Transcript
Two women are in a room filled with computers. One is sitting in a high-tech chair, rigged up to a futuristic virtual reality system.
Friend: Are you ready to fight THE ULTIMATE cyber battle?
Player: I am! I am!
Friend: Okay, but one more thing…
The player looks worried.
Friend: If you die in the game, you die in real life.
Player: What? You mean…
Her expression changes to scared.
Player: My mind, believing itself done for, will be lost in the depths of cyber limbo…
She now looks completely terrified.
Player: …staying disconnected for so long that my body will WITHER and DIE?
Her friend menacingly holds out a pointy wooden stake. The player recoils in surprise.
Friend: No, see, I’ve bet all my money on this game, and I’ll be watching your score.
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
Makes more sense than ‘the equipment will kill you, if you die in cyberspace,’ if you ask me.
Well, to be fair there is nothing illogical with that per sé – the illogical part comes with the widespread use of fatal tech.
Guess that fits in with the whole Cypberpunk-Dystopia-Darkness-and-Suffering vibe.
But yeah in an optimistic and/or(?) realistic setting fatal-tech is hard to belive or justify – humans can be dump but not to that degree and not to that magnitude. :3
You know. You could probably make that trope work with magic tech.
Oooh, you could do something like enders came meets the hunger games, kids from the dominions and the slums go to military school but are actually going to war and when one dies the kids think they are just sent home straight from the hospital and then the kids figure it out and then there’s an army of pissed off kids now pointing their magical battle mechs at the capitol. Why is this not a movie!!!?
Good question. Now I want that movie … or at least that novel.
I’ll get right on it… right after the one about the cyborg girl and her shifty girl friend/captain/[spoilers]… and the one about the human convict soldiers trying to end a war that began because the settlers didn’t realize that being cannibalized by (awesome lawful good humanoid) tolls, is the highest honor… and the one about hidden sufficiently advanced aliens who use earth to roll play as capitalists, politicians and other criminals… and the one about a dude and his pet kitten who get resurrected and uplifted after hidden sufficiently advanced aliens accidentally kill them…
Maybe I should quit my day job