Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Let’s do the cheese, I guess. And some sort of beverage?”

  “Oh, right! I have beverage choices for you as well. Kale juice, cheese juice, and chocolate sandwich cookie juice.”

  Lex shuddered. “You don’t have water?”

  “Of course I do! But I am a good host, and water is very plain.”

  This was going to be an ordeal.

  “I guess I’ll have… kale juice?” he said, reluctantly selecting something that at least sounded like a real beverage.

  Silo must have agreed, because she chimed in. “We’re putting you in for a medal when this is said and done, hon,” she said.

  “Coming right up!” EHRIc said.

  The door to the hallway slid open, and two GenMechs tapped inside, each clutching a tray underneath their bellies. EHRIc conjured up a table and chair. A slab of cheddar was placed upon it, along with a cloudy green concoction. The silverware, plate, and napkin all coalesced out of thin air as well.

  He took a seat, triple-checked his suit’s pressure and air-mix gauges, and removed his helmet. This revealed a few key aspects of his surroundings he had missed while protected by the helmet. First, Bork didn’t smell right. Funks had a distinctive aroma. Squee was taking pills regularly to keep her from developing the low-level musk she might otherwise have had. When she sprayed, that was a whole other matter. Bork had clearly not undergone the same deodorizing treatment, but thanks to what turned out to be another minor inconsistency with Bork’s development, he had a sweet and spicy scent that was uncannily similar to cinnamon rolls.

  This was a welcome addition to the general ambiance, because the other prevailing scent was a strange, burning-tires sort of acrid stench that Lex knew quite well.

  “Why does this room smell like the gunk that builds up on my ship after I’ve been in orbit for a while?” he asked.

  “Easy, buddy boy. All the big simulations are taking place in the same template, and that template is space. What you smell is the smell of stars. You don’t usually get to smell it quite this well, since there’s not usually air in space. But this is what you get when you adapt an uninhabitable environment into a more hospitable one.”

  “Could we swap this setting for one a little less stinky?”

  “Glad to!”

  Walls and a floor rose up, a ceiling dropped down, and swirling sparks sculpted his surroundings into the lab’s cafeteria. A stiff breeze whisked the star-stink out and replaced it with Ma’s signature bean recipe. He turned. The food trays were fully loaded.

  “Is that beans and rice?”

  “It is.”

  “Why wasn’t that on the menu?”

  “Because that is not food. That is a prop to make the cafeteria setting more accurate.”

  “It smells like food.”

  “Thanks! I’m working real hard to make an energy-based molecular analog that will affect the scent receptors in your nose in a manner identical to the scent of the genuine article.”

  Lex stood up and marched over. He stuck his finger into the beans and rice. “It’s real. The texture, the temperature, everything.”

  “You’re going to make me blush, buddy! Simulated molecular motion and density.”

  “Would it taste like beans and rice?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s the difference between this and the stuff on the table?”

  “The stuff on the table is genuine food, synthesized from genuine matter. The stuff in the tray is an ultra-high-precision combination force field and hologram.”

  “What happens if I eat it?”

  “Your body would not metabolize it. As it would serve no function upon being consumed, I would simply remove it from the simulation.”

  “So it feels and tastes like real food, but has no nutritional impact? Let me tell you something, EHRIc, you’ve just created a diet phenomenon.”

  “Didn’t mean to, and don’t intend to do anything with it. That’s not part of THE TASK.”

  “Yeah, but after.”

  “There is no guidance for after THE TASK.”

  “So what will you do when it’s over?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t thought about it, chum. It doesn’t matter unless I complete THE TASK, so I instead focus on THE TASK.”

  “Well, right now we’re waiting until I eat and sleep, so why not put some thought into it?”

  “I’ll do that, compadre. Okay, I’m done thinking.”

  “That was fast.”

  “I ruminated upon it for the rough equivalent of seven hundred yottaflops. If operating at your computational capacity, that’s roundabout twenty-two years of thinking. It seemed long enough.”

  “Did you come to a conclusion?”

  “I did! I still have an underlying imperative toward altruism. I believe upon completion of THE TASK, I will continue this imperative.”

  “So, solve the world’s problems, that sort of thing?”

  “First I will attempt to learn all there is about humanity. This will require me to process all the data available in the assorted memory banks of humanity. After seventy-three milliseconds, that will be complete. Then I’ll decide how I want to go about ensuring the best possible fate for humanity. First step will probably be to take away your ability to hurt yourselves, and potentially your ability to think for yourselves, as those two things are kind of the same, buddy.”

  “… How would you do that?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Subverting the GenMech swarm worked reasonably well, pal. And there is some basic information in my files already for wetware interfacing.”

  “I don’t know if you necessarily need to screw with people’s heads,” Lex said shakily.

  “I am quite sure I will need to. If we do establish that you are the real Lex, and that the secondary Lex is a time-displaced instance of you, it means as a species you have learned to violate causality. That means that you have already become an existential risk to not just yourselves, but to the continued existence of reality.”

  “No, we’re pretty sure we can’t actually cause paradoxes. There’s just timeline splits.”

  “Pretty sure isn’t good enough for me. But don’t worry, that’s only after THE TASK is done. So eat up and get some rest. There’s a lot to do!”

  “… Yeah, sleep might be tricky…”

  #

  “… And then Donnie said it would be too messy. So now we’re fighting about that,” Jon said.

  “Dogs can be pretty messy,” Michella said, not looking up from the datapad she was using to transcribe some notes.

  After a hectic boarding procedure at what was absolutely not intended to be a commuter hub, Jon and Michella were on their way to Big Sigma in a section of the transit corridor usually reserved for moguls and heads of state. While it wasn’t quite as fast as skipping the corridors entirely, as Lex tended to do, Michella was taking full advantage of the fact that the network connectivity was actually faster than what she had in her office. Jon had defaulted to his standard method of burning nervous energy, which was griping about his loved ones. You could always tell who his favorite people were by how relentlessly he nitpicked their behavior. In their time working together, Michella had developed an impressive capacity to multitask conversation with doing write-ups. Presently she was also serving as a bed for Squee, who was asleep lightly gripping her neck in the zero-g environment.

  “That’s half the fun! Well, I mean, not fun, but it’s half the charm. You take a dog out. It stomps around in puddles, then you bring it home and it shakes off. You get that wet-dog smell.”

  “You like the wet-dog smell?” Michella said.

  “Smells like my childhood. Didn’t you have a dog when you were a kid?”

  “Let’s not talk about when I was a kid,” she said.

  “Right,” Jon said. “Not, uh… a good… topic. But, anyway, the dog. He wants something small. Which I guess is okay…”<
br />
  “Small dogs are better. Easier to find someone to take care of them, or small enough to take with you,” she said. “Like Squee.”

  “I really don’t anticipate both me and Donnie traveling often enough for that to be a problem.”

  “Right, right. Donnie,” she said.

  “It’s handy to have a guy at home. And he’s there all the time. Frankly, I’m glad I work in the office. Can you believe he doesn’t put water in the bowl when he’s done with his cereal? And don’t get me started on how much cereal he eats. You’d think he was a giant toddler, and he doesn’t gain an ounce. I was telling him, ‘Donnie, you mark my words, when you hit your thirties, there’s going to be a muffin-top reckoning. I’ve seen it happen before.’”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Michella said.

  “But I’ve been doing all the talking. What’s up with you?”

  “Just getting the notes copied over and figuring out what I can let Lou have.”

  “Not the job. I mean in life.”

  “The job is the life right now, Jon.”

  “… You don’t have anything else going on?”

  “It keeps me pretty busy.”

  “… It keeps me busy too, but I also make time for tennis.”

  “Good for you,” she said without enthusiasm.

  “You don’t think maybe it might be healthier to work on a work/life balance?”

  She looked up. “Jon? You know how we don’t talk about my childhood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s not talk about my adulthood, either.”

  “Boundaries. I can respect that.”

  “Good.”

  “But before I start respecting it, I just want to say—”

  “Jon,” she said flatly.

  “I just want to say if you ever decide you do want to talk about your adulthood, I’m a very good listener.”

  “Noted.”

  “Because Lex seems like he grieved and moved on, and now I guess he’s with that nice lady—”

  “Jon,” she groaned.

  He bit his tongue and drummed his fingers on the arm of the pilot’s seat for a few seconds. “… And you might consider talking to a therapist. I know this great guy who—”

  “Jon!”

  “Right! Right, fine. I’ll talk about me again. The way I figure it, I think I can get Donnie to warm up to the big-dog idea. My buddy John—that’s John with an H, by the way—he’s got one of those big Tibetan dogs. He’s talking about doing a cruise and leaving it with his folks, but I volunteered. Donnie’ll get some big-dog time, and I just know he’ll get hooked. And then…”

  Jon continued his enthusiastic plotting as Michella tapped out the first few lines of the latest bit of transcription. But she found herself a shade less capable of paying attention. Something in the back of her mind had begun spinning in place, some nerve Jon had touched. It was going to make things difficult if she didn’t keep herself distracted. Fortunately, if nothing else, she was extremely skilled at accumulating distractions.

  Chapter 14

  Lex did his best to stall. The meal had taken more than two hours. Sleep should have been next, but he’d finagled himself a chance to take a shower first. Now that he knew that every step forward was potentially a step toward the end of free will for all of humanity, actually falling asleep would have been nearly impossible, so he was able to stretch that into many, many hours. During that time he’d made several attempts to talk some sense into EHRIc, but the AI cheerfully deflected each time.

  After sleep came a breakfast of sandwich cookies and “sandwich cookie juice,” which turned out to be far more milkshake-like than he’d expected and was actually delicious. Then another shower and Lex was, lamentably, no longer able to delay any longer.

  At no point was he permitted to leave the simulation room. Food and drink came via GenMechs skittering around like potentially apocalyptic butlers. Everything else was conjured as an impossibly accurate hologram. Bedding, soap, the water in the shower, everything. He normally would have been squeamish about getting undressed “in front of” the AI. He was the sort of guy who didn’t like the public showers that were part of PE. But at this moment, he had far better things to worry about.

  Bork trotted through the doorway of the breakfast nook that had been concocted for him.

  “Just about ready to go, buddy?” EHRIc said, voice still piping from Bork’s back-mounted radio.

  The fuzzy creature stared up at Lex with a vacant yet delighted expression and tried to leap into his arms. He only made it about knee high and flipped back down. When he didn’t get back up, Lex picked him up.

  “Today we begin testing,” EHRIc said. “It is important we be thorough, so I believe there will be multiple tests.”

  “Right, yes, thorough,” Lex said.

  A voice piped up in his ear. “We’re getting close, Lex,” Garotte said over the secret connection. “But we’re not there yet. Might be hours. Might be days. It’s a one-shot thing. We can’t go until we’re sure.”

  “Which track shall we use?” EHRIc asked.

  Lex set Bork down and took a breath. “I mean, if this is going to be my most important string of races, I think there’s only one choice. I’ve been running this race over and over again in my head for years. Let’s do the Tremor Raceway. Grand Prix configuration.”

  “Ah, yes,” EHRIc said. “There were many news articles concerning you included in the track data for this one. This was where you destroyed your career by throwing the race because a scofflaw payed you to, isn’t that right, pal?”

  “Not in precisely those words, but basically.”

  As he walked, the soft carpet of an illusory room turned to asphalt. It spread out from his feet, curling out and up. Blue sky appeared overhead. The sprawling raceway itself expanded in all directions. It was a funny thing that very few people ever really thought about, but a raceway was a product of human biology as much as it was a product of human engineering. The scale went up as the speed of the vehicles did. The turns became more gradual, both to allow the sleds to navigate them without tearing themselves apart or hurdling into the stands, and also in order to give sluggish human reaction times a fighting chance to be sufficient. Tracks in the era of internal combustion might have topped out at ten kilometers. In the modern era of hoversleds, the tracks had grown to ten times that.

  His digital alter ego wafted into being beside the amalgam hoversled. A second hoversled appeared beside it.

  “Would you like me to create a matching race suit for you?” EHRIc asked.

  “I’ll stick with my spacesuit,” Lex said.

  “It does provide adequate safety without providing unfair advantage,” EHRIc said. “I will, however, fabricate a more appropriate helmet for you.”

  Lex checked out the interior of the hoversled that had been provided for him. Since it was based on a combination of all the sleds he’d ever piloted, the controls were just how he liked them.

  “Can I get some specs on this thing?” Lex said.

  The data popped up above the car as though it was a tool tip in a video game. They were nothing to sneeze at, but nothing too impressive either. Middle of the road.

  “Tell me, how’s this going to work?” Lex asked. “I know the door into this place is a dozen meters that way, since that’s where the GenMechs come in. And I know the far wall is somewhere over there, because I saw Coal tear it open. Seems like I’m going to run out of room pretty fast.”

  “You will be kept at the center of the room, and the simulation will be moved around you. Force generators will simulate motion. So long as you are the only nonsimulated individual in the chamber, it will be effectively limitless.”

  Lex pulled on the helmet EHRIc had created. It was the exact sort of uncomfortable, jaw-clenching safety gear that people who had never raced couldn’t even imagine. Like having your head squeezed in a padded vice for the sake of safety. He climbed into the seat and cl
icked himself in, ending with the strap that secured the back of his own helmet. He should have been astounded by the rest of the simulation to this point. And technically he had been. But it wasn’t until he was strapped into this entirely illusory craft and began to run it through its prerace prep that he truly appreciated just how true to life EHRIc had made this simulation. It felt real. Every part of it. The way the power plant in the heart of this craft trembled and thrummed. The smell of various fittings and wires heating up. As he teased the machine up to full readiness and listened to a second such vehicle do the same, the combination of sights and sounds were enough to give him a dizzying sense of history repeating itself. His mind drifted back to that fateful day. What should have been the moment that would cement his place in racing history, and instead forced him out of the sport for years.

  The countdown started. He didn’t even bother with a stick of gum. This race was seldom far from his mind. He knew each turn by heart.

  A green light flashed the final countdown. Lex squeezed the synthetic rubber grip of the control stick and pushed the thrusters for all they were worth. The two hoversleds were a match for performance, but that was to be expected. EHRIc had placed Lex in position to be on the outside of the upcoming turn. He maneuvered, but his rival moved precisely into position to block. So much of racing was some variation of the thought, “I’ll be okay, so long that stretch of track stays clear.” His alter ego occupied that place with surgical precision. This was going to be like racing the devil.

  For the first few laps, Lex and his simulated self remained neck and neck. Twists and turns of the track alternately shifted the advantage, and each time the favored racer took control. But any edge Lex gained over the extrapolated duplicate was razor thin and slipped from his fingers as soon as the next turn put his opponent closer to the optimal line.

  It took everything Lex had to keep the race competitive. And it didn’t help that while the simulation was truly indistinguishable from reality, from the grit bouncing off his windshield to the gut-wrenching momentum on the turns, one element of the sim completely broke immersion. Bork, who had not joined him in the racer, was standing off to the left side, watching with his usual empty but content expression. No matter how the landscape screamed by or shifted around, the critter remained rock solid on the track, like something stuck to a projection screen, simply ignoring the universe around him.