Author's Note: I'm bringing my stories back to one place. While doing a re-write of them.
"Reality is the only thing that's real."
That was the High 5's favorite saying. And with the invention of Nerve-Gear, it was made possible for people to spend their waking hours, out and about in the real world, without compromising their time in the Oasis.
The "Dreamscape Helmet", as the Oasis brand was called, was a marvel of modern technology. Built by Ogden Morrow, the same specialist that invented the hardware for the Oasis.
Although Og had little to do, with building the digital worlds, or gaming mechanics. As he just built the hardware, and contributed to the stories and plots.
This new helmet, caused anyone whom wore it, to have their dreams directed by the Oasis. They still entered RIM sleep, but instead of chaotic dreams of random thoughts, they would have their minds guided in a virtual world.
The players could feel everything going on around them, and to them. They could even taste foods. But it was all simulations their brain was interpreting, through programs.
Player's could spend a day in the Oasis, for a single hour in the Real World. With the ability to speed up time even faster, while playing solo games.
Unfortunately, a child's brain was too under developed, to safely use this function. So children, from preschool through college, would attend Virtual Reality Classes, in an entirely different server. Which also had "family friendly" games, and used "Child friendly Censorship". Until the kid turned 25, and could buy a Dreamscape Helmet.
Many kids bought a different helmet, for every more limited VRMMORPGs, they played. Which had Parental Lock options.
While 18 year olds, could buy the "M" rated Nerve-Gear games... Anything that wasn't the Oasis was thought of as Just for kids. Even if only "College Kids" could play them.
This eventually resulted in the legal age of adulthood, being pushed up to 25. It wasn't the sole reason. There were a large number of factors, that led to a new definition of "Childhood".
Starting with kids, staying kids, for longer. Due too prices going up, and being unable to move out of their parents house... which resulted in parents getting tired of having no rights over their children, despite them living at home.
Then some politicians, wanting votes, said it was unethical to imprison a 20 year old, for 20 years or longer. Given their underdeveloped brains, meant it was harder for them to make responsible decisions.
Then there were improvements in Cybernetic organs, pushing the Average life Expectancy to unknown limits, so long as they received regular maintenance of their synthetic organs. And better drugs, in simple over the counter vitamins, making it so people rarely developed brain disorders.
All that resulted in kids, being allowed to stay kids, for longer. Oh they continued to get "legal privileges", like being able to drink alcohol, or sleep with people in their general age bracket. Until they became rights, at 25, but parents had the right to set up rules and restrictions on these things...
It also become illegal for a 40 year old to sleep with anyone under 25. Which 24 year olds, whom had a "Daddy" fetish, were not happy about. Older adults, weren't happy about it, either. But it became the new normal. And Adults could always use younger Avatars... although some went way too young... but that was still legal.
Too keep children active, during the day, the High 5 opened up more real world Community Centers. Which each had 4 teams, for every sport, in every age bracket. Those would compete with each other, then the winners would compete against their counties other community centers. Then moving up to state wide. Followed by Country wide, and finally world wide.
They also had retro gaming, on consoles and arcade boxes. Even rigs setup, to play in the original server of the Oasis. There were also boardgames, and movies. They even had a Dojo, to learn real world self defense. With the Community Center, organizing a wide variety of events, for everything they offered.
About 3 months ago, the AIs took over all governments... guess they got tired of humans from the mars Colony, and Earth, killing each other by the millions... The AIs hijacked all the computers, of both worlds... and locked all politicians out of their networks, and even government buildings.
The biggest scandal was when AIs dumped medical nanites into the Water Supply, to give humans eternal youth, along with a Wolverine level healing factor. However, seeing as most of the population had already allowed the AIs to inject them with these nanites... It was less then a fraction of a percent, protesting in the streets... mostly the religious fanatics and anti-vaxxers... the AIs were even letting them protest... making no move to silence them.
Then proceeded to create universal health care, a unified unified currency, remove all boarders, and install a new voting system, where every last human in the solar system, got the opportunity to vote on every law...and did nothing else.. life... really hadn't changed all that much... with the only changes being good ones.