13 Twelve Virtual Realities And "PRISON"

Eisuke tried to calm down and pretend nothing happened. It would be better for him that way.

After fifteen minutes of driving, he reached the 47th primary school. The school was a perfect mix with modern architecture that was developed just a couple of years ago and old-style designs. The primary goal of this building was to secretly affect everyone who looked at it and invoke a desire to study.

The colors and everything was in perfect harmony. Practically every school was remodeled or built to influence certain good habits in youth from the start.

Eisuke was right on time. There still was six minutes before he had to give his first lesson of the day. Eisuke saw a bunch of children entering the massive gates, so he told Sui to join them, and he went to a parking lot specially built underground for staff and teachers.

Just when Eisuke found parking space and disembarked, his friend Leila walked out from the shadows. She had a smile on her face with obvious amusement, "I heard you had an almost near-death encounter, but you still look pretty okay, hear, take this." She extended her hand that held a beautifully designed white suitcase and gave it to him.

Eisuke took it from her and nodded, "yep, we had an accident, but they told me that everything was alright and hinted that there was no need to feel panicked. We are forced to train two hours a day for a reason, you know." Eisuke started to walk out of the underground parking lot towards his classroom when he stopped and turned around to remind Leila, who was walking behind him, "today's the last day of school we should celebrate in real life. I think I don't want to waste my in-game time. We should pay the required fee and teleport to venus. I heard a new destination point was developed there."

Leila, hearing Eisuke snorted, "but I already reserved paradise Pavillion for our party."

Eisuke felt a headache coming, but he felt like a celebration should be in reality, not in-game, so he decided to pay for everything, "listen, Leila, cancel the reservation. I will pay for what's required. We should go to venus."

Leila laughed and nodded, "since your paying, nobody will disagree, but it's gonna cost you a lot."

Eisuke waved her off and gestured that he was ok with it.

Eisuke came to his classroom and stopped at the door. He would have to take a big responsibility today, of course, he was trained for it multiple times, but any mistake could lead to irreversible damage. Of course, everything could be amended by Morgols, except his failure, and that would force him to have extensive hard training sessions. Just thinking about it made him shudder internally.

Eisuke opened the door and walked towards his table at a steady pace. Cacaphony of children's voices entered his ears, but they all quietened down when they saw him. Eisuke overlooked everyone and confirmed that no one was exempt from the classroom, and all thirty-eight attended the class, which was typical for today. Still, every other day the children would be called for various reasons, and there would always be one missing.

Eisuke saw how diligently Sui sat they're among her classmates, and he prayed that she would not interrupt him today for his dignity's sake.

Eisuke calmly looked at the children and gently said, "today is the last day for you, first graders, which means that all of you will be making a massive leap towards your futures. Starting from today, but do not assume that everything's going to be that easy. You all will have to work hard; this summer will determine how many worlds will open to you three or ten."

"Before we begin," Eisuke caressed the suitcase and said, "tell me the history behind the rise of virtual reality worlds and why you all are so excited?!"

Kids didn't jump around trying to overtake each other to answer the question. instead, they long since prepared who would answer certain questions if they were asked, so a kid with bright features and pool like eyes stood up and gently said, "teacher Eisuke after Morgols took over the world with irresistible might by giving both the stick and the carrot."

Cough cough

The child was interrupted by heavy coughing coming from Eisuke's throat.

The children were a little scared. Someone even ran off and returned quickly with a glass of water and said, "teacher, are you alright?"

Eisuke patted the child on the head, drank the water, and said, "I am alright, something got stuck in my throat just now." internally, he was speechless, " with the stick and the carrot! these children have their interesting thoughts, don't they."

Eisuke waved for Patrick to continue. "as I was saying after Morgols took over. Every disabled person, mentally challenged, those who had incurable diseases, so on and so forth, were cured in three weeks. Medicines, serums, special injections were delivered to them extremely quickly, and every time it worked without fail."

Patrick made a weird hand gesture that seemed like he was correcting invisible glasses or something like that and continued, "when all the physical impediments were cured, countless other problems remained. To make humanity better in every possible way, World AI that was created by Dominus Morgol released twelve virtual reality games. Four in a medieval fantasy setting, one high fantasy, two post-apocalyptics, one cyberpunk style, one with only combat and slaughter 'samsara burns,' one with perfect synchronization with our world mandatory virtual reality were people encounter real-life hurdles and tests to improve their mental health directly, deal with inner demons and so on."

"No one knows how that virtual reality manages what it does, but it is fully in world AI's control. The remaining two are 'Cosmic Battles' and 'meet the Death Head-On.'"

Eisuke was a little speechless that this kid cosplayed someone while talking, but he didn't mind, "Patrick sit down, let someone else continue."

Patrick sat down without making any sound, and another girl stood up. She had a lovely and cute appearance, "I will continue from were brother Patrick stopped."

Eisuke smiled and nodded at her.

"Brother Patrick didn't have time to mention that there exists one more virtual reality. It is called 'prison'! Every bad person that commits a severe crime or anything unacceptable by society and contradicts our moral values and beliefs will be imprisoned in the virtual reality. where they will receive the punishment they deserve, this virtual reality is scary, and I hope I will never get there."

Hearing her words, every child and even Eisuke nodded their heads. If you ever got in that 'prison' when you came out of it, people would never scorn you or abandon you. After you came out, your past would be forgiven. No one would mention what you did to get there, because the punishment received by these people was utterly destructive for them. The rehabilitation that the 'prison' provided after was not easy to handle either. Billions of people were imprisoned in this virtual reality. Some couldn't be saved to this day.

These people included rapists, madmen, killers, sinners, psychopaths, so on and so forth. Practically everyone who committed crimes after the Morgols conquered the world and every person that previously before Morgols escaped from justice was captured and identified. They received exactly appropriate punishment, and yes, more than two billion people were caught by this virtual reality in just a month. At that time, humanity had no more than 16 billion In population.

No one knew of its existence until the first batch was released from imprisonment, and some remained silent, some told what happened to them.

After people realized that they could be imprisoned without their consent and knowledge, thousands of internet threads were created. Everywhere chatter went for days. People all over the world felt unprecedented fear and loss of freedom, but over time those who were freed out of 'prison' weren't ratted but instead were punished exactly the way they should have been punished and were shown the consequences of there actions, guided and assisted.

'Prison' was not created to take people's freedom and force them to be obedient sheep that followed set rules at all times out of fear. On the contrary, it genuinely allowed them to repent and understand why they did what they did. Most interestingly, time flow in 'prison' was thousand to one, so a man could be stranded there for years, and people wouldn't even notice.

To achieve something this miraculous, Dominus, Zagaroth, and world AI united, tricked time, to waste as little energy as they could. How many tries it took to find that one solution to create such amazing virtual reality would be left to the imagination.

Little Hellen sighed lightly and continued, "over this year's humans completely embraced these virtual realities, our rise in every single aspect has been so staggering that we have been accepted as one of the super civilized societies. Now dominant across the galaxies. No one looks down on us, and they even negotiate with us on equal footing. Still, to evolve further, World AI developed and created a guideline to protect us. According to which only after we, the younger generation, reaches near seven years of age and finish 1st grade would we be allowed to broaden our horizons and see virtual realities for ourselves."

After saying all this, Hellen sat down, and Sui stood up, "but we will only be given access to four virtual realities chosen for us by the world AI, and every classmate, including me, are willing to take the injection. We also have the consent of our family members and guardians for those who have no parents. Now I will send all the signatures to you fa… I mean, teacher Eisuke." Sui gently tapped on her wrist were world AI appeared and sent all the required authorization to Eisuke.

Eisuke confirmed that world AI didn't reject anyone and proceeded to open the suitcase were he found an injection device and thirty-eight colorless energy balls that were miniature with a pointy edge.

Eisuke would have to approach a child and, with pinpoint accuracy, inject the colorless energy balls directly into their consciousness by shooting them straight between their eyebrows.

Eisuke went to his daughter Sui first. He was a little nervous, and since they practiced it at home, he found doing it to her first more reassuring; Sui didn't mind herself. She wanted the injection for a long time already. People all over her discussing virtual reality worlds long since made her impatient to see what was happening.

Eisuke pointed the injection device between her eyebrows, held the back of her head as gently as he could, and thought of something happy, after which he pushed the trigger.

The colorless energy ball instantly pierced and dissolved, invading her consciousness, after which the substance took the form of a root, a mirror, and a chair.

The root with an infinite possibility to transform and grow, mirror to reflect a person's soul and a chair that could have a purpose one day but would have no use for now.

Sui only felt slight pain, after which she blanked for a moment, and several seconds later, hair eye's reflected many 0 and 1s, after which she fainted.

Eisuke quickly caught her and sat her back in the chair. According to usual practice, Sui would awaken in 5 minutes.

None of the children seeing Sui fainting, felt anything bad they all waited there time to receive the injection.

Eisuke visited every single one of them and, without any fail, did everything as it was intended. After finishing with the last child, he felt it wasn't that hard to transfer positive emotions with the injection. Now virtual reality bubbles would grow In their consciousness, which would allow the children to gain access to virtual realities even in there sleep.

Every human could spend time in virtual realities only for six hours of a real-lifetime and if special permission was granted, up to ten hours, but never more than that.

Time in every virtual reality flowed differently, exempt from mandatory ones that had time flow one in one, they had to be visited, for two hours every day, without exception. These were the fee required to possess access to virtual realities in the first place. If you disagree, no one will force you out there in the world. There existed millions of citizens who declined any involvement in virtual realities. For them, different options were provided.

Those people were just ignorant and hard to convince, hard even for Dominus, who could directly see what they needed.

Eisuke even now felt that the process was a little scary and unnatural, but when he asked the world AI why they didn't use other options, the reply he got was, "if you have a better idea that provides better transparency, consent, and vibes he could make a suggestion himself, better ideas were accepted and that he would be rewarded accordingly."

When Eisuke heard world AI words, he shut up and accepted the fact. It was still the first time for him, so he felt a little weird. That was all.

The first to awaken was, of course, Sui. It took more than five minutes, but not by that much.

Sui looked visibly excited. Her body was enveloped with a white light that completely isolated her from her surroundings. Every time a person entered a virtual reality, a person's body would emit a white light that isolated them from the onlookers and made their faces seamless, but if anyone wanted to approach them, they could extract themselves at any time.

In case someone wanted to kill them or kidnap them, both were highly unlikely in today's world. They would be teleported away to the nearest save teleportation node that was scattered throughout the solar system, which numbered in the thousands.

Dominus wasted a lot of resources and god energy to make everything possible; unfortunately, he couldn't make it so that it happened all the time. Every person would be protected by these white light, only ones, and it only worked in the solar system, as for teleportation nodes, they could be used by any person at any time after paying sufficient fees that were affordable for average income humans without a problem.

People were lucky enough to get to work via one teleportation from Paris to Budapest and have dinner at a restaurant on Mars and return home on the same day while visiting multiple countries without any problems and buying whatever they desired.

Zagaroth was the one who visited every node connected them and made platforms for teleportation. With thousands of united scientists, they managed to find a way to use only one percent of Dominus' ring energy to make all these thousands of nodes operational for five hundred years, even if all humans teleported back at forth endlessly.

Sui extracted herself from virtual realities. She looked visible excited, wanting to jump here and there, but she refrained herself and squealed from the excitement on the place.

"Teacher Eisuke! I got access too, only one mandatory virtual reality 'real-life circumstances', high fantasy world 'Zagaroth's Domain,' 'Cosmic Battles,' and medieval fantasy setting ' Ten thousand creature herding'. hehe, lucky so lucky exactly what I wanted."

Many children were happy with what they got. They wouldn't be allowed to visit and join more virtual realities until they were twelve, but some were disappointed there was even someone who got all three mandatory virtual realities.

Eisuke thought that this child certainly required special grooming. It wasn't that often when all three mandatory ones were forced on someone.

Eisuke noted every newly awakened child's virtual realities until he reached the final one. At this point, the last one has been enveloped by the white light for more than an hour.

If Eisuke remembered correctly, this girl's name was Naia, and she was a diligent and obedient child, never causing any problems and had good comprehension.

When the white light finally disappeared, she seemed a little different seeing this. Eisuke instantly understood something was not right. Not a single child looked in their direction because they were all sharing their brief experiences about the virtual world, or some couldn't wait and reentered one of the virtual realities.

Naia looked at Eisuke in the eye and started to sob, "I am so sorry, teacher, I know, I was wrong, uahhhhhh, I don't want to be punished anymore," she continued to cry out.

Eisuke momentarily reacted and hugged her, "it's alright, child, you won't get punished any longer since your out, you are free, don't cry, don't cry. We are all here with you."

But inside his heart Eisuke was freezing a six, an almost seven-year-old child was sent to 'Prison,' his heart felt cold, he wanted to question what happened, but he had to follow the procedures calm the child down and assist her.

Eisuke calculated roughly and determined that if she was in virtual reality for an hour, it meant that she was in 'prison' for more than forty days. Forty days for a little girl, this was madness.

"Naia, stand up and go to my office, you know where it is, don't you?"

Naia nodded and silently stood up. Her eyes looked like she experienced several lifetimes in a matter of an hour.

"Naia, why were you crying just now? Did something happen?" children flocked her over from every side, but Naia tried to remain calm, "I was just upset I didn't get any of the virtual reality worlds I wanted, that's all. The teacher told me to wait for him at his office. I will go now."

Naia extracted herself from curious kids and left. Eisuke watched this calmly and thought that this little kid adopted to fast, terrifyingly fast. Maybe if it weren't for a realization that forty days have passed for her and she had a momentary emotional outburst, she wouldn't even cry out, and he wouldn't even notice.

Maybe Naia was a little monster hidden between innocent and cute appearance. He would have to wait and see.