SOTF: Cyber: Setting, Location, Virtual Environment, & Abduction Information

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This thread contains all information about the setting, location, virtual environment, and abduction for SOTF: Cyber. For additional information and to ask questions, check the SOTF: Cyber Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) thread.

Table of Contents

• Setting Information
  • The World & Universe Timeline
  • The Present Day
  • • Modern Cyber Reality
  • • Cyber Reality & Video Games
  • • Cyber Reality & Education
• Location Information
  • San Jose, California
  • Sycamore High School
  • Senior Class 12-B
• Virtual Environment Information
  • Avatars
  • Backpacks
  • The HUD
• Abduction Information
  • The Abduction & Real World Events

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Setting Information

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The World & Timeline

SOTF: Cyber takes place in a world very similar to our own. The timeline of the version is almost identical to that of our baseline reality. However, minor changes to the timeline began in 2008 (with the election of a fictional stand-in as President, rather than Barack Obama), and more significant changes in 2010 (when the titular Cyber Reality technology entered the public eye). Most events that predate 2010 can be assumed to have happened the same—or similarly—to our baseline reality.

In 2008, a man named Louie Sarratt, a United States Senator from Illinois (equivalent to Barack Obama), won the nomination of the Democratic Party; soon after, he was elected to the Oval Office on a campaign of hope and change and became America's first African-American President. He would go on to hold this position for two terms and is looked upon somewhat favorably in hindsight—although with some die-hard enemies.

In 2010, a massive revolution in technology took place. The Cyber Reality Device (CRD)—an advancement upon Virtual Reality—was unveiled to the public to wild acclaim. The technology, invented by two men, Professor Timothy Fowler, and Elliott Kempner, quickly started a technological revolution; their shared, co-founded company, Interface, went public, where it experienced massive financial growth and rapid adoption.

President Louie Sarratt quickly saw the potential of the new technology and began to promote it; with the backing of members of both parties, several laws—which allowed Cyber Reality technology to become widespread—were made and signed into law. However, this came at the cost of much of his domestic agenda due to a sudden and violent backlash from swing voters concerned with governmental overreach.

Following an election that, to this day, is still contentious, a New York real-estate mogul named Hannibal Garrett (equivalent to Donald Trump), a Republican candidate was elected in 2016 to the nation's highest office on a platform of right-wing populism. Garrett also promoted Cyber Reality technology; however, the common consensus is that he had little personal interest in it and only sought to ride the technology's wave of popularity.

Around that time, there was a schism between the founders of Cyber Reality technology over the future of it; the two, once friends, rapidly grew apart from one another over their differences in views. Timothy Fowler, the technology's principal inventor, chose to separate from Interface and sold his shares in the company—now worth massive sums of money—to Elliott Kempner; Fowler subsequently left the public eye.

Following an administration full of scandal and corruption—during which President Hannibal Garrett got impeached on two separate occasions—the incumbent administration was dethroned in the 2020 election; Roger Goodwin (equivalent to Joe Biden), former Vice-President to Louie Sarratt, was elected as the 46th President. He is an old, cautious man, primarily concerned with forging unity and continuing the status quo.

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The Present Day

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Modern Cyber Reality

In the present day, the use of Cyber Reality technology is ubiquitous; however, society has yet to unify in a singular mega-server, a concept known as "the Metaverse"—though some niche groups, especially in the cryptocurrency scene, have pushed heavily for the creation of such a thing—and instead makes use of Cyber Reality in their daily lives for work and pleasure while they remain otherwise geographically segregated.

Cyber Reality technology is used for instantaneous connection and socialization worldwide. However, most people spend most of their lives in the Real World, also known colloquially as "Meatspace," instead; the vast majority of the populace prefers to arrange physical interactions beyond the boundaries of their lives within the Virtual World, also known colloquially as "Cyberspace." Exceptions abound, but most people sustain an equilibrium of lifestyles between the natural and the artificial.

The entertainment industry was also notably disrupted by the invention of Cyber Reality, which allowed them to provide their services for fewer maintenance costs than they would otherwise be required to make if they were to run their businesses in the Real World. Virtual nightclubs (known as 'discos'), amusement parks, museums, and zoos are only a few examples of places anyone with access to Cyberspace can visit.

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Cyber Reality & Video Games

The video game market, surprisingly, was initially slow to adapt to the so-called "Cyber Revolution." Due to the complexity of Cyber Reality technology, many companies found it difficult to develop games that utilized it; also, there were fears that the Virtual World could become hard to distinguish from the Real World. As a result, there was some hesitance among game developers to make use of its immersive potential.

For example, the initial playtesting of first-person shooters made using Cyber Reality tech (colloquially known as 'ego-shooters') resulted in the development of symptoms similar to those of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In addition, there was an outcry from concerned citizens, who feared that these hyper-realistic 'ego-shooters' would allow dangerous individuals to train and familiarize themselves with weaponry.

Afraid of lawsuits, these incidents caused most game companies to halt the development of these games; the ones that did get completed were never released to the public in any markets due to government regulation. However, unrealistic games that were significantly different from the Real World, and games that utilize a third-person camera, were not found to have similar psychological effects on their players and are commonplace.

Older games with limited graphics also do not pose the same severe psychological dangers as modern games that utilize realistic graphics; research has shown that their visuals, which look unlike those of the Real World, allow for additional detachment from the events displayed. As a result, dedicated communities have ported several classic first-person games, such as DOOM, Half-Life, and Quake, to Cyber Reality.

Despite the legislative and moral prohibitions against realistic, first-person 'ego-shooters,' some have been released on darknet websites. Some of these are professionally-made prototypes, shelved by their developers and leaked on the dark web, or otherwise independently-produced underground products; servers for these games are hosted in secret by hidden operators. Due to their reputation as "murder simulators," there is a powerful stigma against playing these games, often viewed with horror.

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Cyber Reality & Education

Virtual schools—which take place fully or in part within Cyberspace, in a place called the Virtual Educational Environment (VEE)—have, for the most part, supplanted the operation of physical schools in a relatively short time. About 70% of state-funded schools are virtual Cyber Reality schools; only 30% are located entirely within a Real World physical location. However, most students from a given administrative district remain inside a geographically-defined area serviced by a given school.

A geographically-defined structure serves several purposes. For one, it permits the physical meetings of classes such as physical education and the operation of extracurricular activities—such as sports teams—that benefit from being held outside the Virtual Educational Environment. In addition, grouping students based on their geographical location helps reduce the financial cost of server operation; this grouping also ensures that every student can maintain a better connection to the network.

Cyber Reality schools operate under federal guidelines that require a general adherence to the physics and 'look' of reality; this guideline is called the Realism Threshold Policy (RTP). The government established this policy to make sure that young adults and children do not psychologically disconnect from the somatic consequences of their having physical selves before they are old enough to make informed decisions concerning their lifestyles—in the eyes of the state, at any rate.

Cyber Reality schools, thus, emulate reality; however, their nature as virtual spaces, rather than physical ones, allows them a bounty of resources they can easily simulate as needed. Most schools can, with proper allotments for staff and preparation, provide adequate facilities and detailed instruction for their students across diverse fields, everything from Agriculture to Robotics, at an advanced level.

At the same time, due to their high-level graphics, Cyber Reality schools can maintain a grounded and sophisticated simulacrum of reality that would not be jarring to connect to after spending a weekend in the Real World or other Cyber Lifestyle ("Cyberlife") locales, which prevents users, students and faculty alike, from feeling any amount of discomfort or stress as they move seamlessly between physical and virtual spaces.

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Location Information

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San Jose, California

In the world of SOTF: Cyber, the large city of San Jose, California, the beating heart of the Silicon Valley region, was ground zero of the Cyber Reality revolution—one of several technological hubs that provided the groundwork for its modern renaissance. Even in comparison to our reality, the San Jose of SOTF: Cyber is an iconoclast of tech culture and speculative finance—and often finds itself on the cutting edge of both.

Paradoxically, the cost of living and real estate stabilized at a more reasonable—and affordable—level compared to the real world. Physical space in the city has become less and less of a hot commodity, in part because the current vogue among the well-salaried workers of the city is to live most of their lives in Cyber Reality; many spend upwards of sixteen hours a day, which leaves little need for large amounts of floor space.

The city's most hip-and-happening real estate takes the form of bland, multi-dwelling spaces crammed with small apartments consisting of modular rooms; this living situation is similar in many respects to the aesthetics and functionality of micro-housing. In turn, San Jose's communal areas and shopping locations have become much busier, now primary hubs of activity in Real Life, actual places to meet and hang out.

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Sycamore High School

Sycamore High School is one of several educational facilities established following the Cyber Reality revolution. Like many other schools of that type, it has never had a corresponding physical space associated with it; apart from the Gymnasium, its campus is an entirely virtual space, and the building that serves as its Real World counterpart exists first and foremost as a physical space in which to store its Cyber Reality Server (CRS).

While San Jose recently began to test more interesting 'designer' schools, many of which experiment with progressive education—school hours designed to conform more closely to the average teenager's sleep schedule, modular and individual lesson plans, and a form of play education, among other experimental teaching strategies and policies—such things are not to be found on the grounds of Sycamore High School.

The school hews as close to the Federal blueprint of education as possible and evokes the style in vogue before the revolution, days when school days took place in brick buildings. Everything from the school's familiar layout to each classroom's seating arrangement elicits an accurate and authentic comparison to the pre-revolution days, albeit with a substantial 'modern' spin due to the transition to a non-physical space.

Each week has five days of standard classes, all of which take place within Sycamore High School's Virtual Educational Environment; each Saturday, voluntary classes are held in a physical Gymnasium; these classes are for physical education, as well as athletic clubs and sports teams that would make little sense to operate virtually. Although optional, around 85% of the student body participate in Saturday classes regularly.

Like most Virtual Schools, Sycamore High School's Cyber Reality Server is inactive and powered down throughout the weekend. It goes online, barring any server issues or cancellations, each Monday at 7:00 AM and offline each Friday at 7:00 PM; students are allowed to remain on the server even after school for club activities, studying, or to spend time together, though the servers typically close at around 7:00 PM each day.

As each student logs in for the day, they 'spawn' (enter the server) in front of their designated locker; all lockers are located—similarly to physical schools—in the hallways, with a student's designated locker usually placed close to their assigned homeroom. Students are only allowed to log out during classes with the permission of Sycamore High School faculty, most often the teacher of their currently-ongoing class.

To exit the school's server, a user must say or mouth the phrase "log out" while their Heads-Up Display is activated. Due to the way the system operates, however, accidental logouts are commonplace (particularly among freshmen and recent transfers from physical schools), exacerbated by the fact that the system will, on occasion, mistake similar phrases—such as "Look out!"—for the command to log out of class.

In their later years, the faculty expects students to be skilled in avoidance of this phenomenon. While many recent transfers can get away with skipping class using it as an excuse, long-time students receive no such slack. In addition, there is a sort of competition among several students, which revolves around trying to trick others and make them log out by accident; doing this to a teacher is a surefire way to end up in trouble.

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Senior Class 12-B

Every character in SOTF: Cyber is part of Senior Class 12-B at Sycamore High School. The homeroom teacher of Senior Class 12-B—and the Social Studies teacher for seniors—is Mr. Samson Franklin. Mr. Franklin is a man in his early thirties, an energetic sort of man with a casual, open-minded teaching style. He often encourages students to view things with a critical eye and to discuss different viewpoints. He has a lifelong love of literature, a topic he will gladly discuss at length with interested students.

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Virtual Environment Information

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Avatars

As with other Cyber Reality spaces, all users within Sycamore High School's Cyber Reality Server inhabit and control virtual 'bodies.' These virtual bodies are called "Avatars." Avatars do not require food and water, and the supposed "consumption" of such things in a virtual space does not replenish a user's physical energy; they can make a person feel sustained but do not sustain them. People must still eat food and drink water in the Real World to survive for extended lengths of time.

Students have permission to edit their Avatars to certain degrees as long as they still resemble their actual appearance, remain within the realm of realism, and are not otherwise deemed problematic. Each change must be checked by a member of the school's faculty before they are approved and added to the server to ensure that they conform to those guidelines and the school's student dress code. However, these checks are swift and snappy, completed on average in only a few minutes.

Some students make regular adjustments to their appearance every week; for example, some change the length and color of their hair every week. However, if someone attempts to change their appearance too often or excessively, they may be barred from submitting further changes for some time. Faculty members are known to frown on students who attempt to waste their time using this feature, as it distracts from their duties. To avoid having students in senior year that still look like freshmen, each student must upload a new avatar at the start of each school year.

Transgender and nonbinary students may, with the knowledge of the school's faculty, use an avatar that depicts the gender (or lack of gender) they identify with; to do they, they scan themselves as any student ordinarily would and then use a program to change their Avatar's physical appearance into one of their preferred gender (or lack thereof). However, some students decide against this, often because returning to their physical appearance at the end of each day depresses them.

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Backpacks

Sycamore High adheres to state educational standards that require—for realism and verisimilitude—that virtual schools include the student logistics of carrying books and supplies between classes. Many students find this feature inconvenient and pointless, but it is a requirement given to the school, and even the faculty themselves have little say in it.

As a result, students are inclined to designate a backpack or other school-appropriate bag of some description for themselves to use within the Virtual Educational Environment, or to purchase a pre-built asset that achieves a similar function, often with the added benefits of convenience, having a prestigious brand name or style, and other such bonuses.

These bags, like avatars, are rigorously checked for conformance to school guidelines. Unusual features such as hidden compartments are not allowed; neither are non-standard containers for a school setting, such as a briefcase. Worthy of mention is that the daypacks handed out by the terrorists will be modified versions of each student's backpack.

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The HUD

Cyber Reality technology allows for the use of a Heads-Up Display (HUD). The Cyber Reality Server of Sycamore High School allowed only modest usage of perceptive alterations for students (for example, assistance with note-taking and research, disabled in the middle of tests, quizzes, and exams, and a map located in the bottom-left corner of the user's vision to aid in their navigation of the school's Virtual Educational Environment).

To activate the HUD, a user has to speak or mouth the phrase "HUD." To close it, one does the same while it is open. For many students, especially those who have spent their entire high school career at Sycamore High School, it is as easy to open or close the HUD as it is to breathe, almost second nature for many; newer and transfer students often lack this muscle memory and must develop it throughout their time at school.

During the events of the version itself, the HUD will be used to constantly display a map of the arena in the bottom-left corner of a student's vision, with all Danger Zones highlighted in a bright red color. It will also feature a real-time countdown in the uppermost-middle portion of their vision which displays the time until the end of the four days they were given.

Another important use of the HUD during the version will occur during the announcements; all students will receive clips of the deaths in the upper-right corner of their vision as the announcer lists them all. The HUD will open automatically for the entire duration and cannot be closed until it is over; however, students who don't want to see them can close their eyes.

Any students present in the clips—outside of the killer and the victim—will have their faces and bodies blurred whenever they are visible. In addition, the terrorists may, if they so choose, censor or omit information that they want to conceal from the students at large. The clips also contain a mixture of audio and video to allow for context and drama.