Uploaded

By Jonden Chickeness

A coder and virtual reality enthusiast has reached the limit of his technological abilities. A stranger from the darknet claims to have access to advanced hardware, and offers to share it. The coder receives an unexpected visit and is pulled into an underground world of hackers trying to change the human race, forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonden Chickeness
• Release date: Oct 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311288615

Jonden Chickeness

Jonden Chickeness is a Canadian self-published author from the small town of Marshall, Saskatchewan. He is a father of three and has been married to his wife, Justine, since 2010. He works as an electrician during the day, and is an avid gamer in his free time.

Book preview

Uploaded

Uploaded Series, Book 1

By Jonden Chickeness

Copyright 2015 Jonden Chickeness

Smashwords Edition

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Cover Design by Trevor Smith

Author Photo By Cheryl Dow

Chapter 1

His hands were a mess of origami skin tones as the program loaded. The polygons gradually shrunk and multiplied, increasing the resolution of his body. There was a lag between the moment when he thought he moved and the actual movement. It was noticeable at first but negligible once the simulation was fully loaded. Walking was shaky, but he adapted to the unusual lightness of his new avatar.

He stood in a room with no doors or windows. The walls were solid white and perfectly flat. They extended out roughly five metres in all directions and formed a perfect cube. The only fixture was a metal table with a faint electric blue grid etched onto its surface. He approached the table and a holographic interface materialized from its surface. He manipulated the controls, adjusted the room brightness, wall textures, and shaders. He increased the size of the room. 10 metres. 30 metres. Just past 100 metres he felt the world stutter and freeze. The environment derezzed as he was booted out of the program.

The transistors, resistors, and capacitors that made up his computer’s memory were overloaded and overheating. He found himself staring into the dark interior of his virtual reality headset. He removed it and disconnected the small pads that stuck to his scalp, returning the rig to its stand on his desk. He ran the program again, this time making sure to save the error log and performance statistics before it crashed. He poured over the error log of his pre-alpha software. He copied the performance data to a spreadsheet and extrapolated the numbers.

Jesus, this is impossible, he thought. He checked the data again, but the result was the same. Expected RAM requirement, 1.7 TB. Expected GPU requirement, 5 TB. There was nothing on the market that could even get close to that. The highest end custom computers could get up to 128 GB of RAM and 48 GB of video RAM with 4 Titan X cards. Including the motherboard that could support all of that, the liquid cooling system that would keep it from going up in flames, and the small power station he would need to power it, he was looking at tens of thousands of dollars. And that’s not even a fraction of what I need. He pressed his palms into the amber toned skin and dark black hair of his head, then accepted defeat.

He spent the majority of his time at work violating company policies. His tasks were complete well ahead of schedule, so he maintained the illusion of productivity by keeping a generic project file open behind his web browser for easy switching. He researched up-and-coming computer hardware, cloud computing networks, even less-than-legal botnets. If one computer couldn’t do the job, maybe a network of them could.

There has to be a way, he said, not realizing he had spoken out loud.

A way to do what? asked Seth, who leaned against his cubicle and obnoxiously slurped his coffee. His novelty mug sported the quote: Like a boss. It was fitting, as Seth looked over the coding department of the small game development studio.

Nothing, just struggling with the coding for the boss fight in this level. He quickly minimized the web browser and pulled up the waiting page of unfinished code. The A.I. requirements from the level designers are tough to work out.

Designers, eh? Bunch a Molyneux wanna-be’s, right V? He brushed some doughnut crumbs from his out of season Hawaiian shirt and walked away before V could reply. The nickname was easier to pronounce than Vidyadhar, his real name, for his English speaking co-workers.

Once Seth was out of sight, V pulled up the web browser tab. He scrolled to the bottom of his reddit feed and noticed a link that wasn’t getting much discussion,