You can do anything. That was it. That was the idea that got me in at the start. There were all sorts of other reasons to buy in, but when it all came down to it, that was it. You can do... anything. Lots of people say stuff like that, but they don't really mean it. There are always boundaries. Money can only do what money can do. We get old, our bodies fall apart, we die. There are always limits. I don't care how far technology has come, there are always going to be limits. But when Harvey Winsford III, President of the Winsford Technology Group, looks you in the eye and tells you that you can do anything, your mind can't even begin to imagine what that means. Well, not unless you're a game-caster like me. What does it mean? It means you're a god. It means no limits.

  See game-casting, well, game-casting was always about living what someone else created. Don't get me wrong, it's a damn good ride. You plug in and you. are. THERE. You're snow-boarding on slopes that never existed. You have the abilities of a world-class athlete. You're freaking Spider-man. Whatever you want, someone somewhere has made the sim. But it's always on someone else's terms. It's always playing by someone else's rules. The boundaries are still there.

  But this? This was different. He called it thought-casting. Reckons it's gonna be the next big thing, reckons it's gonna change the freaking world. I reckon he's right. We're talking about live, in-sim programming. Can you even begin to get that? This is not about living someone else's sim, walking into a story where there can be only one ending. This is about creating a sim while you live it. Thought-casting. The only limit is your own mind. Walk up a wall. Create a castle. Hell, with enough time you can create a whole world if you want. Thought-casting. There was no way I was gonna say no. So there we were. One boss, three game-casters, two other dudes, and one prototype thought-caster.

  "Ladies. Gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. You have been invited here to make history. Now I'm sorry about the non-disclosure contracts I had you sign, but what we're dealing with must be contained... for now. I trust that my offer of remuneration was... acceptable recompense for the inconvenience." Damn straight. I was never working another day in my life. Whatever this was, it was big.

  "You have been selected because you have something to offer the Winsford Technology Group, something I believe will be critical to the success of our latest venture. What you are about to experience will change your lives. It's going to change the world. I'm talking about... thought-casting."

  Now at that point, as I sat back in my pristine white-leather recliner, sipping champagne, and looking out from Winsford's 45th floor conference room, it didn't mean much to me. What was this anyway? Next-gen game casting? The latest tech upgrade concept for sim-designers? Sure, hook me up. But don't tell me we're making history. This will become obsolete just like everything else does. That was before what came next.

  "Now I could explain what that means, but I think it will be better if you see it for yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to observe." With a gesture he held out his hand... and the champagne in our glasses rose and began to float toward him!

  I can't tell you what goes through your mind in a moment like that. See, in our minds there are always categories. Boundaries for what's possible, expectations for what we might experience in any given moment. And when something happens that steps outside of those boundaries, well, it's like your mind explodes. Every possible explanation races through your head in a second, but you know none of them can be true. Your heart races as adrenaline pumps into your system, the heat rushes into your head, and you hope to God that somehow this will start making sense in the next two seconds.

  The ball of liquid floated in front of him and it turned into... a shaft. It was a spear. What the hell? He took hold of it and began to spin it around like some kung-fu master in a ten thousand dollar suit. It really was wooden. You could hear it as it thudded against his palms. He spun around and it was... gone. Then he turned, facing the room-length glass window and, holding out his hands, pushed forward. The glass shattered and went tinkling down to the ground below. He started walking. Everyone gasped, we knew what he was about to do. He reached the edge, and his foot stepped out into open air... my stomach lurched as I prepared myself to witness a suicide. And he... kept walking... on to nothing but air! He turned around and smiled at us. "Any questions?"

  After a few moments of confusion it hit me. It's a sim. Has to be. Stuff like this can only happen in a sim. Damn it was good though. Don't get me wrong, sims generally are pretty close to reality, but you can always tell when you're in one. Mainly because your sim-augment conditions feel like they're semi-automated. I mean, if you really could play basketball like that, who needs a sim right? But there's more than that too. You can spot it in the environs if you know what to look for, a digitized blur if you move too fast, constructs that look "too clean" for a lack of real-world detail. That sort of thing. This room though, I could have sworn it was for real. Creating a room in-sim like this? With real-world detail? Takes a hell of a lot of programming. Whole environments are infinitely harder. Any questions? Yeah, I had one.

  "How did you get us into a sim without us realizing it?"

  Winsford smiled again with those million dollar teeth. "That is why you're here Peterson – because you can think. This is a sim, but not like anything you've ever seen. This is thought-casting." He held out his hand and the champagne materialized before him again, which he then sent gliding back into our glasses. You never would have known it was gone. He walked into the building again, the shattered glass reassembled behind him, and all of a sudden things were "normal" again.

  "All you need to know is this: you can do anything."

  I blinked.

  We stood on a rocky outcrop at the top of a waterfall that never should have existed. Holy... now this was new. See, the thing about sims is that they're pre-constructed. You design them, you outlay your features, but then everything that happens has to happen in that space with whatever narrative you've designed into the sim. It can be huge. It can be complex. It is realistic, but it's always a pre-construct. Somehow Winsford had found a way to beat that. Unless... this was somehow part of the pre-construct too?

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Three of you, our game-casters, are thinking right now that this is a pre-construct. Chen, ask me to create anything. New setting, new element, whatever you want." I looked over at Chen. I'd never met her before, but I knew who she was. She was like me, one of the best. A game-caster.

  "Dragon." The roar was deafening, the monster flew just a few metres above our heads as it soared out over the expanse of the falls. A huge ball of fire spewed out from its maul, exploding into the water in a burst of steam. The dragon flew into the mist, never to be seen again.

  "Ross, give me another one." Ross Murray. Again, one of the best. With the three of us in the same space you had three of the best casters in the world.

  "Okay... space craft."

  In an instant we were standing in the bridge-head of a suspiciously imperial looking spaceship. Star Wars? Nice. Old school.

  "Peterson. You're up."

  Let's take this to the next level.

  All of a sudden we stood in an alleyway between two buildings. New York City. Winsford grinned at me. We were all in this sim together, and that meant that whatever he could do, we could do too. What I couldn't believe was what I had just done. Live, in-sim game-casting. That's why he calls it thought-casting, because that's exactly what you're doing. You're casting direct without an interface. I had no idea how he'd done it, but somehow he had.

  "If you can think it, you can cast it. Actually, you've been doing it since this sim started. The real-world detail that you see in the environ, that's your subconscious at work – casting as you move through this reality. Apart from that, some of the usual rules also apply. Your avatars are indestructible and self-contained – a direct projection of you. There are no "kill conditions" here."

  A kill condition is what game-casters call the end-game-element. You can't truly kill someone's avatar, of course, so you need to create a condition of failure within the game. You can only get kill conditions when you've got your game-narrative laid out. If Harvey's creation was what I thought it was, then there is no narrative (unless you make one), just infinite or near-infinite game-space for live thought-casting.

  "And, as you will see," he continued, "you can engage other people's constructs. Now our constructs, unlike our avatars, are destructible. The strength of your constructs depends on three things: imagination, focus, and memory. Whatever you can imagine, you can make – you are your only limitation. Your focus will determine the actual strength of your construct, and your memory will determine its durability. Constructs, like memories, will fade and crumble over time if you don't use them. The more vivid and memorable a construct, and the more time you spend with it sustaining it, the longer it will last. And if other people engage your construct, it will last even longer as the interface draws from both of your minds to strengthen it."

  "Can you destroy someone else's construct?" I asked.

  "Good question Peterson. Make yourself a sword. Go on..."

  I held out my hand and a samurai sword materialized instantly. Winsford did the same, and then he attacked me. I'd played enough sword-based combat-sims to know the form, and I held up my sword in defence. As he brought his two-handed long-sword down on mine, the blade of my katana snapped in an instant, and I fell down on my back stunned.

  "The reason that happened is because you summoned yours hardly thinking about it all. Mine, on the other hand, was manifested with near total focus. Try it again, this time – think about it. Focus."

  I looked down at my hand, and closed my eyes. I visualized the blade before me, tried to push every other thought out. I'd cast swords like this one thousands of times before while game-casting, and as I opened my eyes, I felt the weight of the blade in my hands. Winsford prepared to strike again, and as he did I focused all my attention on meeting the blow, on maintaining the construct. The blade came down, I raised my defence, and... with a deft parry I deflected his blow. My blade was intact.

  "Good. Mental exhaustion, tiredness, lack of discipline – these are the things that will erode the strength of your constructs. You can create constructs at will, but the only way to destroy a construct that wasn't yours originally is to do something like what I just did to Peterson's blade a minute ago – make something stronger. If your construct hasn't been modified by anyone else, you can dismiss it at will. If it has, well, you can only weaken it by taking away what you put in yourself."

  "Why?" It was the old guy. Mid-fifties or so. I had no idea who he was. Short, closely cropped hair, and well-muscled too. Harvey smiled.

  "Well let me put the question to you – what are the applications of this technology?"

  Hmmm. Well, there's the obvious one isn't there? The ability to do whatever you want without limits. If game-casting is about entertainment, then this technology would literally let you live your personal fantasy. Any fantasy. At will. Yep. People will pay for that.

  "You're still gonna need game-casters," Ross said. "You put people in this thing, and they won't know what to do. They're monkeys, they're used to feeding on whatever we give them. It's like asking them to draw when they've never done it before. They'll scribble something, see that it sucks, and give up. They wouldn't know what to do with this technology if they had to create something for themselves."

  "Tsk tsk, come on Ross, this can go so much further than game-casting. Anyone else?"

  "Training." It was the old guy again. "This puts the power to program training sims straight into the hands of experts from any field. Military, space programs, whatever you need. This will be the most realistic training program on the market by a long way."

  "Not bad Major. But you're still not taking it far enough people. Anyone else?" We looked around at each other. No one answered.

  "You don't know do you? And the reason you don't know is because you've never been confronted by the possibility of a world without limits. Let me tell you what this technology means. The history of our race has been the history of our battle to overcome limitations. Our existence and purpose has been defined by this battle, our very character and nature has been determined by it. We live in a world, a cosmos of limitations. Limited resources. Limited time. Limited opportunities. The very bodies we live in – sickness, injury, decay... death. It is the survival of the fittest. Always has been, and it always will be unless... something changes. In one way or another the defining feature of humanity has been the struggle to exist, to push our boundaries further." He paused a moment before continuing.

  "But what if we could live in a new reality? A reality where limitation was not an issue, a reality where the constant struggle to survive was removed. A world where there was no space to fight over, no lack of resources to hold us back. What would we find? What would we do? How would we discover purpose in a world where all that has given us purpose and meaning in the past has disappeared?" He turned his back on us, pacing for a moment.

  "This technology will redefine what it means to be human. I'm talking about a world without limitations. I'm talking about transcendence. What lies before us is a quest. A quest to discover and perhaps re-invent what it means to be human. A quest to push the boundaries of our existence beyond anything we've ever imagined. No more limitations. No more agendas forced on us by a cold, emotionless universe. No longer does the universe make us, we will master and make it. What is that going to look like? I don't know. But I do know that we are on the verge of a new frontier. We are here to define a new existence, a new reality. What does it mean to be human? What could it mean to be human? That is what this is all about, and that is why you are here."