Erotic Virtual Reality World Concept

[SimonDoom]

I'm working on a story that involves an erotic virtual reality world. It will combine sci fi and fantasy elements (I'm sure that will be the category) plus lots and lots of sex. The basic idea is a corporation has created an erotic fantasy VR world that is in beta stage -- it's almost ready but hasn't been released for public use yet. The corporate president and creator of the world enters the world to check it out and gets "kidnapped" within the VR world by those who want to extract his trade secrets, and he has to be rescued.

Not being an expert on this sort of thing, to put it charitably, I have a number of questions/issues for the development of the story:

1. How the VR world is entered: I think I will handle it via a neural implant something like what's featured in the Black Mirror episode USS Callister. Ther person sits down in a chair and attaches a device that connects directly to the brain, putting the person in a VR world state that the person can leave via a voice command. This makes more sense to me than an Oculus type system or body suit or something like that because of its flexibility. Does that make sense?

2. For the plot to work, it has to be impossible simply to bring the person out of the VR world from the outside -- the person must in some way be trapped. My concept is that the kidnappers somehow "boobytrap" the system so if the rescuers try to bring the person out of the VR state coercively the person risks injury or death. Is there a realistic (or at least quasi-realistic) mechanism for this? It would be a bit like the Matrix in this respect -- you need specific ways to get out of the VR system and if you die in the system you can die in the real world.

3. Once someone is in the VR world, that person is not trackable by those on the outside. In this respect, it's not like the Matrix -- you can't watch what the people in the VR world are doing if you are on the outside. You have no idea what's going on. This is crucial for the plot, too, because it's necessary to send rescuers into the system to rescue the kidnapped person. Does this make sense?

4. Where the VR world resides: My concept is that a renegade former employee of the corporation has left and hijacked the VR world and it's no longer fully controllable by the corporation. He's added components to it that they can't see and can't control. The world may not entirely reside on company computers. Does this make sense?

 

[AlinaX]

1. How the VR world is entered: I think I will handle it via a neural implant ... Does that make sense?

The direct neural interface has been a popular concept in sci-fi for a long time, and it the best way to have a VR world without it seeming stupidly clunky.

2. It has to be impossible simply to bring the person out of the VR world from the outside ... if you die in the system you can die in the real world.

Again, this is a common trope, though justifying it takes a bit of hand-waving. Call it reality shock, maybe; or the neural overload creates a high risk of stroke; or something. It's sci-fi, so you can get away with it.

3. Once someone is in the VR world, that person is not trackable by those on the outside. Does this make sense?

I would suggest that *something* at least is discernible from outside, i.e., emotional state, physical arousal, which parts of the brain are most active.

4. The world may not entirely reside on company computers.

Well, the whole thing may be hosted in the cloud, and possibly even in such a way that no one's entirely sure on which servers where...

 

[Carnevil9]

I'm not an expert, but most of your points make enough sense to sustain a believable story. Except for #2 - "if you die in the system, you can die in the real world." That strains belief, because why would anyone use it? The whole point of a virtual environment is to get the experiences without the danger. It worked in The Matrix, because the Matrix wasn't designed for entertainment (or for safety).

Maybe you can use that, but it is an implementation flaw. The system was designed to be perfectly safe, but some sort of coding error has screwed up the safety system. Or maybe the renegade employee has disabled the safeties somehow.

For #4, I would just assume that the program is too huge to reside in any one location, and is contained "in the cloud." So that any clever enough hacker can get at it.

Anyway, sounds like a great setting for a lot of great stories!

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

I'm not an expert, but most of your points make enough sense to sustain a believable story. Except for #2 - "if you die in the system, you can die in the real world." That strains belief, because why would anyone use it? The whole point of a virtual environment is to get the experiences without the danger. It worked in The Matrix, because the Matrix wasn't designed for entertainment (or for safety).

Maybe you can use that, but it is an implementation flaw. The system was designed to be perfectly safe, but some sort of coding error has screwed up the safety system. Or maybe the renegade employee has disabled the safeties somehow.

For #4, I would just assume that the program is too huge to reside in any one location, and is contained "in the cloud." So that any clever enough hacker can get at it.

Anyway, sounds like a great setting for a lot of great stories!

The Shadowrun RPG has a virtual network like this called the net. Runners on the net, sometimes try to steal data from megacorps. Megacorps have software that will track the users' location, wipe their deck, and fry their brains.

So it's perfectly safe to use unless you try to do something illegal, then not so much.

The kidnapper in this story can set up some kind of software that will send a powerful electric shock or into his victim if the avatar dies.

Inert nanobots are installed in the system. They are activated and released if the avatar dies and they rip apart the person.

A bomb. He planted a bomb in the victim's computer and if rescuers come to save him, he detonates the bomb.

AI is great for this. In Shadowrun, there is a "Ghost in the machine". It's an AI that a megacorp created and escaped into the net. The AI could be the kidnapper, it wants it's freedom, not be locked in a single server.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm not an expert, but most of your points make enough sense to sustain a believable story. Except for #2 - "if you die in the system, you can die in the real world." That strains belief, because why would anyone use it? The whole point of a virtual environment is to get the experiences without the danger. It worked in The Matrix, because the Matrix wasn't designed for entertainment (or for safety).

Maybe you can use that, but it is an implementation flaw. The system was designed to be perfectly safe, but some sort of coding error has screwed up the safety system. Or maybe the renegade employee has disabled the safeties somehow.

For #4, I would just assume that the program is too huge to reside in any one location, and is contained "in the cloud." So that any clever enough hacker can get at it.

Anyway, sounds like a great setting for a lot of great stories!

I agree 100% with your concerns regarding point 2. One way of dealing with that is to acknowledge that this is why it's still in Beta and not fit for public consumption yet -- it's still dangerous and they can't release it until they figure out how to deal with the danger. It's a stretch, but in a sci fi story I think you can get away with things like that if you introduce them early on and your story adheres to them.

The alternative is to provide some other explanation why the kidnapped person cannot easily be extracted from the system, or why he is in peril.

The basic idea is that he's trapped in the system, and that the kidnappers are going to try to extract information from his brain that will help them and devastate the corporation, and there's a limited amount of time to prevent it from happening, necessitating the need to send a rescue team that is under a time limit. I need plausible plot devices that make it impossible to bring him out of the VR world without sending somebody after him IN the VR world.

 

[AlinaX]

I need plausible plot devices that make it impossible to bring him out of the VR world without sending somebody after him IN the VR world.

If orgasm can be induced externally, perhaps that can destabilise the VR?

 

[Carnevil9]

If orgasm can be induced externally, perhaps that can destabilise the VR?

Ooooh, that's an interesting twist! If your real, physical, corporeal body can be stimulated to orgasm while you are "jacked in," what happens to your virtual body and existence? I like it!

 

[bettiezyx]

Deep thoughts...

First off, of course there's "Jumanji" and "Inception", which would be fun w/ more sex!

Then there are a few erotica sci-fi stories I reviewed on this theme:

1) Virtual torture
"Soldier is orgasmically tortured by aliens in an attempt to get him to reveal secret information. Which he doesn’t know. So it gets harder and harder and keeps coming and coming. Fortunately, he gets rescued. Not that he appreciates it at that point."
https://scifieroticareviews.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/the-human-equation/

2) Just enough virtual to adjust reality
"The hero/heroine’s express their dis-satisfaction with each other sexually and verbally, and it’s all made better once the [VR] lenses can be used to block out those bits of the other person that are not pleasing. Yay progress. Or is it arrested development."
https://scifieroticareviews.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/blink-to-share/

3) Full on virtual sex makes ppl crazy
"VIRTUAL SEX is the latest threat to mankind, because it’s waaaay better than the real thing. But there’s one small, intangible problem with those glorious explosions of the orgasmic kind: that whole lack of any emotional contact. Which kind of drives the hero and his fellow programmers crazy in a special way. And by special crazy, I mean bunny-ears crazy. This is the kind of crazy that can only express itself by disturbing the adorable, subverting the bliss of happy memories, and throwing a blanket of insecurity across a stalwart safety symbol from childhood: this is the cray-cray that distorts reality and spreads like a mental version of the flu."
https://scifieroticareviews.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/holox-deck-adventures/

 

[bigtallman]

2. For the plot to work, it has to be impossible simply to bring the person out of the VR world from the outside -- the person must in some way be trapped. My concept is that the kidnappers somehow "boobytrap" the system so if the rescuers try to bring the person out of the VR state coercively the person risks injury or death. Is there a realistic (or at least quasi-realistic) mechanism for this? It would be a bit like the Matrix in this respect -- you need specific ways to get out of the VR system and if you die in the system you can die in the real world.

Would it work if it was consequences to someone else that kept him in? I imagine the protagonist has a lover who is an elite cyber criminal doing a dangerous infiltration online to steal some corporate mega-secret. Protagonist is 'riding' along in VR with the lover to help with some special traps or obstacle that they can't solve on their own. Maybe questions posed by a hostile AI that only protagonist can answer cause they're based on his personality imprint taken when he used to work for evil mega-corp. If the protagonist has to abandon their lover, they'll both get caught in RL and be subjects to weird mutant experiments in an ex-soviet chemical warfare lab or some such.

Some of this is from what I remember of William Gibson's "Neuromancer", I'd also suggest Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" as another VR / sci-fi book that's got lots of ideas.

 

[LupusDei]

1. How the VR world is entered: I think I will handle it via a neural implant something like what's featured in the Black Mirror episode USS Callister. Ther person sits down in a chair and attaches a device that connects directly to the brain, putting the person in a VR world state that the person can leave via a voice command. This makes more sense to me than an Oculus type system or body suit or something like that because of its flexibility. Does that make sense?

2. For the plot to work, it has to be impossible simply to bring the person out of the VR world from the outside -- the person must in some way be trapped. My concept is that the kidnappers somehow "boobytrap" the system so if the rescuers try to bring the person out of the VR state coercively the person risks injury or death. Is there a realistic (or at least quasi-realistic) mechanism for this? It would be a bit like the Matrix in this respect -- you need specific ways to get out of the VR system and if you die in the system you can die in the real world.

3. Once someone is in the VR world, that person is not trackable by those on the outside. In this respect, it's not like the Matrix -- you can't watch what the people in the VR world are doing if you are on the outside. You have no idea what's going on. This is crucial for the plot, too, because it's necessary to send rescuers into the system to rescue the kidnapped person. Does this make sense?

4. Where the VR world resides: My concept is that a renegade former employee of the corporation has left and hijacked the VR world and it's no longer fully controllable by the corporation. He's added components to it that they can't see and can't control. The world may not entirely reside on company computers. Does this make sense?

Okay, some techno-babbling more than expertise, but here's my opinion:

1. Yes. Given how readily neurons search for and grow connections to charged electrodes and how electronics operating in neural system's voltages are in development today, it seems even far more plausible than a cumbersome bodysuit or sleep tube setup. The caveat here is, that the core implant has likely to be permanent and probably *intended* for other things, using it for VR gaming is planned abuse, but probably not the whole focus of the device.

2. This has to be the villain's doing. If such a risk readily exists, it has to be carefully managed for any system considered as entertainment accessible to the public. At least some meddling with such safeguards must be done or claimed to be done by the villain. How physically denying the connection could be harmful isn't clear at all, but let's say, each brain is unique and the world is rendered directly into the brain using its own procedures and processing power and thus suddenly terminating the process can leave behind all sorts of garbage that may render the person comatose or a blubbering idiot or just crazy. Lastly it may be bluffing from the villain, the rescue team recognize the risk and that's enough.

3. It depends, but believable within constraints. Matrix was observable because they long since hacked in, not by design. Given a new unknown system and limited time frame figuring out what it does from the outside may not be feasible, especially if the system involves a living unique brain as one of its processors. On the other hand, it's a system under active development, so it has to have at least some level of at least partial documentation and even more importantly, developer's tools package. Also given the nature of the program observer's mode seems highly desirable even in the commercial product. You may still need numerous encryption keys to "locate" the connection and observe the person; it may be just easier and faster to just jump in. So, cue the villain again, he must be done something to at least partially deny the developer's access. Alternatively, developer suite is how the rescue party logs in anyway, what may or may not give them special powers or additional safeguards, but not necessarily readily bring them to the prisoner.

4. Yes. The processing power required to run a VR world being huge, building and maintaining a dedicated server farm for the product may first require the product to prove successful. While developing would likely use inner resources of the corporation if available, the corporation itself could have outsourced processing to dedicated chip-on-demand platform "on-the-cloud." Or alternatively, the test in question could run on more public infrastructure for, well, test purposes prior to commercial launch that would use such scheme until the real demand could be determined and businesses decisions made.

 

[ChuckWolf]

I have a similar idea, only the protagonists are brought into the virtual world, "Tron-style"(their physical bodies enter the VR universe).

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I'm working on a story that involves an erotic virtual reality world. It will combine sci fi and fantasy elements (I'm sure that will be the category) plus lots and lots of sex. The basic idea is a corporation has created an erotic fantasy VR world that is in beta stage -- it's almost ready but hasn't been released for public use yet. The corporate president and creator of the world enters the world to check it out and gets "kidnapped" within the VR world by those who want to extract his trade secrets, and he has to be rescued.

Not being an expert on this sort of thing, to put it charitably, I have a number of questions/issues for the development of the story:

1. How the VR world is entered: I think I will handle it via a neural implant something like what's featured in the Black Mirror episode USS Callister. Ther person sits down in a chair and attaches a device that connects directly to the brain, putting the person in a VR world state that the person can leave via a voice command. This makes more sense to me than an Oculus type system or body suit or something like that because of its flexibility. Does that make sense?

2. For the plot to work, it has to be impossible simply to bring the person out of the VR world from the outside -- the person must in some way be trapped. My concept is that the kidnappers somehow "boobytrap" the system so if the rescuers try to bring the person out of the VR state coercively the person risks injury or death. Is there a realistic (or at least quasi-realistic) mechanism for this? It would be a bit like the Matrix in this respect -- you need specific ways to get out of the VR system and if you die in the system you can die in the real world.

3. Once someone is in the VR world, that person is not trackable by those on the outside. In this respect, it's not like the Matrix -- you can't watch what the people in the VR world are doing if you are on the outside. You have no idea what's going on. This is crucial for the plot, too, because it's necessary to send rescuers into the system to rescue the kidnapped person. Does this make sense?

4. Where the VR world resides: My concept is that a renegade former employee of the corporation has left and hijacked the VR world and it's no longer fully controllable by the corporation. He's added components to it that they can't see and can't control. The world may not entirely reside on company computers. Does this make sense?

So... kinda like Westworld but in the Cloud?

ETA: or maybe Cloud Atlas a 2012 movie based on 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell. But then again... maybe not... but similar.

 

[ChuckWolf]

One idea I'd been considering for my upcoming story, but have been on the fence on, involves the idea that because of the computerized nature of the cyber-realm,
orgasms are constantly improved upon (longer, deeper, more intense, etc.), so there is the inherent danger that too much sex may leave the main characters locked in a permanent state of orgasm of ever-increasing pleasure of unbearable levels.

In my story, this only affects the 3 main characters who are from our world, not the natives of the cyber realm. They can "reset" themselves by leaving the cyber realm (not always an easy thing to do), so that when they go back, they're essentially at "default level" (normal).

 

[HectorBidon]

2. For the plot to work, it has to be impossible simply to bring the person out of the VR world from the outside -- the person must in some way be trapped.

Maybe the problem with the beta version is that it is so addictive that the user loses all connection with his real self, like opium dreamers or like those lab rats who keep pressing the pleasure stimulus lever until they die from dehydration. The president has disappeared, both from the office and from email. His underlings begin to suspect that he may have tried the VR. He has a penchant for slipping away, checking into an obscure hotel using a disposable credit card. The underlings are worried that he may be sitting in a room somewhere, logged into the server, unmoored from the demands of his physical body. It may have been as long as thirty-six hours now, another thirty-six could be critical. They launch a two-pronged hunt, using standard detective techniques to try to locate his physical presence, and using forensic IT techniques to try to locate his internet connection. But the first draws a blank---no known credit-card transactions, no traffic camera sightings of his license plate. And the second is confounded by the fact that the renegade employee has taken control of the server software. Time is running out. The only other option is for someone to enter the VR and try to contact him that way.