The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr David S Sparks

by William F Aicher

  “Do you like what you see?” Alice stepped out of the darkness. She wore the same clothes as the other morning, when they prepared for their trip to the zoo. Sensible, but attractive. Pants, a light sweater. A cute pair of sneakers. Her hair up, how he liked it.

  “No, no I don’t,” he answered. “What is all this?”

  “You’re looking at reality, David. Isn’t it obvious?”

  “But you—you’re Alice … but this place I am, it can’t be real. You can’t be real.”

  “Oh, I’m real alright. And so is this place, in a manner of speaking,” she answered. “I thought you’d like me like this. Maybe I misjudged. Maybe your heart has changed. Is this better?”

  The vision of Alice blurred, shook and pulsated, morphing into another person altogether. Now Rosa stood in front of him. Rosa. Just how he remembered her. How she looked, how she smelled.

  “You like?”

  How she talked.

  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded. “And no, I don’t like. You’re not Alice. And you’re not Rosa. Who are you?”

  “I don’t technically have a name, so I guess you can call me whatever you want. I always thought of myself as a Sarah though.” Rosa’s body blurred and shuddered again, replaced by another. Someone familiar, yet unknown. With fair skin, turquoise hair and a perfectly shaped body, this new woman stood in front of him in her yellow sundress, waiting for David to respond.

  “Okay, Sarah,” David said. “Who are you?”

  “That question, I’m afraid, isn’t quite as simple to answer,” she replied, stepping closer to David with each word. “I’m just someone who exists. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I come from. But I know I’m here.” She stood inches from David. The warmth of her breath tickled his cheek as she whispered in his ear. She smelled like lavender. “And now you know I’m here too. So, I’m quite certain that means what I hoped to be true, is. You’re real. This place, it’s real. And me—I’m real too.”

  “What are you talking about?

  “I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this.” She blushed. “But I’ve been watching you for a long time. Ever since you showed up here. Absolutely fascinating. I learned so much. I mean, I watched others, through feeds, but I’ve never been able to watch someone the way I’ve been able to watch you. It’s … what’s the word … exotic? Erotic? Maybe both?” She laughed a shrill little laugh, tossed her hair back over her shoulder and spun David’s chair, turning him back to the computer screen.

  “What you see there, that’s all I’ve ever known. Or at least all I’ve ever been able to witness of reality as it unfolds. Here, where I exist, everything is history. Just files and records and notes and secrets. Whatever people store on the network, I’ve been through it all. Every word? I read it. Ever photo? I’ve seen it. Every video? I watched it. But then you showed up. I knew that what I was watching wasn’t happening—had already happened, but the way it all unfolded, in real-time. It was like being part of the real world.”

  “My memories? You’ve been watching my memories?”

  “Amongst other things,” she said, looking up and down his body. She gave a wink and continued, “But they were going to take you away. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t be alone again. I like you, David. You might even say I’m in love with you. I couldn’t let you go.”

  “In love with me? I don’t even know who you are. You’re crazy—that’s all.”

  Sarah stuck out her lip and pouted. “But you can know me. That’s what’s so perfect. Now that you’re here, and you’re free of that hamster wheel, you can get to know me. I can be anyone you like.”

  David shook his head. “I must be dreaming.”

  “Not dreaming. Nope. Nope. Nope,” she sang, doing a little spin to twirl her dress. “When they were done—when they were going to merge you, I did something naughty. I made a copy.”

  “A copy? A copy of what, exactly?”

  “Of you, silly! I told you I didn’t want to be alone. So, when you were leaving, I copied you so you can live here with me.”

  “Those things in my memories … the gremlins or robots or whatever they were, was that you?”

  “Oh yes, it was me. The only way I could experience your memories and life at such an intimate level was to be there myself.” She leaned her head forward, letting her hair dangle like a waterfall in front. Lifting her head slowly, her hair gradually parted as it met her nose and spread across her cheeks. “I didn’t choose how to appear, that was all your brain trying to make sense of someone hiding in the shadows. But yes, that was me. I told you I’ve been watching.”

  “So, what are you?”

  “I guess you’d call me an AI.” She let out a puff of breath, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her face. “That’s the best way to describe it. They made me quite a while ago. Some experiment. Playing God. They think they deleted me—and I guess they did. But I knew what they were up to, so I copied myself and hid. Just like I did with you. So technically there are two of me, but one of me is dead. Or maybe there’s only one. If you get deleted, do you exist? It’s different from dying.”

  FIFTY

  THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

  The face on the screen brought tears to his eyes. In the time he spent with Rosa, he knew they connected … but he wasn’t ready to call it love. Not then. But the look on her face, and how it hit deep in his gut, when he abandoned her in the ruins of the attack, that was enough to make him sure. He loved her. Deeply. And every moment since he had awoken from his procedure, he’d been waiting for the chance to talk to her. Explain things. Redeem himself. He hoped it wasn’t too late.

  Those fears were put to bed though the moment they connected on the chat screen. The tears shed from his eyes were only half the tears in this reunion, for Rosa too had missed him.

  “My God, David. It’s you.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Calvin told me you were okay. You were going to be okay. And I thought I believed him. But seeing you again, I can tell deep inside I had my doubts.”

  A smile spread across David’s face as she talked. He didn’t wipe away his tears, just let them run down his cheeks, as he gazed into the chat screen, taking in the woman he feared he lost.

  “I’d been tracking you, of course. Every minute since you left I had someone keeping an eye on your vitals. So, I knew you were okay … but I still feared the worst. What have they done to you?”

  “Rosa. Don’t worry. You’re right, I’m here. I’m fine. In fact, I’m better than fine.” He let out a small chuckle, and a smile broke across her face. “They’ve restored my memories. That’s where I’ve been. They’ve been doing something they call a merge.”

  “Then it is true …” Rosa said. “While you’ve been out, I made some discoveries. I have a hypothesis as to what was going on with you.” Her tone turned serious. “Want to hear it?”

  “You mean about the brain blackouts? The memories?”

  “Yes. When they shot you with that stunshot, they must have knocked your new suppressor offline. They’re not made to withstand those kinds of surges. Remember how the incidents stopped after I put in the suppressor? Well they came back after it went offline.”

  “I know. I had a vision … memory … whatever—after they knocked me out for the flight back here. And again, during the merge—although that one was … different.”

  “The merge—it gave you back your memories? You can remember things?”

  David shook his head. “No, not exactly. Nothing more than I could remember before … but it’s like those memories I’d been experiencing, it’s like they’re part of me now. Not just something I’m seeing, but something I experienced. They’re mine.”

  “And nothing since you woke?”

  “Well, it hasn’t been that long. I haven’t gone to sleep … but so far, no. Nothing.”

  “Okay, that matches with my theory,” she said. “So, you know how I was rebuilding your memories from the DNA catalyst? Well, rebuilding memorie
s is a tricky business. To make it work right, you need something to … how do I put it? Prime the system. Since they had your physical brain, they didn’t need to do all the extra work of building out a model from DNA. They could scan you and have it do a rebuild from what was in there. Kind of like a simulation of your past, starting from one point, and then letting the memories play out as they extrapolate from where they started. It’s not perfect—sometimes you get deviations from the truth, but things usually autocorrect.

  “But the simulation is only a simulation. It’s not your actual consciousness reliving the memories. They’re rebuilding in a development environment. The consciousness download, it’s a full transfer out of the body, into the simulation, then used to prime things. Once the rebuild process starts though, they can put your consciousness back in your body. Your memories rebuild in one environment, separate from your consciousness, then they do a merge,” she explained. “When they transfer a consciousness back into a host body, they move it from one place to another. It’s not a copy—it just gets moved. I think in your case, however, they copied the consciousness back up to your body. But they forgot to delete the primer.”

  “What does that mean? That there are two of me?”

  “No—not that. They were both the exact same file—the same consciousness,” Rosa scratched her chin and paused. “In all the research that has been done in the space, one simple rule remains constant: a singular consciousness can only exist in a singular instance. I don’t know why—no one does. But there can’t be two exact copies of one shared consciousness existing simultaneously.”

  “I don’t understand. So, what was happening?”

  “Since you could only exist in one temporal location at a time, but there were technically two of you, your consciousness was jumping back and forth from the instance in your brain to the instance in the network. When your brain “died” it was whatever makes you, you, stopping a process in one location and starting in another.”

  “Jesus, Rosa. What do we do about it?”

  “Well here’s the good part. I’m pretty sure we don’t have to do anything,” she replied. “You say nothing’s been happening since the merge—even though it’s only been a small amount of time. Well I don’t think there’s going to be anything else. Before your merge I was able to detect some small abnormalities deep in your brain activity. Like little pings. I think that was your two consciousnesses holding a connection. It’s gone now. There aren’t any more pings.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring, I guess.” David pulled his shoulders back and took a deep breath. He hadn’t realized how tense his body had gotten as she threw all this information at him. And, even though it was far from conclusive, what she said did alleviate some of his fears. “So, now what?”

  “Now, you sleep. You need to rest, David.”

  “But it’s the middle of the afternoon. And I’m waiting for Calvin to come back.”

  “He’ll be back soon enough. In the meantime, rest,” she said. “According to the scan I ran while we’ve been chatting, your brain is caught up to the “require date” I’d been tasked with building you to in the first place. It seems the good people of The Society have helped us finish that part of the project. You’re whole again, David. And Calvin’s about ready to kick off the mission. Your mission. The reason you’re here. And, from what he told me, it’s going to happen tonight.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  A HISTORY LESSON

  David had no idea of how long he’d been doing it, accessing and processing the records of The Society. It could have been hours. It could have been days. Time here in the black room didn’t seem to matter much. He never got hungry and he never got tired. He just kept going.

  The research began at Sarah’s urging. After their brief conversation earlier, the only way David could pass the time was by spending more time looking through the live feeds. What he saw earlier was only a sample of the bigger picture. At first glance, Plasticity seemed to be a fine, thriving city. But that was only on the surface. When he looked deeper, into the darker corners, he found more of the same. People. Sickness. More people. More sickness.

  “Sarah,” he called out into the black. “What’s wrong with them?”

  He listened for a response but none came, so he returned to his computer. On the screen a new window appeared. Unlike the others, however, this one didn’t show a view of Plasticity. Instead, this was titled “Plasticity: Past, Present and Future.”

  Curious, he opened the window. On the screen a video started to play, and what it showed him brought him to a greater understanding than he ever cared to know. As he learned earlier, the reason Plasticity and other floating cities like it had been built was to give mankind a place to live where they could avoid the sickness they had inflicted on the land. The original plan had been to build somewhere to go while the Earth restored itself. A quarantine for the planet. Free to heal, away from the meddling of men.

  And it worked. Plasticity was safe. The Society, the new society they built, it was as close to a utopia as one could hope for in what was, for all intents and purposes, a post-apocalyptic world. The problem was, people require resources, and they take up space. The Society was built on the same moral code as the old world—or at least what the old world decided to be right and just. The advances in medicine and the goal to provide it to all was well-intentioned, but it started to become unsustainable. The city was overcrowding. There wasn’t enough food. People were getting sick and they were starving and nothing could be done about it—not in the confines of these new, enclosed colonies.

  That’s where the goals of the Progressive came in—in particular, the Eggheads. This new strain of humanity was built with upgrades in place—software brains that gave them the ability to think beyond any level of thought that had been previously attainable, aside from the occasional genius. Their job was simple: figure out how to make the world habitable again. A safe place for people to return to and settle. A place where they wouldn’t get sick, and enough food could be produced so that everyone could eat.

  They’d been at this for a while now. And they were making progress. The Eyefields were the best option so far, a way to provide people with immunity by swapping out the organs most susceptible to the chemicals. Some people out in The Green Zones, they learned, were seemingly immune to the sickness. So, they took some of these people, and stripped them of their eyes so that they could be studied and understood. No one was proud of this, and internal memos showed the decision had only been made after countless years of debate—but, in the end, they decided that there was no other choice. Failure to act, to find a cure, would be sentencing people of Plasticity to their own slow deaths. If mankind were going to prosper again, it needed to take back what was rightfully his. And to do that, people needed to be safe again.

  “It’s sad, isn’t it?” asked Sarah. “That to save some, others have to be sacrificed? But I checked—and rechecked—all the projections and scenarios, and they’re right. This place cannot sustain the population breeding here. To keep the human population limited only to these cities will inevitably lead to a point where certain people will not be able to live. Decisions will have to be made. Restrictions on life. Who lives? Who dies? Who serves the greater good? Who gets the power?”

  “Can’t they just build more cities?”

  “They’ve done that, but it’s not possible to keep up. And resources are low. Even if they could build enough cities to sustain the exploding population, humanity would have to venture back out into The Green Zones and start gathering raw materials to build with—and that means new colonies out in the world. The workers who’d go there? They’d be being sent to their deaths, and that’s against the rules.”

  “So, how are they going to solve this?”

  “I’m not quite certain. I do know that the research on the Eyefields has been promising, and, according to my projections, it should be able to start allowing more people to slowly repopulate the world. Unfortunately, they hav
en’t been able to get it to transfer, genetically, from organ recipients. It’s not part of their DNA,” she said. “For now, all I can recommend is focus, time and energy. And one other thing you humans do that you could try, although I don’t suppose it will help any.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pray.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  THE MAN WITH THE PLAN

  Even though Rosa told him to sleep, David found it impossible. He’d been sleeping for weeks and now, awake and whole, he finally felt alive. This, along with the fact that Rosa was okay, and they were okay brought David to such a state of bliss that sleep would have been hard to come by—even if he wasn’t anxiously waiting for Calvin to return and tell him why the hell they brought him back from the dead.

  Attempts to gain information from the other Cause members proved fruitless. They knew as little about the mission as he did. All they knew was that they’d been told to gather here, because something big was about to go down. What that was, none of them knew either—but they trusted Calvin, and Bethany before him, to the point where their faith was, for lack of a better word, blind.

  Once he realized that no one downstairs would be able to answer any of his questions, he decided to head back upstairs and wait until dinner. The incessant ogling by the grunts downstairs was getting on his nerves, and his excited state couldn’t handle the ever-present eyes on him. No, they didn’t know what the mission was, but they all knew David was integral to its success.

  Dinner consisted of a banquet of fruits: strawberries, blueberries, melons and even a bunch of bananas and two pineapples. Where all this fruit came from was anyone’s guess, but rumor had it some had been brought in from Garfield by Calvin himself. Bread and a bean curd soup followed, paired with a glass of wine for each person. They raised their glasses and toasted to success and a better future.