I am helping Taylor on a virtual reality project.  Taylor is convinced that we can create a Utopia of sorts out of this VR, which he made himself, and then remodel the real world after it.  I, to say the least, have been less convinced.
     What it has lacked until now is a resemblance to reality, though we have been working on that.  Most recently, Taylor succeeded in having the game create realistic, fictional people out of suggestions or expectations from the player.  Now, we have decided to add pain to the experience, finally having a consequence for things gone wrong as in real life.  This will help us create a Utopia that is realistic enough to model after, and fewer setbacks are expected in the remodeling, for fewer unknowns will be present now that pain will tell us what is destructive in any manner.
 

     “I go, and it is done,” Taylor announces jokingly, setting down his work with a dangerously excited gleam in his eyes.  “When you, say, fall off a building inside this thing, your brain will be convinced you are in a small amount of pain, just enough so you know you are hurt, and only where you are hurt.  It doesn’t matter how injured you are, it will only be a small nuisance.  This is, after all, only our first test on this aspect...”
     I think a moment over the safety precautions he has taken, then enter the VR.  I have already explored the possibilities yesterday, and go over them only briefly now.  In the game, I check first to see if every other thing operates as it should, and assured, hop on my skateboard.  Before when I had skated, it seemed as if I were floating almost, because there was no danger in it, but now would I test that.  Here before me is a steep ramp, something that if I fall would kill me in real life; I have already felt the sharp realism of grass beneath my feet in this world, and the soreness of rocks.
     In skating, finally do I fall hard, and pain is all I feel. Light at first, as Taylor promised, but my mind is quickly crazed in anticipation of how my bruised ribs must feel- it is all too real, and the pain increases as I expect it to, until it is too much to not be real, and I find myself in the real world again.  I must have ripped the headset off, a smart thing to do, but all I feel still is pain.  Looking at my hands that should be skinned, I see them whole but still I feel the pain.  I realize now that I have heard these past seconds the sound of Taylor’s reasoning, impossibly calm voice, but I have not been listening to him, and notice also that he is preparing a sedative.
     I begin to hate Taylor, even in my dreams.  He is no doctor, and still took the liberty to sedate me, though he could have easily gotten the dosage wrong.  I can only suspect, and wonder why I ever trusted him.  Perhaps my senses are all crazed, for the pain still seems to linger, but I hate him.  He put no limit on the VR, that much is clear.  He gave it only a starting point, and my mortal mind, fearing and knowing of intensity, coaxed the VR to overload my senses, to drive me to an unreachable point in human experience.  Yes, this pain is reached only in dreams of fear: none of this can be so.
     Slowly, I come again to know my surroundings, but this simple thing seems in confusion and blended mercilessly with imagined places of before.  I am in my room still, but also I am still in some strange dream; the skateboard still awaits me, the grass, the stones...  I moan softly, not able to help my confusion.  I can feel nothing where I was hurt, only numbness, and a soft aching everywhere else.  The memories of the VR are mixed indescribably with all else, and I can no longer distinguish it from anything, but remember pain in both worlds.  I try to get up, but am faint and ill. Taylor is now beside me, though I did not see him approach.  He says something unexplainable about shock, and assures me I will recover as he presses a glass to my burning lips and a cloth to my likewise forehead.  I feel dizzy as Taylor helps me back in bed, and cannot understand his speech.  I must be in a mental shock, for nothing can I think of but trying to remember clearly what has happened, unable to.
     Taylor speaks again but it is as if in a foreign language and in starts, so I close my eyes against it. Slowly, I feel the urge to go skating again- perhaps it will sort my memories.  I ask Taylor, but he gives me only a concerned look, and says I may not go into the VR again so soon, but later.  I complain of my fever, and he says in starts he is the only doctor I need. My concentration begins to fade, though I try to stop it.  I wonder briefly why there is no doctor, and remember the reason, hating Taylor for it.  My emotions are too raw, and I cannot control them as I used to.
     The pain, I remember the pain; the overloading- it drives me.  Such memories jerk me back to wakefulness, with the full wont to excape, survive, live... Where am I? I may never know.  I recognize Taylor’s voice and try to pick it out, but cannot. My hands feel as if they have been asleep and finally wake, but the memory is not quelled. In that moment or as I relive it, I cannot tell which, I feel more alive than ever.  Hurt is the only realness of reality, the only thing that tells me I am alive in a tangible world.  When I dream not of pain, I feel asleep indeed, but the hurt brings me back as sharp as it may. Focusing on an object real enough, I see another, and my franticness is soon calmed by Taylor.  He is always there.  He is the center of my pain, where ever I am or may not be, he is there, there...  Will he never get a doctor?  I am kept here still, and sometimes seem as if I am not in the room at all, though I never remember leaving.  I feel now as such, and think that the sharpness of it reminds me of the VR, but there is no difference in my mind between that and anything else, after all, and VR seems only a word.
     I know I need a doctor, for I have lost myself to pain, to reality... I cannot stay here for it is no longer real.  I have only one question; summoned I am away from here, but to heaven, or to hell?