Her toes got wet with a rush of water. “Ooh. It tickles,” she said looking back to Jim. She had on a pair of jeans that were sloppily cut off above the knees and a yellow tee shirt, exact clothing items she actually had once, yet, they appeared brand new. “It feels—real! And not too cold.”
Jim rolled his pants then kicked off his shoes and followed her to the edge of the beach. He examined every aspect of her actions and shared in her excitement. He scanned for changes, differences, looking for the big-deal. The resort—he’d been here plenty of times—was empty, as it should be.
Another more powerful wave slid in bringing globs of seaweed, the water went above her ankles and the slimy blue-green weed wrapped itself around her feet. She pulled it off and held it up with two fingers examining it. Much was new to her. “Slimy. YUK,” she said, then slung it at Jim. He was just returning his attention to her when it slapped him across the face. She couldn’t help it, and burst out laughing. Jim, as if mad, pulled his hands from his pockets and cleaned it off, then cocked his head at her before erupting himself. They laughed together.
The salty smell engaged her senses. She had little control over the smile stretched tightly between her ears and turned to face Jim who was just standing still, grinning contently, daze-like. “This is—Jim. Amazing!” she screamed, the last word so loud the entire world could likely hear it. “I almost can’t believe it. But why?” Jim was reminiscing about his first time and had to pluck himself from a memory that was returning to him: his hate for the war and how this place, meaning the entire dream world, all maps, allowed him to vent. And vent he did—for years. He shook the thoughts and walked closer to the water to meet her.
“We have some very special technology that allows us to stabilize this world,” Jim explained, although quite late to her question. “It sets some basic rules in order to keep us, well, grounded. And it also allows us to share this dream which is important for output reasons. Follow me.”
Amy followed as he walked on the packed sand of the empty beach. Yes, she had the look of a girl with a million questions, that he knew, it was his job to answer, to teach her. Not the easiest thing, mostly because of the disturbing aspects—the hardest part to explain. But later on that anyway. He opened up to start, pausing when he saw several people arriving at the beach. Before long there were teams of people and families arriving. His jaw dropped, cutting off the first letter of his first word. Oblivious, Amy was elated to be there and things couldn’t be better. To her, the more the merrier; the people made it that much more real. Amy giggled, a pudgy little black boy, maybe three years old, barely able to run in the deep sand tripped, face first. His mother snatched him up and his face was white, the sand sticking to some odd goo she’d smeared all over him moments prior. The people were arriving in drones, carrying loads of stuff. She thought, Why all the stuff?
She turned to Jim who had slowed and noticed a change in his expression. Hers changed in response to his and she asked, “What is it Jim?” He displayed a look of shock. He stared at the beach-comers with wide eyes, as if counting. “What, never seen people in the dream before? Oh right, the map.”
“Amy I’m sorry,” Jim uttered in a worrisome tone, “we have to cut this day short for now.” He knew he could no longer continue with the job, at least not for the moment. Ted had told him to keep a close eye on things, to tread slow, and not to hesitate logging out at any time, for any reason, so they can carefully assess any new data before proceeding further. They wanted to take no chances.”
“Everything is okay isn’t it, what’s wrong? Jim we just got here.” She crossed her arms like a disappointed child.
“We’ll have to log out, but we can come back very soon, I promise,” Jim replied walking fast up the beach. “But trust me, there is plenty of time. Ted is watching us right now and is likely expecting me to call it.”
“But why?” She ran to catch up. “And you still haven’t told me—”
“There shouldn’t be this many here with us. There are only two people allowed to enter one dream environment at any time. All others—are them,” Jim said, pointing at the newcomers. “Dream characters. We call them DC’s for short, and they are generated by your subconscious. I don’t think there’s anything wrong but I’d like to check in and find out why so many are appearing.”
DC’s continued to flood the beach as Amy followed Jim back to the chairs on which they had materialized.
“Okay, Amy. Just lie down and relax just as you did to log in. Try not to focus on anything, just let your thoughts unwind. You’ll feel yourself falling asleep. Sometimes it can take quite a while so just be very calm and patient.” Amy and he lay in the beach chairs and after a several minutes of relaxation Jim spoke, “Director, Jim and Amy to log out.”
They awoke in the broadcast room. The blue light devices moved away from their temples. Ted was standing near, waiting. Rubbernecking from their control panels, others gazed over as well. Amy looked a little confused but quickly regained her bearings.
“Amy, do you know who I am?” Ted asked quietly.
“Of course silly. You’re Mr. Ted.”
“That’s great. And Just Ted is fine,” Ted chuckled. “You can leave off the mister. Just hold still for one moment and we’ll be all set.” He rotated a scanning device around her head, over—and around. Back again, one more time. It had a light blue glow just like the temple-touching devices. He asked her a few basic questions and she got every answer right. “Okay, things look great. This was an excellent test and we have lots of data to go over. Amy, if you would, take a little rest in the break room. Get something to eat if you’re hungry and use the bathroom. I need to speak with Jim for a moment.”
Amy nodded with a sliver of disappointment in her eyes, but sparked at the idea of topping off from the measly breakfast she was given in her new apartment. “Well I am pretty hungry. Okay, but sure hope we can continue that. It was fun.” She pointed quickly at Jim—YUK—thinking of the seaweed. She smiled, almost laughed, and then headed straight to the fridge.
Ted and Jim walked to the BROCC and stood around the HAT. Ted initiated the replay of their session then retrieved some statistics from one of the nearby screens. Two other techs, Ron and Devon, Ted’s foremost assistants, joined them with portable screens in hand. Ron was short only 5 foot 5 with glassy-white skin, round facial features, and reddish-brown straight hair resembling a helmet. He was in charge of overall map stability and predictions. Devon, the complete opposite, was taller than Ted, young and slender, skin as black as night, with a rounded hairstyle that resembled a globe. He handled mental status and emotions, overall lender mental stability, and environmental and dream character variables that affect both.
“Should we call over the twins?” Ron asked. The twins were the only two others techs that worked in the broadcast room, relatively newer to the job than Devon. Jackie and Jenny, identical with unusually high cheek bones, had long straight red hair, intense green eyes, and small chins. They worked at the far end and kept on eye on the broadcast feed and buffer, its usage, depletion rate, and status alerts. Besides assisting the automation—something rarely needed—they also helped Ted correlate data when huge piles of it came through. And, like all techs, took a turn, rotating for the night shift. The full team was active at once only because of Amy.
“We don’t need them just yet.” Ted said pointing to the screen above. “I’m accessing all of the feed data here.”
“Okay, Jim. This is what we got. Apparently Amy is far more advanced than anyone we have ever had in the program—we kind of knew it already—but our initial testing only revealed this in a very general sense. Our first tests did show that she was gifted but were not substantial enough to rate the true limit of her creative IQ. She seems to exceed the test’s ability to rate it. And it might be early to say, but she doesn’t seem to have a limit. We’re still calculating the effect on the system when she’s logged in.”
Ted asked Ron to highlight the numbers on
the screen and continued to explain, “You see Jim, even with the broadcast feed active on your map her levels remain very high. And when the DC’s began to appear, her output still outperformed even our best working lenders. Here, take a look at this.” The hologram table (HAT) began playback. “Double speed please Ron.” Jim and Amy arrived highlighted in white and moments later many DC’s were generated out of view, shown glowing in blue. As they strolled along the beach the DC’s emerged, all changed to bright green upon first acknowledgment. “Okay Ron, slow it down—right—there. Notice, regardless of distance, equal potential. She generated an unheard of thirty-two DC’s, instantaneously—and more spawned continually until we logged you out. Jim, your record—has been, obliterated,” Ted joked lightly.
“My record was 21,” Jim smirked with careless sarcasm. “Fine with me, but what does this mean and how will we get a handle on the sheer numbers of DC’s her subconscious can generate? Or do we even have to manage them with numbers like these?”
Ted rested his chin on his thumb with his elbow planted in his stomach, held in place by his other hand. “I say we get in there and finish the shift. At least half of it, this is getting quite interesting. But for today, perhaps don’t manage the DC’s. Leave them alone, relax and enjoy your day, but explain everything to Amy. We’ll run a few more tests on our end. This is excellent data and it enables us to further comprehend the extent of creativity humans have lost as a species. The ramifications of altering DNA, is probably, greater than we previously estimated.” He gestured to Ron and Dev who were crunching numbers with their screens, “Guys, are we okay to continue?”
Ron looked up from his portable, for only the second time since joining Jim and Ted. “Yes, map stability is at 100%,” he said emphasizing 100% in his normal high-toned voice. “It is a little odd but even with the addition of hundreds of dream characters, more than our system has ever managed, with Amy’s presence the system—”
“Ron?”
“I have to double check, this can’t be—” With his waist mount holding the portable screen in front of him he rapidly gestured above it with his right, touching the panel with his left. Done. He rotated the screen to his side and looked up with a baffled expression. “Uh,” he hesitated again, “She is apparently able to stabilize the system on her own. This lends evidence to a theory of mine. She might be able to affect the system’s programming, and the environment, perhaps other variables—something we’ve never been able to touch.”
Ted looked at the hologram, and hesitated, squeezing his lips together in a moment of thought, then turned to Jim. “I told you we were in for an interesting day Jim. Do you have anything to add Devon?” Devon was watching Amy while they spoke. She was seated on a stool at the bar, legs kicking a million miles an hour, eating a fruit bar.
“Everything looks perfect,” Devon said. “Her emotional state is solid. If it dips, it bounces right back, almost instantly. Very stable. I don’t think we’ll have much to worry about as far as crashing is concerned.”
All of them turned to see her except for Ron who spun his screen back around after getting another tickle of an idea; he continued to crunch data. They watched as she quickly devoured another energy bar. “She’s like a kid in a candy store,” Devon continued in his ultra low voice. “She managed her first login flawlessly—no drawbacks. But we hadn’t had the feed activated for more than fifteen minutes so I’ll need more data in order to make better comparisons.”
“Okay then we’re a go in thirty minutes,” Ted said. “Jim, please head over to her and hang out for a bit until we get a few things primed on our end. When you get logged in you can resume your training. About managing DC count, passive manner should be fine. Teach her Jim, I can see curiosity is eating away at her patience.” Jim nodded definitively at that, then headed to join Amy who was watching the techs talk about her from across the room—she knew something was up, yet really, hadn’t a clue what. Ron and Devon went back to their stations and continued with calculations. Ted stayed at the hologram table. His swiping gestures reset the map, and he worked with the myriad of controls on the movable rim that encircled it like Saturn's rings. He did a quick check of all of the other active maps, except for one which had been set to private.
“Amy I’m sorry, we had to go over some technical crap,” Jim said as he approached and mounted a stool aside her. “They want to make certain everything goes smoothly as we move forward. And, that nothing causes you any harm.”
“Jim, can’t you just tell me straight, what is all of this?” Amy urged. “Please.” She was about to open a third power bar, but tossed it aside with a sigh.
The contrast from quaint outside life in the town where everything was extremely simple, all of this curious technology, wanting so badly to know; all of it left Amy annoyed, and ironically, drained. Her patience—what little she had—was climbing a tree into the sky, with no top in sight. The branches of knowledge were shorter, but the stem of meaning was a vine into the clouds. She wanted simple answers to what she’d just experienced. But she guessed, if they couldn’t just tell her outright, it probably wouldn’t be simple, and possibly, not pleasant to hear.
9. Get Back in There!
“I’m going to be as straightforward as I can,” Jim said. “Our job is simple but our purpose is great. We log in to that dream world together and lend a part of our consciousness. That cylindrical device in the center of this room uploads what we call the feed. It does so constantly to machines that use it. The status indicator needs to stay in the green, always. We are lenders, and the systems depend on us at all times.”
“Lenders—” Amy paused. “—but why Jim? Why do machines need our consciousness?”
“They need our consciousness because they would be lifeless without it, and we need the protection they provide. We don’t know all the answers, or exactly why. In fact much of the software that controls this facility is in the hands of—perhaps the machines themselves. We cannot change or alter most facets of it, such as the rules of the dream-state we work in, and the various maps. There is room for improvement and it seems we have been allowed at least that; it’s what the techs do, much with great success. The motion path, that was created by us, and it boosted efficiency quite a bit.”
Amy shook her head slowly, “Wow.” She looked over at the power bar she’d slid aside; it’d been looking at her too.
“It’s crazy I know. We hardly even have a say in how human life is to be lived in our town. We do know it was purposefully limited in technology and knowledge, for reasons we don’t entirely understand.”
“You know what’s out there, beyond the wall?” Amy asked.
“Well we think there are more of these human cities—something out there. Ted has been working at this for a long time. He knows that some of the feed goes, elsewhere. But we can’t pinpoint anything; we might never know for sure. We do know of the machines that are near us, they protect us, and use the feed, lots of it. In the main control room of this facility we have a small amount of control over this. We can see them on the screens and can even manually operate and control a few aspects of our town security if the broadcast feed falters. Some assume war is too advanced for humans, yet we’re still needed. We’re most likely not the smartest species on this planet, but together with machines and technology we are a vital part of it.”
Jim paused figuring how to best arrange his words, trying put a finger on things he knew for sure, rather than just best guesses to date. And Amy finally had patience like that of a grown adult, or that of a normal person. She stayed quiet and listened attentively. This is what she wanted—straightforward answers.
“Outside the wall that surrounds our little town, the war rages on, but with the combined efforts of man and machine, although we now have drastically different roles, we continue to fight, to survive. We lend, and the machines do the actual fighting. We are winning as far as I know, I hope. But there are tiers of knowledge; perhaps each hasn’t a full picture, or an up-to-d
ate status. You were the last one brought to this town. You probably know from your experiences before arriving—and we still don’t know how you survived for so long—that the machines have been trying to exterminate us, millions of species have gone extinct. Most know this but we are only beginning to understand why and the reason could have grand implications.”
“That was, a long time ago…” Amy sighed, getting flashes, not wanting to remember, having had pushed many of her memories back. “You know why the machines want to kill us?” she asked. Jim lifted his fingers, and slightly shrugged.
“We assume there are good machines—and bad—”
Ted interrupted from the distance waving his arms. “Amy, Jim, we are ready if you are,” he whispered loudly, then pointed to the beds with two fingers. They stood up and looked at each other. Amy gave a single nod.
“Let’s do this,” Jim said looking firmly into her eyes, and they started walking toward the beds. “I’ll tell you everything we know. We have plenty of time.”
Before getting onto the beds Jim hesitated, “Amy, we are going to enter the dream world again, the same map. We don’t have to do anything much just yet. Ted’s going to keep an eye on our stats, and crunch some more numbers. I’ll continue to explain many things to you. We’ll have some margaritas at the bar; you can go swimming if you want. I know I feel like a dip.” She smiled at the idea. They climbed onto the beds and lay down. Amy looked up to the lights and an anxious tingle faded from her body. A few moments later, they were both out.
A big pelican sat at the end of a barnacle encrusted dock on her far left. Waves rushed in and out turning over seashells and leaving jellyfish blobs on the shore. Everything was exactly the same—except for that pelican. This time without such a hurry to move Amy just lay there for a few minutes in silence watching: the dream took focus, the sounds began, the smells floated by, lastly feelings came and she felt the chair beneath her as a separate item, and the moist breeze tingled the hairs on her arms. This time everything seemed to load much faster. She didn’t budge, just looked around at various things. She noticed how her focus could affect the reality of the environment. Maybe it’s only my own perspective, she thought. She fixated her attention onto her toes—wiggling them, the columns on the pier as the water crashed onto them, the clouds in the distance morphing, and as she did, anything she focused on became infinitely more clear and detailed.
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