Chapter 18: The Registration Ends, The Curtain Rips
The room was quiet in a way that wasn't natural.
There were no wires humming overhead. No data-pads tapping against tables. No idle side-chatter from assistants. Only the distant whir of the air system and the cold breath of finality that came when something important had been decided—just not in your favour.
Chris stood beside Fredrick Nguyen as the verdict came down. The walls of the IP Oversight chamber, smooth and unadorned, seemed to press inward with invisible weight. The morning's technical revelations still echoed in his mind—the piggyback device, the impossible override, the way technology seemed to recognize him in ways that defied explanation.
Fredrick closed the folder in front of him with deliberate care, his eyes resting on the Yang delegation with the detached focus of a man who had already decided the matter long before the session began.
"The game IP is eligible," he said, his voice clear and official. "The system recognizes your design as valid under civilian-grade simulation parameters. You may proceed with the registry filing."
Helen Yang gave a small nod. Her expression didn't shift. She had expected as much; it wasn't the complete victory they wanted, but it was enough to live with.
Fredrick's tone shifted slightly as he continued. "However, regarding access to Deep VR pods, or any Class V immersive platform—this office has no authority to guarantee compatibility or protection. Those systems fall under broader infrastructure rights. Legacy pod models remain federally owned. The current Deep VR generation is managed under the House of the Bear. Use of those systems, in any form, will be entirely at your own risk."
Helen didn't flinch. "It's acceptable," she said calmly. "We've secured enough."
Rob gathered their hardware quietly, his jaw tight with frustration. The black prism that had caused so much trouble disappeared into a padded case, its mysterious humming finally silenced. Sarah lingered a step behind, her eyes drifting somewhere toward the centre of the table, not quite meeting Chris's gaze.
Chris watched the device being packed away and felt something twist in his chest. Whatever had happened when he touched it—that moment of recognition, of being called "Master"—it was connected to the other anomalies. Wall Pod, the demo plaza, and now this. A pattern he couldn't ignore, even if he couldn't understand it.
Fredrick gestured toward the door. "This concludes the registration process."
Helen bowed slightly, stiff and formal. Rob mirrored her. Sarah hesitated, but offered nothing beyond a polite nod before following them out.
The chamber door sealed shut with a soft hydraulic click.
The rest of the workday passed like fog in Chris's mind. He helped Fredrick with casework, filed archival summaries, cross-checked names against minor House license disputes. The tasks were meaningless—bureaucratic busywork designed to keep junior clerks occupied while the real decisions were made elsewhere. Nobody cared what he thought. No one mentioned what had happened during the session. Sarah didn't return.
But Chris couldn't shake the memory of that moment when he'd touched the piggyback device. The surge of recognition, the way the system had responded to him personally. It was the same enhancement he'd triggered at Wall Pod, the same impossible realism that had transformed the Yang twins' crude simulation into something that traumatized a child.
He was the common factor. The variable that turned ordinary VR systems into something that defied every safety protocol the Republic had established.
By the time the clock edged past four, the stale lights had left his head buzzing. He considered skipping dinner entirely, collapsing into bed, and letting exhaustion drag him under.
That was when the message came.
A quiet ping on the phone Jamie had given him.
"Hey Chris. It's Mark. Want to catch up at the end of the week? Go out for a drink or something?"
Chris stared at it for a moment, remembering his old colleague from Wall Pod. Mark had been struggling with his own bureaucratic problems—VR pod certification applications lost in House of the River paperwork, months of waiting for approvals that never came. Maybe talking to someone who understood the Republic's casual cruelties would help clear his head.
Then typed back: "Sure. Meet you at six. You choose the place."
Mark's Escape
The pod hummed around Mark like a failing heart, its fans stuttering with the exhaustion of overworked machinery. The cockpit materialized in stuttering fragments—neon city stretching in broken strips across his field of vision, buildings flickering between wireframe and detail like a fever dream refusing to resolve.
For a moment, the throttle worked. The jet roared with simulated power, and Mark let himself believe. He was flying. He was free. He was something more than a logistics worker grinding through another day of moving cargo for people who barely acknowledged his existence.
Then the sky warped. Buildings twisted between rendering states, their surfaces crawling with texture errors that made his eyes water. The jet's left wing dragged behind the rest of the aircraft, moving through digital molasses while warning klaxons screamed malfunction codes he couldn't interpret.
Mark gritted his teeth and pushed the throttle harder. "Come on, just hold together for five minutes—"
A missile warning blared too long, its tone stretching into electronic screams. The enemy drone ahead shattered not in a clean explosion, but in jagged fragments of corrupted light that hung in the air like broken glass. The game kept running, but wrong. Always wrong.
"I paid for this," he hissed, slamming the throttle forward again. The response came three seconds too late, momentum building like cold honey while enemy fire traced lazy arcs around his unresponsive aircraft. "It's mine. My money. My escape."
The console flickered, cockpit lights strobing in patterns that hurt to watch. His jet dissolved into broken pixels mid-turn, leaving him floating in empty sky while error messages cascaded across his vision like digital rain.
"I just want one game," he rasped, striking the control panel with his palm hard enough to crack the plastic housing. "One flight after work. One place where it feels like I matter. That's all."
Then the HUD chimed with mechanical politeness, its tone as sterile as a medical diagnosis:
"Detected outdated runtime dependencies. Please contact the House of the Bear's Certified VR Services for firmware alignment and official patching."
Another message followed immediately:
"System performance degraded due to unverified firmware. Your experience may be limited."
The words hung like mockery in the failing simulation.
Mark barked a laugh that cracked into something darker. "Why do I need the Bear's blessing just to play a game? Why do I need a clan's permission to fix software I bought with my own credits?"
The jet stuttered through another impossible manoeuvre, controls sliding a half-second behind his inputs. His hands trembled on the stick, six months of saved credits and broken promises crystallizing into pure frustration.
"I tried!" he shouted at the failing cockpit, voice climbing toward hysteria. "I filled out the forms! I spoke to their liaison! Three months of waiting and nothing—nothing but silence and 'we'll review your application' and 'please be patient with the process'!"
He yanked himself out of the pod, breath ragged, sweat slicking his skin despite the apartment's chill. The cramped room pressed in like a cage, walls too close, ceiling too low, everything designed for someone smaller and more grateful than he'd become.
"They want loyalty!" he screamed at the empty air, his voice cracking with months of suppressed rage. "Respect! Submission to rules I don't even understand! How can I give loyalty to something that won't even acknowledge I exist?"
His fist slammed into the wall. Skin split. Pain blossomed, but barely registered through the white-hot fury that had been building for months. Blood streaked the gray paint.
"I don't know their customs! No one explains how to belong! I follow every regulation, learn protocols that make no sense, try to navigate a system designed for people who grew up inside it, and it's never enough!"
He staggered, chest heaving with the effort of sustaining rage that had nowhere to go. His words became ragged, torn from a throat that hadn't screamed in years.
"I just want to be treated like I'm real! Like I matter! Like I'm not trespassing through someone else's life!"
The pod whined behind him, its fans struggling with heat buildup, warning lights bleeding through seams in the casing. He turned on it with wild eyes, seeing not a machine but a symbol of everything that had been denied him.
"I don't want to cause trouble!" He kicked the side panel, denting the plastic shell. "I don't want to mock your culture!" Another kick, harder, metal groaning under the impact. "I just want to sit in this room and fly a simulation without fearing that Bear House officials will break down my door over hardware from a decade ago!"
The pod groaned, warped plastic giving way under repeated impacts. His knuckles dripped red across the console he'd tried so hard to keep pristine.
"Why is every door locked with no keyhole? Why is silence the only answer I ever get?"
His throat tore with the scream that followed. Raw, brutal, it echoed against thin walls that had absorbed months of quiet desperation. The sound contained everything he couldn't say during business hours—every ignored application, every polite dismissal, every reminder that he was foreign, unwelcome, barely tolerated.
"Is anyone there? Someone! Anyone! Tell me I'm too loud! Tell me to shut up! Just prove I still exist in this country!"
He dropped to his knees, blood smearing across the floor tiles. His arms hung limp, the fight draining out of him with every ragged breath. His vision swam with tears he hadn't realized were falling.
"I'm so tired of being alone," he whispered to the empty room, voice breaking into nothing. "I just want a normal life. I want joy. I want people who see me. I want to wake up and matter to someone."
He pressed his forehead to the cold floor, the rage collapsing into hollow exhaustion. "Please. Don't ignore me anymore."
The pod wheezed behind him, its fans cycling down as overheated processors triggered emergency shutdowns. The air purifier carried on its quiet work, filtering out the scent of his sweat and frustration. The lights dimmed automatically as evening protocols engaged, leaving him kneeling in gathering darkness.
The Republic remained silent. As it always had. As it always would, for people like him who'd made the mistake of believing that effort alone might earn them a place in the machine.
Outside, the city hummed with its usual efficiency. Transit pods glided along magnetic rails. Citizens moved through their evening routines with the confidence of people who belonged. The great engine of the Republic continued its smooth operation, powered by the certainty that everyone inside it had earned their place.
Mark knelt on the floor of his failing apartment, surrounded by the wreckage of dreams that had been too small to matter to anyone but him. The broken VR pod sparked once, then went dark, taking with it the last pretence that he might find escape in digital worlds.
Tomorrow he would clean up the blood, repair what could be repaired, and try again to navigate systems designed to exclude him. But tonight, in the space between one rejection and the next, he allowed himself to grieve for the simple human desire to be seen, acknowledged, and valued.
The Republic's silence pressed down on him like deep water, and Mark finally understood that drowning could happen slowly, one ignored application at a time, until even screaming produced no sound at all.