H.L. Wegley: Behind the Story of Virtuality
Before retiring, I spent my last two decades working in computer technology, developing large-scale computing systems for Boeing. Consequently, I subscribed to several IT publications and ezines which I’ve continued to receive. These publications provide good fodder for stories that deal with issues we face both as a society and as individuals—virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics.
Virtuality deals with technology that exists today and which can be used for a variety of nefarious purposes. The story digs deeply into what it means to be made in the image of God. It illustrates that, at our essence, we are not material, but spiritual. Our identity, i.e. our self-awareness, and our will, does not depend on a physical brain. Our real self doesn’t even depend on a human body. If it did, how could we be, as the Apostle Paul said, “absent from the body and present with the Lord?”
We only have a finite, incomplete understanding of what God actually did when He designed and formed us. But I view the brain as the interface to the real us, an interface necessary for us to interact in a human way with our physical body and thus with the world. And that implies strongly that we should, as Solomon admonished, guard our hearts because, through the brain, the physical can reach through to the spiritual and impact it for good or for evil.
One thing I’ve observed is that, If there’s a way to profit from man’s proclivities, people will take advantage of it. As Thoreau said about man’s inventions, “They are but improved means to an unimproved end …” Virtuality illustrates this truth by spotlighting a dangerous direction that adult entertainment technology is headed. In so doing, it illustrates how next-generation virtual reality can deceive the human brain by using other parts of our nervous system to create virtual worlds so life-like and addictive that people will prefer them to the real world. Statistics already show this trend in current video-game technology which is far less realistic and less insidious than what’s coming.
Rather than spoil the story, I’ll stop at this point. To get the details, you’ll have to read this action-packed story. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 1:
Excerpt from Chapter 1:
Though the water was only three-feet deep, the current’s relentless pull on Vince’s body overpowered him. It ripped at his legs and hips.
Vince’s feet slid along the river bottom as the torrent shoved him downstream. He pushed his shoes deeper into the rocks and gravel. If he lifted a foot to try stepping toward shore, in an instant, the current would sweep him away.
He buried his fingers more deeply into the fabric of Jess’s tank top and burrowed his feet more deeply into the river bottom.
Jess’s body in the water was the biggest problem, the greatest drag pulling him downstream. But his freezing, spent arms couldn’t lift her out of the water.
Vince slid several more inches downstream.
The dim light from the lodge across the river revealed their location. Ten feet in front of him, the entire Snoqualmie River plunged into a black void that roared its fury at them.
And the ferocious current continued to push him inexorably toward the blackness.
Vince squeezed on Jess’s tank top with all the strength he had left and pulled. But what he had left was like Vince van Gordon, the man … simply not enough.
He had failed Jess. He had failed to fulfill his promise to his brother, Paul, to protect Virtuality and its dangerous technology. Vince’s only consolation … it would be his last unhappy ending, either written in his second-rate novels or lived out in Vince’s second-rate life.
I’m so sorry, Paul … I love you, Jess.
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Book Blurb:
What would you do with innovative technology that could make you the next Bill Gates but could unravel the fabric of civilized society?
“Don’t sell Virtuality. Jess can help you.” His brother Paul’s dying words to Vince van Gordon, a struggling author who can’t write happy endings, inherits controlling interest in Virtuality, a growing high-tech company with a mysterious product the US Army classified Top Secret. Paul’s last words force Vince to return home to Seattle to run Virtuality and face the girl he walked away from seven years ago. Can Vince, once again, endure being eclipsed by Paul’s larger-than-life shadow, a shadow that cost him the woman he loves?
Jessica (Jess) Jamison is a genius, a beautiful, highly introverted, young woman who can count her friends on her thumbs. Seven years ago, Vince left, shattering her heart. Now Jess has a Computer Science degree and still prays her childhood soulmate will come home. If he’s willing to reconcile their relationship, Jess can help Vince take the reins of Virtuality. But why is someone trying to kill Vince and her? And could Professor Scoggins be right–that, in the wrong hands, Virtuality’s technology could shred the fabric of civilization, and that stopping it may literally take an act of Congress?
Virtuality is a character-driven thriller with romance about dangerous technology lurking on the near horizon–a story of love and sacrifice, illustrating that there are no shadowed, worthless people in God’s economy.
