Inside a Computer System: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

This is a relatively new branch of [[Science Fiction]], it deals with the aspects of people being either partially or completely attached to, and part of a computer system. Virtual Reality taken to the next step, or perhaps, Virtual Reality ''as'' reality.

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' has this as the central theme of the story. Notably, it treats [[Inside a Computer System]] as a mystical experience, without any technological peripherals connecting people to the virtual reality; the only "scientific" explanation given to the out of body experiences is the Earth's electromagnetic Schumann Resonance, which in the story can link human brains and computer equipment together without anyone noticing.

* In ''Silent Mobius'', this is [[Mad Scientist|Lebia Maverick]]'s main shtick.

* Everyone in ''[[.hack|.hack//]]'' is inside a MMORPG.

** Except in ''.hack//Liminality'', which is all about what's going on on the outside.

* The second season of ''Superbook'' had the pet dog one of the first season's regulars getting trapped in a computer after a freak accident caused it to merge with the Superbook (the Bible, only with a magic ability to transport people into the stories). The new hero of the season then had to travel into the computer to get her back.

* Chisame of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', being a [[Playful Hacker]], gains an Artifact that lets her do this.

* Like ''[[.hack|.hack//]]'', everyone in ''Mythic Quest'' is in the MMORPG ''Mythic Quest''.

* [[Digimon]]. That is all.

== Comics ==

* ''[[Kimmie 66]]'' takes place almost entirely in "lairs", basically VR environments.

* Minor [[Firestorm]] villains Bug and Byte are a brother and sister with the power to ''physically'' enter computer systems (à la ''[[Tron]].)''

 

* The movie ''[[eXistenZ]]'' had a virtual reality gaming system that people entered, and in some cases you couldn't tell whether they were in a game or in reality. This movie came out about the same time as ''[[The Matrix]]'' and ''The Thirteenth Floor''.

* In [[Freejack]], the "soul" of the character played by [[Anthony Hopkins]] is stored in a computer because his body has died, and needs a replacement body to be transferred into within 24 hours or his soul will also die.

* ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]'' revolved around a city in a computer system owned by the protagonist's company - {{spoiler|which in turn was in a city within a computer system}}.

** {{spoiler|And possibly inside at least one more computer system - if you notice, every one of the three worlds you see has different [[Color Wash|subtle colorizations]] to them like that [[Lampshade Hanging|pointed out]] for the 1920s sim, and the movie ends on a CRT-shutdown animation...}}

== Literature ==

* Cyberspace in the ''[[Sprawl Trilogy]]'' of [[William Gibson]] pioneered this trope.

** This trope is central to the original book's premise: {{spoiler|The Earth itself}} is a very elaborate computer created to discover {{spoiler|the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything (the answer has already been found: 42).}} The behavior of the beings on the planet are a goodly part of the computations.

* The ''[[Otherland]]'' series by [[Tad Williams]] is about a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] who break into a virtual reality network (in a [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|time]] where [[Metaverse|VR is commonplace]]) and become trapped there, unable to go offline. Furthermore, they can apparently be [[Your Mind Makes It Real|killed there too]]. One of the mysteries they must solve is why this is the case.

* G.A. Effinger's book ''When Gravity Fails'' has a system where people meet in a Virtual Reality system, and can even have sex while in the system, and it's indistinguishable from the real thing. In one case, eight people lie down on the Virtual Reality couches, and only seven get up; one of the visitors figured a way to kill one of the others by causing their "soul" not to go back into the body, but to stay and effectively be purged when the machine was shut down.

* ''In the Matter of: [[Instrument of God]]'' is about the Afterlife, set up inside a massive computer system, where the occupants are aware both that they are dead and that they are within a computer system.

* Piers Anthony's [[wikipedia:Killobyte|''Killobyte'']] involves a paralyzed cop and a diabetic player who are both trapped in a virtual reality game by a hacker and in danger of dying in reality.

* The majority of the storyline of ''Realtime Interrupt'' by James Hogan is [[Inside a Computer System]]. The apparent strangeness of reality the character experiences is explained to him as mental illness.

* ''[[Permutation City]]'' is a remarkably hard scifi look at this trope, with some strange philosophical added in.

** [[Greg Egan]] is quite good at this. Diaspora features a relatively in-depth look at the Polises, underground supercomputers simulating posthuman intelligences several times faster than real time.

* Three of [[Jack Chalker]] 's better novels (the ''Wonderland Gambit'' trilogy) feature people who have been inside the machine so long they've created thousands of alternate universes -- all of [[No Endor Holocaust|which keep running]] [[Dream Apocalypse|after they're gone.]]

* ''[[Altered Carbon]]'' and the Takeshi Kovacs series features this trope put toward particularly gruesome ends. Torture victims could be implanted into a computer world, where they would be tortured for hours of subjective time every minute, for as long as the computer stays running. In theory, a person's consciousness could experience millennia of agony without the mercy of death.

* Timothy Zahn's ''Conqueror'''s Trilogy: The Copperhead fighter pilots have implants that allow them to jack into their fightercrafts: the pilots become the craft. They have expanded fields of vision, data from the ship's status comes in as taste, smell and touch. It is an extremely addictive feeling, leading to some pilots remaining jacked in between missions. Recently the Commonwealth military had set up better screening processes to avoid this. Reception to these new tests is varied.

* Most of the events in [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''Labyrinth'' trilogy take place in a virtual city called Deeptown, made possible due to a psychosis-inducing video that is played every time someone logs on. A full body suit is necessary for an immersive experience, although the first case of perceiving a virtual world as reality occurred with a guy playing ''[[Doom]]'' afted watching the video. A special group of people are able to exit the "deep" at will. These so-called "Divers" can also see security holes and backwoods as... holes and doors. The trilogy also features a "super-Diver" with the ability to see how things really are and affect them (e.g. walking through a solid object after realizing it's only a computer-generated model).

 

 

** The half-dozen people who actually watched the whole series eventually discovered that the much-maligned "acoustic modem" was ''not'' off-the-shelf technology, but [[Applied Phlebotinum]] from a buried Secret Project.

* J-drama ''[[Sh15uya]]'' centres on a group of fifteen-year-olds trapped in a virtual replica of Shibuya.

* The premise of the [[Bonus Round]] on ''[[Nick Arcade]]''.

 

 

== Music ==

 

 

 

== Video Games ==

* The people of Tranquility Lane in ''[[Fallout 3]]'' are all in pods hooked up into the main computer a la The Matrix.

** In the add on ''Operation: Anchorage'' The player character can enter a military training simulation, it is obviously not real from the players perceptive but the computer generated characters see it as totally real.

*** McGraw also mentions that the sim had it's safety protocols turned off, meaning that getting killed in the sim results in your character going into cardiac arrest in the "real" world.

* Star Ocean: Till the End of Time {{spoiler|All of the [[Player Characters]] were actually [[NPC|NPCs]] in an [[MMORPG]].}}

* On ''[[Pokémon]]'', you store the titular monsters inside one. And items inside another. The anime is more sensible; Ash just teleports his mons to Professor Oak.

** Actually it's sensible either way, as in the games you're just teleporting the pokeball into storage; Not really digitalizing it.

== Web Original ==

* Merry, in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'', is a cyberpath who can interface with computer networks simply by being within a few feet of a powerful CPU hooked to the network. When she does this, she's "in" the computer network. She meets a Whateley Academy kid who can do almost as much as she can, but who prefers the ''[[Tron]]'' visuals for his version of cyberspace.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Re Boot]]''

* The entire premise of ''[[Code Lyoko]]''. Going further than just "connected", though, the heroes are physically transported into the virtual world.

* [[Scooby-Doo]] and his buds did the ''[[Tron]]'' version of this trope, being disassembled in the real world and dropped into a video game in ''Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase''.

** Same with ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'': In the episode "Hard Drive Courage", Courage's computer catches a virus and kidnaps Muriel into its digital world in the hopes of curing its "illness" as Courage goes to rescue her. Things like computer mice, [[Visual Pun|a "RAM"]] and a hard drive named Bill [[Homicide Machines|are out to kill Courage as well.]]

* This was a common plot in [[Animated Series]] from [[The Eighties]]:

* ''[[Johnny Test]]'' When {{spoiler|Susan and Mary develop a system for relieving boredom on a rainy day, by reliving The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe}}