Plot

After inventing a drug that induces time-compressed virtual realities, young Ren grapples with partner Sam over how to use their powerful creation.

The bright Dr. Ren Amari has developed a nanotechnological drug based on the research of her father, Professor Robert Amari, that she stole and capable to give memories to the user. She co-founded the Otherlife company with her friend Sam, with the intention to help her brother, Jared Amari, who is brain dead in coma after hitting a rock with his head while diving. Otherlife has a short schedule to prepare a demonstration and Sam is pressing Ren and the engineer Byron Finbar to fix the glitches in the software. Further, he wants to sell the confinement software to the correction department since the inmates will be able to spend one year sentence in his mind and spend only a few seconds in the real world, but Ren does not agree. When Ren demonstrates the skiing software to her boyfriend Danny, who works in Otherlife, he wants to repeat the experience and without authorization, he mistakenly uses Ren's experiment with her brother and dies. Sam proposes to the correctional department to use the isolation software in Ren instead of going to jail and convinces her to accept the deal. Ren reluctantly accepts and spends one desperate year alone in a virtual cell. When the period ends, there is no exit and the clock resets. Ren uses her knowledge to make a prison break and finds that she was in a real prison indeed. She also finds that Danny is alive, and she was betrayed by Sam and Byron. What will she do next?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In OtherLife (2017), Ren Amari, a scientist and programmer, invents a groundbreaking technology called OtherLife-a drug that creates vivid, real-time virtual experiences in the mind by stimulating specific areas of the brain. The idea is to allow users to live alternate lives, experiencing days or even years in just a few moments.

Ren's business partner, Sam, sees a different use for the technology: to revolutionize the prison system by using OtherLife to simulate long sentences in a matter of minutes, avoiding physical incarceration. Ren is hesitant, fearing the ethical implications, but her resistance is overruled.

After a tragic accident involving her brother, Jared, who falls into a coma due to a related trial of the technology, Ren feels immense guilt. Following a heated confrontation with Sam, Ren is framed for negligence in Jared's case and is sentenced to a year in virtual confinement using OtherLife. During her simulated imprisonment, Ren endures the psychological toll of isolation, experiencing time distortions and hallucinations.

After what feels like an eternity, she believes she has finally escaped, only to realize that she has been placed in a loop, reliving her virtual sentence. She manages to break free of the simulation and discovers that her escape was planned by Sam and her father, who wanted to push her to complete OtherLife's testing. In the end, Ren decides to leave the company and erases the core code of OtherLife, ultimately choosing to live in reality rather than virtual simulations.