by Dima Zales
I follow my body’s urges. As odd as it should be for us to be intimate right now, it actually feels natural. Maybe it’s because I saw the world through her eyes. This is, of course, in part what she’s trying to prove to me with her body. That this is real. That we are real. And I have to admit, she makes her point quite well.
* * *
“Okay,” I say when we’re lying on the beach, spent. “I do feel real—and happy—but my mind still boggles when I try to understand a mind like yours. To fathom what that Matrioshka thing is computing is just—”
“I know,” she says. “But the coolest part is that we’ll find out eventually, when we reach the outer layer.”
“Oh right. We’re flying toward it.” I brush the sand off my body. “Should we still be going there?”
“Would you want to pass up the opportunity now that you know it’s there?” She gestures and, to my mild disappointment, her bikini reappears on her body. “I know I’d never forgive myself.”
She’s right, of course. I want to know what life in the Solar System is like—even if I’m still having trouble applying that term to something so immense.
“So we keep going,” Phoe says. “The good news is that the trip won’t take as long as I thought. The outer layer of the structure is much closer to us than Earth was.”
“Oh yeah.” I sit up and gesture for my clothes, which show up like they would in Oasis. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
“That’s hard to answer. I suspect we don’t need to make the full journey to it. If we get close enough, someone will likely make contact with us. Another reason your question is hard to answer is that time is flowing really fast for us. Unless I slow down our thinking—which would be a very dumb thing to do—a few weeks of regular, human travel time will feel like a century, or maybe longer.”
I look at the sun above us. It doesn’t show any hint of having a megastructure surrounding it, which makes sense, since this sun is virtual.
“You didn’t know about the structure before?” I ask, voicing something that’s been bothering me for a few minutes. “When you set a course for Earth, you didn’t know it was gone?”
“I didn’t,” Phoe says solemnly. “I didn’t have access to my sensors. All I felt was that kinesthetic awareness you experienced. When I combined it with the old maps, I was able to set a course to where Earth used to be, but I couldn’t see what had happened. This is why I’ve been pushing for more resources. On some level, I was afraid something like this had happened. I think I mentioned it to you before.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling that mind-hurting sensation coming back. “What do we do while we travel? How do we kill all that subjective time?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” Phoe beams at me and gestures at the air. A large gray sphere appears between us. “We build a world, and then we live in it.”
Phoe waves at the sphere, and blue water—the same as the ocean in front of us—shows up on it.
She examines the sphere and gestures again.
A tiny continent appears in the middle of the global ocean. Then she gestures again, and another, bigger continent shows up on the opposite hemisphere.
“Is this a recreation of Earth?” I ask as more details appear on the sphere.
“Not really. This is my best guess at a world we’d find fun.” The polar caps appear at the edges of her globe. “We can call it Earth if you like. I was originally going to call it Phoenix, since I don’t get to use my full name much.”
“So is this some sort of model I’m looking at? When you’re done, you’ll make it life-size?” I watch her create a strange weather pattern over one of the larger continents.
“Something like that,” she says and turns the tiniest continent into a beach. “It’s a model, true, but the world gets created around us, so when this is finished, we’ll already be on this planet, whatever we decide to call it.” She spins the sphere so I can get a good look at it. “You should help me.”
I tentatively gesture at the globe. Nothing happens.
Phoe dramatically sighs and gestures at me with the same confidence as when she was creating the elements of our world.
I instantly learn how to build a world. What’s odd is that I feel as if I always had this ability. I point at the beach continent and wish for something I’ve always wanted to see in person: the pyramids. A very tiny pyramid appears on the continent, right by the water.
I gesture again, and a second pyramid appears next to the first.
“Good call,” Phoe says, looking past me. “Sand and pyramids go well together.”
I follow her gaze to where the pyramids actually appeared behind us. So that little beach on the globe is the beach we’re standing on. Though I know how this world creation works, it’s still amazing to see something I wished for manifest like that.
“If you don’t mind,” she says, “I’ll add the Sphinx.”
She gestures at the sphere, and the Sphinx appears next to my two pyramids, both on the sphere and on our beach.
“Your turn.” Phoe waves her hand and the sphere flies closer to me. “What would you like our world to have?”
26
For at least an hour, I create all the things I’ve always wanted to see on ancient Earth. Places I’ve read about and monuments out of Filomena’s lectures.
Phoe helps me, pulling on information she gained from the ancient archives.
I soon find myself feeling hungry and tired, but I keep adding details to our world.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Phoe says when my stomach growls for the second time in as many minutes. “I made your virtual body identical to your biological one, which means you’ll feel things like hunger. I can tweak this, of course.”
Hunger isn’t exactly pleasant, but eating is. “Can you adjust my body so I’ll never feel the need to eat, but I can enjoy food on a whim? For that matter, what food do we have in this world?”
“Of course I can,” Phoe says, and a large carpet with a variety of picnic baskets appears on the sand, answering my question about availability of food. “I altered your body so you’ll never get hungry again,” Phoe says a second later. “How do you feel?”
As soon as she says it, I know it’s the truth. The hunger pangs are gone, yet I’m still curious about what foods are in the baskets. I walk up to the nearest one and open it.
It’s filled with pastries. Some, like muffins, are foods I’ve tried during the Birth Day celebrations, but others, like the cheese croissant, are things I’ve only seen in ancient media, since cheese isn’t something we had in Oasis.
I grab a croissant and bite into it. It’s sweet, flaky, and delicious—much yummier than what I imagined.
“I just guessed at the taste,” Phoe says and grabs one for herself. “But it was an educated guess based on a lot of research.”
I sit cross-legged on the carpet and examine the rest of the baskets for interesting surprises, of which there are many.
“Do you want to see the world we’ve created?” Phoe sits next to me and grabs a slice of pizza. “We can fly around on this carpet, like they do in that Disney movie.”
I swallow a piece of marmalade and say, “Only if you can tweak my mind to get rid of my fear of heights.”
Phoe demonstratively waves at my head. “Done. I must say, you’re very open to this tweaking business. I’m proud of you.”
After a moment of introspection, I say, “I feel the same. Are you sure—”
“How’s this?” Phoe says, and the carpet floats off the ground.
I examine my internal reaction. When I floated up like this on a disk, I was definitely panicking by this point, but I don’t feel any negative emotions right now.
“I think it worked,” I say. “This should be interesting.”
We fly higher and higher and then shoot toward the ocean. Soon, the beach is a small dot behind us. I stop eating and focus on the flight. The faster we fly, the stranger I feel. Instead of panic, I’m experienci
ng a certain level of excitement.
“Is this how the ancients felt when they rode roller coasters?” I ask, a smile forming on my lips.
“I assume so,” Phoe says and increases our speed. “Shall we resume building?”
To underline her suggestion, she summons the Earth model, and it hangs in the air above us, undisturbed by the speed we’re traveling at.
Spinning the globe to an emptier portion, she points at it and adds more landmass.
I join her, and we continue creating the world. From time to time, we land to admire the details of our creations. I spend a day checking out the Wall of China as I hold Phoe’s small hand. And I can’t resist spending another day climbing our replica of the Eiffel Tower, especially since I’m no longer afraid of heights. Phoe seems to be enjoying all of it as much as I am. We have a friendly competition going on as to who can come up with the most creative landscapes. So far, she’s winning.
Our explorations are like some surreal tourism for the gods. First, we create the most romantic spot inspired by descriptions of the Taj Mahal and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; then we have a romantic tumble on the white marble, right under the glorious vegetation.
Oh, and we have a lot of sex. I’ve stopped blushing when I think of it and no longer feel weird about initiating it. Sex has become part of this strange process, as if our new world isn’t complete until we get intimate in every location we’ve created.
There’s only one thing spoiling my happiness: I can’t stop thinking about my friends. It’s like a splinter in my brain.
Finally, as we’re flying across the ocean again, I interrupt our make-out session to say, “Phoe, I’ve been thinking. Can you build a replica of Oasis? I think I’d like to bring Liam back in our Dorm room and then slowly reveal this crazy new reality to him.”
Phoe gives me an understanding look. I suspect she’s been reading my thoughts on this subject and waiting for me to bring it up.
Without saying anything, she waves her hand, and the ocean below us turns a familiar, disgusting orange-brown color. It’s eerie how much it resembles the Goo.
Phoe then makes a big green island appear below us, with geometric buildings all around it.
My heart skips at the sight. Having lived in Oasis for so many years, even its replica feels a little like home.
Our carpet flies down to the island, and we land on the soccer field by the Institute.
She looks around, nods approvingly, and gestures once more. The Dome shows up in the sky.
“This is only until I explain everything,” I tell her, wrinkling my nose at the Dome. “My plan is to have the Dome and the Goo disappear to convince Liam I’m telling him the truth.”
“That’s as good a plan as any,” Phoe says, getting up from the carpet.
We walk toward the Dorms together. Inside, I find a perfect replica of my room.
“So how is this going to work?” I ask as we make two beds appear. “Will he just wake up like it’s morning? He won’t recall the life support stuff failing, right? Please tell me he won’t remember suffering and dying.”
“Not unless he slept after it all happened—and he didn’t. I just checked his mind backup to verify that. Losing consciousness due to asphyxiation didn’t trigger the backup procedure the way sleep would, which is good. He won’t recall those horrible events; he’ll just think he’s waking up the day after Birth Day.”
My head spins when I consider what I’m about to tell my friend. How would I react if someone told me everyone I knew was dead and this was a virtual world? How would I react to the news that the world I knew is gone? Actually, I know that the world is gone, and I’m doing okay, so maybe Liam will be fine too. Still, he’s about to learn that he woke up in a technologically created afterlife. What do you even say to something like that?
“Listen, Theo. There’s something I mentioned before, but I don’t think you fully grasped it. It’s about emulating Liam and the people from Oasis in general.” Phoe sits down on the replica of my bed. “Our resources are still finite, and because of that, I want Liam’s thinking to be emulated at normal human speed.” She gives me an apologetic look.
“Why?” I ask. “I thought we had plenty of resources. Just look at the planet we created.”
“Yes, we created habitats, but it’s much harder to simulate people. With our version of Earth, I can do what ancient computer scientists called ‘lazy loading’—only utilize resources to run these environments when we reach that specific location. For example, since we’re not on our beach right now, the beach isn’t eating away at any of my processing power. Its code is stored away in a place that’s basically dumb matter, which is more abundant than our computing substrate. With people, I obviously can’t do something like that, since storing people is exactly what Limbo is for. Once they exist, they’ll exist forever. It wouldn’t be fair to put them in storage, or in Limbo, when we’re not around. Don’t you agree?”
I nod.
“So this is my compromise,” she says. “You can bring back as many of Oasis’s citizens as you want, but they will not think as fast as you and me. Simulating slow thinking is much cheaper computationally. This is something Haven’s designers should’ve done to accommodate a much larger population.”
Maybe it’s the enhancements she gave my mind earlier or my prolonged exposure to her, but what Phoe said actually makes sense. I see a problem right away, though.
“If you do that, given that I’m running much faster, won’t talking to Liam feel like I’m watching a glacier melt?”
“Yes—which is why I think it’s time you had multiple threads of existence, like me.” Phoe moves closer to me on the bed and gives me a conspiratorial smile. “Because you’re right: given the speed differentiation, you’ll go insane with boredom, just like I would if you weren’t thinking as fast as me. When you were a regular human living in Oasis, speaking with you was what first inspired me to run my thinking in threads.”
I consider it. In a nutshell, she’s offering me the ability to be in many places at once, akin to what happened when I was that anti-virus army.
“I’m only talking about two places at once at first,” Phoe says. “And it might feel different from that anti-virus situation. You’ll see.”
“Okay,” I say. “But it seems a little unfair that Liam would exist in this slightly inferior way—compared to us, I mean.”
“I understand and even agree, but there’s simply too little computing power available. I suspect the situation will be different once we reach the Matrioshka Brain. In the meantime, look at it this way. If this is the only option that would allow Liam, Mason, and the rest of Oasis to exist, wouldn’t you rather they existed in this limited way than not at all? Besides, they wouldn’t be any worse off than they were. An hour will seem like an hour to them, just as it always did, but they will no longer be under the Elderly’s control, which is worth something.”
I think over her words and feel better. In a way, there’s a benefit to living at slower speeds. The trip to the nearest Matrioshka layer will go much quicker for my friends than it will for Phoe and me. Still, part of the issue is that this solution will require me to once again expand my capabilities.
“You would eventually want the threading capabilities anyway,” Phoe says. “Don’t you want to be more like me? Don’t you want to be my equal?”
She hasn’t just read my mind; she somehow gleaned my subconscious hopes and dreams. I realize in that moment that being her equal is something I’ve secretly always wanted. I never admitted it, not even to myself, but I want to be like Phoe, and the only way to make that a reality is for her to raise me to her level, since it wouldn’t be fair of me to expect her to become a lesser being.
“Maybe if I’m your equal, you won’t be so good at getting your way,” I say with false grumpiness, trying to steer my thoughts toward more comfortable territory.
“I wouldn’t count on that.” Phoe winks at me. “No matter how much processing powe
r you get, I’ll always have you wrapped around my little finger.”
I narrow my eyes at her, and she gives me a disarming puppy-eyed look.
I give up and admit defeat. If she can melt me with a single look, what chance do I have at ever getting my way? The funny thing is, I don’t mind.
“All right. You’re about to think something so corny that I definitely have to stop you,” Phoe says. “Are you ready to expand your abilities again?”
“Fine.” I close my eyes. “I’m ready.”
She chuckles and the air flutters, which I assume means she was waving her hand at me.
I wait. At first, nothing happens.
Then, slowly, I feel something that is very hard to describe. It’s as if I suddenly become aware of a new limb, or more accurately, a bunch of limbs. Then I realize it’s more complicated than that.
I’m aware that I can have two bodies at once.
I open my eyes and look around the room.
My vision is the same, though maybe a little sharper.
“Do this.” Phoe demonstrates a gesture that looks like a peace sign, and suddenly there are two of her in the room. One is standing in front of me and looks frozen in time. Though when I look closer, I realize she’s moving very slowly, like a bug stuck in molasses. The original Phoe is smiling at me from the bed and moving at a normal speed.
I repeat her gesture, and my consciousness splits.
There’s a second me standing next to the lethargic Phoe.
Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that there are three of me: the thinking part that is the normal me, and two bodies that I can occupy at the same time. The strangeness of the varying rate of time these bodies experience is a slight twinkle compared to the much stranger reality of existing in two places at once.
Until it happened, I couldn’t have even dreamed that such a thing was possible. I’m looking through two pairs of eyes, breathing through two noses, and moving two pairs of arms.
When I adjust to the dichotomy of my new existence, I focus on the fact that one of my bodies is experiencing the world slower than the other.