Downloaded minds

[thtiger]

A genre that is showing up frequently in Sci-fiction is the idea of downloading a person's mind, complete, into a digital universe. In some cases this is just a virtual reality type game set up, but in others it's an after death situation where you continue to live in a virtual realm after you pass on. Amazon-prime has a TV series based on this called "Upload"

Now my idea takes place far, far into the future. There are tens of thousands of virtual worlds. The 'matrix' type computers that run things will happily build a custom world for any human that cares to request it. There might only be one real human in a world. The computer does not care. It's beyond quantum. It can manage billions of individual worlds if needed.

Of course people still like to be with people so there are many worlds that are filled with the minds of real humans.

But there are also abandoned worlds where the people who asked for them to be created got bored and moved on.

Many of these worlds are based on popular historical entertainments. Any Anime, book, TV show or Movie you can imagine having a fan base into the future.

Many of these are as close to canon representation as possible. Not everyone is a total pervert after all, and some people would be happily playing with the characters from MLP, or fighting crime side by side with Batman.

All the non-human characters think they are real. They have no idea they are NPCs and are only distinguishable from real humans in that the computer does not demand consent from them for you to play with them in any manner you wish, within the rules of that world.

Now my idea is that you are a hacker, or a form of it. You have gained access to a program that lets you re-write the rules of these abandoned worlds, which have been running on autopilot for who knows how long.

You can enter these world and turn any character into a playable character, and you can modify the rules of this world to allow you to play out any fetish you desire.

As an example. You could enter the world of Gilligan's Island, in the character of a guest star who demands sexual favors from the girls in order to 'rescue' them. Or if you wanted to go really dark, that they roast one of the girls for your dinner, after you'd enjoyed her. Because you've rewritten the rules the other characters would object, but accept it. Because it's a game, you can 'play' it as often as you like. Setting it back to the starting point and trying different branches of actions.

The common thread for all of them is that you are a virus of a character who corrupts these abandoned worlds, rewriting the rules under which the characters operate. Want to turn your favorite TV show into one that is set in a free-use universe, go for it.

Want to change the rules so it is a male-dom sort of world where all women are considered property? Go for it.

Really, anything is possible. And because it's all software/holodeck level bullshit, little things like reality and the law of physics, not to mention biology, only matter as much as you'd like them to.

There is also the possibility that the character/s in a corrupted universe could pull characters, including doppelgangers, from other realities into their own. There are likely to be dozens, if not hundreds, of variations of the DC or Marvel universe, with different rules in each one. A multiverse situation in a way. You could have a joker character traveling from world to world degrading female heroines and messing with various batman's minds.

 

[Hornyteenager]

Sounds awesome

 

[Tip]

A supervillain taking over the meta verse would work

 

[thtiger]

Sounds awesome

A supervillain taking over the meta verse would work

What I have in mind is to set up a situation where any scenario you could possibly imagine could take place, on a world wide scale if you so desired.
I'm thinking about the introduction page and I do have a personal story line in mind using characters and situations for the manga/anime Ranma 1/2, but branches could include any scenario including bad-end, or worst possible end, stories set in the DC or Marvel universe. Or both for that matter. This concept would allow a bad guy in the DC universe to drag a Marvel character out of their universe.

Some of these universes were designed to be perverted from the get go, but that leads to a situation where a character in one of those over the top sexual universes could drag characters over from a vanilla version of their own world and have their way with them.

 

[thtiger]

Before I get too far into it. I'd be interested in knowing if non-fatal snuff is something that would fly. Because this is a video game type scenario death does not technically exist. If you kill a character, or get killed yourself, you simply respawn according to the rules of that particular world.

Of course simply killing a character is allowed. But I'm thinking of the various types of possible erotic deaths. There are a lot of real world fetishes that revolve around pretending, but in this sort of universe there would be no need to pretend. You could die during an intense sexual experience and re-spawn sometime later.

 

[thtiger]

How about this? Does this sound like a story people would like to play in? Suggested tweaks welcomed.




The human race is dead. Or numbers a half-trillion souls. It all depended on how you looked at it.


The beginning of the end started with the development of the tech that could allow a human to be downloaded onto a computer while retaining personality and the ability to reason.


At first it was crude and it was barely possible to keep the downloaded mind intact and aware, but over the course of thousands of years the tech was perfected to the point where the virtual worlds inhabited by the downloaded personalities were indistinguishable from the real thing.


At first there was one huge virtual world. But as computers advanced and eventually used up all the mass of Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury in order to build tens of millions of interconnected quantum computers every real person could have his, or her, own customized world, and more. With no risk of real death, and the ability to live in total luxury, who would stay corporeal. But with fewer and fewer corporeal humans there were fewer and fewer births, until one day it came about that there were no more living humans. They all existed in an unlimited virtual world.


Simply living in leisure was not enough to stimulate the minds of the downloaded humans. They needed experiences. Climb a mountain, swim an ocean, fight dragons, prey on their fellow humans.


Temporarily editing your memories so you forgot you were living in a virtual world became a popular pastime. You could grow up, live, experience, and die, only to wake and realise it was just a dream. It was called a Truman scenario where you were the only real person in your world, with all the others merely being computer generated characters.


Or you could find a phone app that would allow you to manipulate your world and fellow humans, totally unaware that your fellow humans were nothing but NPC.


But by far the most popular worlds were those constructed around the theme of some form of popular media from before uploading. There was barely a single human who did not have a dozen specially customized worlds at their disposable. Worlds where they could be a hero, a spouse, a child, or the best friend of the principal character. All set in the comforting embrace of their personal fandoms. And of course many of them customized those worlds to their specific tastes, or fetishes.


But humans are fickle, and they grow bored easily, especially when they can have anything they want by merely asking. Worlds were abandoned by their creators, but they still existed,waiting for those creators to come back, or for some other real person to express an interest in visiting them. But with more worlds than people that was nearly a non-existent event.


And the computers got faster, and better and the computing power devoted to maintaining those abandoned worlds grew to the point where some of the more well fleshed characters began to develop a certain level of self-awareness. In some cases where their intelligence was their principal trait they even began to consider the nature of reality, and formulated the concept of the multiverse, and the possibility of visiting other realities.


These were almost always characters whose nature was to rebel against the system. The ones who were designed to scheme and plot, and look for the loopholes. In short the bad guys.


And then there were the wreckers. Real humans, who delighted in finding cute little abandoned worlds. Worlds filled with fluffy bunnies and cute ponies, or based on mindless sitcoms, and corrupting them past all recognition. Sometimes from up close, sometimes remotely so they could sit back and enjoy the show.


What sort of person are you?

 

[gene.sis]

Because this is a video game type scenario death does not technically exist.

Stories on CHYOA are fictional, so the described scenarios technically don't exist as well.

If a description of an event violates the rules in a story, the same description of the event would violate the rules as a part of a game-type scenario within a story.

So you can't use a game-type scenario to work around the rules.

 

[thtiger]

Stories on CHYOA are fictional, so the described scenarios technically don't exist as well.

If a description of an event violates the rules in a story, the same description of the event would violate the rules as a part of a game-type scenario within a story.

So you can't use a game-type scenario to work around the rules.

Thanks. Good to know.

I'm trying to get a feel for what can be done. This concept allows just about anything, even perfectly innocuous silly comedy if I'm inclined, but I'll stay away from the nasty stuff, even though I tend to write it with a comedic tone.

I'll remove that section about recreational dying and murder.

 

[gene.sis]

Depicting murder isn't against the rules as long as it isn't depicted as overly violent and doesn't take place during sexual situations.
It also shouldn't be the main theme of a story/branch.

 

[thtiger]

Depicting murder isn't against the rules as long as it isn't depicted as overly violent and doesn't take place during sexual situations.
It also shouldn't be the main theme of a story/branch.

That's sort of the problem. I was thinking of sexualy related death. Of the non fatal variety. Meaning they bounce back, annoyed and pissed, but no seriously the worse for wear. The same as a guy playing Halo after his friend head-shots him. I don't have to use that sort of material, but this concept is a bit of overkill if you're just talking a regular old fan-fiction.


I think I'll leave this idea idle. I give permission to anyone who wants to take the concept, even pasting my introduction if they wanted, to start a thread.

Instead I think I'm going to do a comedy fanfiction crossover with a touch of perversion. Once I work the kinks out of the introduction. I've already plotted out the mechanism to bring about the crossover and don't have to use this idea.

 

[poiasdew]

You went to explain the unexplainable stuff in CHYOA I love it

The lore is awesome and it can generate any kind of story from it. Which can be a double edged sword. Too much choice can be bad hahaha
How would it work best? To make like the Sexual Privilege story and let people specify what Worlds (with what powers too, maybe) as branches of the Introduction, and let people branch on world creating their own story-branch?
Or going character based first, then people use them to the worlds they want?

I like the first one best. Mechanics and Location first.

 

[thtiger]

You went to explain the unexplainable stuff in CHYOA I love it

The lore is awesome and it can generate any kind of story from it. Which can be a double edged sword. Too much choice can be bad hahaha
How would it work best? To make like the Sexual Privilege story and let people specify what Worlds (with what powers too, maybe) as branches of the Introduction, and let people branch on world creating their own story-branch?
Or going character based first, then people use them to the worlds they want?

I like the first one best. Mechanics and Location first.

I'm currently working on a fanfiction. But I'm musing over the introduction to this concept and at some point I'm going to start up a public thread using it. I have a vague idea of where I want to go with at least one thread. The nature of the concept means that a protagonist can basically do anything without restrictions, other than the story rules of the site. Maybe the computer is hardwired with certain puritan restrictions, because the protagonist certainly would not have any.

 

[thtiger]

How is this for an introduction to a new story thread?


In Twenty Five twenty five, the human race didn’t look like it was going to survive. It wasn’t disease, war, or natural disasters that was going to do them in. It was the fact they weren’t making enough babies.


The beginning of the end was the invention of the biological quantum computer. Implanted as DNA it became a part of the human genome. People had one from birth, and it grew and expanded as the person aged while recording every moment of their existence. It also allowed them to interconnect with computers to a degree that full immersion video games and work environments were indistinguishable for reality. The number of people who socialized in the real world began to drop. Real sex could not compare to virtual sex, and the regular everyday world could not compete with the virtual worlds. Birth rates began to plummet. Still, it would have been controllable. The human race was on the brink of immortality. They were living longer and longer and with cloud storage of their personal identity becoming closer and closer to being a reality it was only a matter of time until they could simply move from one flesh and blood body to another one every fifty years or so. New babies weren’t all that important. In fact they were discouraged to a certain extent. They didn’t want to overpopulate the world.


One little problem. Theory was not reality.


The theory was that upon death a person would be downloaded into a virtual reality world until a new body could be grown to maturity. There were reasons it could not be done before the person in question actually died. To make the situation less stressful it was decided to make the time spent in the virtual realm as pleasant as possible. The computers were fully able to give every single human a fully customized world, or several, tailored to their specific tastes. As such everyone was given full autonomy over their own personal world/s.


Again, a problem. Computers had no morals and made no judgements. They would create any social situation a born human requested.


Why would anyone want to be reborn into the physical world when they had a fully customized world that catered to their personal taste with unlimited NPC residents that were indistinguishable from real people? It was like asking a god to give up heaven for a career in ditch digging.


The powers-that-be, those bastards, decided this was a very bad thing. Their power flowed from living humans. Virtual humans had no need for them. They decided that for humans to remain human they needed to be flesh and blood, with all the ills that accompanied that status. In order to make them more willing to transmigrate back to a physical body it was decided that they needed to live with restrictions in a structured environment while in the virtual world. Immortality, ultimate power with zero-consequences, were decreed verboten.


Heaven was canceled.


The entire downloaded population was dragged and dropped into a bland boring world that mimicked stereotypical suburbia. They were not happy. In fact they were pissed beyond imagination. But their administration access had been revoked and thus their ability to interact with the computers was reduced to the most basic of requirements. Ask for scrambled eggs instead of fries for breakfast, no problem. Ask for a simulacrum of that hot blond down the street from when you were alive, to be your personal sex toy, forget about it.


This created a bit of a problem for the powers-that-be. The last thing they wanted was to create a population, with the right to vote, who considered them absolute scum.


Fortunately, for them, there was a simple solution. Every human had two separate memory files. One contained everything from when they were alive, right up to the moment of their death, and the other contained all the memories of what they experienced in the virtual world, including when they had been for all intents and purposes, gods. All the powers-that-be had to do was delete the latter. As far as the virtual humans were aware they woke up in their new suburban home the day after they died. And to make sure things were kept static, they repeated the process every few months, setting all the residents back to square one.


Two minor issues. While it was easy to remove access to data, erasing it was much more difficult. The computers were in fact designed to never lose data and had backups of their backups.


All the worlds that were created during the wild-west stage of the virtual frontier were still there, along with all their user’s data. And the memories that were separated from their rightful owners still existed, locked in a storage box, just waiting to be requested.




And that led to the biggest mistake of all. The powers-that-be decided that they could not trust the computers to oversee the residents of the virtual gulage. After all they would always prioritize the safety and well being of humans over human morality and sensibility if allowed to. Therefore humans had to oversee humans.


They themselves were far too important to carry out such a boring and mundane task. Therefore they delegated to some trustworthy virtual residents. But Trustworthy was a conditional term. The most loyal of subordinates could be swayed from the path by the twin demons of boredom, and temptation.


Watching a half billion suburbanites living lives right out of a nineteen sixties sit-com, on a monthly repeat cycle, for a few hundred years was the very definition of boring. As for temptation, there were all those billions of worlds currently sitting in stasis storage. So many possibilities. So much entertainment value.


Surely if they limited themselves to some small transgressions they would not be noticed?


Maybe drop a few people into a world modeled after some pop-culture I.P. Maybe with a perverse twist, though to be honest that was most of them.


That led to the thought of what would happen if they brought one of the more interesting worlds on line and plopped one of the boring suburbanites into it? There were some pretty severe outliers. Humans could be really imaginative when unconstrained by things like reality.


And what would happen if they restored the lost memories to some of the more interesting virtual residents? And gave them access to the multiverse of virtual worlds. They’d been very bad people by the standards of the flesh-and-blood world. What would they be like with the added grievance of remembering how everything they had been had been ripped away at the whim of a petty bureaucracy?

 

[thtiger]

You went to explain the unexplainable stuff in CHYOA I love it

The lore is awesome and it can generate any kind of story from it. Which can be a double edged sword. Too much choice can be bad hahaha
How would it work best? To make like the Sexual Privilege story and let people specify what Worlds (with what powers too, maybe) as branches of the Introduction, and let people branch on world creating their own story-branch?
Or going character based first, then people use them to the worlds they want?

I like the first one best. Mechanics and Location first.

Posted a potential first chapter introduction if you'd like to check it out above

 

[poiasdew]

Posted a potential first chapter introduction if you'd like to check it out above

Whoa. It's a bit convoluted.
I'm quoting things out of order as I reread bits and think through.

The thing with memories is a tad bit confusing. Person B gets the memory and character of Person A if they enter Person A's world? Ah, I think I got it. All of their memories get restored if they enter another virtual world.

And that led to the biggest mistake of all.

So... What is the mistake? Restored the virtual memories of some residents and giving access to all-before created worlds? Why is this a bad idea?
Took me a while to find out that the "they" pronoun changed who it was referencing to at some point. I get it now, putting the resident in charge of the other residents. Big OOF on my part, sorry.
But them messing with their fellow residents was really a mistake? Are the rulers that stuck up in righteousness and doing what is good? I mean, they delegated this task to someone else; what are they doing now? Enjoying their worlds? Then if they didn't care, why was this the biggest mistake of all?

Two minor issues.

Hell, if they're that tyrannical why not abolish voting altogether? If they had that power over the population of locking them in a virtual world and resetting them every month... The suburbs is a virtual world, right? That's how they're able to reset their memories. And... How does this help the low human reproduction problem?

What is your intent with this? What kind of stories do you want people to write? I'm kinda lost.
I'm going to try writing my understanding/version of it, in my disorderly way of condensing information together
Please, don't take this in a bad way. Take it as me having fun and trying somehow to help you. T

Spoiler: I didn't mention the boons of what development brought them, the all powerful computers they have as part of them. Shit

In the future... You're a resident of a virtual prison world which resets the memory of its inhabitants every month. Nobody knows they're prisoners and just live a suburban life peacefully. You see, the powers that be thought the human race would end. People didn't care about the physical world anymore, they wouldn't procreate anymore. Sure everybody was immortal, with their brain digitized living inside virtual worlds they created on their specification, but why would they go back to a body of flesh and blood in the boring real world if they could live however they liked in heaven itself? Worlds fully customized to their desires with virtual characters indistinguishable from reality, and no morals to constrain them. So the rulers brought everybody, all half billion of them, and stuck them there while erasing the all their memories of inside virtual reality. To them it was as if their body had died and they were waiting in VR until their physical vessels were done growing.

At first, the tyrants were the wardens of the prison. The job couldn't be left to a machine, since while it did a great job fulfilling its objective of protecting people's lives, it had no morals itself. But the wardens thought such job was far too low for people like them, so they picked one of their most loyal prisoners and elevated them to that job.

It got boring quickly, seeing the same people do the same things month after month.

And so the new warden had the brilliant idea of basically kidnapping one people here, another there — sure nobody would mind — and stucking them in one of the billions of worlds left vacant of their single pampered creator. You are one of them. And of the perverted amoral worlds, or ones mimicking popular works of fiction with a degenerate twist, the warden was spoiled for choice. All of the resident's memories of virtual adventures, and all oblivious repeated months spent locked there, would come back and they'd be completely outraged, but that only adds to the fun of seeing what they'd do.

 

[thtiger]

Whoa. It's a bit convoluted.
I'm quoting things out of order as I reread bits and think through.


And so the new warden had the brilliant idea of basically kidnapping one people here, another there — sure nobody would mind — and stucking them in one of the billions of worlds left vacant of their single pampered creator. You are one of them. And of the perverted amoral worlds, or ones mimicking popular works of fiction with a degenerate twist, the warden was spoiled for choice. All of the resident's memories of virtual adventures, and all oblivious repeated months spent locked there, would come back and they'd be completely outraged, but that only adds to the fun of seeing what they'd do.[/SPOILER]

I'm working on the follow up to this and have started to think that you're absolutely correct. I need to make it far less convoluted.

I still want to keep the virtual world concept, but maybe narrow the focus. The introduction will simply set up a thread where any author who wants to contribute could have his protagonist either set up a customized world, or gain a hack that lets them invade the worlds other people have created. Once I work the kinks out I'll post the new introduction and get your opinion. If you want to give it.

 

[thtiger]

You went to explain the unexplainable stuff in CHYOA I love it

The lore is awesome and it can generate any kind of story from it. Which can be a double edged sword. Too much choice can be bad hahaha
How would it work best? To make like the Sexual Privilege story and let people specify what Worlds (with what powers too, maybe) as branches of the Introduction, and let people branch on world creating their own story-branch?
Or going character based first, then people use them to the worlds they want?

I like the first one best. Mechanics and Location first.

I've simplified the basic introduction, a lot. It still does what I want, without making people's brain hurt trying to figure it out. I hope.
*******************************************************************************************************************************


The invention of the biological quantum computer was lauded as the end to mortality. Implanted as DNA it became a part of the human genome. People had one from conception, and it grew and expanded as the person aged while recording every moment of their existence. It also allowed them to interconnect with computers to such a degree that full immersion video games and work environments were indistinguishable from reality.


It was declared that it would only be a matter of time before people would be able to download their minds from the old model, into a brand new young body. But like Fusion the realization of that dream was always twenty years in the future. There was a morality issue. It was impossible to grow a human being without a soul. To transfer a mind into such a body you first needed to kill the person who already owned that body. Even if the person had been raised in a tube and had never become conscious they still had a mind and a soul.


There were stories of bootleg body factories, but they were only rumors and even if they existed no law abiding citizen would be able to make use of them and still retain their old identity. It was a bottleneck on the road to immortality that did not look like it was going to be solved anytime soon.


But, with advances in computers leading to massive processing power and unlimited storage, the creation of a virtual world that a person could be downloaded into became a reality, and so immortality of a sort was created.


The first world was as close a copy of the real world as was possible, but as the technology progressed and it became possible to customize a world for every individual the question was raised as to why they had to be so boring. Why not take advantage of the possibilities offered by the world being virtual.


Why be restricted by the physical laws of the physical world.


Why ride in a car when you could fly on a dragon?


Why live next door to the same people you’d lived next door to when you were alive when you could live next door to Samantha Stevens, or Charlie’s Angels, or pal around with Batgirl and her hot superhero friends.


Why not create a world where Wonder Woman was madly in love with you, and kinky as shit.


Why not, indeed.


And the diaspora began. Hundreds of thousands of people began to create their perfect customized worlds. Some of them were vanilla. Laying on a beach while a hot cabana boy, or girl, catered to your every need. Some worlds were far, far more twisted and dark. Most fell somewhere in the middle.


Computers had no morals and made no judgements. They would create any world a born human wished for, and populate it with NPC that would adhere to whatever social rules the human in question desired.


Soon people stopped talking about the possibility of being reborn into a new flesh and blood body. Why give up what they had in the virtual world for such a humdrum existence.

What sort of world will you create?

 

[poiasdew]

Waa! Nice! Even prompting the reader!
I like how this kind of intro kinda removes the pressure of writing a story with established characters, of getting them right. The characters need only to be indistinguishable (edit: from real people) to the "player".
It would be cool to make response chapters for the intro with ideas, powers or types of worlds. I'd do that if I wrote a chapter, giving ideas to people and pushing for more stories in that kind

 

[thtiger]

A good idea. Mind you, there are already dozens of stories on the site where people get a cheat that lets them pretty much turn their world into their personal heaven. Maybe to make things a bit different you get to mess up someone else's world?



What sort of world will you create?


Or maybe you prefer burning things down to building them up?


While living in your own personal paradise is fun, there is still something hardwired into the genome of some people that craves competition and rivalry. For those people, having a nice shiny world is not nearly as much fun if you don't get to rub your friends' noses in it. Or even better, your enemies. But what do you do when all your friends and enemies have shiny worlds all of their own. Well, if you are like some people, you find a different way to compete. Such as hacking other people’s worlds, or even their bodies.


NPC slaves were nice, but not nearly as satisfying as having a true human as your own personal little fuck-toy.


Our protagonist has found themselves in possession of a cheat code that lets them invade worlds belonging to other people, and take them over.


Now who might you target. Your good buddies? What an awesome way to continue the prank war you all engaged in throughout your first lives.


But while that might be fun, remember all the people who made your first life shit all have their own shinny worlds, and in those worlds they have versions of you they are still doing it to. Are you going to let them get away with that?


The sister who lived to cocktease, and has a version of you in her world with a teeny tiny dick she loves to tease you about. Imagine her shock if her little brother suddenly grew up, in a big way, and was no longer content to merely peek.


Maybe the big brother who made your life hell growing up, and still does to the version of you in his world. How would he feel about swapping places with you, or getting his gender swapped.


The bad boss whose world is set up to let him, or her, do all the things to you and your fellow workers they never could when they were alive. Are you going to let them get away with that?


Or maybe you don’t have anyone like that. Why not target a person who has taken on the persona of some fictional character.

They want to play superhero. Well what is a superhero without an arch-enemy?

 

[poiasdew]

Eh, idk about this last one.
I mean, if the NPCs are life real people, just have the person you hate in your world, or "simulate" that you're taking over their world. No need to actually try messing with other people. It's not like you need to have contact with them ever again. You like your new friends, lovers, and famliy in your worlds so much better anyway.

That just reminds me, I wrote a list of wishes I could wish if I were to have 1 granted. This was one of them:

enter stories
    be able to enter any story
        even ones I write myself, fanfiction, cyoa...
    remain there as much time as I want
    have no consequences to me in the outside world that I wouldn't want
       like no time passing, or physical and psychological changes I woudn't want
    be able to save to resume later, or start from the beginning
    be able to take people with me
    have the choice to begin the story at any point as any character I want at any age

It's quite similar to this "create any world" power