Life on Mars

Chapter Thirteen

Vic pushed his right thumb and forefinger across his chest and flicked his forehead with his left hand and everything around him went black. Slipping the helmet over his head he decided to call it a night, it was getting late. He was very pleased with his work so far but he might finish it tomorrow. The last few nights had been spent in V-World, creating a sim of his own. Over the last week Doctor Touchreik had been showing him how to create virtual world environments. Working with the doctor, he'd been creating scenes from his own history. Using these as templates and with his own limited skills he had developed something for himself. He wanted somewhere to relax that reflected his own time.

The doctor had shown him how the simulator that created the V-world experiences in private sims could also operate in reverse. This was how Bluu had created their Lon-Don sim to provide his history lesson. It could work as a three-dimensional recorder, building a world from memories, fantasy or just thoughts. Once created, it could be the scene of any future adventures with its own set of rules. With a little late-night fooling around Vic had mastered the equipment well enough to create a sim of his own. The sims were based on recordings of memory outputs using the same helmet in reverse mode. The real skill was eliminating the inaccuracies that came about from the intrusion of fantasy, dreams or personal bias. The subconscious mind has always struggled to determine the difference between what is real and what is fantasy. The result would be contamination of the world he was trying to create. This was not so much a fault in the software but more a fault in the human brain. Memories are never accurate and so there would be lots of things out of place or time. 

Vic's sim was designed to replicate his time in history and he'd done a satisfactory job. His first effort was pretty good, but he was aware someone from his own time would spot the glaring inaccuracies in a second. There was nothing too major though; no dinosaurs walking around or anything like that. Just the wrong car models, technology or music out of place. But seeing as the futures were 500 years out of time, then they were unlikely to notice thirty or forty years either way. Anyhow, who cares, no one else will see it. He enjoyed his time within a butchered version of the twentieth century. This was not for them or the doctor anyway, it was purely for him. There were no futures going to see any of it were there?

Vic found his time with the doctor exhausting at times, but this sim was the first of the benefits he'd reaped from his cooperation. The doctor was a reasonable guy and they had developed a good relationship. Vic had never considered he could become a living, breathing museum exhibit.

Occasionally, Vic got bored or frustrated so they might split their time, sometimes just walking and chatting in reality or visiting the reserve. It's more difficult than it seems explaining every detail about life to someone who has no idea how society works. Sometimes he sounded like an idiot, in fact, sometimes, Vic felt like an idiot.

Where did the money go that you gave your government? Tell me how you made food? After a while, it had got deeper and more difficult.

Where there were gaps in his knowledge, Vic had kept the doctor satisfied with scenes he remembered from films and books, which worked quite well. It wasn't like they were made-up stories; it was just easier to reference things from films and comic books. Oddly there were more problems with the real facts as opposed to the fabricated ones. When Vic explained that an actor had been President of the United States, there were doubts. Politics had been a problem for him, too, and the questions were endless.

"Who was the king of your government?"

"Why did people speak different languages?"

"What was this and that war about?"

"Tell me about colour, racism and religion?" On and on it went.

Once Vic had relaxed and started to make up the bits he didn't know, then it got easier, even fun. The futures would never know whether Malcolm X and Jesse Jackson were pop stars or politicians; that was all detail. Later it amused him to think that he might be the man to literally rewrite history. It was harmless and unlikely to cause any damage. The doc had been interested in sex and that kind of thing too. Explaining to a grown man how we made babies was very odd for Vic.