The whole world bubbled with excitement upon the arrival of the second world.
For years, factual corporation has been working on building a virtual world that was both realistic and self sufficient. The virtual world would be designed to operate on an advanced sentient form of AI which would not need human interference to carry out daily activities.
The idea of a sentient world which was both realistic and doesn't need the interference of humans to run properly seems like a dangerous idea but majority saw something else.
They saw a door, leading to freedom,to liberation, a one way ticket out of their miserable boring life and so they supported the idea and gave it their all.
Dreams would become realistic if enough effort was put into realizing it. Humanity dreamt of escape in the form of a virtual world and in turn gave it their all to make it a reality.
Project second world was a success or so they thought. Swarmed and cleared off the market after a few hours of its release just went to show how eager humans are to explore this new world.
The second world also turned out excellent. Featuring various landscape and breathtaking sights while being extremely realistic, it was said that one could feel the touch of air caressing the skin in the second world.
But a perfect sentient world isn't really something that could be easily achieved, the fact that the world was sentient posed alot of threats as being sentient grants it the ability to adapt, think, implement and learn new things.Cxmonths of its release, the second world was okay. Humans couldn't seem to get enough of it's beauty and they actually began to establish settlements in it's domain and began living their normal lives
Everything seemed fine for the first few months of the game not until reports started goingy around of people suffering mind damage after coming into contact with wild beast in the wilderness of second world but that wasn't all, complaints began to come in waves. Complaints mostly made up of worried mothers about their kids who had ventured who didn't show any signs of coming out of the pods after being stuck in it for days on end but didn't show any signs of coming out of the pod anything soon and their bodies seemed to have lost all vital signs.
Like a winter fire in a dried out forest, the state of mind called panic spread within humanity causing severe unrest. Things got worse when political opponents of the government saw it as a way to push their agenda and rally the masses. It was surprising enough that a virtual world was able to damage a person's state of mind but what about the bodies that doesn't seem to be dead or alive.
People immediately got rid of their virtual pods while millions stormed factual corporation demanding an explanation
But factual corporation was in tandem with the government and the government couldn't sit by and watch a business partner incur the wrath of an angry mob but at the same time couldn't choose a single corporation no matter how big over the masses and instead had to secretly pull strings to suppress the mob
A month after the virtual world incident, the government was losing it's grip on the situation and when it seemed there might be a violent outburst something completely unexpected happened
In a special secret government observatory facility, six teenagers who were placed on watch after their minds seemed to have been gnawed off by an insidious virtual world humanity created suddenly came to live after a month and half of dead stillness. But they came back and brought along something extra....
Something that'll forever change humanity and tilt the scale of power