There were a few who predicted what the new Cyber world would do to the real one, and they were dubbed crazy conspiracy theorists. Sure internet worlds had existed for years, but when it became free for everyone, and VR became readily available, everyone and their brother became instantly attached to this utopia. One of the first signs was when an epidemic of online dating spread through the younger generation. Why be you when you could be whoever you wanted to be? Then children began disappearing for days on new games than connected people all around the world. Then shopping online took off so far that stores slowly began to shut their doors and simply became warehouses.
Because most business would be done online, and most social interactions were now done online, no one felt the need to go out anymore. Expensive houses, office buildings, and other multi room buildings quickly became simple apartments where many people could get online at one time. Some of the more unfortunate people who were still working in the real world, mostly delivery drivers, slowly became jealous and bitter. There was a sudden spike in murders and robberies as the corporate world found themselves too reluctant to leave their cyber lives to stop them. Like any good government, they quickly stepped in to offer their services. Large guarded complexes began springing up everywhere. Since the occupants did nothing but jack themselves into Edin, as they called it, housing space was reduced to a minimum, which in turn maximized the occupancy of each building.
The more excentic kept their homes, turning them into private complexes for themselves, and their friends and family. Guards were bought up like candy, and offered exorbitant amounts to keep these people safe. As could be expected, this had mixed results, as someone who is willing to kill for money doesn't always have the morals not to kill their employer for a bigger cut.
It took longer than expected, but the effects of prolonged jacking (the slang for plugging in to Edin) became apparent. Starvation, muscle deterioration, heart failure, all began to climb. Once again the governments of the world were happy to help. As if they were already working on these issues, products flooded the market to counteract these issues. IVs, feeding tubes, special chambers to jack in, electro shock wired to the internet to stimulate your body as you went about your day in Edin. Gradually, appartments began to look more and more like scientific labs, or some futuristic museum.
As with all revolutions, there was resistance, but only so much can be done with the unwilling. As the old term goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. All the resistance could do was try to sabotage the internet, or just refuse to take part. Both were tried. Sabotage proved unlikely, as the most efficient hackers were jacked in, or hired by the government. Eventually, the rebels simply settled into communities of their own, or submitted to Edin. With the vast majority of people jacked in, the governments of the world slowly united into one.
Without stores, or restaurants, or other conveniences, the people who refused to be sucked in were forced to return to the basics, which they did with amazing speed and efficiently. Farms and homesteads spread through the now mostly empty landscape. Solar panels, windmills, and water turbines replaced the dependency on the grid, which was good, since most of the grid was used up for Edin.
As things settled, the world settled into factions. There was Edin, and the real world which people took to calling Nod. In Nod, there were the Settlers, the Government, and the Union.
The Settlers keep to themselves, living life as normal. Some communities held a single jack in order to keep touch with what was going on in Edin, but others completely banned all access to the internet. The government refuses to do anything with the settlers except police them and harass them any time they come near Edin sanctioned cities. They have been rumored to deals through the Union, however if contact has to be made.
The Union is the middle ground to everything. When people began to realize that they could make money in Edin, many of them quit their jobs for good. This left a lot holes the average person hadn't considered. It was true that using warehouses took out the need for store employee's, but someone still had to deliver the products. Still more had to Make the products, and still more had to make the materials to make the products. Repair men were always needed. Construction crews. The list went on. The more people left the real world, the more the working class had to fall on each other for help.
Eventually, as the corporate big wigs lost themselves in meetings, and affairs, and gambling in Edin, their underlings took over the actual work and operation of the companies. When the CEOs found there was a huge uproar, many managers were fired. In turn, so many employees quit that the stores could not remain open. Those managers opened their own stores, hiring all the employees that went with them, and prospered. This happened a few times to a few companies before the CEOs of other companies sat down and worked out a deal with their managers. The CEO position became a PR position in Edin, while the managers ran things in Nod. The managers, in turn, gathered together to form a union, protecting each other from CEOs, and from collapse due to lack of employees. Hence the Union was born. The Union is filled with workers belonging to what jobs are left. Buys, sell, and trade with the settlers and government evenly, support each other's causes, keep the world going on it's unsteady wheel. People from the Union come in all kinds as far as Edin is concerned. From those who never want to go, to people who spend every moment they are not at work there. The only thing that matters is that the work gets done.
The government, now a conglomerate of all the governments of the world, do little more, at this point, then meddle. They are in Edin and Nod, and do what they can to keep the people in Edin, or out of the way. The settlers believe, for good reason, that the government is simply keeping people asleep so they can do whatever they want. While the settlers expanded and perfected homesteading, the government did the same with technology. Collaborating through Edin across the world, the government has run rampant through science unhindered by the outcries of moral society. Cloning, black holes, human experimentation, anything they wanted to further what ever challenge they had that week. The government also used swift and brutal punishment on anyone that did not follow the rules. People did not simply disappear, they were publicly, and brutally, executed. That execution was then televised in Edin with whatever story they wanted to tack to it.
Within Edin, things were much different. While people struggled in Nod, Edin was a safe haven. When the laws of reality no longer applied, people were free to be whoever they wanted, and people's true nature's began to emerge. Districts, the term used for websites in Edin, were available for anything. From colorful cloud cities made of candy and ice cream for children to dank virtual reality cities where people could play out their darkest sexual fantasies on generated characters, or even other users. There were war games, fantasy realms, endless casinos, and a red light district that would boggle the mind. There were libraries containing everything ever known, and theatres playing anything you could imagine. People had homes, careers, and whole lives on Edin to replace what once was in Nod. Someone in Florida would meet, marry, and settle down with someone in Japan in Edin. Who that person was in Nod lost its relevance as few and few people spent any time there anyway. As the government found newer, and better, ways to prolong life as long as you were jacked in, people started living their whole lives in Edin, trusting the government to lock them away in an incubator, strung up with wires and tubes like some puppet. Someone fully jacked in like this would never be able to leave Edin, leaving their bodies to lose all muscle structure, but could live a could hundred years in complete bliss online.
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I'd love to do something with this setting. I'd like it to stretch through both Edin and Nod, contain action, romance, and maybe some horror and mystery. I don't really have a full plot yet, but I'd love to work something out with someone. I'm looking for someone long term, obviously of legal age, and preferably in the upper 20s-30s range. I want someone I can chat with, and get along with ooc, as well as in the story. If you're interested, please let me know. Message me. I'm looking for serious writers, I work on a quality over quantity basis, but I can not work with a single paragraph. As you can see, I've put quite a bit of effort into this, and I'd hate to waist time on people who aren't going to show some effort in return.
My character is a young hacker, and the black sheep of a Settler family who sneaks away to jack in to Edin. In Edin, she's a fairly well known and mysterious person who specializes in information trade and hacking. A dangerous, and highly illegal business.
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