Wednesday, August 26, 2015

238. Get A Life!

Get A Life! immerses players in an XP-like simulspace simulating a regular life anywhere in the system, on pre-Fall Earth, or in one of dozens of historical or fictional scenarios. Like in an XP, Get A Life! provides a full sensory experience, including everything from sight to hunger. Your memories are blocked, so that only the memories of your new life are retained. Your personality, however, remains the same, and you make the choices you would have made, in that life. Once completed, AIs will compile a highlight reel XP for you to keep.

Of course Get A Life! does not actually simulate an entire life, the computing power required would be formidable, and even a 60x real-time simulation speed would take more than a year to complete. Users' sense of time and reality testing are disrupted, and as in dreams, they accept any gaps completely. In fact, the "highlight reel" is usually almost half of what was truly experienced.

Get A Life! has found use in therapy and psychosurgery. The fact that personality remains the same while circumstances change and memories are inaccessible allows a therapist to observe a patient living honestly in a variety of situations. Certain personalities, however, have been known to have trouble letting go of the false life, and undergo great trauma when thrust back into reality.

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