Eutopia

I woke up to the sound of a woman screaming. I seemed to be in the courtyard of a medieval castle, with high walls and Tudor-style towers which almost, but didn’t quite seem to match. The woman had fallen out of her chair and was looking around frantically. Instinctively I went to comfort her.

“You’re alright. You aren’t hurt are you?” I heard myself say, but I didn't hear her answer. I was just starting to realize how strange my surroundings had become.

“Where the hell are we?” I heard someone say.

“Have we been abducted?”

Suddenly voices everywhere were talking, fearful panicked nonsense.

“Everyone calm down!” came a woman’s voice, clear and assured. “We all agreed to this. Don’t you remember?”

“I sure as hell didn’t,” snapped one of the men. “I’m getting out of here.”

The talking died down as he marched his way to the large portcullis of one of the gatehouses, which stood at either end of the courtyard.

“Hello! Whoever's up there, draw up the gate. I won’t be kept here any longer. You can’t keep me against my will–it’s imprisonment!”

Suddenly a voice answered, not from the top of the gatehouse, but seemingly from the air all around us. “I could let you out, but you would die before you took your first breath.” It was a youthful, but confident and masculine voice, and his reply was tinged with laughter.

“Don’t you threaten me,” said the man, his brave front belied by a visible tremble.

“Don’t scare them, Pasqual,” came another voice from the sky, this one softer, almost paternal. “I suppose I’d better make an appearance, things seem to be getting a little out of hand.”

“Look up there!” someone shouted. I turned around to see a man with long black hair, pulled back in a ponytail looking down on us from the top of the wall. I couldn’t see his face clearly from that distance, but I seemed to know that it was he who had been speaking.

“If everyone would please lend me your attention, I will address your concerns, though please keep your questions to the end. My name is Eugene, but you may have heard me referred to as Dr. Prentice. I am a scientist who specializes in the elongation of the human life. You are my test subjects.”

There was protest from the crowd.

“Sorry, let me try that again. You are the lucky candidates who stand to benefit from my newest and greatest breakthrough–Panacea–a medicine which I believe can cure any ailment. Some of you may remember speaking to me. I endeavored to gain the consent of as many of you as I could–but for most of you that was simply not possible, as you were already unconscious before I got to you. In those cases it was a parent, spouse, or legal guardian who signed you up for this trial. Perhaps it would be a good time to examine those now.”

“You haven’t explained Scuba at all,” said the younger voice.

“Oh, that’s a good point. I really should have planned a speech.. You must forgive me, ladies and gentlemen.

“Right now, what you are seeing, everything you are feeling, is being relayed to your brain via a device called Scuba, an augmented reality of sorts.”

“Let us out of here! I refuse to be your guinea pig!” someone shouted. Before he had finished, he was echoed by others.

“I don’t consent to anything!”

“Let me out!”

Suddenly the other voice cut through the rising clamor. “Listen up, the Doctor should have led with this, but if you are in here, you are already ostensibly dead. No one else in the world can save you. Nothing but Panacea can bring you back to the real world, but unfortunately we only have enough for one person, so we’re keeping you here until we can decide who will receive it.”

“Give it to me!” cried a voice. “I will pay you anything you want. My family owns two Caribbean resorts. Give it to me and I’ll see that you’re paid ten million dollars!”

There was tension in the air. Suddenly the unembodied voice of Pasqual burst out laughing. “Ten million dollars!” he cried. “You think the Doctor would sell Panacea for ten million dollars?”

The Doctor replied gently, “Panacea will cure any ill, but the price to manufacture it is, currently, completely prohibitive. Pasqual is right: ten million dollars wouldn’t begin to cover the costs of producing a unit of Panacea. No, Panacea cannot be bought–it is so valuable that it must be given freely. Which of you is the most worthy to receive this gift is what I wish to discover. Until then you will live here, inside Eutopia while my team of doctors work tirelessly to keep you alive. As long as you remain in stable condition–conceded that condition is comatose–Scuba will keep you here with us.”

The doctor stopped speaking and for the first time since I had arrived there, the courtyard was in near total silence.

“No doubt you will find this all quite discouraging. After all there are more than a hundred of you and only one of you will receive Panacea. I therefore encourage you all to embrace your lives here in Eutopia. Make your life here count, even if you aren’t lucky enough to claim the Panacea. To that end I have tried to make this world fun and interesting, but it is also dangerous. You can die here. If you do, you will be life-flighted back to the hospital you were at before you came here, but in most cases, that will effectively be the end of you. Without Scuba, most of you will never have another conscious thought. I know that sounds cruel, but in the end there can only be one winner. Only one of you can walk out of here back into the real world. Only one of you will ever see your friends and family again. I know many of you will be wondering if you can contact your loved ones from in here. The short answer is no. Firstly, it would be extremely difficult. Time here doesn’t work exactly the same as it does out there. A simple conversation could take a day or more to relate in and out of Scuba. And secondly, I think it is important to keep a degree of separation between you and the living. I don’t think it would be at all fair to those on the outside. They must learn to go on without you. I don’t want them to feel like their lives are in limbo over you any more than necessary. Oh!”

“Doctor! Are you all right?” exclaimed Pasqual.

“Sorry, Scuba has never agreed with me–ironic I know. It is for that reason that this will probably be the last time any of you interact with me directly. Know that I will be watching, and that I wish all of you good luck. Pasqual, I leave the rest to you.”

The man raised his arm into the air as if accessing some menu which was invisible to us, and then suddenly, he disappeared.

A moment later a new figure appeared nearby, seating himself on the ledge of the wall with his legs dangling. He looked little more than a kid, with unkempt blond hair and the gangly appendages of a teenager–not the person to whom I would have ascribed the self-assured voice of Pasqual.

“All right, I think the Doctor pretty much covered the bases. You heard him mention your consent forms. Those will be accessible to you for the next hour in your tutorial menus. To view them select the concentric circles icon you see translucently in the top right of your field of vision. Otherwise mill about, get to know one another. Scuba can take a bit of adjustment the first time you use it. As for the objective: I’ll be back to talk about that a little later on. There is food on the table over there. The Doctor put a lot of thought into which parts of real life to include here in Eutopia. You should find the food tastes as expected. If you don’t, you can report that in your tutorial menu under the ‘report a bug’ feature. See you later!”

The boy dropped off the wall to a general gasp. Moments before he reached the ground he vanished.

Compelled by herd instinct I looked around, but there was no clear consensus on what we ought to be doing. I realized that I was starting to feel hungry, so despite my feelings of shock and bewilderment I followed the stream of people who milled their way through the courtyard to the large tables which, as Pasqual had promised, were set lavishly, including with many foods I could identify but had never tasted. Paella, ceviche, and beef wellington were set conspicuously among ordinary dishes like hotdogs and potato salad.

I sat down, served myself, and started eating. The food tasted good, but I was eating not for the taste or even because I was hungry, but merely from mechanical impulse. I had been directed to eat, and at that moment I lacked the mental capacity to consider doing otherwise. I ate.

I was somewhat recalled from my stupor by the conversation of those around me at the table.

“The last thing I remember was scuba diving. How weird is that? To be honest, I’m not convinced any of you are real. I think I must be drowning, and you are the figments of my imagination.” The speaker laughed and took a swig of his beer, choking on it.

“I understand where you’re coming from. It’s hard to process all of this,” said a woman with long blonde hair. “It’s hard for me, and I remember getting sick. I had cancer, have cancer. The last thing I remember is saying goodbye to my sister. I wonder how long ago that was now.”

“What about you?” said another man. He had short black hair and big dark eyes. Eyes I realized were looking at me.

“Oh,” I said, “I don’t know. I was just…living, you know. I don’t even know what day it is–or what day it was? Sorry, I’m just really confused.”

“What is the last date you remember? Everybody should answer,” said the man. He was smiling and seemed to find the whole thing funny.

“I don’t know, July Fourth? But I feel like that was a few days ago. Is it like July ninth?”

“July? Oh dear, I thought it was April,” said the woman, turning white.

The short haired man laughed.

“You all have a lot to say for figments,” said the other, devouring a chicken leg with wide-staring eyes.

“Excuse me, have you been able to view your consent?”

The question came from a girl who was standing just behind our table, but seemed to be addressed to no one in particular. She locked eyes with the diver and repeated her question.

“He said it was the circle’s icon but I don’t…?”

It was only half a question, but he waved his right arm in the air without waiting for her to finish. “Yeah, it’s right there: ‘Consent form’. Bunch of jargon, signed by Casey. My wife,” said the man with a shake of his head.

“I still don’t see,” said the girl. She raised her right hand, and took several swipes at the air, and passed on.

“It’s my mother’s name. Patricia Blakely, that’s my mom,” said the terrified woman.

I looked in the top right corner of my field of view and there it was, three small rings of pale white, one inside the other. I pointed to it with my right hand and a menu came up, like in a video game. About, Settings, Report a Bug, Consent Form…

I indicated the form and it appeared, covering the middle of my vision, as if someone was holding up a piece of printer paper in front of my eyes. I glanced to the bottom, saw my father’s signature, glanced back to the top, skimmed the first few sentences, and closed it.

“Thank you all for waiting so patiently.” It was Pasqual, his voice resonating throughout the enclosure. “As promised, I will now explain the contest. The person who wins the contest and receives the one vial of Panacea will be the person who, six months from now, has the highest points total. These will be earnable throughout Eutopia for all manner of challenges, quests, feats, and competitions.”

“Our lives aren’t a game!” someone shouted.

“Oh, but that’s the fun part–they are!” said Pasqual, chuckling.

“To aid you on your journey, each of you has been assigned a class, each with different stats and abilities. You are encouraged to become as strong as you possibly can, and don’t forget that while forming parties can be necessary there can only be one winner.

“Oh and don’t get any funny ideas, deliberately murdering other contestants will result in your disqualification–i.e. your death, and we reserve the right to mete out other punishments on a case by case basis should the need arise.

“With that said here are your new classes!”

A kind of glowing dust filled the courtyard, and I watched as the people before me–normal, ordinary people–were transformed into knights, magicians, elves, dwarves, and satyrs! But I hardly noticed them, for I suddenly found myself paralyzed as if in a straightjacket. Looking about, I beheld two enormous casks, one under my left arm, the other perched on my right shoulder, and my hands–my green hands–were glued to them!

“What’s going on?” I shouted, but no one was listening, each too transfixed by his own transformation to mind what I was saying.

I tried to pry my hands off the barrels but it was no use. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t free my hands. I looked around, but no one else seemed to be struggling as I was. Their expressions ranged from indifference to exhilaration, but I was the only one I could see who was having a panic attack.

“Have you seen what class you are? It says it under About,” I heard someone say.

I tried to touch the menu button with my hand, but it wouldn’t budge. “Are you serious? I can’t even access the menu? What is this crap!” I yelled.

“Oh, and one more thing,” said Pasqual. “Do you see that gate over there? In about thirty minutes a giant troll is going to smash it down and kill anyone that he finds. I hope you’re all able to get out of here before that happens. Good luck!”