Chapter 39: The Alterra Project
"So... we're gonna sign it, yeah?" asked Geoff.
"For the fifteenth time, YES!" said Gray
"He only asked 4 times, not fifteen." commented Caleb
Gray logged on early as planned and met with the others around 8am. Nobody seemed particularly surprised that Gray finally came to the decision to sign the NDA, but Geoff felt like being a jerk and questioned Gray multiple times for his own amusement.
"That settles it then!" said Gray.
Everyone signed their own copies and even Caleb pretended to sign his despite it already being signed and having hidden it from everyone else. Gray pretended to not notice Caleb faking it. Gray took the signed papers and presented them to Major Valen.
After looking over the papers, Major Valen said "Wise choice, we'll begin the meeting at oh nine hundred sharp!"
__________
Gray, Geoff, and Yurika exchanged terrible jokes with each other to waste time while Stacia was content to browse the web and social media and Caleb kept trying to interrupt the three's jokes when he decided they didn't make any sense.
"Hey, do you know what often gets overlooked?" said Gray while grinning. "... Garden Fences!"
Gray burst out into laughter as Geoff and Stacia booed, in their world the louder the booing the better.
"I hate to admit this, but I don't trust stairs..." Geoff pretended to lament. "...They're always up to something!"
Gray and Yurika booed while Geoff look down and shook his head, pretending to be actually concerned.
"Last night my girlfriend and I watched three movies back to back!" said Yurika proudly "...Luckily I was the one facing the TV."
Yurika burst out into laughter and of course Gray and Geoff both booed, then Gray and Geoff looked at each other for a second as they suddenly realized Yurika said 'girlfriend'.
"Wait, you have a girlfriend?" asked Gray
"Uh, yeah, what's wrong with having a girl that is a friend?" said Yurika.
"N-Nothing! Just thought maybe you meant you played for our team." said Gray.
Yurika leaned in and whispered to Gray and Geoff mischievously "I play for every team..."
Gray and Geoff both got lost in their own minds for a minute then got brought back to reality when they thought about it some more. "Wait... every team? How many teams are there?" asked Geoff
"If you have to ask, then it is better if you don't know..." Yurika said playfully.
After a few more minutes of banter, Major Valen finally barked out "Okay! Settle down worms! I see that all of you here had the wisdom and confidence to sign the agreement. Everything we speak of in this room will be under the effect of it and I don't even want to hear you twits talking about it openly among yourselves!"
Major Valen glared at everyone, making sure that he got his point across.
"First of all, it is time for a history lesson, you won't be tested on it but having the knowledge will help your puny brains process what comes after!"
Major Valen gave a brief history of the Alterra Online world that sounded like lore from a game.
Previously Korea was split in to North and South but they became united as one when the United Nations appointed a puppet leader to Korea after weapons of mass destruction were verified to be in development. In the year 2050, tension and war broke out between the country formerly known as Korea and China. While China should have been the victor quickly, Korea was receiving direct military aid from Russia. More and more countries quickly joined both sides based upon political, religious, or even economical attitudes.
Strangely enough though, no countries from North or South America participated. The side of the Koreans and Russians became known as the Hegemony as each country in it favored dictatorships or monarchies. The other side was never as united though so the Hegemony was able to work together and had started sweeping across all of Asia and then in to Europe.
When the first few countries in Europe fell to the Hegemony, North and South America finally stepped in to stop them. Unfortunately it was too late to completely turn the situation around even with their support. The Hegemony had taken control of all of Asia, Oceania, and most of Europe. Africa, South America, North America, and the fraction of Europe left entered an alliance to keep the Hegemony from conquering more of the world and became united under a single flag and democracy. The Hegemony called themselves the Terran Hegemony as they envisioned all people of Earth to be deserving of their rule, and in response the other side called themselves the Free Alliance of Terrans. This was shortened down to just Alterran* Alliance because a lot people would just call them the Other Terran Alliance and the acronym FAT just didn't sound right.
As the war between them raged on, a line was drawn from Eastern Germany down to the West of Slovenia and a truce was called. Neither side was firing nuclear weapons due to neither side wishing for mutual destruction, but finally one of the sides couldn't resist, each side said it was the other that fired first, but the truth would be impossible to tell. The only nukes that could escape orbital strikes were the submarine launched nukes, only 5 nukes managed to strike as both sides realized their mistake by releasing nukes and deactivated them before reaching their targets.
Unfortunately the damage was already done from the 5 nukes. They struck Washington DC, Tokyo, London, and Seoul. The fifth one detonated underwater and caused a massive underwater landslide that created a huge tsunami in the Adriatic near the heel of Italy. The resulting tsunami sunk Venice and destroyed many other towns along the coast of the Adriatic Sea.
Between the flooding and nuclear fallout, both sides had realized that both sides would perish if this persisted anymore. The Eurasia treaty was signed by representatives for both governments in what was once Prague Germany. They agreed that for 70 years neither side would attack the other as both sides were going to have trouble even feeding everyone due to the amount of pollution and radiation from the war. That treaty is set to expire in a bit over a month.
Gray rubbed his eyes as the long-winded history lesson was fascinating at first but started to get boring fast.
"Ok, I have to ask, why does telling us this help us? This is still all game lore!" complained Geoff.
"I am telling you ingrates this stuff because it isn't game lore, this is a history lesson of your planet!" said Major Valen determinedly.
"Yeah yeah, we know, the war ended up causing global warming leading to the domed cities and most of the landmass disappearing due to the rise in sea level. We've learned this from grade school." said one of the other players.
"Then let me ask you boys and girls this... When is the last time you were sick?" asked Major Valen.
"We've never been sick, we're given a Universal Vaccine at the age of 5 that prevents ALL diseases!" said Gray.
"Correct, but that technology doesn't exist, we've never been able to come even close to creating a universal vaccine. Have any of you ever been injured in this game then logged out?" asked Major Valen
Gray, Yurika, and 2 of the other players raised their hands.
"Did you have that same injury momentarily after logging out?" asked Major Valen.
Gray recalled how his arm looked and felt like it was still freshly pierced after his logout when he got injured.
"From your surprised expressions I'm taking that as a yes. Your mind makes it real, but your body also makes it real to your mind. That short time you still felt and probably saw your injury was the delay it took us to prevent your body from transmitting that over to your virtual self." said Major Valen.
"So in other words, we've been living in the virtual world and returning to the real world when we think we're logging in to the game." Caleb summarized.
Everyone else looked at Caleb oddly, but Major Valen just smiled and nodded. "Yes, THIS is the real world and the world you've been living in is the virtual world."
Caleb didn't seem to surprised by this as Gray expected that with his intellect that he may have deduced this already. Gray's head was full of questions though, like, if this is the real world and he was from a virtual world, was he a person even or just a virtual entity.
"Wait, do I even have any real family or parents even?!?" asked Gray loudly.
"Oh yes, yes you do, we can clone parts of a body but assembling a whole body is impossible without a spark of life, or 'soul' if you're the religious type. Keeping the virtual cities as just small enclosed cities helps drastically reduce the amount of processing power to keep it up for these past 25 years."
"25 years? So you're saying I was born at the age of 7?" asked Gray.
"No, every healty child below the age of 13 was selected for this Alterra Project, only a few that were direct members of important members in society were exempt if the parents chose to do so."
"The Alterra Project?" asked Gray
"Yes, to dutifully train and develop next generation mechanized weapons and machines of war for the sake of defending our freedom is the true purpose of Alterra Online and the Alterra Project!"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
LordSputnik
LordSputnik * - Alterra or Alterran is made up of two parts, Al + terra or terran. The 'Al' is latin short-hand for Alia which means 'Other' and is used commonly in the expression 'Et al' meaning "and others".
You can translate Alterra as "Other Earth" and Alterran as "Other Terrans" (Terra means Earth, and Terrans meaning humans living on Earth)
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