Liberty Online: Imprisoned in Heaven

Prologue

Charlotte

She sat on top of him, her hips grinding against his. She bit his ear and moaned his name. Their bodies were pressed together, drenched in sweat, their movements in sync. Underneath them, the bed groaned and squeaked.

The man let out a final groan and collapsed onto the bed. She lay on top of him for a little while, then got off with an unsatisfied sigh. Her naked body silhouetted against the lights of the largest city on Earth, she stood before the window, gazing out upon the millions of people, each of them appearing smaller than an ant. Every dot moved frantically. They all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be, something to do. She wondered if any of them were happy, if any one had a choice. She frowned and smiled cynically.

She turned on the TV and flipped though the channels, nothing capturing her attention.

She stopped.

It was a commercial.

"This is the next step in gaming! Sword Art Online! This first and only game that will transport you to a different world!"

The commercial then showed in-game footage of people battling inside the world of Aincrad.

"Pre-order now!"


The Largest Prison in the World

It is the largest prison in the world.

On November 6, 2022, 10,000 people were imprisoned inside the world of Aincrad.

It was not meant to be a prison; it was proclaimed as one of the greatest leaps in consumer-grade technology since the original Virtual Reality headgear sets went on sale nearly eight years before.

Samsung, Facebook and Apple all tried their hand at Virtual Reality. All of them failed. It was a small company by the name of Argus that finally managed to find the holy grail. Their FullDive technology (patent pending) was to Virtual Reality what the iPhone was to smartphones; it changed what consumers could expect and leapfrogged the competition by nigh a decade.

The FullDive technology was the first to be fully immersive. People could use it by wearing a helmet called the NerveGear which intercepted the sensory signals the brain received from the body and replaced them with its own information. Sight, touch, smell and even movement could be done through the NerveGear.

Argus became one of the world's largest companies. Millionaires were created overnight. The FullDive technology could be implemented in military training, advanced surgeries impossible with human hands, therapy, education and countless other things.

However for their first mass-market consumer product, Argus decided to apply their technology to video games.

The game that would become playable on the NerveGear was called Sword Art Online.

It was a trap.

Only 10,000 copies of the game were made available on launch day. However when the players logged into the game, they found that there was no log-out button; there was no way to disconnect from the NerveGear and resume control of the physical body in the real world.

They then received a welcoming message from the creator of Sword Art Online.

Welcome to Aincrad, he said. The inability to log out is not a fault in the game, but its greatest feature. Aincrad will be your home. You will wake in Aincrad, eat in Aincrad and breathe in Aincrad.

He then handed out a single task: struggle for your freedom. The only way to escape from this game was to conquer all 100 floors.

However if one were to die in the game, one will also die in the real world. When your health points reach zero, the NerveGear will destroy the brain.

People thought of it as a joke at first.

The hours passed and cheerful laughter carried an anxious edge.

Days passed. Despair descended.


I laughed.

It wasn't so bad—was it?

Do you really wish to join that world filled with misery, greed, stress and frustrated people? A world where only money measures the worth of a life?

Are we trapped…or are they?