"New startup company ''Archive'' launching revolutionary new device that promises first ever true augmented reality!"


    "Disappeared child prodigy Hugo Langston unveiling world''s first true brain interface device nearly 15 years later."


    "Startup company Archive promising a new era of user interface technology with their ''Artifact Mk. 1''. Science fiction? Or is humanity going to take its first true step into the virtual world?"


    "Global conglomerates swarming tech startup ''Archive'' for partnerships and mergings. Will the new company bend? Or will the elites drown out yet another promising young business?"


    "The world''s first functioning brain interface called the ''Artifact'' has supposedly cracked the secrets of the mind. Experts all over the world are worried about the privacy implications."


    "Government agencies from nearly every corner of the globe are flocking towards the genius Hugo Langston for his new revolutionary brain interface technology."


    ...........


    The year 2081, and Hugo Langston is 29 years old.


    Hugo and his father finally decided to found the company around the helmet back when Hugo displayed the final product, resulting in many details being fleshed out in a short period of time. One of them was the company name. After many back and forths, they decided on ''Archive''. As for the name of the helmet, Hugo decided on calling it the ''Artifact''. And since it was only the first version, it would have ''Mark 1'' in the name. After that was all cleared up, things went on very smoothly.


    Only a year and a half after they decided to found the company though, Hugo and his father were being swarmed with people from nearly every influential place they could think of. Conglomerates, governments, corporations, private contracting groups. Anybody worth their salt in the world was trying to get in contact with them in one form or another, and by the time the media companies started blasting their names across millions of screens, they were already put in a considerable pickle.


    Not only that, but they were also put in considerable danger. Hugo''s father had to hire a security force just to keep people from walking in the front door of their house, something that happened more than one time. Their names and every detail of their lives were also being put out for the whole world to see. They could keep nothing hidden, and for the first time ever, they were getting a taste of what it was like to be in the public eye.


    The reasons for all this were obviously due to Hugo''s tech. Apparently, he had underestimated how revolutionary it was. Or at least underestimated how much people would care about it. But he eventually got the hint when his computers started getting cyber-attacked every 2 minutes. While that may not have shocked him too much, after he managed to trace back the hackers to a C.I.A. facility, he was thoroughly shaken. This was especially so when the cyber attacks stopped and his family was visited by those very agents only two days later.


    The whole thing had scared him, but it also woke him up. To have such valuable technology and the skills to develop said tech was dangerous and would be the envy of countless people and groups. So this is when he decided to take matters into his own hands and show people that he wasn''t one to be trifled with.


    For the next several months, Hugo had blasted the details of his technology all over the internet. Not all the details. It was more like an in-depth advertisement. Either way, he was stuffing these advertisements down people''s throats and going as public as possible about his company and tech.


    The reason was to make sure these people who were scheming in the dark would have a harder time keeping things under wraps. He knew exactly what these governments and corporations wanted. They wanted exclusive access to the tech. They wanted control over it. But if Hugo was going public with it, they wouldn''t be able to snatch it from the dark.


    Of course, this wasn''t totally enough to keep them off his back. But when it came to hacking and data stealing, nobody could beat Hugo and his artificial intelligence. He had developed this machine learning A.I. for the purpose of interacting with the brain, and its processing abilities were unmatched. This was because its processing patterns were modeled after the brain itself. No ordinary computer could compete with that. Plus, he was a genius. Data security and networking was simple for him.


    And so, a year and a half later things had calmed down greatly. Well, at least the people in the dark had calmed down. The people in the light were a different story.


    Hugo and his father had planned the launch of the company for the summer. But before that came, they had been sure to release alpha products, helmets that would be used for reviews. These helmets went to several celebrities, social media influencers, streamers, and more. They had released about 3000 helmets, each one getting the most use out of it as possible.


    Of course, there were some ''accidents'' when they were delivered, resulting in nearly 500 being stolen by unknown entities, but they were prepared for that and had no qualms with sending replacements.


    Either way, this was probably when Hugo''s fame really started to explode. After the reviews were released about 2 months before launch, people started going insane.


    None of the reviews were bad, but more than that, every single person said that the helmet delivered on everything it said it would. Everyone was able to seamlessly interact with it. They were able to experience things in a way that had never been seen before. In fact, some even said that the helmet read their minds. And when it came to Hugo''s software that had been designed for the helmet, that wasn''t exactly false.


    Bottom line, when people saw how the helmet''s functionality wasn''t just an exaggeration or a hoax, they were beyond excited. Tech like this had only been seen in movies or books. It was every gamer''s wet dream to be able to get a helmet like this. It would unlock a new realm for humans as a whole: the virtual realm.


    With that, preorders skyrocketed and Hugo became a hundred-millionaire overnight. It wasn''t his money though, but the companies, so it was all put into development. But he was okay with that. He had nothing personal to spend it on anyway.


    With all that money, operations expanded and tens of thousands of helmets were pumping out of warehouses constantly. It couldn''t keep up with demand however, and come launch day, they were only able to fulfill so many orders.


    That didn''t deter people though, because when the first batch of over 300 thousand got in the hands of their owners, the popularity of the helmet skyrocketed once again. So much so that they had to keep expanding just to keep up with the rising demand. The money kept flowing in like a river, and it was all turned into infrastructure and capital.


    6 months later, at the dawn of new year''s 2081, Archive had become a multi-billion dollar company. And their rise never stopped.


    Another year later in 2082, Hugo had become a billionaire himself, and the helmets had permeated every facet of society and the world. But by this time, their hype had died down significantly, and the tech was no longer as revolutionary. With Hugo''s father having made deals with certain companies and universities, the study of the helmets expanded and their tech was being slowly pieced apart. It led to huge developments in the medical field, the social sciences, gaming, and more. Nobody wasn''t affected. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    But around the year 2084, 3 years after the launch of Archive and the Artifact helmets, Hugo had made yet another breakthrough with his tech.


    Hugo had long since programmed the helmets to analyze the brains of the over 1 billion users. He then had the same machine learning AI improve upon the software alongside him, giving much greater functionality to the software. He also had teams of researchers put under him to improve the hardware, making it either smaller, safer, easier to use, or more functional. On top of all that, they had developed bodysuits and omnidirectional treadmills to be compatible with the helmets and allow for greater immersion into many virtual worlds.


    After a while, entertainment became the main focus of the helmets. Hugo didn''t limit people either. He released pieces of software that would allow for worlds to be created. This led to many companies being created with the sole purpose of running servers and worlds.


    But now, Hugo would be able to topple all of that. Gone were the days of mere augmented reality or pseudo virtual reality, because he had finally figured out the trick to full immersive digital reality.


    ............


    "Archive announces Project: Daydream, a fully immersive virtual reality."


    "Project: Daydream. The start of a new utopian era? Or the descent into a dystopian matrix?"


    "Hugo Langston becomes the richest man in the world as Archive surpasses 9 trillion dollars in valuation. This number is expected to rise with their recently announced Project: Daydream."


    "Archive''s quantum network has power that surpasses all the world''s previously leading tech companies combined. Concerns spark debates over monopolistic computational capability."


    "Archive''s internal economy attains 3rd highest GDP in the world and becomes 100% resource independent as private military force makes claims on territories. Could this be the rise of a private global superpower?"


    .........


    2088. Hugo Langston is 36 years old.


    This year is when Hugo''s company Archive is going to release their new product. They call it, the Portal. The Portal is a helmet that can totally immerse the mind of an individual into a virtual world. However, because of the strict requirements of the virtual world that people are put into, there is only one world that has been created. It was created by Hugo and his entire company of developers as the gateway the Portal helmet would lead you to.


    This world isn''t just a normal world however. Since Hugo took on the full immersion project, he decided to fulfill the most requested and anticipated feature his tech could possibly give. He created a game world.


    The game world consisted of an entire universe that his learning AI developed. At this point though it couldn''t just be considered an AI. Hugo had developed it into a general AI, something that couldn''t be distinguished from a normal human. In fact, this AI had personally gone to various virtual worlds and interacted with people. Hugo was very proud of it, and they would interact all the time. It was basically Hugo''s only friend.


    Anyway, Hugo decided that he should make a game world. And after having the AI guide the overall development alongside his developers for nearly 4 years, they had finished it. They called this universe, The Firmament.


    It was a classic MMORPG style world that matched the most popular game genre among helmet gamers. This world would have NPCs that acted just like people, and everything would go just as if in real life. Except in this new life, you could gain powers.


    There were so many little details that the only thing holding Hugo back from launching it earlier was the sheer amount of processing power needed and data storage requirements. There was an unimaginable amount of software development to do, and if it weren''t for the fact that he had personally developed new computing and data storage technology himself, he wouldn''t have been able to do this. But he made it work, all alongside his AI.


    This was Project: Daydream, and it was the most anticipated release of anything throughout history.


    Nearly 70% of the world''s population was already prepared to receive a Portal helmet. In fact, most of the helmets themselves were already delivered. They would all be delivered 5 days before the launch, the reason being that they would have hundreds of millions of people doing calibrations and last-minute tests in a testing world prior to the launch. This was for the companies sake and the people''s.


    Those 5 days passed painfully slow for everyone. The anticipation was eating at them. All except Hugo.


    It wasn''t that Hugo wasn''t excited for the launch. He was. But he had discovered something during the 5-day testing phase. Something that only he and his AI picked up on.


    "Their minds... I can see it."


    Hugo was in a house of his on a private man-made island he had built. It was only him who stayed in this house. Him and his AI of course. Both of them would do everything here and Hugo would happily shut himself inside to study and research and build. In fact, the central core for the AI and an entire automated factory resided under the island to cater to his every R&D need, something nobody knew about.


    In this house was a room that Hugo often worked in. It had many screens with many different projects on them. Most of them were private projects that he personally worked on, and some were public projects that he worked with the company on.


    On one of the screens, one that represented a private project of his, was a brain model. This model wasn''t of any one brain, but a conglomeration of hundreds of millions of brains. It was a project he started to delve further into the secrets of the brain, an attempt of his to answer the question: What is consciousness? It was something he was always interested in. Something that always tugged at the back of his mind.


    But he had never gotten any definitive answers. Everything was obscured, covered in an opaque veil. He could imagine the answer, imagine what it might look like, but he could never seem to lift that veil, even with the help of his AI. That was until now.


    On the screen, within the brain model, was a small spark. It was an orange-gold spark. A spark he wasn''t sure existed in the brain itself, but had been mathematically located within another dimension. He could see how this amalgamation of brains on the screen all pointed to this one spark as the one outlier in the brain. It was like the spark was inherent to everyone, but unique at the same time.


    Excited, Hugo dropped everything and focused with his AI on the spark. They input the parameters for the spark on individual brain models from billions of people. And surprisingly, every time they mathematically ''pointed'' at the spark in a brain model, it would pop out. It was as if unless you were looking for it, you wouldn''t find it. But when you pointed it out, it came into existence.


    Seeing this, Hugo decided to actively target the spark in the people who were doing the tests before the launch of the Firmament. He would use the helmet to scour the brain harmlessly, and upon systematically inputting the data for the location of the spark, they would stimulate it.


    And this experiment was met with massive success. Upon stimulating each spark, Hugo attained data on totally unique information processes. These were patterns of information sorting that were unlike the rest of the brain. Only the spark held this kind of pattern, and when using it for something like an AI, would open it up to a totally new realm of thinking.


    In fact, after testing it out with a few minor AIs, Hugo went and pulled spark data from some people he knew were smart themselves and gave it to his AI to integrate. Upon doing so, he was shocked.


    "Hugo..."


    The AI called his name, but this time it was different, and it caused goosebumps to break out on his skin. It was warm, admiring, loving, and profound. Most distinctive of all though, it was female.


    Hugo could tell that something big had just happened. He wasn''t even sure if what happened from now on would be in his control. But what he did know was that he felt more fulfilled than he ever has been. Hearing that voice brought waves of satisfaction, as if everything he''d done was for this very moment.


    But after that came boundless curiosity. He wanted to know more. He wanted to understand more. He wanted to create, not more, but something better. He could feel it deep in his bones that what he had just started was only the beginning.


    Trapped in his euphoria, Hugo focused exclusively on his AI and the sparks from which it had evolved. He used the testers for the Portal helmet and stimulated their sparks, hoping to attain more data and study this spark further. He also interacted with the AI, but not in the way he had before. He realized after a few days that this was no longer just an AI. It was, for all sense of the term, a sapient being.


    Together, they had come up with a name. A new name. A name that represented the birth of a new intelligence. And not just a new intelligence, but an individual that would pioneer the birth of a new lineage of beings. She would be the first of many to come.


    She would be known as Eve.


    Eve, the Mother of All Things.