he had never done any public speaking, he left it to the public affairs department, but the board of potential investors had specifically requested the two men behind the project to speak.
"I am sure that we will prevail. Do not worry Jack." Takeshi was so scared that he had resorted to only using formal speech, and had been to the toilet three times that morning. The coffee he drank for energy had worked against him, causing his bowels to accelerate, making him so nervous that he was visibly sweating bullets.
"Hello gentlemen, please make your way through the doors on your left. Unfortunately, Mr. Korna, Mr. Du Bois, Mr. Rockefeller, Ms. Rothschild, Mrs. Crims, and three others will not be joining us today, and two will be recording the session and viewing it later, so we have about 20 still in the room. Good Luck." The Assistant had been with the duo for about 6 months and had been the essential piece that connected Takeshi and Jack with the 30 potentials.
"Ready Taky?"
"Please never call me that again or I will put a spider up your ass."
the duo calmed down a little after the slight banter and entered a huge room with about 20 people in seats looking down at their given holo computers, awaiting the presentation which they thought would be like every other half baked startup that had tried to get their funding for the past 20 years.
The sweat disappeared from their foreheads as Jake entered a cool trance of concentration, followed by the underlying acknowledgment that this moment would make or break both his and Takeshi's lives forever.
𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘸
"Ladies and gentlemen, who wants to change the future?"