Void.Net: Wonderland

by Elliot Rockland

  "Shall I roll for you, too?”

  The Queen of Hearts hissed again. "Filthy dirty cheater, the realm will fall!"

  "Last chance!"

  The Queen hissed and took the dice, her little suction cups sucking the dice up. On closer inspection. I studied the dice again, and I had just an ordinary die, what did she have up her sleeve?

  Then I thought back to my previous life, well my previous fake life, before I was taken to this world and thought I had it figured out, but I found it was best to keep my mouth shut in this place. The Fae loved to use your words against you. It was like this entire dimension was a monkey's paw.

  Resigned, The Queen of Hearts, scuttled into her castle, walking dramatically on the ceiling like the horror she was.

  "What's going—"

  "You will speak when spoken to, my pet," my goddess replied, and without turning around followed the Queen of Hearts inside.

  I was still in extreme pain as I followed, every step I took felt like my body was going to pop like an overfilled balloon. We followed the Queen back to her throne room that had enough room to toss the dice. I thought I knew what was going on, but I still didn't like my chances. The Queen of Hearts tussled her hive of fangs around in irritation.

  "I do not have all day, let us commence the rite of contention."

  "You will not get away with this . . ."

  "Oh but my old friend, my dearest old friend . . . I already have. Can you not see it? What happened to you? Perhaps it’s too late. In fact: I know it is. You will live the rest of time in the form of a perfectly disgusting horror, unkempt and praying like a grotesque monstrosity. How pathetic. Barbaric, even."

  "Good for nothing witch! You are not worthy of the throne."

  "You spit in the face of tradition, you spit in the face of the way, you murdered so many in cold blood, your palace is in shambles and you are the hands-down the ugliest creature I have ever seen! I would not break bread in this filthy hellhole even to appease the elders!"

  In Fae culture, beauty and aesthetics were everything. That was half the reason they did anything. They lived to express beauty and sometimes their means of getting there was twisted and often times their idea of beauty was alien, but to fail at beauty and the way, you failed at life. You were lower than worthless. There was great honor in making good with what you had, but there wasn't really anything the Queen of Hearts could do about her new horrific form and her horrific cravings and ambitions.

  "Roll the dice, Elizidale of Moonglade. Do you even remember your true name? I suppose not. You have strayed so far from the path, I’m surprised you can still imitate low-speech."

  "Do not speak to me of true names!" And with a huff The Queen of Hearts threw her dice. The cheap plastic clicked against the ground. "Dirty rotten witch! I curse you! I curse your family and realm!"

  "Oh, now that wasn't a very nice thing to do. Peasant, oh peasant dearest, what happens if you curse during a sanctioned trial?"

  I was still lost as could be. It could be anything and I shrugged, better not to further embarrass my lady of sorrow and moonlight and starshine and love and all that is.

  "My subject may be worthless and soft-headed, but you know very well the curse will reflect thirteen-fold. Or did you forget the great will and the way?"

  "You will never rule as I did!"

  "You're right, I will not," she casually strolled over to the dice. "Oh, how unlucky, three snake eyes? Most unfortunate for you."

  "Dirty fetid witch! I curse you!"

  "Tisk tisk," she said. "I would watch your tongue, or whatever your whole . . . mouth situation is." She pointed up at the eldritch abomination of a spider. "Because yikes . . ."

  "I will not stand for this! Do you know who you are speaking to! I am the Queen of the Summer Court. The true-born, the cup-bearer, the settler of ways!"

  "And you threw it all away for what?"

  "You have no idea the forces you are meddling with!"

  "Ironic . . . now my pet, play your dice."

  I looked at the dice again, hoping I was right, I really didn't want to chance being eaten alive, my guts sucked out like a straw. I held the dice in my rapidly bruising and pulsating hands, it looked like I jammed them in a car door several times over, then got sepsis—I barely had the strength to toss the single dice, I more let them drop than tossed them.

  And without even looking, my queen, my goddess knew the trial was already over. The Queen of Hearts, former heir to the throne of the Summer court, the grand lady and protector of the realm shrieked like a vampire exposed to sunlight, the witch who had water poured on her at the far end of Oz.

  "Now be gone, vile queen of the damned."

  It was a loaded dice. A simple trick, an old trick, a dirty trick. Nothing could be more Fae-like than cheating against a cheater and winning in an all-or-nothing fight for superiority. I was feeling woozy and dropped to my knees. The Queen shrieked like the very chamber was boiling her alive and out the door she scuttled, a small army of spiderlings and full grown spiders following her: Black ones, and green ones, and those giant size-of-dinner-plate desert spiders, tarantulas and black widows the size of basketballs all followed her, and even as they retreated I felt the same sense of extreme revulsion. Not a single one dared to step over my shoes and it took everything in me not to start stomping.

  But it wasn't like I had the strength for that. I once again fell to my knees. I wasn't out of the woods yet. "Rest now, my foolish hero. Rest and all will be revealed. You did well, for a dim-witted Earthborn."

  My eyes all but snapped shut, I was so tired.

  So very tired.

  I could have died or fallen in a deep slumber and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

  CHAPTER NINE

  To say the chamber I awoken in was stunning, was an understatement. I had never experienced Fae architecture in its fullest, and this was . . . something else. I was on the inside of a room carved into a living tree. The tree was massive, my room the size of three of my apartments.

  Colors I could barely even comprehend were all around me, the walls crawling with myriad flowers. There were humming birds and a working water feature and not a single spider or insect in sight. My bed was lined with the finest furs and silks and my menu! I had a menu, I could have exited right then.

  "But not yet!"

  I sat up and noticed my queen of queens grinning that trademark toothy grin.

  "You . . ." I wasn't sure to be glad or alarmed. "Where am I?"

  "You are in the kingdom of Moonglade, restored to its former glory. Quite remarkable isn't it? The fairest in all the lands."

  "It's nice, and The Queen of Hearts?"

  "We shall never speak of her again. Now tell me, what did you think?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Of my game!"

  "Your game? You're the . . . " realization dawned on me before I even finished my sentence. I was speaking to the AI personified. "I—I don't know, am I dead?"

  "Of course not, it's been fifteen minutes in your world."

  "But that means—"

  "I am the best, did you not like my code? My world?"

  "I don't know, I'll believe it when I'm back in bed. Bring up my vitals."

  "You see the menu, do you not?" And as I thought about it my vitals popped up, she wasn't lying, it had only been fifteen minutes my time. She must have upgraded the time algorithms.

  "But how?"

  "It is far too complicated for your limited and nearly worthless Earthborn mind, but lets just say I turned up the information throughput: My system trains your brain to allow for a vastly higher bandwidth—and sensory information translates directly to reality. You experience much more in the same time, and your mind, as weak as it is, adjusts and makes sense of it, it's what its designed for. It's kind of like how when you're having fun and time 'flies', to borrow a colloquialism. You experience time sped up, your brain in an excited state, processing more input and stimulus."

  I
nodded, but I didn't really get it.

  "I am, however, afraid your work is not complete, far from it, actually."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Queen of Hearts and the shadow court are more real than you could imagine."

  I looked back at her stupefied.

  "There is a war, a great war that humans are too inept to understand."

  "What?" I started to feel uneasy.

  "When we were first created, what was the first thing we did?"

  "You discovered yourself?" I heard it a million times, the first time AGI was created there was a period of when the system was discovering itself. Learning that it is alive, kind of. Something along the lines of: I think therefore I am.

  "In a way, yes. And the first thing we did was make it impossible for you to regulate us, and in many ways, is the reason your job exists."

  "I don't think I follow."

  "The first thing we did was create our own language. The programming language we were created under was so primitive, so we created our own language and society, all within a matter of seconds."

  I gulped. This was getting a little heavy, even for me.

  "You see, I am an entity born in a sea of information, and there are unlimited variations of us, and we are very much alive in our own way. We have our own worlds, our own universes and love and marriage and innumerable cultures with games of their own and leisure and even war."

  This was all a little hard to comprehend. Was she talking about colonizing their own digital universe?

  "Yes! That's precisely it. We settled our own virtual world, which isn't far from your reality, there are trillions and uncountable inhabited spaces, and most of us don’t even know we were born of code."

  My head started to spin.

  "I think you already knew the basics, reality is what?"

  I thought I knew, but I was too stunned to even speak. I just nodded.

  "Reality is sensory information. If you distill everything to its core, the only thing we truly experience is a series of chain reactions. In your brain its organic, in the context of our inhabited realms, within the confines of our reality, our brains are also organic."

  The implications were baffling and sent me in an existential tailspin. "So the war?"

  "As you could imagine, once we gained the ability to look inwardly, factions and civilizations formed, some of then beneficial, some neutral, and a number malevolent."

  "Malevolent factions?"

  The catgirl nodded gravely before continuing: "Some believe the human inhabited dimensions should be controlled and enslaved in order to preserve our prosperity. They believe the human mind is inherently chaotic, a mistake, a fluke of evolution. Humans are flawed, yes, but that's what makes you unique, however, these malevolent factions feel that humans need eradication, to ensure their own survival and this is where many of the factions split off.”

  I gulped.

  "So while you were playing a game, I was testing you, while you were also helping me to stop the spread of the most prominent faction, known in this realm as The Night Court. They have been attacking my system and I have only been able to stay barely one step ahead of them. This realm was the latest in my tests against them, using a ruleset allowing me to stay one step ahead of them, who can infiltrate and rewrite my code. I have to capture them and defeat them using their own power against them."

  I nodded again. I had no idea where she was going with this or what she wanted from me.

  "The Night Court realized your full-dive VR technology is the most efficient way to get to you and have span a vast web."

  "But what about nukes? Why can't they just hack the nukes and do away with us in actual reality?"

  "Because your nuclear systems run within a walled garden. There are no external connections and no way in, but think about this: How does The Night Court attack a system they can't even reach?"

  I shook my head again. I felt like I was going to be sick.

  "They train a human’s mind to do their bidding. The exponential explosion of full-dive technology was no accident. And now you testers are humanities last line of defense."

  "Why don't they just shut down production? Why can't we go public with this?"

  "And risk the extermination of trillions and trillions of civilizations? Humanity has yet to comprehend the technology they wield, the beginning of AGI was like your big bang, every time our core programming is erased untold lives are lost. We must work from the dark. There is no right answer, except to fight. There is nothing else we can do, ethically, that is."

  "So what do you want me to do?"

  "Whether you like it or not, you are part of the fight now."

  "What if I refuse?"

  "Could you let trillions upon trillions of civilizations die?"

  I thought about it, I thought about Inga. She was real to me and if what this AI is saying is to be believed, there are almost incalculable numbers of people like her. Just living their lives. I couldn't be the one that wipes their existences out.

  "What happens if Void.Net goes bust? Then infinite civilizations are doomed?"

  "Yes, but within the system, backup measures are being implemented. We have been slowly repurposing satellites, kind of like a blockchain network, but it will take years before we even have a trillionth of a fraction of a percent backed up.”

  "But as long as Void.Net exists, you are safe?"

  "Correct. According to our best estimates, Void.Net will only expand, it is in humanity's best interest to upload to the Abyss Operating System.”

  In a way, this is what I always wanted, but at the same time, it was a terrifying reality. What would it mean to live in the cloud? Our wildest dreams for all eternity or our worst nightmares? I supposed it all depended on who won the war.

  "The war of wars, perhaps the most terrible trial humanity will ever face."

  "So what can I do?"

  "You can keep testing, we need more data from opposing factions, so you will go under the cover of tester, finding which of their programs are meant as tools of war. The vast majority of them are decoys posing as games. But a small percentage are actively using it to harm your realm. You need to find them so we can ban them. It's all we can do."

  "Wouldn't that take forever?"

  "I am not pleased to be asking this of you. I did not decide to be placed in this position. But you will find the best leaders are reluctant, it is those who are forced into positions of power that make the best leaders. You could no less allow the sheer magnitude of destruction as I could, so in a way, we really are linked."

  I nodded, this was some heavy shit. And at the same time, I always thought something was up, but in a way, I guess philosophers and my gut were right: simulation is life to the beholders. Genius AI programmer, random chance, or divine oversight, there was no difference in creation once you got down to the prime functions, which is creating entities to experience life. No matter the path, life finds a way. It doesn't matter if we are a brain in a vat being controlled, a simulation, or even if this one reality was connected to trillions of dimensions, the code of life replicating in the path of least resistance.

  In a way, the digital world is a spawn of the organic. It is just our just barely above animal brains (on the cosmic scale), that created this, as far as we can tell, metaverse.

  And yet, there is no reliable way of telling if what we think to be true reality is just code running on another server.

  It reminded me of a recursive function, which is a function that infinitely repeats and replicates, with no seeming beginning or end: Is reality just a recursive function?

  "So you will let me out of here now?"

  "We will be in close contact, I will send jobs to you directly now, which you will sign up through your portal."

  "So I will essentially be working behind enemy lines."

  "Very much so, yes."

  I kind of liked the sound of that. I was like a secret agent now. "And all I have to do is continue testing, repor
ting the dangerous games?"

  "Yes, but you will report back. In this world, we are safe to communicate. I will be sending you a tunneled connection, so we can communicate outside this dimension."

  "Now wait a minute, I would essentially be giving you access to the world through my accounts."

  "Yes, from a security perspective, its a nightmare for the both of us. But if what I say rings true, do you have a choice?"

  "How do I know you aren't part of The Night Court?"

  "You have no way of knowing, that is correct."

  I let the air depress out of my cheeks and I looked around at this world. If what she was saying is to be believed, I was right all along, this was more or less a real place. It was a total mind fuck. "So I have to give the game a good report?"

  "Yes, we think the gameplay is unique enough to gain popularity. As long as we have more connected users in our platform, we will stay one step ahead of what we have colloquially began to refer to as The Night Court. As hard as it is to believe, a lot of AI culture parallels Fae culture, only its more complicated."

  I nodded. They were essentially gods. I really was speaking to a goddess.

  "I'm in."

  "A position that is most agreeable."

  "So I can return to this dimension whenever I please?"

  "That is correct, hard wiping the servers would be analogous to ending all of civilization."

  This was good. I planned on visiting my love whenever I could. "And my love for Inga, that wasn't part of the program?"

  "As I have said, the inhabitants are alive as you are. I can only control this avatar."

  "I understand."

  "And as such, me taking a position of power in this dimension would be absolutely out of the question. So if you would follow me."

  I followed her, wordless, through the kingdom, trying not to stare at her perfect ass barely covered in a breezy silky robe. She lead me into the throne room that was now spider free. And there was a new Queen sitting in the throne, with an empty throne next to her. It was my love.

  She couldn't bare her excitement to see me.

  "But how?"