Epic: the Game

Jack Kaminskie

Description

EPIC: The Game tests whether Life is to be played like a game. If Life were a Simulation, like The Matrix, what would you do?
EPIC: The Game, starts out with an entrepreneur pitching his idea for a Virtual Reality game. The game runs on a quantum computer platform. It leads players into dimensions where they explore their parallel lives, and confront fears, during 20 levels of game play. The game is different for each player as it uses Artificial Intelligence to calculate each player’s fears, based on data gleaned from social media and Internet preferences. It uses human energy for power, so if you get cut in the game, you bleed in real life!
The story centers around a family of four. Seventeen-year-old, Billy Middleton, has a sister, Sarah with an alcoholic mother and workaholic father. When Billy dies during gameplay, his father discovers his secret and goes into EPIC: The Game to fish out his son somewhere in time/space. They learn that Life is a form of Simulation...some kind of code that is like The Matrix, only unlike the movie, people are not “battery power for technology”. They are part of a quantum Ancestry Simulation that runs planet Earth.
This book is an epic Journey for Readers as they explore thought-provoking concepts in philosophy, the occult, spirituality, psychology and quantum physics.

Sujets

• Science Fiction
• Artificial intelligence
• AI
• Fiction
• Google

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669867227
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

EPIC: THE GAME
Jack Kaminskie

Copyright © 2023 by Donna Merrill.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023902623
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6724-1

Softcover
978-1-6698-6723-4

eBook
978-1-6698-6722-7
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 02/28/2023
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
848870
CONTENTS
Prologue
Five Years Later
Four Years Earlier
Summer 2024
Game Over!
Epilogue: Bryson
Epilogue: Billy
Epilogue: Adrian
Epilogue: John
Epilogue: Pablo
Epilogue: Sarah

Epic: The Game is dedicated to my daughter, Sophia Grace Hope, who inspired me to think outside the box in all matters of love and life. I also dedicate the book to our Maltipoo pup, the fur baby who slept by my side while I wrote this story and spent his time in his own quantum field of endless possibilities. He died of cancer shortly after I finished the book.
Finally, I dedicate this book to Bruce, Ehab, Ola, Peter, and Darren, who all listened to various versions of the book and helped me craft a surprise ending.
Thank you, dear reader, as well. The book is really for you—someone who lives in a world where there are more questions than answers. May this book open your mind to a world of infinite possibilities and cause you to look forward to future books written by me.
Enjoy!
Jack
**
PROLOGUE
JANUARY 2019
Bryson Carmichael climbed out of his classic silver Porsche and adjusted his silver Ray-Ban aviators with polarized lenses. His golden retriever hopped out of the car and trod alongside him. Both the golden retriever and Bryson had flaxen hair. He parked in a blue handicapped zone, but he didn’t care if he got a ticket. Today was the day he was launching the next big thing. As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, that’s all he cared about.
Bryson was carrying his demo on his MacBook Pro laptop. Ruby padded along next to him off-leash but never left his side. It had been ten years since he first got the vision for his special project, but only now was the timing right.
Automation, blockchain, Bitcoin, smart cities, autonomous cars, and the metaverse were all anyone in the VC world was talking about. Bryson ignored it all. He had laser focus and only cared about his idea.
Bryson sat in a wooden chair outside Coupa Café. He had ordered an Americano with almond milk and quadruple shots of espresso as well as a spinach omelet with green onions and mushrooms. As he waited for Lawrence, he carefully unfolded a Wall Street Journal that had landed on his doorstep at 4:00 a.m. The paper was cool to his touch as his sprinklers had left dots of dew on the plastic wrapper that enveloped the newspaper. His La Belle Spa–manicured fingers flipped to “Marketplace,” his favorite section.
Ruby let out one sharp bark. It sounded like an exclamation point given a voice. “What is it, girl?” asked Bryson. Seeing that Ruby’s eyes were pointed to his right and she was wagging her tail, he knew that Lawrence must have been approaching them.
“And how are you, Ruby?” asked Lawrence, reaching down to pet the dog whose feathery tail seemed to never stop wagging.
“Good morning,” said Bryson, not bothering to stand up but politely reaching a right hand at Lawrence’s tall frame, which was clothed in an Armani pin-striped suit.
Lawrence shook his hand. “‘Marketplace,’ eh?” he said while pointing at the WSJ that Bryson had been reading. “I go straight for ‘Finance,’” he said.
“Of course,” said Bryson. “You’re a VC. Well, I am an entrepreneur, so I always like to see what new mergers and acquisitions and business deals are being made in this town of ours.”
“You’d be better off with eating breakfast at Buck’s if you’re hoping to make a deal,” remarked Lawrence.
“Oh, that place in Woodside where PayPal got funded and Tesla had their earliest meetings?” said Bryson.
“That’s right,” said Lawrence while adjusting the tail of his jacket so he could sit across from Bryson.
“Well, this meeting isn’t about funding,” commented Bryson.
“Oh?” said Lawrence with a cocked brow while leaning on his left elbow.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Bryson. “I want to get a meeting set up.”
“With whom?” asked Lawrence.
It was Bryson’s turn to speak. “Lawrence,” he said, “I want to meet with Bernie Grin. Do you think you could arrange a meeting with G-force next week—twenty minutes tops?”
“I don’t know. What do you have?” asked Lawrence, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers off Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California.
“I am going to do for G-force what that guy did for Apple when he brought the concept for the music player to the company,” said Bryson.
Ruby, his faithful companion, adjusted herself so she could rest her head on his brown Italian loafer. She had traveled everywhere with him since 2014, which was when Kara Fiore, his fiancée, moved in with him and brought Ruby, who was a puppy, home from a Palo Alto shelter.
“Well, that’s a tall order. That music player was the precursor to all smart handheld devices, Bryson. The miniature Toshiba hard drive and PortalPlayer chip, as well the Apps feature on the phone, were brilliant moves.”
“I know!” exclaimed Bryson. “Lawrence, do you realize that quantum-physics professors are leaning toward a theory that we all live in the Matrix or some kind of coded world of information?”
“Of course,” said Lawrence. “But why are you changing the subject? Are you manic again, Bryson?”
“Nah, I haven’t been manic since Kara died. More like depressed, but I’m fine, Lawrence. Really.”
“Then,” said Lawrence with a cautious tone, “what does a digital world have to do with your meeting with Bernie Grin?”
“Everything. We all know that virtual gaming is becoming more and more realistic. I have access to a quantum computer at my Uncle Tom’s university, and what the world doesn’t know yet is that it’s proven that we live in parallel universes.”
“Rrrreeallly?” said Lawrence, half-chuckling with a hint of sarcasm and half-surprised.
Bryson, oblivious to Lawrence’s sarcasm, continued, “It gets better—what I’ve got is a virtual-reality game that enables players to make decisions in parallel universes. It takes place within an Earth just like this one, but each action changes reality in THIS version of Earth. We EXIST in a parallel world. It’s like the player creates his or her own reality, and it’s totally realistic.”
“Hmm,” said Lawrence, smoothing over his goatee with his fingertips. “You say it’s totally realistic. What sort of gaming environment is it?”
“You must wear VR gloves and goggles. You can play it with a laptop, like this one, but it is much better with a high-definition big-screen TV.”
“Sounds expensive—more expensive than what most consumers can afford,” commented Lawrence.
“Well, yes and no. It’s got a box that’s plug and play with any high-def TV set. Other TV sets can meet the monitor requirements as well. But my business model for this generates revenue. Playing the game, which I call EPIC, actually earns players cash that they can redeem for gaming products or bitcoins.”
“How will you support such a business model, Bryson?” inquired Lawrence.
Bryson responded, “Fuck pay-per-click advertising and banner ads! When everyone starts playing Epic, G-force won’t be making its money off the search engine. That will be spare change as a business model.”
“Why?” asked Lawrence, stopping his goatee stroking for a moment.
“Well, it has to do with consumer choices. As you play the game, you are exposed to life choices. These life choices can be sponsored by advertisers who can use product placement and hints and clues in the game to unlock rewards for the gamer.”
“Huh,” said Lawrence with a nod.
“Epic is a game like no other,” remarked Bryson enthusiastically. “From where you’re sitting, it taps into streams of consciousness. What will be proven in the future is that quantum computers will reach into parallel universes for resources and solutions and may even alter timelines. Consciousness is one global field that we tap into with the antennae that exist in our brains. But it’s the antennae that exist in our brains, not consciousness! And we simply experience individual views of events that we call time. Hey, Lawrence? Time doesn’t even exist. What Nassim, a leading physicist, says is Einstein’s space is memory. To him, it’s like we experience events, and they become stored memories on a hard drive in the universe. In reality, this memory is hard-coded in our cells but can be rewritten by DNA when DNA is altered, which changes history in real time. What’s real are the memories we can recall. Also, science is often divided. We have chemistry. We have physics. We have biology. We have computer science.