It took Carmen about an hour to fully calm down from both the TV shows end and the bomb shell of a talk about death. By then Phineas had already drank his third cup of coffee and is about to finish his fourth along with a hastily made sandwich and a poor excuse of a salad he bought at a gas station. The time was currently around one in the morning but none of them had the urge to go to sleep for days now due to the upcoming project proposal meeting at the Kai-O foundation so they were stuck with working their brains off till dawn. Carmen sat at her desk writing all the ideas she was got from the show onto her research journal but was still stuck on the creation of her Free Will Protocol AI project proposal. She wanted to create complex AI characters that could learn from experiences so the idea of copying the character archetypes from the show wasn’t a bad idea. She just wished it was that easy to do tho.

The reason why she sympathized with the main characters so much was because their actions reflected her own in the aspect of making everyone happy. She fondly remembers the time when she had dreams of her own, but now the longer she looks back at those days, the more jealous she becomes of her perfect younger self. She had everything going for her. Yet now she’s already graduated, and she has no direction for her future. She can’t even pick what job she wants to work towards. She doesn’t even know if she can fully being a robotic engineer or become a video game maker or an animator. The career paths for her future were endless.

She soon picked herself up and walked towards her shelf to find a photo of her elementary school self with her mom in the district science fair. As she went to gently hold it in her hand, she smiled bitterly at herself.

“To think I wanted to be a Nobel prize winner in robotic engineering and now I can’t even get any project ideas without getting heartbroken. Figures.”

“You’re just like Satoshi when it comes to shows you know,” spoke Phineas in a low voice which caused Carmen to turn back to her laptop to see Phineas looking at her with a small smile.

Satoshi. An old childhood friend of Phineas who was a star astronaut for NASA’s space program on the moon base a few years ago. Everybody back then knew of the young astronaut who regularly lead rescue missions on the moon and would occasionally visit high schools to talk about the importance of team work.

He was also the older brother of her friend Keito but he doesn’t like to talk about him much these days. Not since the Moon Crasher incident.

“Really?,” asked Carmen curiously as she sat in her work chair while placing the laptop on her desk.

“Yeah he also had the tendency to get really attached to shows that we would watch when we were younger. Sometimes he would make me go with him for a movie premiere so he could rant about it for the next week with me. He especially loved shows surrounding the science fiction genre since he loved the idea of exploring space. So it’s okay to want to win a Nobel prize and to get emotionally invested into shows. That’s just how we people are in the end. Multi faceted.”

Phineas mention of his old friends having a similar love to shows like her made her feel a bit better since she had a hard time nowadays to figure out if her behavior was suited for a nineteen year old robotics protegee. Her gaze soon turned back to the photo in her hands. Her mother in the photo, who seemed to be just happy to be there for her. She still remembers how encouraging her mother was of her science project, even if it didn’t win any recognition or awards. She soon glanced over to a gold medal that she had won in her last year at high school during the annual STEM expo.

‘Even if I might never win a Nobel prize at least this is enough,’ she thought to herself happily.

She stood up from her chair and placed the photo back on the shelf before plopping herself back in her seat. She stared at the shows menu screen on her laptop for a few minutes as the gears started to turn in her head at rapid speed.

“I recognize that face anywhere. You thinking something up in that brain of yours kid?,” asked Phineas with a grin. He had witness his protegee brainstorm impressive projects long enough for him to recognize the look she would have when she came up with a new idea. Carmen nodded to him again as she continued to ramble to herself for a few more minutes.

“After watching the show, I noticed that people fly through space in giant mechs like they make in the Kai-O Foundation. People tend to model them in Hologlobe as cosmetics but never as vehicles due to their complex design. Yet I want to create something more…immersive.”

“How immersive do you want it to be?”

“I don’t know but I don’t want to control it from the outside that’s for sure.”

As she pondered to herself, she glanced back at her laptop screen to see it display the show trailer over and over again since she left it alone. The trailer showed the cyberpunk aspects of the show and highlighted a major technology present in it called “Pantheon”, which is said to be the most powerful mech in the entire show. A short scene in the trailer showed the main characters connecting to “Pantheon” through a headgear device called a gauntlet.

“Wait a minute! Why don’t I just make an actual mech?! It is technically just a giant robot. A giant space faring weaponized robot. But a robot none the less. I could make a world so I can text out real world situations with it by using physic simulations!”

She continued to bounce around her room in joy for a few minutes after coming up with the brilliant idea before she stopped in her tracks and slowly turned back around to face the laptop with a nervous face.

“But where should I even start?”

“Baby steps kid. We lay out the basics first before figuring out the hard parts. Now let’s plan this out shall we?,” said Phineas before he pulled up a hologram board on his side of the video call. Carmen exited out of the streaming service and put on her VR headset to connect with Phineas on the other side of the screen.

After brainstorming the first steps of her simulation for a bit Phineas had to leave to go to an emergency meeting leaving Carmen to figure out the rest of her plan on her own. After a while of brainstorming by looking around her room for ideas she finds herself facing the same wall where she placed her moon poster on. Her eyes soon widen with a glint of determination as she realizes the endless possibilities that are open to her.

“Of course. Why try to go to the moon if you could just make one? I could just test the thing on a virtual moon!”

She soon stood up and grabbed a red pen and a sticky note from her shelf before quickly scribbling something down. After she finished sketching on the note, she walked over and placed it on the poster. The sticky note showed a quick sketch of her in an astronaut suit holding a flag with a lotus flower on it. One of her mother’s favorite flowers.

She stepped back to admire her work.

“Don’t you worry, guys. I know what I’m going to do now. I’m going to take us to the moon!”

She quietly cheered to herself so she wouldn’t wake up her family. Now all she needed to do was make the sim. It’s going to take some time and effort, but once she makes it, everything will be alright.

Hopefully.

Now all she needed to do was build the damn thing and submit the simulation into the Cybrim X NASA collaboration program which was easier said than done. Thousands of people were going to apply to the program and some of them have more experience with VR technology than she did since she barely got her VR headset two years ago. She had to wait for the prices to go down a bit for her to at least get an old model with the proper features she needed.

She sketched and re-sketched the environments and characters for the simulation and started modeling right away. She had 3D modeling experience from a few years ago when she wanted to become an animator before the animation industry plummeted but she still found a use for it during her robotics project.

Next came the layout and rendering which took a lot out of her pc but she managed to pull through without her computer crashing due to the high quality graphics card her mentor got her as an early birthday gift. She had her own equipment back at the Kai-O foundation for her work but she wasn’t allowed to take it home due to security concerns and the fact she wasn’t a high level clearance employee yet. Phineas was at disappointing she wasn’t allowed a higher clearance level which would have allowed her to come along to help him during research studies abroad but at least she was allowed to visit the moon base so it was fine with her.

Then there came the hard part. Actually coding the goddamn simulation.

It’s common knowledge among people that programming simulations isn’t easy. Well, at least if you’re a novice. Unfortunately Carmen Monez is one of those novices.

“I don’t even know were to start,” muttered Carmen.

She sat at her work desk in the middle of the night with the only light coming from her laptop. Dozens of books ranging from data to virtual reality are scattered about her room in an organized mess. A journal next to her laptop is filled to the brim with notes relating to environments to features she wishes to implement into her sim.

If only she can manage to make it in the first place.

After staring at the blank code environment on her laptop for over twenty minutes Carmen sighs and lays her head on the keyboard. A row of L’s start appearing on the screen. Even the laptop is aware of her frustration.

“How to people do this stuff for work?!,” excalimed Carmen, frustrated with herself.

You see Carmen is one of those creators who love the initial stage of production needed to make an invention but would rather sleep for a hundred years and do the tedious work needed to finish it. In short she loves to write but hates to edit. Thankfully she has a career in robotics so the coding segment would move on rather quickly if she puts her entire focus on it.

And what she means by her entire focus is barely leaving her house for an entire week in exchange to be stuck in her bedroom with nothing but herself and her laptop to keep her company.

Her mother and twin sister had already left for California to work on a new construction site and wouldn’t be back for a few weeks. They had originally left for work a month ago but returned on the night of her and her twins birthday to stay the weekend before heading back again. That meant they weren’t able to visit the moon base together like Carmen had previously planned which was sad but predictable. Her other two siblings that lived with her dad were busy dealing with work along with the youngest attending their last year of high school so they visited once in a blue moon which she was fine with her.

“This is fine,” said Carmen to herself as she sat at the empty living room couch while working on her laptop. The house was uncomfortably quiet that morning since it’s almost been a week since she was seen anyone in person and couldn’t really go out due to her lack of a car and drivers license.

In reality the loneliness was starting to hit a bit and she soon had to resort to talking to the family pets which was crazy once she thought about it but she didn’t care at this point.

She just only hoped her invention will turn out alright. It had to.