The Reborn (The Day Eight Series Part 1)

by Mazza, Ray

  Trevor had half expected Damon to walk back in with a little girl trailing behind him. Or a robot of some kind.

  Damon sat, then reached over and pressed a sleek power button on the tablet. The screen flickered to life, and a crisp picture appeared of... a bedroom. There was a chair facing the screen and a four-poster bed in the back against a yellow wall painted with murals of birds. A nightstand with a lamp and coloring book abutted the bed.

  There was something unsettling about the scene. It didn’t quite look realistic. Trevor couldn’t tell if it was the way the light scattered on the materials in the room, or the lack of impurities or blemishes on the surfaces of the furniture. It looked like computer graphics.

  “Where is she?”

  “Allison, sweetheart, we have a visitor I’d like you to meet.” Damon pointed out a microphone on the tablet while he was speaking. Then he pointed at a tiny, black hemisphere the size of a pencil eraser protruding slightly from the tablet above the screen. “And this is a CCD – a video camera – that sends your image to Allison’s screen. Your view of her room is out of a similar camera she has on her simulated tablet.”

  A sound of a door opening and closing played from the speakers, and then a faint pattering of footsteps. They stopped, then something shot across the screen and it went dim.

  “She’s covering the camera with her hand so she can look at you first,” said Damon. “She’s a bit shy.” Trevor waved, hoping it might help.

  Light slowly returned to the screen as Allison pulled her hand away.

  “It’s all right, Dear,” said Damon.

  Finally Trevor could see her. She was sitting in the chair facing the screen, her vibrant green eyes wandering bashfully. When she looked directly into the camera, it was brief. She was a beautiful young girl, just as she appeared in the newspaper article photo of the fire. Now he could see that the color of her hair was dark blonde. It was straight, although slightly messy, and fell a few inches below her shoulders.

  Allison looked vastly different from her surroundings. She had little strands of hair winding around others, the texture of her skin was complex and non-uniform, and as she moved her face there was nuance in color change and highlights. She looked real.

  Not only that, but he could actually see her eyes focusing when she moved them, her pupils dilating and contracting.

  It freaked him out. She’s looking at me.

  “Introduce yourself,” Damon told Trevor.

  Trevor had to open his mouth a few times before anything came out. “Hi,” he said eventually. “I’m Trevor.”

  “Hi,” she responded quietly, and waved.

  Trevor waved back.

  “What’s... what are you up to, Allison?” He couldn’t think of what to say. He was face to face with what was supposedly a real simulation of a human being, and he had nothing better to say than what’s up?

  “Nothing.” Allison looked down. Was she actually embarrassed? Was this for real? Trevor wanted to test her, to see how she would react to something outlandish, to see how real she really was. But he settled for the basics.

  “Do you have a favorite food?” Did she even eat? What would that mean?

  “I like salad.” Allison looked back at the screen.

  “Salad? Why do you like salad?” That was by far the most unexpected answer a kid could give you, except for “plain spinach.”

  “Salad is fun because it looks pretty.” She even spoke like a nine-year-old, with the wandering voice and inflections of someone that age.

  “Yes, salad is pretty,” said Trevor. “But do you like the way it tastes?”

  “I guess. It tastes normal to me. Like food.” She nodded. “What’s your favorite?”

  Trevor was being asked his favorite food by a girl in a computer that liked salad because it was pretty, while in a secret bunker fifty feet underground, and sitting beside a multi-millionaire. Somehow, that made it difficult to think of what his favorite food was.

  “Peppermint stick ice cream.” He knew it wasn’t his favorite food, but it was all he could come up with. He actually felt sort of bad about copping out.

  “Yum, it sounds pretty,” said Allison, smiling.

  “Hey, Honey,” said Damon, “say goodbye, Daddy and Trevor have to go talk about important things now.”

  “No-o, Daddy!” Allison pouted. “I’m lonely.”

  Trevor whispered to Damon. “Are you sure we shouldn’t talk to her more? She sounds like she wants to.” Damon shook his head.

  “Say goodbye, now,” said Damon. “Trevor will visit again soon.”

  “O-kay,” she said. “Bye Trevor. Nice to meet you. Bye-bye Daddy. I love you.” She waved.

  “Love you too, Darling.” Damon blew a kiss, then reached over and pressed the power button on the tablet. Its life drained away.

  ~

  Damon sighed. “So you finally met Allison, what did you think?”

  Whether she was a real simulation of a human or not, he was blown away.

  “She seemed so real,” said Trevor. “She moved and talked like a nine-year-old. Her eyes were vibrant… She was amazing!” Trevor’s mouth could barely keep up with his head. “I mean, I mean, if that’s for real – er, if she’s for real – like, for real for real, it means... it means so many things! Human life, and evolution and computers, in computers, and, and feelings? She must have feelings? A computer with feelings? Wait, she’s not a computer, she’s a program? No, not even. A person! She’s a person! With this technology – if you can even call it that – you could do so much! There are so many possibilities! I can’t think of them all right now, studying the brain maybe, but lots of other stuff! But she has feelings, right? What does that mean? What are the repercussions? I don’t think I could even begin to comprehend the repercussions of this.”

  “No,” said Damon, “you can’t.”

  What did that mean? That meant something. “What are the repercussions?”

  “That’s something to get into later. Soon, but later.”

  There were so many answers out there and Trevor had none of them. “Why did Allison’s world look so different than she did? How come it didn’t look as real? What even was that place?”

  “That place, Trevor, was the small simulated world she lives in. She has her bedroom, a den with some toys, a bathroom, and a small yard outside to play in, but that’s as large as the simulation is for her.”

  Damon now sounded concerned. “Her world looks different because it’s actually simulated differently than she is. Every part of her is real from the atomic level up. We were able to grow her from conception, so we didn’t need to know the details of her full human structure. But, we obviously couldn’t just grow walls, a bed, sheets for the bed, or the materials that compose the chair that she sits in. Those are simulations on a much higher and simpler level. On top of that, we need an extremely complex interface between Allison and her world to bridge the gap between the simulations, since they’re so different.”

  “So she lives in a small world all by herself,” said Trevor. “How did she grow up from being a baby? How did she learn to talk? Wouldn’t that require constant attention, just like a real child?”

  “The short answer is that she had to grow up in a very controlled environment, and I did give her constant attention.” Damon chuckled. “Trevor, I know you must have a hundred other questions right now. We’ll have time to go into everything in more depth later.”

  “I really hope so,” said Trevor, unblinking.

  “We will,” Damon assured him. “What’s important right now is why you’re here, how you can help me, and the meaning of the letter Allison wrote.”

  Then Damon added, “I may be in trouble.”

  Chapter 15

  Purge

  Trevor sat in the back of Damon’s limousine and stared out the window as it sped down interstate 95. He watched the trees and the houses whip by, a streaking canvas of shapes and colors.

  Damon’s chauffeur was driving hi
m home so he could rest up for his new job tomorrow. Trevor would no longer be working for Day Eight. In fact, he wasn’t even going back to the office to clean out his desk. That would all be taken care of for him. Instead, he’d be going to Damon’s house shortly after the break of dawn. Ironically, he and Damon would cross paths each morning on the highway.

  Damon needed someone to spend time with Allison to keep her company, and offered Trevor the job for an exorbitant salary, more than three times what he used to make at Day Eight. It seemed Damon desperately wanted Trevor for the job – he’d made Trevor call in and announce his sudden departure for “personal reasons,” and then footed the bill to have Trevor’s personal things shipped home. Why Trevor? Because Damon’s choices were limited. He wasn’t supposed to have Allison at his house. She wasn’t even supposed to still be alive.

  Allison had been through a rough ordeal – Damon had explained it all to him and it was obvious why he couldn’t just hire one of the lab coats to look after her. It was a lot of new information, and it was all still sinking in.

  ~

  Allison had been developed and raised at Day Eight. She was “born” there eight years ago, but had aged nine years in that time – they had some control over the speed of her simulation. It could go as slowly as they wanted, and they could even pause it. They’d sped Allison’s simulation up a bit, but it could only run so fast, limited by the processing power of their computers – as advanced as they were, they still had limits.

  In those eight years, Damon had spent time with her every day that he was in the office, and usually weekends, too.

  Allison was the very first human they had successfully grown since conception, which meant she required more attention than any of the others. And there were others.

  The company had lab coats assigned to watch Allison when Damon wasn’t there. They could touch the simulation to move her around, put her in a crib, feed her, rock her to sleep. It was similar to interfacing with a video game – except that it was no game at all.

  As she started to grow up, they had developed tutor programs to help her learn to talk, read, and write. They weren’t as good as a human, by any means, and where they fell short a designated lab coat usually took over.

  Allison had some learning problems because she wasn’t around other children. In response, they linked her world to another world with a newer boy named Oscar. They’d sped Oscar’s simulation up until the two of them were the same age. In their simulated world, they had computer-like devices that allowed them to watch carefully selected TV shows and movies. They were also given magazines and picture books. Media were the easiest things to add to the simulation, and they were also things that would help the children to understand the real world, even though they had not yet developed a clear comprehension of the differences between their worlds and the real one. Neither of them developed socially quite like normal children, but, over time, their peculiarities faded.

  And then, about two months ago, Day Eight began experimenting with Allison. Damon had been adamantly against it, but they were getting a mandate from above – from the CEO, Mark Stonefield himself, the only person that held more clout in the company than Damon. Stonefield told them to use the earliest surviving simulation, and that was Allison. Damon appealed the decision, suggesting use of Oscar or any of the other same generation simulations, but he was summarily ignored.

  He knew what the tests were, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to stand them. Not on Allison.

  When the lab coats began their experimentation, Damon would watch, and the coats would pretend he wasn’t there. People he used to be friendly with became cold and distanced. He’d hired each and every one of them.

  When Damon confronted his right-hand man, Kane, about it, it felt like he was talking to someone he’d never met before.

  “We’re just doing the jobs we’ve been assigned to do, Damon. If you have a problem with it, then take it up with The Valley.”

  Kane was referring to The Silicon Valley, the location of Day Eight’s headquarters, run by the CEO, Mark Stonefield. It was where all technology developed by Day Eight’s branches converged, then filtered back down into the branches to fuel more innovation and progress. Of course, they all knew there were things The Valley was working on that never made it to the branches. Things that were deemed “too sensitive.” Damon could only imagine what could be too sensitive when compared to what his branch did have – artificial life.

  Damon stared at Kane, cold and hard. “Did The Valley tell you why the assignment didn’t go through me?” But he already knew the answer.

  “Drop it, Damon. For your own good.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “Damon! I have no choice!” Kane said as he pushed his thin-frame glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

  “You don’t have a choice?” said Damon. “Because you don’t want to think about what that choice is! Why don’t you just leave?”

  “Ha! Are you serious? You think I can just leave? Just like that? After all the things I’ve seen here?” Kane sliced the air with his right hand. “This has changed me, Damon. It’s changed all of us, and you damn well know I’d be out of my mind to leave. Why don’t you leave?”

  Damon knew he was right. Here, they had created life. Watched it grow. Discovered the answers to some of the most significant questions of their time. Here, they were gods. Leaving to go push papers at some law firm or to research allergy drugs or to start up a social network or whatever people did in the normal world... it all seemed... irrelevant. Nobody in their right mind would walk away from this.

  Damon nodded slowly. “But if there’s anything I should know... about why you’re handling it this way, you can tell me.”

  “I said, drop it!” Kane promptly sat back down at his desk and began violently typing at his computer, stabbing his keys.

  As Damon walked away, he heard Kane let up on the keyboard. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Kane look up with a momentary expression of… was it pity?

  ~

  They were testing a new interface. They tore her out of her world simulation, and attempted to replace it with something else – our world. They had manufactured input devices to emulate the five senses, but Damon felt the devices weren’t nearly advanced enough for their purpose.

  There were synthetic eyes, special microphones to act as ears, an olfactory sensor, haptic surfaces the size of a sheet of paper for her sense of touch, and a chemical tray for taste. The lab coats hooked these inputs into her simulation, vines of multi-colored wires snaking into a massive computer. The bridge from her simulation had been changed to accept these devices as overrides to the inputs she normally got from her own world.

  Allison’s eyes no longer saw out into her world, they saw out into the real world through the cameras – the synthetic eyes. She only had crude control over their movement… they were slow and unresponsive at times, and they made her dizzy and gave her headaches.

  Allison’s ears no longer heard sounds from the world simulation she used to live in; now they heard what the microphone heard – mostly the drone of the machines that housed her program.

  She no longer smelled what the world simulation gave her to smell; she now smelled the air of the lab she was in. She tasted the solutions that were put into the sensory chemical tray. She felt the contact of people that touched the crude haptic surface.

  They also gave her a speaker, her sole connection back to this world. And the speaker had a switch on it.

  These things were a curse and a blessing. For now she could see into the real world as if she were a real human, or close enough. She had real colors and textures to look at, vibrant light – not just pictures that showed up on her communication tablet in her simulated world. She now had the potential to see all the beauty in the world at high resolution. But the lab coats – in their colorless jackets, shuffling from place to place in the sterile lab – weren’t visions of beauty.

  And she coul
d now taste amazing things. When they poured orange juice in the sensory chemical tray, she tasted real orange juice for the first time! Not the faked orange juice in the simulated world she used to live in, but flavorful, sweet, citrusy orange juice! And it had such a pleasing smell! She told them so, and they nodded. They pressed buttons on her simulation computer and it printed many sheets of numbers and charts for them to go and send off to The Valley for whatever they were working on.

  Once, sometimes twice a day, a man with a clipboard would come and sit by her and ask her questions. “How do you feel? What do you think about this? Are you ever happy? Angry? How much sleep are you getting? Describe the new tastes, smells, and sights.” And she answered his questions, eagerly.

  At first, these wonderful things kept her mind off the things that were uncomfortable to her. But after a few days, they weren’t letting her taste or smell as many things. Sometimes they made her taste bad things, like soap, and strange powders. They also began forgetting to pause her simulation at night – something they were supposed to do when they left so she wouldn’t have to be alone and in the dark. In the pitch black, she existed in a dismal limbo between sleep and wakefulness.

  They began to spend less time with her. Damon was there more than ever, talking to her, but she saw and heard the lab coats working with the other equipment and leaving to go to the other floors.

  She asked them nicely to spend more time with her because her father couldn’t always be there. They just smiled and went about their business. She asked them if she could go with them to see other floors, or outside even. They told her she was attached to heavy equipment now, and it was impossible to move her.

  One of the worst things was that she couldn’t move herself at all. When she tried, she felt like she was moving, but she didn’t go anywhere. It was like she was constantly swimming, but paralyzed. If she thought about it, it made her feel nauseated. She’d even thrown up a few times. It was disorienting because she couldn’t see her vomit, she could only feel it coming up and leaving her mouth. She didn’t even know what she was throwing up, because she hadn’t been eating since they hooked her up like this. Somehow she neither felt full nor hungry anymore. It must be because of the men in the lab coats, she thought, wondering what else they were going to do to her.