The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death Read online

  As the roles merged, the term Federal Officer replaced Federal Agent. Old traditions die hard, however, and those on the FBI side of FBI-POB still thought of themselves as doing the real work of keeping this country safe. They thought of the POB side, especially the SWAT-HRT elements as caged animals, only brought out when you needed them. Lt. Stuart was one of those. Out of D.C. and going to the “field” to enhance his resume.

  Stezno smiled slightly. “Well, I remember another young tactical officer who was always balls to the wall. Who thought it was up to God to sort out the mess he left behind.”

  Argosi knew she was talking about him. Before he could interrupt, she continued.

  “Kinda the inverse of Stuart, but still needing to learn about the fine line that is walked in real world ops between public safety and an individual’s rights. In either case, there is a learning curve.”

  Argosi frowned. “Is losing an officer, or even worse a hostage, a good learning curve? That was a softball mission today we threw at them. He failed to use the MUCNCHIE’s. Failed to use the opportunity provided when I left your character alone in the penthouse. Worst of all, Stuart failed to let his team do what they were in place to do.” Argosi shook his head.

  “Stuart is supposed to be 10-8,” using the radio code for in-service, “when his team rotates into on-call status. From what I’ve seen, I’m not sure that he will be.”

  Stezno checked to make sure no one was in earshot.

  “Look, Dominic, Stuart was not my first choice. Hell he was not even on the short list. But you know that the powers that be in D.C. believe that the SWAT-HRT has become too much of a closed society. They see we are the ones that make the local news, get the media attention and as a result get a lot of commendations and awards which have led to promotions when we become the idol of some congressmen who was grateful for saving one of his constituents. You yourself Dominic are slated to take command of a field office.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it, Dawn!”

  Stezno, nodded. “It may be bullshit but it’s driving a lot of assignments to the Police Operations Bureau from the Investigative Bureau. Guys like Stuart looking to get their tickets punched. Plenty of POG’s think our happy little family should be more diverse regarding background and experience, so it doesn’t matter what you or I think. Stuart’s here to stay.” Stezno could see the disgust on Argosi’s face.

  “Dominic, Stuart is a fast learner. He is in excellent physical condition and a top shot.”

  “None of which automatically qualifies him to be a good tactical leader,” Argosi interjected.

  “True enough. That’s where you come in, Lieutenant. It’s your job, and your program’s to see that he becomes one.”

  Argosi sighed. Stezno droned on.

  “Look, I know Stuart. He can be a detached, pompous know-it-all ass. But then who on the FBI side isn’t? But he is also driven, you can bet he will lose sleep tonight over today’s fuck-ups, and he will be eager to fix them.”

  “I hope you’re right, Commander.” Argosi swallowed the last of his coffee.

  “Well I was right about you, wasn’t I?”

  Stezno guffawed and strutted out, leaving Argosi wondering if she thought he was as hopeless as he assumed Stuart was.

  ***

  The FLETC complex outside the town of Artesia in southern New Mexico was a vast base. Originally developed to train Border Patrol Officers, Air Marshals, and various federal law enforcement entities. The mission grew exponentially with the advent of narco-terrorism that arose just to the south of the border. When Mexico collapsed, first financially then politically, what had been up to then a battle between warring drug cartels soon became a fully engaged border war with the United States. Encouraged and funded by terror organizations and their state sponsors far from this hemisphere.

  Towns on the northern side of the border were raided. Sometimes even rocketed and mortared. This was often a ruse to flood illegals, many with criminal or terrorist intents, onto US territory, along with vast numbers of innocent people asking for and being granted sanctuary in the US. By the late 2020’s, the US had enough and declared a demilitarized zone deep into what had been Mexican sovereign territory. An invasion, by any other name.

  These demilitarized zones developed into what became known as EDZ’s, Economic Development Zones. These zones became mostly sovereign entities administered by local elected authorities. Of course, big brother, in the form the US military and then federal law enforcement, was there to keep them that way. These zones ran along the border of the southern United States deep into what had been Mexico.

  Technically it still was. Local Mexican authorities, with no national government to protect them, turned to the Americans to keep the cartels—who still ruled large portions of the country—out of the EDZ’s. It was more of a business arrangement than a political one.

  The Mexicans, at least the ones lucky enough to be in an EDZ, prospered and were safe from what had been rampant lawlessness. It was a beneficial situation for the U.S. as well, which saw illegal immigration slow to be almost nonexistent. All as American factories and industries invested in these EDZ’s. While the jobs paid far less than what the ones north of the border did, American consumers benefited by cheap goods.

  At the same time, the United States recognized that a Free Market would only work if others participated and enacted tariffs and trade policies that made American Industry competitive with the cheaper labor of China and India. The exception being the Mexican EDZ’s that now bulged with factories utilizing almost all the available local labor force. The proximity and logistics of these EDZ’s to the American mainland made them competitive with the import prices of Europe or Asia within many industries.

  This new corporate reality required protection though. Bases along the southern U.S. were built to do just that. FLETC played a significant role in the staging, supply, and logistics involved in maintaining and protecting the EDZ’s, some as far south as Mexico City. So what had once been a sleepy little agricultural town known for its artisan wells and winning high school football teams had become a bustling city to support the huge base.

  With its ten-thousand-foot runway to house the FBI-POB Rapid Deployment Teams and its attendant Logistical Air Wing and its Assault wings of VTAL’s FLETC looked more like a large military base than a training facility. In fact, the training portion of the base was dwarfed by the operations side. Over the years various new names were considered to reflect the dynamic nature of the base and its operations. But FLETC stuck because after all it was indeed supposed to be a training center, and while it fooled no one, that was still the official mission.

  The reality, of course, was that a large part of the mission at this base, just a hundred miles or so from the Mexican border, was to protect the EDZ’s. The Rapid Deployment Teams were designed particularly for that purpose. Unlike the SWAT-HRT elements, the RDT’s were not surgical in nature. They were more like a sledgehammer, conducting raids along the perimeters of the EDZ’s to remind the cartels who was in control. They were a morph of military and police operations designed to saturate rapidly into areas to establish, or reestablish control any time the cartels got too close for comfort. A lesson learned the hard way from rockets and mortars launched into American border communities. The Mexican government, when it existed, was unwilling or unable to stop it.

  The RDT’s had at their disposal large cargo aircraft, armored vehicles and tactical close air support in the form of heavily armed VTAL’s. Ostensibly under the direction of the Justice Department and the FBI-POB, the RDT’s were in fact directed, trained and funded out of the Pentagon. Because they operated on foreign soil, they did not need to pay attention to individual rights, the rules of evidence or things that slowed them down. Like obtaining a search warrant.

  They were in effect a police force on steroids answerable and accountable only to the White House. Their sole mission was to protect the EDZ’s and the wealth they generated. No one was going
to argue against what they did or how they did it. Since the cartels were the first invading force since Poncho Villa to draw blood on American soil in the lower 48, Americans demanded that the borders be secured and the cartels hunted down which they were and with a vengeance. The RDT’s were in place to keep them on the run and as far from American interests as possible.

  At its core, FLETC still trained cops, or Federal Officers as they were officially called now. It was the most multi-faceted non-military training center of its kind. It merged the technology of virtual reality with real world skills like shooting, tactics and operational readiness.

  Students would be trained to shoot on actual ranges with live ammunition under real stress in the form of demanding instructors and challenging conditions. They would then put that knowledge into a simulator that was so authentic it was used to weed out those that could not cope with its demands. Psychologists were on hand to monitor and counsel students about their experiences and when necessary remove them.

  It was the most realistic training environment ever devised. So much so that there was little difference from the real world, except no one got hurt or died.

  ***

  After leaving Stezno, Dominic Argosi dashed through a corridor that connected the building that housed the debrief and other real world offices, to the massive windowless building known as the in-world side of training. Within this building were simulators capable of creating any environment the human mind could conjure up. And do it in such a manner that people often experienced depression upon leaving it. Like a good book or a movie that you become engrossed in and then is over all too quickly but at a level far more tantalizing than either.

  Argosi was no techie; in fact, he rather loathed the idea of “in-world” as opposed to “real world.” One of the reasons that he jumped at the opportunity for this assignment was its location still very much matched the real world. The people who lived around here and made a living ranching, and in recent decades rough-necking the oil and gas reserves of the western Permian Basin, were about as real as you could find any more.

  Sure, they were connected to the Metaverse. Many even had personal virtual reality pods in their homes. But what they did for a living, not to mention the culture of it, necessitated spending much if not most of their time in the real world. Argosi hated the terms in-world and real world, but it was necessary to discriminate between real life and virtual life.

  Argosi stepped into a large room that resembled NASA’s Mission Control on a smaller scale. Two dozen or so workstations with interactive touch screens at each controlled some aspect of the simulators or the environment. Dozens of which could be run out of here simultaneously.

  On one such display, Argosi spotted the Las Vegas Sky Tower. It was an actual image, not computer generated. The simulation used that image to build a digital one making interior rooms fit and conform to the dimensions of the real structure. With this particular building, the sim team had uploaded blueprints. The computer simulation then built the structure within the simulation down to every last detail and exact dimension. From pictures of its rooms or in this case the penthouse even furnishings were exact. Known as Full Dimensional Virtual Reality, buildings, structures, and human beings were indistinguishable from real-life. There was nothing cartoonish or artificial to the human eye, unless that was the intent.

  In the simulated Sky Tower, if you went into the casino level you would hear and see all the various games and people just as if you were in the real thing. Individuals that could interact based on a script would have filled it or an adjacent bar, restaurant or shop. You could stop and play a table game, interact with the dealer or other players. Walk into a nearby lounge and hear a band or sit down in a restaurant and have a meal, ordering from a server who waited on you.

  It was something that always made Argosi uneasy. The other people that you interacted with were, depending on the scenario and role, a scripted computer-generated being. In many scenarios, Humans were often outnumbered by the Artificial Entities, as they were known.

  Artificial Intelligence used to be the term. But there was nothing very artificial about the intelligence of these AE’s. They were scripted and modeled from real human beings, with an infinite number of responses, actions, and gestures just like in the real world.

  In today’s simulation, all the players were real except the butler and assistant AE’s. That would not have been the case if you had walked through the lobby or other public areas of the Sky Tower. The other people not in the exercise would have been AE’s. No human being having a casual interaction with an AE would be able to discern the difference from within the sim without having access to a cast list.

  Argosi made his way to a smaller adjacent room marked “Exercise Control” on the open door. A twenty-something tech was at one of the stations.

  Argosi crept up on the young man, who had earphones on playing loud music. The kid jumped when Argosi tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hey LT, you scared the crap out of me. I thought everyone from the staff left for the day.”

  “They mostly have. I was just taking a walk through to make sure we were secure for the night. What are you running?”

  The tech tapped on the screen and brought up the view of the Sky Tower that then zoomed into the penthouse.

  “One of the guys wanted to rerun portions of the exercise. Said he needed it for tomorrow’s debrief. I didn’t mind the overtime, so I volunteered to stay.” The tech answered, letting the director of training know in an indirect way that he did not work for free.

  “Who’s in there?” Argosi nodded to the screen.

  “Sgt. Keyton, he’s getting suited up now.” The tech tapped the screen, and it went to the H-Pod Room where dozens of the H-Pods were viewable and where Keyton would enter the Sim.

  H-Pod was short for Human Containment Pod. A white, elliptical fiberglass structure resembling a large egg. Large enough to contain humans of varying heights and weights it was a self-contained unit that not only housed the HE, Human Element inside, it also served as a portal into the Metaverse. Within the plastic casing waited an exoskeleton that wrapped around your limbs, torso, hands, fingers and head. The exoskeleton moved in conjunction with every joint and direction that a human body could. Originally these exoskeletons were designed to be worn on the legs of a paraplegic to enable them to walk or to spare the elderly from wheelchairs. The body could be supported and enhanced exponentially by these systems. Combat troops used them to minimize fatigue and carry more weight.

  Surrounding the exoskeleton, an inflatable bladder provided the pressure that supported the exoskeleton. The combination of both the bladder and exoskeleton separated the HE from the real world physically while at the same time connecting it to the virtual world in which the HE was entering.

  As the HE moved his or her body, that motion “reflected” into the simulation. Likewise, the simulation reflected onto their physical body what it would be experiencing as if the body had been digitized and transported into the computer simulation like the characters from Star Trek.

  When you handled a gun in the sim, for example, your hands “felt it.” The exoskeleton pushed back against your hands in the exact shape and configuration of the weapon. If you leaned against the wall, you would feel the stiffness against your shoulder. A simple concept in theory. Newton had discovered it 600 years earlier. But when paired with a visual simulation that was beyond photo realistic, the simulation became for all intents and purposes real.

  When you walked, your legs moved the exoskeleton. Although suspended in the pod you would not actually go anywhere, but in the simulation you felt the ground below and visually moved through your environment. Assuming it was “human normed” and limited by actual human abilities. The simulation required you to exert physically the same amount of work it would take to complete that task in the physical world.

  If where you were walking was an incline you would “feel” the gravity as the exoskeleton simulated that by c
reating resistance. Something that weighed fifty pounds in the sim required that amount of lifting power applied to the exoskeleton, requiring actual effort and energy by the HE.

  Anything, motion or movement that a human could do in the real world could be captured by the exoskeleton and “reflected” into the sim. Anything that happened in the sim could be reflected back to the HE via the exoskeleton, within safety margins.

  Of course, some things that a human could not do naturally in real life could be done in a sim. Flying like a bird or even breathing underwater or walking on Mars. Or not human at all. Perhaps in the sim, you’re an eagle or a dolphin. In those cases, the exoskeleton would have to approximate the movement, as humans do not have wings or fins. At FLETC, many of these recreational simulations were available to the students and staff, but the primary emphasis here was training for real world missions.

  The latest development was known as full emersion virtual reality of the human body into a virtual world. As sophisticated as the H-Pods at FLETC were, they had become relatively obsolete with the advent of “SecondSkin,” the actual name of the suit, which was worn next to your skin with no clothing in between. The Human Element still used an H-Pod with an exoskeleton to link with the sim, but now you were able to make contact with the simulation’s environment in the same way a human could in the real world.

  SecondSkin made it possible to feel the grains of sand between your toes or the sun on your face. If you dove into the water, you would “feel” the wetness and even the pressure. If you stood in the wind, you would feel the air. If you embraced another person, you felt their warmth, the flesh of their skin or the texture of their hair.

  None of these experiences were artificial. They felt as they would in real life, in the real world. This latest generation of full emersion eliminated the barriers that existed in the H-Pod’s still in use at FLETC and other legacy places known as “intermediate emersion.” Unlike full emersion, intermediate emersion could still feel, but in the same way one does while wearing gloves. With the full emersion SecondSkin, the softness of high-count linen was indistinguishable from the real thing.