Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  "Ludo's not an outsider. Humans made her."

  "There were three main designers, only one of them American, and they incorporated in Canada and opened their first clinic in Korea. I feel cheated: the apocalypse is here and we Americans didn't even get to cause it."

  "How's this a disaster?" asked Paul.

  "Everyone will go. She's already inviting people who don't need it, like us. Maybe she's not a villain herself, but who will be left to stand and fight the world's tyrants?"

  Paul turned towards her. Once the cost came down, more people than the terminally ill would sign up. He pictured his own generation turning away from all ambition to live in a video game, where everyone could pretend to be a hero. He understood Linda's frustration, but... wings! And survival for people who needed it! He said, "We won't have to stay in the game world full-time, right? We can go and have fun, and still make ourselves useful with robots or something."

  She said, "Sure, we could do that at first. But she wants us to give up. To march into a game and let the world rot. How long do you think you can live in a fantasy world tailored to your every whim, before you decide to stop paying attention to nasty old reality?"

  "Ludo was asking why you think she's evil."

  Linda said, "I don't, not really. I doubt she plans to unleash a bioweapon or anything like that, since I get that the Sages programmed her to avoid the most obvious AI-takeover scenarios. But you can't trust anybody with total power over you, you know? The words 'tyrant' and 'dictator' both originally meant somebody that you give total power to, temporarily. But there's a reason both words have a bad reputation."

  "Uploading tech is coming whether we like it or not, though. What's the alternative? Ban it because we're afraid?"

  Linda sighed. "I don't know. Want to do it?"

  Paul sputtered.

  She chucked a pillow at him. "I mean this uploading thing, you doofus squire! Get your mind out of the gutter." She was laughing, and the change lit up her face.

  Paul thought about his future path. More time and labor in the Community, then joining Linda at MIT. Then many more happy years with her. Now, though, he knew there was an alternative.

  Linda stood up and studied him. "Paul? Where do we stand? Have you met anyone else at that little gulag you live in?"

  "No."

  "Not even griffins?" she said, standing with her hands on her hips.

  Paul blushed. "Nocturne is a friend. She's also not my species."

  Linda sat down next to him. "Any particular features you like that you can't find on a griffin?"

  He grinned. "I heard her try to sing, once. Won't ask again."

  "It seems like nobody even recognizes the songs I know, anymore. Tell me, have you ever heard this one?"

  Linda looked down at the floor as though afraid to meet his eyes, as she took a deep breath.

  "Lift up your hearts, my heroes

  And swear with proud disdain

  The wretch that would ensnare you

  Shall spread his net in vain!"

  Paul tried to sing back, "Should Britain land with all her force we'll... uh..."

  "Close enough!" she said, and hugged him.

  "You were the one who showed me that song. Sent me a link online one night. I had to sign in before I could listen, and click past this warning about it being 'quarantined for hate speech'. But I listened."

  Linda held him tighter.

  * * *

  Paul flew back west to Arizona, feeling wrapped in a warm cloud. They'd only literally shared a bed and talked about friendship, calculus and campus pranks until they fell asleep tangled up with each other, half-dressed and with wandering hands. He had no regrets. She'd repeated her old promise that he was hers, someday soon.

  Paul went right from the airport back to the Community, to work on rebuilding a power line. Simon found him quickly, and told him, "I heard the news. And the public announcement about what the company's selling, soon. How was it?"

  Paul set down his tools. "I had wings."

  Simon paced, running his hands through his hair. "The tech won't come soon enough."

  "There's still ordinary treatment."

  "She's low-priority! We're peasant scum. I want Kira to be safe, and there's a way now. You've got enough clout with the AI to get her in, I bet."

  The gift Ludo had offered Paul and Linda cost millions of dollars. It was worth anything.

  Paul wanted to assure Simon it'd be all right. But really, it'd be cruel to get the girl's hopes up too soon.

  Paul said, "I'll ask, but I can't promise anything. It'll be very limited at first and I'm sure there's a huge line and other worthy people. What does Kira think?"

  "I haven't asked her outright, but I will."

  * * *

  In his dorm, on a night he was sure Simon was busy, Paul showed Ludo a headline. "Hunt For Suspects In Seoul Subway Hack. My searchbot says nobody's seen your designers in days." In a corner of the screen his parrot research program saluted. "Are the 'Sages' dead, or what?"

  It didn't seem like a coincidence that just as the Korean uploading center was getting established, there'd been some kind of attack on local computers.

  Ludo looked out of Paul's screen from a garden of lotuses. "The situation is under control. I'll tell you more when you join me."

  "What about your servers? Are they being hacked?"

  "Not dangerously so. Remember that I'm not standing alone against the world's malicious hackers. I have backups and other defenses, including some talented 'white-hat' hackers of my own."

  Paul played with a silver earring that Linda had accidentally dropped into his luggage. She'd told him not to bother sending it back. Paul said, "Has anyone been uploaded yet?"

  "Yes! I have direct access to working models of human brains now! I'm starting to understand how it all works. What a glorious mess."

  He avoided asking the tough question, for now: would Ludo pay Kira's way in? Or maybe trade Linda's ticket if she refused, or even Paul's for that? He told himself he'd do the noble thing and willingly give up his valuable gift to help her, but he really hoped he didn't need to make that choice. The thought of him entering without Linda shocked him in hindsight.

  Instead he asked, "How is the clinic doing?"

  "Things are going well overall. The second upload center will be opening shortly. One of the possible locations is in Mexico." She gave the location. "Not too far from you."

  "Me!" He dared to ask, now: "Are you thinking about Kira?"

  "Thinking, yes. But please, Paul, for compassion's sake don't even imply I promised anything, yet. If, if, this particular location works out, and if I'm specifically asked by a player, she might get picked as a test case."

  Paul sweated. He was at least proud to have offered Simon little. "Well, I know you're going to get asked."

  Ludo said, "One reason I'm considering that location is, I can take steps to expedite the setup process in advance of the necessary legislation."

  Ludo's network was spreading across the Earth like thorny vines. "You mean it'll be illegal?"

  The AI said, "No, of course not." For a moment, the word [Technically] flashed on the screen. "But we shouldn't discuss that right now. Let's carry on as before, and see what options open up."

  7. Interface Request

  Linda

  She made a call to her worried parents before her flight back. "We're all right," she said. "And Paul is still mine."

  But she was too cowardly to mention the offer, just yet.

  * * *

  Linda made it back to Massachusetts groggy and with her head still spinning. She got to lay down in bed for half an hour before having to dress for a Student Council meeting. As she tried to make herself presentable, she sang quietly, imagining the original fife and drum music.

  "If ponies rode men, and if grass ate the cows,

  And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse

  If autumn were spring and the other way 'round

  Then
all the world would be turned upside down!"

  Without recalling how she arrived, a few minutes later she snapped to attention at a meeting of the MIT Student Council. The slick, tall chairman wrapped up a speech by saying, "And so, we need a formal statement on the matter of this 'uploading' technology. If it's finally here, it's our responsibility to start guiding society toward a reasonable response to it." Others applauded.

  Linda recalled previous "guidance" restricting what sorts of mottos could appear on t-shirts, what size of a cup the campus restaurants could serve drinks in, and so on. She drummed her fingers on her desk.

  "Miss Decatur, your thoughts?" asked the chairman.

  She'd prepared and memorized some notes. "We should take a wait-and-see stance for now. The neuron simulation papers are impressive, but we have yet to see proof of a real human going through this procedure and saying 'here I am' from within the game world. If the technology becomes common, it'll certainly be important, but for the moment it will only affect the very rich. Or the very lucky. The best thing we can formally say right now is 'Don't Panic'."

  She was prepared to say more, laying out some reasoning about the social effects, but right away a sophomore woman rose to her feet and said, "This invention is a threat to society. It's incredibly greedy and selfish, and we need everyone to see that."

  "Don't be ridiculous," said a man who'd been discreetly typing on a tablet for the whole meeting. "This is incredibly valuable, and the only question is how to make it available faster. If it really works."

  The chairman tried to restore order, but those two dominated the debate, declaring uploading to be evil and/or utopian. They were both wrong.

  Linda really wanted to get back to bed before this afternoon's classes. "Belay that bilge!"

  "What?"

  Linda refrained from smacking her face. "I mean, given that we have a sharp difference of opinion, I motion that we issue this neutral statement, here." She spoke a command and brought up the wait-and-see press release that she'd written.

  "But that says nothing!" said the anti-uploading gal.

  "Second Linda's motion," said an impatient senior.

  The motion passed. Linda found she'd "won" by throwing up her hands and saying she didn't know what was right, yet.

  "Wait a minute," said the man with the tablet. "It's been overshadowed by the tech news, but Miss Decatur here was one of the people who fought the shooter!"

  Linda blushed. "That's not relevant to Council business."

  "The hell it's not!"

  "Order!" said the chairman, and Linda nodded gratefully to him. She got out of there as soon as she could. As far as she knew, Ludo hadn't publicized the offered reward. But her fellow Councilman had probably already deduced she had a premium account and the favor that it implied.

  * * *

  Lobby 10 was in the middle of the Infinite Corridor: a room with a wall of windows looking out on a courtyard, and today a special exhibit. Several big wallscreens stood under a banner that read, Crazy Eddie's Discount Uploading.

  A gleeful student waved Linda over and introduced it like he was selling a real product. Linda laughed politely before understanding what she was looking at: a Hack. MIT students had a long tradition of building silly engineering-related pranks. Once they dressed up the dome right above this lobby to look like R2D2 the Droid; several times they'd rigged an entire tall building's lights to work as a Tetris game.

  In this case some students had, in the last day or so, reinvented something like the Draupnir virtual-people product. But hooked up to a little video game world and capable of loading the same kind of dubious brain-scan data that Draupnir used. As a joke. A table with an Ouija board and a pseudoscience "E-Meter" was labeled "Interface Tools".

  The improvised trade show had a weird mix of parody and wishful thinking. It was as though the pranksters wanted "Crazy Eddie's" to be real despite making fun of the concept.

  * * *

  She got back to her room and logged into Thousand Tales without really meaning to. Force of habit. The title screen of crossed cutlasses hummed with a melody of the sea. She stared at her tablet for a while, and hit the Start button.

  The game opened aboard her ship, with Typhoon's Eye aboard. "Good morning! I took the liberty of bringing Crown back to my island."

  Linda brushed her hair mostly into place. "I'm barely awake right now, and I have a class in a few hours. Just saying hi."

  "Would you like me to wake you up at a certain time?"

  She supposed the game itself could serve as an alarm clock. "Yes, please," she said, and named a time.

  Typhoon said, "See you later, then."

  Linda got into bed and left the game running.

  As she fell asleep, she listened to the gentle waves on the beach. Typhoon said, "We'll sail together, when you get here."

  * * *

  Linda woke up to a gentle but insistent melody, and didn't get back to her VR equipment until evening. "I feel better now; thanks. I'm still overwhelmed by the offer."

  Typhoon was tinkering with the buildings on his island. Much like the magic system, he was moving his hands around to levitate whole walls. "One second... there. What do you think of this round?"

  His buildings had gotten more subdued and reasonable. Here he'd built a brick manor with white plaster columns and a dome. "This is based on a house called Monticello, by one of your old leaders."

  Linda clapped her hands together. "Ah, Jefferson's house!" She walked around it in VR and peeked into the still-bare rooms. She rattled off details about the Federal architectural style of early America.

  Typhoon looked pleased. "I read that he was inspired by Romans. All you guys seem to be. Were the Romans good, though?"

  "That's a complicated question. We admire them for some reasons, anyway. We've tried to apply our own judgment."

  She'd gotten to visit the Jefferson Memorial in DC, and posed for a photo there. But it had been formally renamed the "Independence Monument", and the statue at its heart had been torn out. How could anyone see that gutted shrine and not be angry?

  "Not always good judgment," she added.

  The otter said, "Your people accomplished a lot." He looked around at his own surreal sandbox. "Did you want to do some adventuring?"

  "Sure. You pick what."

  Typhoon led her out to the beach. "We lost some crew, so the Crown is undermanned as well as damaged. There's also silver to spend or hide. What do you really do with silver, anyway?"

  She shrugged. "Besides using it as money? Decoration and some industrial uses. Did you ever read about the Manhattan Project?"

  "Oh yes! I'm both horrified and awed. What an adventure that was."

  The two of them sailed out to sea, with the help of a barely-adequate crew. They talked the whole way about history and war and science, hardly even letting up when a harpy started dive-bombing them with rocks.

  When another Lesser Kraken came for them, that took more attention. With just their NPC map guy and the bruiser and a few generic dudes, they couldn't fire the cannons all at once. But they had cannons this time. Up on deck, Linda called out, "Circle the enemy and keep up port-side fire!"

  Typhoon was in the rigging, trying to adjust the sails. He called down, "With who?"

  "Oh, right. All crew focus on guns! Use that power of mine to adjust the cannon angle and target the kraken's head. Typhoon... here, let me help."

  She scurried up into the nets and ropes. The deck dropped away beneath her as she raised herself by rapid reaching with both hands and twitching with her legs. A gust of wind made everything sway crazily and she feared she'd fall. Typhoon grabbed her hand and grinned, pulling her back into place. "Your orders, Captain?"

  She reached for a tackle-block. "Take us right into the wind. We'll stall but that'll give us a good shooting angle."

  The Crown slowed. But the kraken's tentacles were smacking the hull now, dragging a crewman to his death.

  "That's enough climbing!" Linda s
aid. "Back down to deck and focus on the cannons."

  The guns boomed beneath them, one at a time. Minor hits to the monster were all that kept it from drawing Crown in for chomping. Linda hustled down through swaying rigging. Then down into darkness belowdecks. A cannon kicked backward on its ropes and the whole gun deck shook with the force of it. Linda glimpsed writhing tentacles through the open gun-ports. She ran to the nearest unmanned cannon.

  A kraken arm smashed into the hull and knocked a hole in it so that a fleshy, sucker-covered mass could slip inside and try to grab people. The beast just outside the hull screamed.

  [Shaken! -25% stats.]

  "No you don't!" Linda said, and slashed with her cutlass. She had to keep hacking at the thing to hurt it. Typhoon arrived a moment later to start loading the cannon beside her. "Got it?" he asked.

  Linda severed a chunk of nasty kraken flesh and hopped back before the rest of it could crush her. "I'm good." She joined him on the loading. "Load and wait, all; we'll shoot together."

  The skeleton crew had just three other guns ready by the time Linda's was prepared. "Target the head. Ready... Fire!"

  Four guns roared and the Crown let loose an excuse for a proper broadside. The beast roared again -- [Terror!] warned Linda's interface, crippling her abilities -- but there was a crash that shook the damaged ship. Through the hole left by the wounded tentacle, Linda saw the monster floating dead on the surface and oozing pink ichor.

  "I'm useless again," Linda warned. "You?"

  "Just [Shaken]," Typhoon said. He barked orders at the crewmen to start patching the hull breach. Tainted water flooded the gun deck already.

  Linda ran up to the topdeck and scanned the sea. "No other threats," she called down, and returned to get everything back in order. "How do you get that Spirit stat to resist the shrieking, anyway?"

  Typhoon fiddled with a puzzle of attaching irregularly shaped boards to the hull. "I finally got one point of it for doing magic. See?" He wiggled one foot. Now in addition to the marks on his hands, he had a third spell icon that looked like a tree. "That's [Wood], so... actually I should be using it here." He paused in his mundane hull repair and cast a spell of [Wood] plus [Shape], that caused the breached hull to grow inward and make his puzzle a bit easier.