by Phoenix Ward
“I just wish she could come back,” Ethan started, “for a visit, you know. So she could tell us what it’s like out there. Or even just to play some adventures together.”
“Yeah, it would be nice to know what we’ve got in store for us,” Sharpe said. “A heads up.”
They walked through the artificial sand and looked at the ocean. The waves crashed against the beach in metered succession. A few of the birds that made up part of the background noise flew off into the darkening sky.
“Speaking of Nadia,” Sharpe started after a long quiet, “what do you say to some hoverbike racing? That was always one of her favorites. I could always load up the Rainbow Road track.”
Ethan didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stared at the waves.
“Or we could go catch an old flick at the theater,” Sharpe continued. “I heard they got some Mel Brooks comedies playing.”
“Nah,” Ethan said after a moment. “I think I’m just going to call it a night. Get some rest, you know.”
“You gonna get some dinner, too?” Sharpe joked. As residents of the simulation, they naturally didn’t get hungry or sleepy.
“I wish.” Ethan chuckled. “Goodnight, Sharpe.”
“Night, buddy,” Sharpe replied. “Don’t get too worked up about the big day. A week’s a long time!”
Ethan smiled at his friend before disconnecting from the boardwalk map. Once all the shapes stopped fading and reloading, he found himself in his virtual home base. It was small, but cozy. More like a little home than a fortress, like some of the other sim kids had. But he preferred to keep it humble. He liked getting from his treasure room to his bed in short trips.
A bit of torch fire, not unlike those on the beach, lined his walls. They were digital flames, so they didn’t need fuel and there was no risk of them burning anything. He rather liked the ambiance they provided. They made the place feel warmer, more like home.
Even though he was just a human brain in a simulation with all his nutrients being fed to him by some mechanical process or another, he felt tired. Maybe it was the excitement surrounding their victory over the Ghoul King. Or maybe, it was more nerves about the impending birthday.
As he laid down in his virtual bed, he stared up at the canopy above it. He started to close his eyes and picture what it would be like to open them again, but in an entirely different bed. A whole new world.
The real world, Ethan thought. I wonder where I am in it.
5
The Motel
If Tera had skin, it would be crawling. She thought the streets of Slumside were pretty unappealing, but that’s because she didn’t know what the insides of some people’s shacks looked like.
The woman across from her lit another cigarette, staining the filter with her violet lipstick. The smoke rose up through the still air and into her eye, causing her to blink in pain. Her long false eyelashes waved at her like the wings of some sickly moth.
Tera could tell from her complexion that the woman spent almost all of her time indoors. It wasn’t a terribly healthy way to live, but Tera understood it. The chances of getting robbed, stabbed, or raped were much slimmer inside the frail shacks than out. If there isn’t a cop somewhere in eyesight, anything was free game on the street. Only the tough, the delusional, or the crazy thrived out there.
The couch Tera sat in smelled of dried urine and body odor. The entire left cushion was uncovered, surrounded by the stuffing that had once filled it, and the right one had a huge gash on the top. It looked like someone had slashed it open in search of a hiding spot.
Like rats do, Tera reflected.
She was on her first solo case since graduating from the academy. Abenayo got tied up at the scene of some shooting or another before Tera’s shift began, so she was forced to proceed alone. She received a call right away that brought her to this shithole to respond to reports of theft. Generally, a matter such as this was below the attention of the Council police, which is why it had been tossed to her. As a rookie, she needed to earn better cases, and the only way to do that was to start at the bottom.
And what a bottom it was.
Camila, the woman across from her, seemed like she might fall asleep between every sentence. Her words slurred together as she tried to articulate her story and she struggled to keep her eyes open. Tera felt secondhand discomfort for the woman as she seemed to be slouching against some hideous stain on her armchair.
Probably strung out on something right now, Tera thought. Doesn’t look like heroin, though — she’s far too alert. Unless she has a resistance, that is.
Camila was something the slum dwellers called a “motel.” She was a prostitute that specialized in I.I. clients — ones that wanted to feel what it was like to have a body. She “rented” her body out, so to speak, to anyone who was willing to pay the price. She would open her mind up and let them take over, paying her on an hourly basis as they did whatever they liked with her. Naturally, she attracted some real creeps, and one of them apparently saw fit to rob her blind.
“So, what happened after your client contacted you?” Tera asked. The microphone and camera in her bodyshell were recording the whole conversation.
“We set up the meet like usual,” Camila replied. “His bodyshell seemed nice. It looked like he had some money.”
“Then you let him mindshare with you?”
“That’s right.”
“What happened then?”
“That’s the thing,” Camila said. “The son of a bitch took some pill thing he brought along with him. A roofie or something like it. I don’t remember anything that happened after. He drugged me out of my own body, and when I came to, all of my cash was gone.”
“Was anything else missing?” Tera asked.
Camila seemed to resist a little. Her eyes darted around the grime-covered shack as she mulled something over in her head.
“You can tell me,” Tera said. “We won’t be holding you responsible for anything illegal he may have stolen.”
“He took my stash, too,” the motel replied after some hesitation.
“Your stash?”
“You know,” Camila said, blushing a little. “My drugs.”
“I see,” Tera replied. “How much?”
“Over four-hundred capsules,” the motel answered.
“Capsules?”
“Of kip. You know the stuff.”
“I do,” Tera said. Her training covered all kinds of narcotics education. The drug Camila was referring to was a tranquilizer.
That explains the droopy eyelids, the police officer thought.
“Anything else?” she asked the motel.
“A gun,” Camila replied. There was a sheepish quality to her body language.
“What make?”
“It’s homemade,” Camila said. “There’s no model number.”
“Caliber?”
“.32.”
“You know there’s a law against makeshift firearms, right?” Tera asked.
An indignant twitch furrowed Camila’s brow. “You told me you wouldn’t hold me responsible,” she said.
“We won’t, because we can’t,” Tera replied. “But if you are ever caught with one in your possession —”
“I know, I know,” Camila said. “Don’t worry, I won’t be getting a new one. Not like I could afford it anyway.”
Tera reflected on the bulletpoints she had notated on her digital notepad. She couldn’t help but feel like this was a complete waste of her time. There was no chance they would find the guy who robbed her, especially since he’s an installed intelligence. There was even less chance of recovering the money, the gun, or the drugs. Tera was only here because no one wanted to babysit her, and they didn’t trust her with an actual case.
Tera started to sigh, but caught herself.
“Is there anything else, Camila?” she asked. She prayed to God that she’d say “no.” She wanted to be out of that disgusting dwelling as soon as possible.
How does s
omeone spend a whole day in this place, let alone their lives? she wondered.
“Well, I guess not,” the motel replied. “Are you gonna catch the guy? I’d love to have a few minutes alone with him without his sick-fuck pills.”
Tera looked down into her lap. “Honestly, Camila, I don’t think so,” she said. She had no idea why she felt the urge to be frank, but she could see the woman across from her was not pleased by it.
“What do you mean?” the human asked.
“I mean that if you didn’t let creeps like this use your body like some sort of communal toilet paper, you wouldn’t have this issue,” Tera said. The logic in her brain was telling her to shut up, but it was too late. The floodgate was open. “There are people out there with real problems that I could be helping right now, real problems that they didn’t create, Camila. And instead, I’m here in this shithole listening to a whore lament about her missing dope. Do you see something wrong with this picture?”
The motel’s mouth was agape with shock. The look in her eyes said she hadn’t been talked to like this in some time. Then her expression folded into anger. Her lips pursed until they were white and her brow almost seemed to swallow up her eyes.
“Who the hell do you think you are, lecturing me like a god damn child in my home?” she cried. It almost looked like she was working up a lather on her lips. “You don’t know me and you don’t know my life! What the hell makes you think you can look down on me and tell me how to live? Just because you’re some ghost bitch in that lifeless shell, you think you’re better than me? Motherfucker, people pay me — pretty well for some human ‘whore’, mind you — just to live in my body and feel what I feel. I’ve got what you want, and you think you can talk down to me?”
Uh oh, Tera realized. I made a mistake.
She stammered a little. “Camila, I didn’t —”
The human’s eyes were starting to fill with tears a little. She jumped to her feet so she could loom over the cop as she yelled at her. Tera shrunk into herself like a frightened child.
“No!” Camila interrupted. “You don’t get to come in here and talk to me like that. You think my life is easy? You think I can just go out there and get a goddamn office job? If there was even such a thing, how would I make sure I didn’t get raped on my way to the interview? You would be sick to your robot stomach if you knew what some people had to do just to survive. You work in Slumside, but you don’t live in Slumside. In fact, you don’t live at all, do you? You are just like all the other progs out there: thinking you’re better than the same people you envy. Well, fuck you! Get the hell outta my house!”
Camila’s eyes looked like they might pop out of their sockets as she stared down at the I.I. Tera felt minuscule under her gaze. She couldn’t help but stare down at her metal feet, avoiding the motel’s stare.
After she stopped yelling, Camila froze in place and waited for the bodyshell to move.
“Sorry,” Tera said. Her voice was tiny.
“Get out!” Camila repeated.
It only took two steps for Tera to make it to the door of the shack, but she stopped and turned back to the human.
“I’ll do what I can,” she said.
“Like you care,” Camila spat.
Tera left, closing the door behind her.
6
Gauge
Ethan found it hard to focus on the lecture with his upcoming birthday on his mind. His brain was preoccupied with thoughts of the outside world, of being able to walk around with his mortal body. He found himself slipping into daydreams more and more often.
“Mr. Myler, if you wouldn’t mind paying attention, please,” the Kindly Professor said in between topics. He was part of the simulation, so he didn’t get upset or impatient with the students, but he did demand a certain etiquette. Any disruptions to class would be met with a calm stare and an awkward silence. The Kindly Professor could wait any amount of time for the children to quiet down without breaking down into a furious rage.
Ethan looked up at the old man — or, at least, the computer program that looked like one.
“Thank you,” it said, then resumed its lecture. “As I was saying, the nuclear fallout from World War III is the worst the planet has ever seen, excluding the radioactive periods of Earth’s existence before a full atmosphere developed.”
As the Kindly Professor monologued, a holographic rendering of the Earth’s surface swallowed the room. It wasn’t green and vibrant like Ethan had seen in other renderings. Instead, the surface was scorched and covered in a sickly yellow haze.
“Scientists predicted that the world would become inhospitable in just a few short years after the war’s end,” the instructor said. “Every human on the planet would die if they didn’t find some way to contain the contamination.”
The projection that filled the classroom showed some eye-level shots of ruined cities. There were a few skeletons scattered in the cracked streets. It was like something out of Dante’s Inferno.
A few of the students around Ethan took notes as the Kindly Professor spoke. He had fallen too far behind to catch up on today’s lecture, so he just listened and watched the holograms transition. He wouldn’t need to be in school for much longer, anyway.
“Thanks to a super-powerful artificial intelligence — or A.I. — the cleanup effort was a success, however,” the digital instructor continued. “Where humans were unable to work because the radiation would kill them in less than an hour, A.I.-operated machines were able to function indefinitely.”
The projection transitioned to a similar scene within the nuclear ruins, but there was movement now. Ethan saw large red and orange machines roving through the rubble, shoveling up mounds of contaminated soil and concrete. They resembled old construction equipment Ethan had seen in other history programs.
“They made it possible for the environmental damage to be controlled — even reversed — for the most part. Since then, humanity has made enormous strides toward negating the damage, both physically and culturally, that World War III left behind.”
The dark and bleak forms of the ruined city vanished and were replaced with stark and pristine buildings. Autocars zoomed around between them and happy people could be seen walking the sidewalks. It transitioned again to the image of a rocket launch.
“In fact, in the short hundred and fifty years since the Third World War, people started to colonize the planets around them and eradicate terrible diseases that used to kill millions,” the Kindly Professor continued. “Scientific colonies on Mars turned into civilian settlements, with more than three billion people estimated to be living on the red planet to this day. Even portions of the Earth’s moon were able to be terraformed and domed under protective shields. The war was a terrible tragedy to be mourned for eternity, but it was also the catalyst for the golden age we live in.”
While the Kindly Professor spoke, the hologram showed the various colonies as they were referenced. The images swirled around so much that Ethan thought he might be sick, but he was still able to make out the faces of some of the colonists. They were all smiling and laughing, likely the result of some staged photoshoot. Among the settlers, however, was a man who seemed out of place. He was a young man with short red hair, a thick beard to match, and large glasses. To Ethan, it looked like he was making eye contact with him. Like the man could see out of the hologram and into the classroom.
The image shifted to another scene before Ethan was able to get a good look, but the man’s face left him unsettled.
Everything around Ethan changed to the image of some old-world hospital, where a group of surgeons were leading a guy on a gurney down the hallway.
“Cancer became as treatable as many minor illnesses, and genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s became a distant memory. All of this laid out the foundations of the world you will be entering soon.”
The hologram became an awe-inspiring scene of a space station, taken from outside. A couple of astronauts could be seen working on the side of the s
tructure in their environmental suits. For a brief moment, Ethan thought he saw the face again.
That face, he thought, transfixed.
It was gone before he knew it. He wasn’t even sure if he’d really seen it; it could have just been his eyes playing tricks.
The lecture continued on for another hour, but Ethan could barely focus. He already knew all this post-WWIII stuff, anyway. With the graduation coming up, his anxiety kept distracting him. He just wanted to curl up and nap, and he had no idea why. When the time finally ran out on his lecture, he packed up his things into his digital inventory and loaded into the downtown map, where Sharpe lived.
There was a bit of a walk from where the map loaded him in to where Sharpe kept his home base, but Ethan found the stroll relaxing. With his mind all aswirl with his upcoming graduation, he didn’t mind a little moment to clear his thoughts.
“Hey,” a voice came from one of the alleys between the digital mom-and-pop stores.
Ethan jumped a little, startled. Looking over at the source of the voice, he was even more surprised.
It was the redheaded man from the education projections. There was no doubt in Ethan’s mind.
The teenager opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come. The strange man took the moment to introduce himself.
“My name is Gauge,” he said. “I’m from the outside world.”
“The outside world?” Ethan said. He could feel his pulse, or something resembling his pulse, jolt to a runner’s pace. “How?”
“I used a back door,” the man calling himself Gauge replied. “Someplace the architects of the simulation didn’t want anyone to find.”
Ethan looked around to see if there were any people nearby. He could see no one for at least a block, neither humans nor computer-controlled characters. It was just the two of them.
Ethan felt uncomfortable.