I get this question a lot, and recently I was asked to prepare a document about the Proxima Galaxy for a potential endeavor. Below is what I prepared. There shouldn’t be too many spoilers. If so… well, damn me.
The Proxima Company
The Proxima Company is the owner and creator of the Proxima Galaxy, of which exist various multiverses known as Proxima Worlds. These are digital neuronal dreamspaces that people can “dive” to. Think fantasy worlds, cyberpunk worlds, any type of world in existence and with varying degrees of how deeply they’ve been fleshed out (lore, locations, the user interface, what you do in said world, etc.).
Why this matters to Sacred Cat Island
Sacred Cat Island exists in a Proxima World that is part of the Proxima Galaxy and administered by the Proxima Company. It is a world that real people visit to simply live out normal lives along NPCs through other relationships (re: a different spouse), or a different job, or really anything. Think SimCity in this regard. There is no point of going to this world aside from doing what you can’t do in the real world (i.e. become rich, own a home, fall in love, escape a bad living condition, try a different career). The characters on Sacred Cat Island are NPCs who have escaped from this.
Some terms used throughout the Proxima Galaxy Books:
Dive - To dive is to use an NV Visor to enter one of these worlds. This is done either with a visor and haptic gear (gloves, etc), or suspended in a sarcophagus-like vat of liquid known as a Dive Vat.
D-NAS - Digital Neuronal Autoconstruct System. “DNA” for NPCs and people (re: humans) currently existing in these various Proxima Worlds. Everyone’s D-NAS is unique.
ImmiNPC - An immigrant NPC. Re: an NPC from one Proxima World who is now a permanent member of another.
NV Visor - Neuronal Visualization Visor. What a real person wears over their head to dive to a Proxima World.
OMIB - Orthogonal Matrix Inverse Base. This is the code side of one of these neuronal dreamworlds, think a bizarro world that can actually do some damage to the Proxima world if it is exploited.
Permalogged - This is the term used when someone, perhaps because of socioeconomic reasons or simply to escape reality on Earth permanently, stays logged into a Proxima World through the usage of a Dive Vat and machines managing their vitals. They opt to keep their physical body alive, but exist elsewhere.
Reverse Dive - This would be the opposite of diving to a Proxima World; it would be an NPC coming to our world through various means, everything from a speaker system to being uploaded into an actual android.
RPC - Reborn Player Character. This is a digital imprint of a person through D-NAS into an NPC set to spawn when they die. Think your grandmother/grandfather being able to live eternally in a neuronal dreamworld after they have passed, a form of immortality. Even stranger is if an RPC reverse dives into an android, meaning grandma from 100 years ago (say we’re in 2200 here) would be able to attend your wedding in the real world.
Timeline of Proxima related books
One thing to note about how all of these books fit together in terms of the “Proxima Galaxy” or “Proxima Company” is they are actually the story of a company going from a startup, to the most powerful video game company, and how this branches out into other things, such as an app that “brings” NPCs to our world through androids (known as humandroids in the text) and on eyelid based internet that later moves to retina-based internet known as iNet. There is something ouroboric about it from a philosophical standpoint, not quite touched upon in the text but perhaps visible in this brief timeline.
Cherry Blossom Girls (9 books) - set in the 2030s - this one only mentions the Proxima company in passing, but it does talk about it’s rise to prominence to some degree, and how they shift from the gaming we are used to now to something in a shared neural network/dreamscape.
The Feedback Loop (8 books) - set in the 2050s - deals with people being able to “dive” into Proxima worlds and getting stuck because of an algorithmic issue that’s exploited by a company that reaps profits from life insurance policies taken out on people stuck in said Proxima Galaxies. Introduces the concept of the OMIB and DNAS, and NPC relations, such as the love triangle the main character finds himself in between a human female and an NPC whom he’s been with for eight years. The Feedback Loop introduces technology that brings an NPC to an android’s body, to be “part” of our world. The characters in the real world of this book use iris-based internet and later, NPCs will be brought through this medium. Some of my fans think the beginning of the movie Boss Battle was, ahem, inspired by this book…
The Last Warrior of Unigaea (trilogy) - set in the late 2060s. This series revolves around a man who has permalogged into a fantasy Proxima world known as Unigaea and does not live in the world world aside from his body in vat somewhere in Chicago. In the trilogy, he tries to stop an algorithmic bomb from destroying Unigaea and fails, but is able to send some of the NPC characters to Tritania (see next book) and later, Monster Hunt NYC.
Fantasy Online (currently a trilogy) - set in the 2070s - With a real-world setting of Japan, the series deals with furthered relations between NPCs and humans in a Proxima fantasy world known as Tritania, and introduces technology first used in The Feedback Loop to bring an NPC to our world via someone’s pane of vision (i.e. you would see the NPC, but other people wouldn’t).
Life is a Beautiful Thing - The first series I wrote starting in 2011 as a Nanowrimo experiment. I was given a month to write a book and this is what I wrote. Four years later, I added three more books. The Proxima Company is mentioned in passing and there are scenes involving some of the characters from Fantasy Online. It is a very trippy book, hallucinatory cyberpunk, so if you do indulge yourself, be aware of that.
Monster Hunt NYC (trilogy) - set in the 2090s - With a real-world setting of New York City, Monster Hunt is about a pair of musicians that use a banned Proxima app that “brings” NPCs to our world to help them catch other monsters. Think Pokemon Go!, but in a real world setting. They also attend tournaments in the Proxima Galaxy, where they grow stronger to help them capture better monsters here.
Sacred Cat Island - Set in the 2100s, this book sees NPCS living in the Proxima Galaxy and operating as if they are actually living beings. Some of the NPCs, like Ganix, actually work for the Proxima company within a Proxima World, and know more about this than others. The younger characters are able to turn into cats via an OMIB portal on the island (not revealed in the text), which is why the researcher Curtis is there (but this tidbit isn’t directly discussed in the book).
And there you have it. I’m likely missing something because, collectively, the list above represents spans 31 books and also an author fail. I started writing this stuff while living abroad and still working full-time. I then moved back to America and continued to write and work full-time. Unfortunately, doing this is not advised (But entirely necessary for all of us to get our start) and I wrote much faster than I would have liked. My newer stuff (think Pilgrim, Cowboy Necromancer) and even my pen name stuff (My Ninja Girl) isn’t written like this. I am now a full-time writer and before starting a project, I generally spend six months or more building the story, characters, and worlds. The books above, aside from Sacred Cat Island, didn’t benefit from this enhanced time and care, and I didn’t keep good enough notes of all the connects. So author fail.
But at least I had fun, and if you read any of these ones, I hope you did too.