by Joseph Rhea
“They never gave Ceejer an Avatar, or body, if you will, so it can’t mate or produce offspring, and therefore can never evolve into something dramatically better, like a THI.”
Then a light went on in Alek’s head. “And because you built your simulations using DNA-based memory, even Ceejer can’t change the rules and give itself a body, can it?”
She stared at him a moment before answering, “That’s correct. Breaking any rule or any physical law programmed into the system would result in a full-scale crash, effectively killing every single program inside Cyberdrome, including Ceejer.”
“So how are you able to interface with your simulations if you can’t break any rules?”
“Quite simple,” she said. “All personnel inside Cyberdrome are required to obey all of the laws of physics while interfaced.”
“When you say, ‘all of the laws,’ what do you mean?”
“I mean all of them,” she repeated. “It’s why our people are required to live inside big floating ships called ‘Survey Vessels,’ and fly aircraft back and forth to the study areas scattered around each of the worlds, instead of just transporting our Avatars back and forth. Contrary to what you may think of us, Mr. Grey, the people who designed all of this are not idiots.”
“So, you really don’t think the hostages are part of some sort of THI trick?”
“The attack on our system was real and it came from the outside. It was your stolen Cyberphage that started all of this, which means that someone—a human—is to blame.”
Just then, an alarm went off in the room and Leconte looked off to the side. Her face froze in a look of disbelief. “I understand.” She glanced at Alek. “Please tell Dr. Benness to proceed with what we discussed—tell her I’m implementing ‘Plan B’ immediately.” She then stood, walked behind Maya’s desk, and sat down in the chair. Alek pivoted around to face her, realizing that bad news was coming.
“What happened?”
“Regardless of the mistakes this company might have made in the past,” she began, “I think you will agree that the only thing that matters now is getting our people back.”
Somehow, he knew that she wasn’t referring to the hostages. “You’re talking about the mission team, aren’t you? What’s happened to them?”
“I need you for a special project, Alek, and I would like your verbal consent before I begin.”
“You want me to go in and save everyone,” he said, with a bit more sarcasm than he meant. In reality, the thought of experiencing a full neural interface—especially one as advanced as Cyberdrome appeared to be—filled him with equal portions of excitement and trepidation.
Leconte narrowed her eyes. “You can certainly choose not to help us,” she said. “Maya and the others...”
He straightened his back. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
Leconte smiled. “Recorded and logged.”
At that moment, he heard the door slide open behind him. Before he could pivot his chair around, something cold pressed against his neck and he heard a slight hiss.
He spun his head around and saw Doctor Benness standing next to him, holding what looked like a hypo-gun in her hand. “What are you doing,” he tried to yell, but the words poured out of his mouth like cold honey. His head felt heavy and his vision began to blur.
“Was that a full dose?” Leconte asked.
“Of course,” Benness replied. “Are you absolutely sure this is necessary?”
He heard Leconte’s answer just before he lost consciousness—her voice seemed distant and muted. “It’s our only option at this point,” she said. “Mr. Grey is going to help us end this situation, once and for all.”
PART TWO
METAL
SIX
Alek opened his eyes and saw a strange glowing man standing in front of him. It took a moment to realize that it was just a bio-display of his own body. He was on his back in one of the interface chambers he had seen earlier. It was open to the air and he could see the top of the chamber nestled in the ceiling above him.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position and looked around. In the dim light of the room, he could just make out the other six chambers lining the outer curved wall. This is my father’s chamber, he realized. It would’ve been the only one not used by the six-person mission team. The room was otherwise empty, which meant that he couldn’t call his powerchair. What the hell was Leconte up to?
He looked down and saw that he was wearing a long-sleeved, dark-gray bodysuit with matching boots. It felt like smooth cloth against his skin but hard plastic—almost armored—on the outside. He heard a slight rumble and saw the main door to the room slide open. He quickly laid back down as the silhouette of a woman jogged into the room and began running along the circular path by the chambers on the far side of the room. In the dim light of the bio-displays, he saw that she wore only a black bra and matching underwear. Whoever she was, she had a great body.
As she passed his chamber, he cleared his throat. The woman spun around with her arms raised in a fighting posture. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, slightly out of breath and obviously startled.
He recognized her face immediately. It was Maya’s friend, Lorena Aston. “You tell me,” he said, trying not to stare at her body, which glistened with perspiration. “The last thing I remember, your boss, Leconte, and I were talking and then I woke up in here.” He looked around the room and then at her. “So, how long have you guys been back?”
“Back?” A half smile spread across her lips. “Oh I get it. I guess I should expect a newbie like you to be confused.”
“Confused about what?”
She wiped sweat off her face and pushed her long brown hair back. “Your Avatar’s channeling its sensory data directly through the dream centers of your obviously tiny cerebral cortex. In layman’s terms, it means you’re asleep right now and having the most realistic dream of your life.”
Tiny cerebral cortex? Why the hell was she being so rude to him? Then what she said about being asleep sunk in. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re interfaced, newbie.” She waved her hands at the room. “This, in all its glory, is a part of what we call Cyberdrome.”
He reached out and touched the smooth surface of the chamber. It felt far too real to be a simulation. “If this is a simulation, why does this room look exactly like the interface room?”
She sighed. “It’s a copy—obviously. You’re currently inside one of the ships used to study the Earth simulations.”
“You’re talking about Survey Vessels,” he said, remembering the description in the datapad Cloudhopper had given him. Huge floating space ships that housed both ALife and human researchers in the simulated worlds.
“Much of the ship’s interior is a copy of the main facility,” she said. “It makes it easier for us to work here, knowing where everything is.”
“That explains why your facility’s laid out like a buried spaceship,” he said. “But why have an interface room inside a simulation?”
“This room’s used to transport the ALife researchers back and forth between the simulations,” she said as she walked to the far side of the circular room. “These chambers use matter-energy converters to transport us, which is also how we enter and exit Cyberdrome ourselves.”
“Matter-energy conversion is physically impossible, at least for transporting living organisms. Aren’t you breaking the laws of physics?”
“The laws of real physics, I suppose. But, it works in here, at least well enough to allow us to get in and out of the system without causing a crash.”
“So, where are Maya and the others?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Out placing the third deletion routine,” she said as she pulled what looked like another folded-up black bodysuit from an opening in the wall. “One of us has to stay behind and protect the ship.”
“Protect it from what?” he asked.
She bent over and pulled the bodysuit
over her long legs and up her body. As she did so, the material seemed to move with her, actually helping her get dressed. He blinked twice, wondering if he was seeing things.
“They’re called Omnisuits,” she said, obviously aware that he was watching her.
He touched the material of his own suit—it seemed to react to his touch. “Virtual clothing?” he asked.
“Think about that statement,” she said. “Virtual clothes wouldn’t obey the laws of physics, would they? The Omnisuits are an intelligent, silicon-based nanotech fabric. They allow us to adapt our clothing to the environments and cultures we study here. They can also be used for camouflage, of course, which is why some people call them ‘Hides.’” She stared at him. “Get it? You can use them to hide.”
“I got it,” he said as he examined the material on his arm. He thought back to what Leconte had told him about the DNA-based memory they used to run the simulations. In order to contain any potential THI programs, everything and everyone would be forced to follow all of the laws of physics, or at least the ones programmed into the system when they created it.
“Each has a voice activated interface,” she said as she lifted an arm up to her mouth. “Standard uniform.” He saw a blur as her suit changed into the dark blue uniform she and Cloudhopper wore back in the real world.
“Wow. How many types of clothing can it make?” he asked. Unable to move from the waist down made it difficult getting dressed every day. An Omnisuit would certainly make his life easier.
“Almost anything,” she said. “It also adjusts itself automatically to maintain optimum body temperature and can even help you in emergencies.”
He lifted his arm and described the outfit he wore before interface. Within a few seconds, something surprisingly similar covered his body. As he felt the sleeve of his shirt, he asked, “What do you mean by emergencies?”
Lorena made a signal on a wall pad, closing the lid of her chamber. “Well, let’s say we took this ship into high orbit around a planet. Then, let’s say I shove you out of the nearest airlock. Your Omnisuit will realize that you’re in danger and turn itself into a functional spacesuit.”
“You mean it can provide air and life support?” he asked, ignoring the implied threat.
“It’s not magic,” she replied. “It can only change shape and color, like the skin of an octopus. In the hypothetical event I just described, the suit would stretch to cover your face with a bubble and seal itself to keep whatever air was inside from escaping. You wouldn’t last long that way, but like I said, it’s not magic.”
“Still, if this fabric really is based on the laws of physics, that much movement would have to eat up a lot of energy.”
“Each suit has enough internal power for about three days of normal use, much less if you ask it to do anything fancy. After that, you need to recharge it—like I was just doing when you interrupted my workout.”
“Sorry for dropping by unannounced,” he said.
“Speaking of which, I’ve got things to do,” she said as she turned and walked toward the exit.
“Wait a minute,” he yelled. “You can’t just leave me in here.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she said, stopping just before the door. “You were in some sort of servo-chair, weren’t you? Well, don’t worry—the software would’ve automatically repaired your digital body during the scanning process. You should be able to walk in here just fine.”
“I thought Avatars had to be exact copies of your body for the fast interface to work.”
“It’s your brain that has to be copied exactly,” she said as she turned and headed through the door. “Bodies can be tweaked quite a bit.”
The door slid shut and he was left all alone. “What if the damage isn’t physical?” he yelled, panicked that he would be a cripple in this world, without even the use of his powerchair. “What if the problem’s in my mind?” he asked the darkened room.
Determined to follow her, he rolled out of the pod and grabbed for a nearby handrail. In the darkness, he missed the rail and hit the floor hard on his knees. The pain shot through his legs. As he lay there curled up in a ball, cursing at his mistake, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“I thought you said you couldn’t move your legs,” Lorena’s voice said.
“I can’t,” he replied, “but I feel pain just like everyone else.”
“Well, if you can’t move your legs, tell me how you managed to land on your knees? Rolling off that pad like you just did should’ve made you land right on your face.”
He looked up at her and realized that she was right. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
He took a deep breath and reached for the rail. He felt a strange warmth spread through his leg muscles as Lorena helped him up to a standing position.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed.
“Try taking a step,” she said as she held his hands and moved backward a few feet, pulling him gently toward her. He took an awkward step forward. As he repeated the movement with the other leg, he realized that he was walking stiff-legged, like Frankenstein’s monster, but it still felt amazing.
After a few steps, she stopped abruptly and he almost ran into her. “You’re taller than I thought,” she said.
There was an awkward silence as he looked down at her. Something about her felt strangely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“Now I really have to go,” she said as she turned abruptly and headed for the door.
His legs still felt stiff, but he tried not to show it as he followed her out of the interface room and into the central elevator. It also looked identical to the one back in the Cyberdrome facility.
“Well, Ms. Aston, if I remember correctly, there are something like a thousand artificial people on these ships. So, what do I say to them when I meet them?”
She sneered at him. “Unless you want to make it formal and have me start calling you Mr. Grey, Lorena will do,” she said, making the hand gesture to start the elevator. “But to answer your question, except for the two of us, this ship’s empty. We transported it in along with the mission team.”
“You sent this entire ship in with you? Seems like a huge database.”
“A single human Avatar is more complex than a hundred of these Survey Vessels. Someone as bright as you claim to be should know that.”
“Right,” he said, hating the way she kept talking down to him. He decided to change the subject. “So, when will Maya and the others return?”
“Soon,” she said as she stepped out of the elevator and headed down a long hallway.
As he followed her, his stomach let out a loud gurgle. In the silence of the empty ship, it echoed down the hall. He realized that he had not eaten since the previous afternoon “Must be lunch time,” he said, then came to a halt. “Wait a minute. If I’m inside a simulation, why do I feel hungry?”
“Your brain’s now fully connected to your Avatar body,” she said over her shoulder, not bothering to stop. “And, it’s operating just like the flesh and blood version. In other words, it will get hungry. Unless you’re a lucid dreamer, you will have to get used to it.”
He was about to say that he actually was a lucid dreamer, but something in her manner told him to shut up. “What do you mean?” he asked.
She stopped a few steps away and turned to face him. “Lucid dreamers are people who can control aspects of their dreams,” she said, obviously bothered that she had to explain the facts of cyber-life to him. “I already told you that the data feeds to our Avatars are directed through the dream centers of our brains, so you do the math.”
“Lucid dreamers would have the potential to alter their own realities here,” Alek said, realizing the weight of that statement. “Leconte told me that breaking any rules here could have a disastrous effect.”
“It could cause a system-wide crash,” she said, “and each of us would lose all sensory contact for as long as the neuroprobes kept us interfaced.” She looked glumly at him. “Do you have
any idea what that would do to us?”
Alek felt a shiver go up his back. “Total sensory black-out,” he said. “I’ve heard people say that it’s worse than death, and they just experienced it for a few seconds.”
“For obvious reasons, everyone’s screened before interface.” Without another word, she turned and walked back down the hall at a brisk pace.
They didn’t screen me, he said to himself. Then again, I’m not supposed to be here.
As he jogged down the hall to catch up with her, he realized that his legs were steadily becoming used to the movement. He had a flashback to playing soccer again, but then remembered that this was all an illusion. When the mission ended, he would be going back to that other body, the one still confined to a powerchair.
For a moment, he imagined what it would be like to stay inside Cyberdrome permanently. Would it be so terrible? With time passing one hundred times faster than normal, he could experience an entire lifetime in less than a year. In ten years, he could live out the lives of ten men. Then something else dawned on him; was his unexplained ability to walk in here a result of lucid dreaming? Was he unconsciously willing his legs to move? Was he risking the mission and everyone’s lives just by being there?
Just then, he felt the floor suddenly move. He lost his balance and ended up pressing Lorena up against the corridor wall. “What the hell was that?” he whispered a few centimeters from her ear.
She pushed him gently away. “The ship seems to be repositioning itself,” she said. Her face told him that she wasn’t sure why.
“I thought there were no artificial people here. Who’s flying this thing?”
“I’m the pilot on this mission but when I’m not on the bridge, it’s controlled by an ALife collective that’s built into the ship,” she said, looking distractedly down the hallway.
“You mean an auto-pilot?”
She didn’t respond as she pressed her hand against a wall panel, lighting up a hidden display. She then drew a shape on the input pad with her index finger, and the display switched to an exterior view of the Survey Vessel hovering over a metallic-blue plane with light blue circular markings that stretched to the horizon.