Charlotte's PoV

 

Charlotte felt lightheaded as she groggily rubbed her eyes. What happened? The day had already been pushing her to the breaking point but something finally pushed her over the edge.

Out of more habit than thought she grabbed her phone. Thankfully no new messages, but it was right at the edge of her memory that she had discovered something important. She could have swore she recorded Jim doing something weird and had the footage of it on her phone. Then the flash of memory hit her as she remembered. Jim pulled out helmets from thin air. She remembered Jim's antics as he kept trying to make her doubt what she had seen.

Then her memory came to the word simulation. Creating something from nothing. The new employees that had magic powers, yet knew nothing of Earth. Jim standing up out of the bindings as if he was restrained by toys when they had been kidnapped. Jim disappearing those men.

Charlotte covered her stomach as she remembered the punch while blinded in the chair. She felt so helpless. Sweat started to bead on her forehead as she remembered all the events from that day. She had to know.

Getting up she looked around for the culprit. Out of patience she found Jim's room and opened the door. Confirming her previous memories she saw him running diagnostics of 10 helmets that shouldn't exist.

Surprised Jim sheepishly looked at her as her gaze looked from the helmets and back to him with a quirk of an eyebrow.

Mustering up her courage she said "I need to know Jim. What have you gotten us into?"

Jim sighed and gestured her over to take a seat. Reluctantly she did and Jim started, "I think everyone else is asleep. We have pizza, are you hungry?"

She glared at him.

Jim said "Are you sure you want to know? This information… is very dangerous."

"Jim… as far as I can tell people who shouldn't exist are in our world with magical powers. One, I can't help nearly as much if I don't know what's going on. Two, we already got kidnapped. It's already dangerous Jim."

Jim's face turned into a stormcloud saying "I am going to find out who did this to us Charlotte. Then I am going to make them pay."

Rubbing her forehead she replied "What are you some kind of vigilante? Things are getting out of hand Jim."

Jim snapped his fingers and said "No! If I wear a cape, then I'm a superhero and not a vigilante. Do you know anyone good with capes? I think I would look good in one!"

"Jim! Focus!"

Jim rubbed the back of his neck then met her eyes.

"If you really want to know, I will tell you. But it might change the way you look at the world. Hell, even I don't know all the answers."

Charlotte nodded and Jim continued.

"As you know… two weeks prior to getting fired I made some major discoveries. I basically mapped out the entire sensory package for the brain in addition to a couple other things."

Nodding Charlotte had already figured as much. She wanted to know what the 'couple other things' were, but she didn't want to interrupt. It was the least of her concerns right now. He continued.

"So… I wanted to have some fun with the tech while I had it. Long story short, I tried to recreate a lifelike version of Final Fantastic 3. Charlotte, it worked. It worked too well."

Pointing to the other rooms in the house he asked "What do you think of them? Are they real to you."

"Of course."

"Well… I kind of accidentally created them. In addition to creating about a few million others like them."

"What!?"

"As far as I can tell, these people are indistinguishable from a normal person in terms of thought patterns. I'm kind of a dad… a few million times over."

"Millions…"

"And that's just people. There are elves and demons too. Then there are plenty of creatures there that have sentience in all the ways that matter."

The implications ran through her mind. Not only was there the fact of creating something out of nothing but creating actual people.

"What makes matters worse is that as far as I can tell, if I die on the other side, every one of them will stop existing. I'm not sure if people I pull over to this side will still count, but snatching up everyone in that world and dropping them here is not a viable option. They would live like lab rats."

Charlotte felt the bile come up from her stomach. The horror of that situation played out in her mind. She had no doubt the governments of the world would magic away these people and they would turn in to little more than slaves with their odd powers.

Jim continued speaking, "That's not even the biggest problem."

Picking up one of the helmets he hefted it into his hand and said "Anyone who has a working one of these can basically make an almost infinite number of people. Slavery would exist on a scale that would rival kingdoms of the past. Any work that didn't need to be done physically could be taken over by a person created with one of these. Hell, even the operation of machinery could be outsourced. And that's only what they could do if they figured out how to make people biddable. If they figure out they can transfer stuff over from their worlds to Earth it could be even worse. They could magic up millions of nukes and end the Earth, then retreat to their own little versions of paradise."

Charlotte felt small. This was crazy.

With determination she said "Then we need to destroy them. This is too big. We can't handle this."

Jim raised an eyebrow and said "Then we will just be pushing it off to the next generation. If you think about it, this is a really good explanation for why we haven't encountered aliens. Once any civilization figures out how to make one of these, the entire universe becomes irrelevant. We discovered how to do this Charlotte, how long do you think it will be before someone else does as well?"

"But it has never been discovered yet!"

Jim made a skeptical look.

"You know what I mean. You're the only one to figure it out yet."

"We can't close Pandora's box Charlotte. Our best hope is to hide the box so thoroughly that people never knew it existed. If we don't, eventually someone will follow our footsteps."

"But we own the intellectual property!"

"IP's protection only lasts so long, and that assumes people will follow the law. We just saw an example of what powerful people think of laws when they become inconvenient. The cat is already out of the bag. I talked to Greg before the 3D Tech building burned down. Did you know the majority of the staff have a betting pool on how long it will be before the project gets picked back up?"

Was that true? She had been locked up in her office a lot before the end, so she didn't know. Charlotte had always known that the majority of her staff had been excited to come into work every day, but was there that much enthusiasm? A lot of her enthusiasm for the project was to give Adam the ability to see, so she didn't trust her own judgment on the excitement of the project.

"Even if I break all these, it will only be a matter of time. The blueprints for these are on some backup somewhere. Hell, I had one from before we owned the IP. The security wasn't exactly great. It wouldn't surprise me if half the workforce made some backup copies of their data, not to mention the company itself. Whether it's two years from now, 10 or 100, this technology is coming."

Charlotte wanted to deny it, but it's true. But how could they stop it?

Reading her mind Jim pointed to sections of the device and said "We really only need these modules if we want to give people a realistic VR experience. Everything else in the commercial version can and should be removed. If we bring this technology to market, we could bastardize it and limit its potential. We can make it so every single piece of software that runs on these can detect the extra modules 'unneeded' and fail to run. I have other ideas, but that's my short term solution. You know business better than I do Charlotte, do you think our competitors will want to work on a more advanced and expensive headset when it won't be able to run anything?"

"It would really depend on how much market share we have. If we are far enough ahead…"

Her mind started working. Yes… if they were the dominant retailer and had a monopoly for a few years, then they could force any competitor to their standard. There were plenty of examples in the past of companies doing just that.

Charlotte felt lightheaded. Jim continued to tinker with the helmets. Charlotte asked "Wait, if anyone can make anything, doesn't that mean we solved world hunger? Can't we just make an unlimited amount of food and feed the world?"

Jim, seeming to take the question seriously, rubbed his chin and said "Yes and no. Yes, if we had a working helmet, that would be within possibilities. But keep in mind the world isn't sunshine and rainbows. We drop a ton of goods in war torn countries, then the people in power will more often than not seize the stuff for their own good."

Irritated Charlotte said "Who cares! Why not do it? Even if it only worked a little, it would save a lot of lives."

Awkwardly Jim rubbed the back of his neck and said "Umm… remember how I said 'if we had a working helmet?'"

Cautiously, Charlotte said "Yes…."

"Well… these are all broken. Every last one of them."

Feeling like that was bullshit, Charlotte stood up and started examining the helmets. What the hell? What kind of reckless crap did he pull to do this kind of damage? Every single one of them had crushed or broken bits.

Pointedly she said "Explain."

Jim sadly looked at the equipment saying "Remember how I told you that if I died in the other world, all people in that world would die?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

Shrugging he said "Well, I got first hand experience of what that was like. Two days before 3D Tech shut down I tried to make a new world that was a mix of 3D Tech equipment and potions from FF3."

Potions? His miracle cures finally made sense. Interrupting she said "Really? Our wanna-be new pharmaceutical division is an item in the game?"

"Genius idea huh? It was totally my idea too. Great idea right?"

Her bullshit alarm was going off but she wanted to make sure she understood, "So, that Milly girl? What is she, some kind of alchemist?"

"They call them Potion Makers, but yeah it seems to be the same thing. I haven't seen her make anything yet. Hopefully her skills and the plants she brought still work on this side. I'm thinking of making our new company building in the FF3 world."

Seeing she was getting sidetracked she said "Wait, go back to making a new world. What happened?"

"Well, I created a new world. Was alive for all of 15 minutes. Then died. Two days of memories gone, all of them. Turns out dying in these new worlds not only erases the world, it steals all of your memories from the point the world was thought up. The only reason I know what I worked on was because I was looking over the newest files on my computer. So yeah, all the kinks are not worked out yet."

Pointing to the damaged helmets, she was starting to put it together "So that's the reason you have those? But why are they so damaged?"

Sheepishly Jim said "Seems when stuff is in my game inventory, if things have the same name but are different items, they still stack into the same item name slot. Apparently before I died I put a few in my inventory, died and forgot about them, and only recently rediscovered them. They've basically been in a pit of heavy armor and sharp objects. It's going to save a lot of time though."

"How badly damaged are these?"

"Best one out of the lot has 13 faults."

Charlotte winced. They would need to do a full breakdown, testing and rebuild. But yes, that was a lot better than starting from scratch. But she didn't want to back down on helping other people. If he could duplicate the helmets with a working unit, then he could make the entire world those cures of his.

She said "Okay, but once we rebuild the helmet I want everyone on Earth to have access to your miracle cures, not just the wealthy."

Jim looked at her with dead seriousness in his eyes and said "I would love to. But if we sold each cure for a penny, what do you think is going to happen to us?"

Irritated, she wasn't going to let him use that as a justification for only letting the wealthy have them. She said bitingly "If you can make them for free, everyone should have them for free!"

"Healthcare is a multibillion dollar industry. I am willing to take the risk of giving them away for free, but that will mean a lot of very wealthy people getting very angry with us. It will make the last day look like childsplay. I am willing to take that risk, are you?"

Finally seeing his point, she felt a little scared. Then she remembered the joy in Adam's newfound eyes. She wanted everyone to experience that. With determination she said "I am willing to risk it. It's a worthy cause."

"Thank you Charlotte, I was hoping you would say that. Going to turn this back to business a bit, but I want you to look for an industrial building that's outside town. Preferably with a lot of privacy and has plausibility that it can be used for pharmaceutical manufacture. I think attacks like the past one are going to become more common. I want our essential personnel on Earth gathered in one location so we can be safer."

Charlotte agreed saying "Okay, I think I have a good idea where to look."

"Thanks Charlotte, but it can wait till the morning, there is leftover pizza downstairs if you're hungry."

She wanted to ask more questions but her mind was in information overload at the moment. If everything he said was true, the implications were horrifying. If they were going to play with so much fire, Charlotte liked the idea of moving to a more remote location. Her mind was still in partial shock that she had gotten kidnapped.

Making her exit she said "Okay Jim. I'll look into it first thing in the morning."

Mind numb, she got up and she started to walk away. She had to think.

As she started walking away her stomach growled. In her haze she missed the sound of the faucet and the door being opened. Still in a bit of a haze she heard the little girl named Maria look at her with concern and said "There is still pizza down stairs, you can make it hot again too! It's called a microwave! Do you want me to teach you?"

Smiling, she said "Thank you honey, I'll do just that. Don't worry, I know how to use it."

"Okay! Goodnight!"

"Goodnight," Charlotte replied.

Maria headed back to the guest room while Charlotte made her way down stairs. Making her way to the kitchen she microwaved the pizza as she continued to think. Little girls like that are depending on her. She felt like a bomb was dropped on her mind. But she needed to break the tasks down to a step by step process. It was something that she was good at.

Seeing Maria it also reminded her… she needed to get Maria into school. Step by step she would get it done. She needed an assistant. There were so many things she needed to do and the gravity of the situation was finally dawning on her. Morning though, it could wait until the morning.