Divine Artifact in a Scientific World

The month following CES was a hectic time for everyone.

Jack registered for double the normal class load, and so did Madison, Miranda, Samantha, Katie, and Naoko. They couldn't attend lectures for all their classes, so Jack templatized some of their professors so they could get private lectures in his soul space.

And since he was already templatizing professors, he decided to start looking for professors to "join his team". Both to provide education to him and his girls, but also to contribute to the Worlds of Wonder project.

Despite classes, homework, personal research, and interviewing professors, he still had some free time to spend with his girls, because he had four additional soul space days for each physical world day.

While Jack's days were feeling full, but not crazy, everyone at Horizon VR and Jensen Manufacturing was working overtime.

The demand for the AVR Explorer was stratospheric, and even though they had ramped up production to over thirty thousand units per day, their order backlog had continued to grow and was approaching ten million.

Their existing buildings were getting cramped, and they would probably max out at fifty thousand units per day once the last few fabricators were installed. They planned to expand to a larger building but would only do so when they were ready to begin production of the AVR Explorer 2.

Radius was also experiencing growth pains as it struggled to onboard every school in the Federation, the Union, and the Asian Alliance. And interest in Worlds of Wonder was far beyond their expectations.

When Radius had posted job openings for teachers on their website, they were flooded with applications soon after. They were also flooded with applications from game designers who wanted to contribute to Worlds of Wonder.

The AVR Explorer wasn't just an incremental improvement over existing VR headsets or AR glasses. It represented a fundamental shift in how the public perceived VR.

All existing VR and AR tech had three fundamental flaws: poor resolution, narrow field of view, jittery graphics.

The VR headsets with the highest resolution only had 4K per eye, and that was still not enough to be "retina" quality. The individual pixels were still visible.

Headsets with the highest resolution also had the narrowest field of view and only 100 or 120 degrees. Yet for a seamless experience, the headset needed to provide a field of view of 220 degrees.

And finally, VR headsets and AR glasses suffered from jitter or lag. Turn your head too fast, and the image would lag behind causing headaches for many.

But the AVR Explorer had none of these issues. Its resolution was 16K per eye, its field of view was 230 degrees, and it had a special processor that ensured that even if the computer providing the images couldn't keep up, the AVR Explorer could still extrapolate and adjust the image seamlessly.

Even crappy VR games were playable with the AVR Explorer, and AAA games that updated to support the haptic gloves became a dream to play.

The demand for the AVR Explorer was so high among tech workers and gamers that, for a while, there was a thriving secondary market where people were selling their AVR Explorers for as much as 30,000 credits.

Horizon had a five-per-customer limit to prevent people from ordering thousands, then reselling at a profit. This still happened anyway, just on a small scale.

Still, with units selling for 30K credits on auction sites, Horizon added their own auction. One thousand units a day would go up for auction, going to the one thousand highest bids.

The result was some initial grumbling on social media but also a 30 percent increase in profits for Horizon. The list price was 299 credits, but the average price on the auction was closer to 3000 credits.

The one feature that didn't get much media attention was the Radium assistant that was bundled with each AVR Explorer. As useful as it was, Jack and his team had expected more media attention to it, but because it was seen as just a cute wrapper around the existing chat feature, many ignored it.

However, there were a growing number of people who were quietly discovering just how powerful the Radium assistant could be. Software developers, data analysts, book editors, authors, anyone who needed to process, analyze, or produce information, found their jobs easier when they leveraged the Radium assistant.

Madison had done such a good job designing it that there was no need for people to discuss prompt engineering strategies for optimizing the Radium assistant's utility. It just worked.

And because it just worked, there was no need to blog about how one overcame its stupidity and managed to get it to do what one wanted. With nothing to complain about or brag about, people just got on with doing their jobs.

Still, word was spreading, and Radius continued to build out their data centers to support the increasing demand.

But while Horizon and Radius were experiencing meteoric success, the other players in the VR and AI markets were floundering.

AI-n-stein's attempts to retain customers were like trying to scoop water with a strainer. And Primal's headset sales had screeched to a halt. Things were so dire that both companies felt compelled to take drastic steps. One legal, the other extralegal.

——————————

Allan Hadley, a senator from the great state of Gatorland, was sitting at his desk leafing through a draft of a bill submitted to him by his assistant. The bill was probably drafted by one of his campaign donors, but his assistant had cleaned it up enough that it would look like he had drafted it.

He had no plans to actually read the damned thing, just skim it so he could honestly say he had looked at it when his fellow committee members asked him about it. From what he could tell, it had something to do with AI and protecting the Federation economy.

His secretary knocked on his door and said, "Sir, you have a call from Hammond Saltzman. Do you want to take it or have him leave a message?"

Recognizing Saltzman as the name of one of his major campaign contributors, he said, "I'll take the call, Iris."

His secretary disappeared, and a moment later his phone wrang.

"Mr. Saltzman, what can I do for his fine Thursday morning?" said Allen in a cheery tone, the tone he reserved for his top-tier donors.

"Senator Hadley," replied Saltzman over the phone, "thank you for taking my call. I apologize for contacting you out of the blue like this, but heard that an important bill was sitting on your desk and I wanted to express how very important that bill is to the future of the Federation."

You mean the future of your business, thought Allen.

"So important," continued Saltzman, "that seven of my fingers are feeling itchy."

Allan sat up in straight in his chair. The words "seven of my fingers" were obviously a thinly veiled offer to make a seven-figure donation to Allen's campaign fund.

Before the Senator could reply, his cell phone made a sound he recognized as a notification from his secure communications app. Very few people could contact him through that app, and each of them was infinitely more important to him than one wealthy donor.

He picked up his phone, unlocked it and opened his secure messaging app. There was a new message from an unknown sender.

When he opened the message, his body shook, and he almost dropped the phone.

On his screen was a picture of a very naked and very aroused Senator, engaged in amorous activity with a young man. Below the message were the words, "Shred the bill, or we shred your reputation. And don't worry, the boy is safe, safely out of your reach."

His constituents were heavily conservative and would not approve of his most recent choice in romantic partner. His comfortable lead in the current election would evaporate if this picture got out.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Saltzman, I cannot help you," said a shaken Senator Hadley.

He hung up the phone and took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He might feel shaken on the inside, but twenty years in the senate meant he could at least appear calm on the outside.

He stood, grabbed the now hateful bill, and walked out of his office.

He set the bill on his secretary's desk and said, "Shred this, and destroy every copy of it we have. Also, tell my team that we will no longer consider any legislative proposals from the same source."

"Sir?" said his secretary, sounding surprised and a little disturbed.

"You heard me, Iris. And cancel the rest of my appointments for today."

As he turned to leave the suite of offices that were assigned to him, his phone dinged again. It was another secure message.

When he read the message, he felt his stomach drop and the room spin.

The message was from the same unknown sender and read: "Good boy!"

The secret service swept his offices for bugs weekly. In fact, they had just swept his offices earlier that morning. Which meant that either his own secret service detail was monitoring him, or someone with greater sophistication than the secret service were watching him.

Both possibilities made his stomach churn and his face grow pale.

"Sir, are you alright?" asked his secretary.

"No, Iris. I don't feel well at all," said the Senator as he sank to the floor. Then he passed out.