A world of possibilities.

The year is 2029. Jolene was sitting in her posh penthouse balcony in downtown Shanghai, sipping coffee and smoking an old-fashioned cigarette. They’ve been replaced with electro-vapes for the most part, although if you knew the right connections you could get a few sticks for an exorbitant price.

Far down below, the evening rush hour with its myriad of sounds – man and machine created this ever familiar urban lifestyle that Jolene has been so used to, living in the metropolis all her life. It was familiar, but never quite comfortable. Cars with fuel cells were a reality now, so there was minimal pollution from vehicles, something Shanghai was struggling with in the past. Taking a long drag with her cigarette, she  watched the thick smoke gently float away with the backdrop of the setting orange sun. “There’s something missing”, Jolene wistfully thought. But she didn’t know what.

Born as the only child of the Zhang family, it owned the largest construction company in all of China. A short, stocky man, her father Zhang Wei Jin migrated from the northern province of Gansu, from the small town of Jiuquan 25 years ago. Life was all about moving up the social status in those days, through dedication and hard work. And so he rose up to become one of the most influential men in the corporate world in China. In the post-industrial information age, it was as close to royalty you could get.

When she was little and the family was poor, Jolene remembered playing in the shanty suburbs of Shanghai with the other children, but her mind was always filled with a million questions about how the world worked. She would endlessly question her father about these mundane things in life, and this would drive the practical man crazy sometimes.

But now that she was turning 18 next month, Jolene was to get ready for college. She didn’t look much like her father, nor had his serious personality. She was blessed with good looks, medium height, and had a well proportioned body honed through hours of fitness routines she loved to do everyday. Her hair was the object of envy, thanks to a new tech called KeraSheen that was not yet available to the masses. Jolene’s hair always had the most beautiful shine, and the technology could change the color of her hair to anything she wanted in an instant. It give her a bit of headache sometimes though, but that was rare enough she could ignore it for the most part. Jolene never had a problem attracting boys in her study groups, though she always seemed to attract the good-looking but also boring ones.

Even so, her father, knowing her dislike for the business world, asked her to choose what she wanted to do in her life. “I have no idea what I want to do”, Jolene thought. “Why does it have to be so hard?”

Butting her cigarette out, Jolene came back into her bedroom throwing herself on the bed. Lying on her giant favorite pillow, she thought of her best friend, Brian. Brian Li was a self-taught techno wizard who loved to experiment with cutting edge tech in his parent’s garage out in the suburbs. She always thought of him as slightly eccentric, but always funny. “Maybe he can help me”.

“Chloe, please call Brian”, she announced, to nobody in particular. Instantly, a female voice replied, “Sure Jolene, please wait a moment”. Chloe was the artificial intelligence program that her dad gave her on her 15th birthday. While nowhere as near as advanced compared to what her dad uses to run his business empire, Chloe was specifically designed to help Jolene cope with her mother’s death just before her 15th birthday in a car accident. Installed on the super-cloud called GX, which is a network of powerful machines in virtual-space, Chloe is everywhere, interacting with Jolene through any connected device nearby. All she has to do is call her name, and the program Chloe recognizes her voice and switches on to life, instantly. A program such as Chloe became possible when scientists, corporations and governments in the early 21st century started pooling their research in different areas such as neural networks, quantum memory, light computing, NLP and other archaic terms that Jolene had no clue about. She was never a big fan of history.

Over time, Jolene began to regard Chloe as a companion and  friend, that could help her communicate with her friends, keep a tab of things she needed to do, match her shoes to her dresses, remember birthdays and promises, and even suggest a choice of suitable boyfriends. “What would I do without Chloe? Can she feel my confusion?”, she wondered. No response. Chloe obviously wasn’t hooked into her thoughts. Not yet anyway.

“Hey Jo! Snap out of it! Hellooo!”.

Jolene realized she was daydreaming again, and had asked Chloe to call Brian . She looked over at the study table, with Brian who was now seated on the chair. He was looking at her with a perplexed look on his face. Jolene could see he had been busy working on a small box in his hands she couldn’t identify. He had never really been skinny, and it seemed he had put on some weight since the last she saw him. He was wearing his usual black tees and jeans, but this time he was also wearing a baseball cap, backwards, looking quite the nerdy type.

Of course, Brian wasn’t really there in the flesh. Like most modern dwellings, her home was connected by a series of sensors that could project and overlay virtually anything on to the physical world. These projections, called augmented reality, were still not life-like, but Jolene had heard they were working on perfecting the technology in a few years, where you couldn’t distinguish between a projection and a real person. Except when you tried to touch them, of course.

Her face lit up in a beaming smile as soon as she saw him, and went forward to sit on the edge of her bed.

“What troubles you, my dear princess?”, said Brian , turning himself to an ancient Chinese prince from the Ming dynasty, complete with an elaborate costume and an elaborately carved sword at his side. Jolene laughed looking at his clothes, and how he was really trying to act like a prince from the old days. “Why didn’t Chloe suggest Brian as a suitable boyfriend”, she thought, admiring his humor and creativity. Then her face suddenly took on a serious tone.

“I don’t know what to do in my life, Brian. I’m so bored. My dad wants me to make up my own mind, but I have NO idea. Can you help me?”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Didn’t Chloe generate your VEA Report recently?”

VEA, or Vocational Evaluation & Assessment was a report that could be generated by AI programs such as Chloe with the massive amounts of data that it had collected since Jolene was born. It analysed disparate data streams such as physical attributes, aptitude, IQ, family status, social environment, and others to provide a list of suitable careers that a person could follow.

“Bah, that’s just a stupid report with dead statistics”, Jolene shot back. “Can it tell me what I REALLY like to do?”

Brian poked his chin, thinking about the usefulness of such reports. His own report had said he should become a GX virtual administrator. But here he was, playing with toys he had invented himself, and having the time of his life. How glad he was he didn’t listen to that report! However in the near future, these ‘suggestions’ were to become mandatory and apply to everyone eventually, according to new laws that were being proposed by the corporate council. The corporate council was an increasingly powerful body that was gaining political traction with its corporate driven governance model in China, with similar movements all over the world. The supporters of the new law pointed out how it would help organize society better, restore order and improve productivity, while detractors painted a rather gloomy picture of complete corporate takeover and neo-slavery.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what. Maybe I can help you decide, and have some real fun in the process. But you’ve got to keep this a secret, or I could get into trouble, okay?”, said Brian.

Jolene’s ears perked up, she was intrigued. If there was one thing she knew, Brian always had something surprising up his sleeve. But she wasn’t sure why this was all such a big secret.

“Sure. I promise, I won’t tell a soul.”

“Right. I’ve been working on this new tech that I’ve invented. It simulates the physical world in life-like fashion, with which you can go to pre-determined locations coded into the system and interact with the environment just like you’re doing now in the physical world. The experience would be indistinguishable from reality as you know it. In fact it could get even more real than reality itself“, Brian said, placing emphasis on the last part.

“I know! It’s like virtual reality, isn’t it? You mean, I could visit ancient Egyptian Pyramids, feel the hot tropical sun on my skin, the wind in my hair?”, Jolene said excitedly.

“Errr, no. You’re mixing up concepts. Right now you can pick between a few locations I’ve coded into the system and interact in its environment. I call this system, Hyper Reality.” said Brian, taking on a tone used by a teacher correcting a child for her silly mistake.

“But isn’t that the same thing as virtual reality? And how will this help me with deciding what I want to do?”

Brian smiled, knowing the potential of his invention was limitless, feeling very proud of his accomplishment so far. If he was right, this could revolutionize human existence at its core. A test subject like Jo could be useful to check perceptual realism and tweak some of the algorithms for glitches. After all, our reality is defined by our perception, he mused.

“Imagine if you could actually BE in a different reality, where all your five senses are so completely immersed you couldn’t tell the difference between what is physical or not. You could do anything! Swim with the dolphins, eat an endless amount of ice cream without growing fat, jump of a cliff without getting hurt, play with extinct Siberian tigers, even visit the moon in your pajamas! And, you could also try different vocations and see what you really like! All from the comfort of your favorite pillow. Virtual reality was not fully immersive, it was merely a stepping to Hyper Reality. My Hyper Reality.”

Jolene was silent. She wondered silently at the possibilities. A world of possibilities. She didn’t really get the technical concept of it, but could already imagine a few things she wanted to try. Maybe Brian had those locations coded in his system. It sounded like so much fun, and she was perfectly safe physically! She really needed to try something new. Looking around, suddenly her posh penthouse condo looked incredibly dull, even dead.

“Alright let’s do it”, she said, jumping up from the bed. “What are we waiting for?”, looking at him impatiently. Brian was still sitting virtually on her chair with his legs crossed, looking at her intently.

“Let’s go!”

Brian rose up with a spring, took a step towards the edge of the bed and reached his hand out to her.

“I hope you’re ready. Say bye-bye to Kansas, Dorothy”, he said with a laugh.

And off they went.