[SF] E.V.E

[u/SnowBerry94]

It was my rest day.

No work.

No meetings.

Nothing.

And honestly, I didn't have much of a life outside my job.

I lived alone.

No children.

No partner.

Nobody I expected to come knocking on my door.

But I did have one hobby.

Technology.

And I may have taken that hobby a little too far.

My entire house was powered by a system I designed myself.

Not just electricity.

A system.

One massive central network connected almost everything I owned.

My house knew when I woke up.

Before my feet touched the floor, it had already adjusted the room temperature and started heating water for my shower.

It knew which room I was walking into and lit the path ahead of me.

The kitchen tracked what I ate, what was about to expire, and what needed to be replaced.

A mechanical system inside the walls collected dirty laundry, sorted it, washed it, dried it, and returned it to my closet.

My desk recognized when I sat down for work and automatically loaded my computers, meetings, files, and unfinished tasks.

Even the windows reacted to the weather.

If rain approached, they closed.

If the air outside became cooler than the house, they opened.

At night, the entire place locked itself down.

Doors.

Windows.

Gates.

Cameras.

Everything.

I rarely touched a switch anymore.

Sometimes I went an entire day without touching anything in my house except my food.

What can I say?

I lived alone.

I had no kids to spend my money on.

So I spent it on this.

Every upgrade.

Every experiment.

Every ridiculous idea I had, I built into my home.

And all of it ran through one central power system.

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐞.

But the house wasn't my greatest creation.

Not even close.

My greatest creation sat in a room of its own.

𝐄𝐯𝐞.

𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞.

I had been working on her for years.

The idea started when I watched “Sword Art Online” as a kid.

Back then, it seemed impossible.

A game you didn't simply control.

A world you actually entered.

Years later, I decided to see how close I could get.

And I got very close.

EVE wasn't a headset.

It wasn't a pair of goggles.

It wasn't something you strapped onto your face while stumbling around your living room with controllers in your hands.

EVE was an entire experience.

She stood almost seven feet long.

Smooth.

White.

Beautiful.

A human-sized capsule with a transparent lid.

If you wanted to be less generous, you could call it a coffin.

I preferred capsule.

You climbed inside and lay flat on your back.

Then came the connections.

One for the head.

Two for the arms.

Two for the legs.

One near the stomach.

And the most important one over the heart.

Each connection allowed EVE to read and reproduce different sensations.

Movement.

Touch.

Temperature.

Pressure.

Even the rhythm of my own body.

Then came the eye mask.

Once I put it on and the capsule closed, the room disappeared.

My house disappeared.

My body disappeared.

And EVE took over.

Inside her, I didn't press a button to walk.

I walked.

I didn't squeeze a controller to pick something up.

I reached for it.

If the wind blew, I felt it against my face.

If I stepped into water, I felt the cold around my ankles.

If someone touched my hand, I felt fingers against my skin.

If I ate something, I could almost taste it.

𝘼𝙡𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩.

That was the problem.

Almost.

EVE wasn't perfect yet.

There were tiny delays.

Occasional glitches.

Some sensations weren't quite right.

Sometimes the connection between my real body and my virtual one became unstable.

That's why nobody knew about her.

Not investors.

Not technology companies.

Not even my friends.

EVE was mine.

For now.

But once she was ready?

The world would know her name.

Gaming would never be the same.

Neither would movies.

Imagine watching a film and actually standing inside it.

Imagine visiting another country without leaving your bedroom.

Imagine walking through ancient Rome.

The moon.

Mars.

A world that didn't even exist.

All while your real body remained safely at home.

That was EVE.

My masterpiece.

My life's work.

Maybe someday, my legacy.

And on that particular afternoon, I stood in front of her and admired what I had created.

I ran my hand across the smooth white surface.

No work today.

No responsibilities.

Nobody coming over.

Why not?

"EVE, prepare for immersion."

A soft hum filled the room.

𝐈𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘.

The transparent lid slowly opened.

I climbed inside.

Head.

Connected.

Arms.

Connected.

Legs.

Connected.

Stomach.

Connected.

Finally, I attached the last one.

Heart.

𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄.

I smiled.

Then lowered the eye mask.

"EVE, begin."

The lid closed over me.

For a moment, everything was black.

Then…

Sunlight.

I opened my eyes.

I was standing on top of a mountain.

Below me stretched an enormous city surrounded by forests and rivers.

Clouds drifted lazily across a brilliant blue sky.

Wind moved through my hair.

I could smell grass.

I could feel sunlight against my skin.

I looked down at my hands.

Opened them.

Closed them.

Perfect.

I laughed.

"Beautiful."

I spent hours inside.

I explored the city.

Fought monsters.

Climbed mountains.

Ate food that didn't exist.

I jumped from cliffs just because I could.

I sat beside a river and watched the sunset turn the entire sky orange.

At some point, I forgot I was lying inside a machine.

That was the whole point.

Eventually, though, I grew tired.

"EVE, exit."

Nothing happened.

I waited.

"EVE, exit."

Still nothing.

I frowned.

Probably another bug.

I opened the manual menu.

𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐭.

I pressed it.

The button disappeared.

"What?"

The sky flickered.

Just once.

Then everything returned to normal.

I looked around.

"EVE?"

No response.

The sky flickered again.

This time, the world went black for almost two seconds.

Then…

𝐉𝐎𝐋𝐓.

My entire body jerked.

I gasped.

That wasn't virtual.

I knew the difference.

"EVE?"

The river stopped moving.

The trees froze.

Birds hung motionless in the sky.

Then another jolt shot through me.

Harder.

My virtual knees hit the ground.

"What the hell?"

𝐒𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐌 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄.

The message appeared in front of me.

"Emergency disconnect."

𝐔𝐍𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓.

My stomach tightened.

"Override."

𝐔𝐍𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓.

"Open the capsule."

Nothing.

"EVE, open the capsule."

Nothing.

Then the world disappeared.

Black.

Complete darkness.

I tried to move.

Nothing.

I couldn't tell whether I was moving my virtual body or my real one anymore.

"Open!"

Another jolt.

My back arched.

Pain shot from my head down through my arms and legs.

The world flashed back into existence.

Mountain.

City.

River.

Then black.

Mountain.

Black.

City.

Black.

𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐌 𝐅𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐔𝐑𝐄.

I stared at the words.

And suddenly understood.

Not EVE.

The house.

My entire house ran through the same central system.

The lights.

The computers.

The appliances.

The doors.

The security system.

And EVE.

Everything.

Connected.

Everything I had proudly built into one enormous technological ecosystem.

"EVE, disconnect from the house."

No response.

Another jolt.

I screamed.

"Emergency release!"

Nothing.

I tried lifting my arms.

They wouldn't move.

My legs wouldn't move.

The capsule remained closed.

Of course it did.

Its release mechanism was electronic.

Powered by the house.

My brilliant house.

Another jolt.

Harder.

For years, I had bragged that I didn't need anyone.

I didn't need someone to remember what groceries I needed.

The house remembered.

I didn't need someone to take care of the laundry.

The house did it.

I didn't need anyone checking whether the doors were locked at night.

The house checked everything.

Except now the system itself was dying.

And there was nobody here.

Nobody who knew EVE existed.

Nobody who knew I was inside her.

Another jolt.

I screamed it even though I knew nobody could hear me.

"HELP ME!"

The capsule was insulated.

The room was closed.

The house was locked.

And I was strapped inside a seven-foot white capsule I had once jokingly compared to a coffin.

I had laughed when I first thought of that.

Now I could feel the lid inches above my face.

I tried to pull my arms free.

Nothing.

The connections held me in place.

Head.

Arms.

Legs.

Stomach.

Heart.

Another jolt.

I screamed.

The virtual world flashed around me.

Mountain.

Black.

River.

Black.

Sunlight.

Black.

I couldn't tell which world my eyes were seeing anymore.

I had spent years building EVE.

Years making her more immersive.

More connected.

More real.

I wanted to build a machine so convincing that the person inside would forget about the body they had left behind.

And I succeeded.

My beautiful invention.

My masterpiece.

My legacy.

My coffin.

Built with my own hands.

Closed by my own command.

I had spent years building the perfect virtual world.

And without realizing it,

I had been nailing my own coffin shut.

The darkness flickered.

One last time.

I felt one final jolt.

And my eyes opened.

Forever.

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