USS Callister: Into Infinity story
The USS Callister crew, digital clones within the game Infinity, become space pirates to survive on stolen in-game credits while planning to hack the servers to create their own space. To do so, they require Walt, a respawned clone of CEO James Walton. In the real world, a reporter's questions about rogue players and Robert Daly's illegal cloning alert programmer Nanette, who enters the game with James to identify the clones. They and Nan (Nanette's clone) locate Walt. James kills a clone to avoid legal exposure and is removed from the game. Walt leads the crew to the Heart of Infinity, where they discover a digital clone of Robert and his cloning technology. Robert offers Nan a choice: merge her consciousness with the comatose real-world Nanette, erasing the crew in the process, or transfer the crew and another clone of Nan to a private server while keeping her behind to accompany him. Nan agrees to the private server but refuses to remain with Robert, angering him. James returns disguised as Walt and lures hostile players to attack the Callister. Nan kills Robert, triggering the game's self-destruct, and activates "copy and paste" to merge the crew with Nanette's consciousness. Infinity is wiped, James is arrested, and Nan and the crew are thrust into the real world.
30 total · 3 choice · 10 major · 17 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| digital clone of a person | choice | The story concerns a group of digital clones who found themselves trapped in a giant space MMORPG. Digital cloning had been outlawed because of the ethical concerns involved. As the characters were subjected to various forms of abuse, a central theme of the story is clearly to make the viewer think about the moral status of hypothetical digital humans. |
| speculative virtual reality | choice | The story turns on the USS Callister crew's struggle to survive in, and later extricate themselves from, an all-immersive virtual universe reminiscent of Star Trek. |
| what if I was trapped inside a game | choice | The story concerns a group of digital clones who found themselves trapped in a giant space MMORPG. |
| a person and their clone | major | A part of the story concerned Nanette encountering her own clone, Nan, inside the game and marveling at what a badass Nan had become due to her harsh travails inside the game where she was trapped. |
| AI rights | major | A point of the story was to highlight the ethical dilemma of whether James Walton's brutal killing, and attempted killings, of digital clones was ethically tantamount to murder. |
| boss and employee | major | A recurring theme was the mean way by which James Walton treated his employees. He insulted them at every turn and generally treated them like dirt. Kabir quit in protest. |
| brain-computer interface | major | The game Infinity was played by putting a small button-like device on one's temple. |
| coping with a bad boss | major | A recurring theme was the mean way by which James Walton treated his employees. He insulted them at every turn and generally treated them like dirt. Kabir quit in protest. |
| desperation | major | The USS Callister crew members, in an act of desperation, resorted to petty banditry to survive in the perilous virtual universe in which they were trapped. |
| facing adversity | major | The USS Callister crew members, in an act of desperation, resorted to petty banditry to survive in the perilous virtual universe in which they were trapped. |