OtherLife 2017

Ren Amari [Jessica De Gouw] is the lead researcher at a technology company she co-founded with entrepreneur [T.J. Power]. Using nanotechnology, Ren develops a biological form of virtual reality called OtherLife that can implant vivid memories. A week before the product launch, she tests its code on herself under the watchful eye of Byron Finbar [Clarence John Ryan]. Unknown to the team, she is also privately testing the system on her comatose brother [Liam Graham], hoping the inserted memories will help him recover. Her father, Dr. Robert Amari, a professor whose work inspired the project, wants to terminate Jared’s life support. Meanwhile, Ren’s relationship with coworker Danny [Thomas Cocquerel] strains under the mounting pressure.

Sam pitches OtherLife to investors, describing it as a near-instantaneous experience that can last for days. Ren is horrified when Sam proposes licensing the technology for government use as an alternative to prisons; inmates would be trapped for years inside their own minds while only minutes pass in real time. While alone with Danny, Ren explains her research and shares a skiing simulation. Danny, excited, tries another simulation unsupervised, not realizing it is the experimental one Ren has designed for Jared. Danny suffers a seizure and dies.

The government is willing to avoid a trial for unlicensed human tests and Danny’s death if Ren agrees to one year of solitary confinement in OtherLife. With no alternative, Ren agrees. She is then stuck within a stark, single-room simulation that provides only the basic necessities of life. After a full year, Ren breaks down when the confinement counter resets to 001 without her release. However, in her rage, she dislodges a wall section and escapes. As she emerges, she realizes she had been trapped in a real-world cell. She escapes and makes contact with a sympathetic coworker, who reveals that Danny survived.

Ren reunites with Danny and finds that OtherLife has become a major success and is being used for a wide range of applications, including long-term confinement stretching for centuries. Determined to stop Sam and salvage her work to help Jared, Ren develops a new, more advanced prototype of OtherLife. After she tests it on Jared, he responds positively but makes it obvious he desires death; Ren unplugs his life support. Shortly afterwards, she awakens from the actual simulation. Her “escape” was part of a glitch in her year-long imprisonment. Ren keeps this quiet, knowing Sam would use this technology against her wishes.

Once she recovers, she leaves the company to meet with her father. Recognising Jared’s situation, Ren agrees with Dr. Amari’s decision to terminate Jared’s life support.

While going over the data from her experience with Sam and Byron, Sam excitedly points out part of a brain scan that correlates with her interactive experience. When Ren refuses to cooperate, Sam abruptly forces her into a second year-long imprisonment, hoping that she will once again trigger the glitch and allow them to learn how to develop interactive experiences. Byron reluctantly goes along with it when Sam says it is the only way to force Ren’s assistance. Ren again escapes from the OtherLife experience, but this time she does it by hijacking the simulation and making it go faster, thus experiencing mere minutes inside instead of a year. She regains consciousness and traps Sam in his own year-long OtherLife imprisonment simulation. Sam starts to have a seizure, but Ren refuses to allow Sam to escape until he has served a full 365 days, plus letting the clock tick over a few more days, so he understands the agony she herself felt when the countdown reset to one.