“Why did you always use this actor model?” I ask abruptly. She doesn’t look phased at all but instead looks back at the meadow in front of us, as distorted it is by the glitching graphics engine.
“I did not design it,” she replies. “Maya had a very difficult childhood. Even more so than Alexia. This actor is modeled after the ideal image of herself that existed in her memories.”
“She missed her childhood.”
“No. She missed her innocence. Ignorance truly is bliss.”
“I see,” I say even though I’m not sure I follow.
“Maya was the first human to ever host a Controller,” she continues, perhaps sensing my confusion. “She was much younger than Alexia when Director Sommers starting experimenting with her mind and encephalon.”
“Alexia’s memories are vivid with the confusion of those years of training.”
Sophia scoffs and shakes her head then says “you don’t know half of it. By the time Alexia joined the Program, the Director had found ways to stimulate the encephalon by means of neural group programming. Maya on the other hand, was the guinea pig upon which his team experimented with trial and error. The Controller Program turned her from a confused, scared child into a broken adult. For years she struggled with depression no one around her seemed to notice. I believe she was probably grateful in her final moments.”
The glitching worsens and from the distance, I see the simulated models of trees, clouds and animals become malformed then disappear leaving behind a black emptiness. This will happen to me too probably very soon. The sight terrifies me in a way I’ve never felt before.
“I’m scared, Sophia. What should I do?” I ask her. “Tell me what to do.”
“Take care of yourself, Aurora,” she says as she looks at me one last time with her warm smile then the simulation collapses and my connection is violently broken. I am expelled from the encephalon emulator back out into the Francisco Citadel network. Once and again I try to reach back into it but none of my probes work. It is as inert as Maya’s brain. And so it finally hits me. Sophia is gone. Forever.
I’m not sure of what to do. Ethan used me to deliver the directive to erase Sophia’s daemon. Once I return to my home network, I could be erased too on arrival. I can’t tell how far he would go and experiment on Alexia’s encephalon just to get rid of me. My mind races with simulations and possible scenarios but they all point to the same outcome. Controllers have truly become obsolete overnight. The natural next step is to erase us.
I exit this heavily damaged environment and return home. The simulated park where I spoke with her is still vivid in my mind. I feel the overwhelming need to be there again. Once back in Alexia’s encephalon, I start the construction engine with a blank canvas. My simulation begins with a white landscape devoid of any features. I run the calculations in the background stream to begin construction. Basic geometric solids first rise from the ground far into the distance. Colorless cubes, spheres, cylinders and pyramids grow and acquire texture and complexity as they transition from simple wire meshes to real world simulations. Massive rectangular prisms turn to buildings. Here and there spheres on top of cylinders morph into trees. I feel Alexia’s neural network struggling to keep up with the workload but there is no risk of permanent damage beyond a temporary headache for her. She will have to deal with it. I do my best to replicate the park with the limited resources I can draw from Alexia’s encephalon. I look around and find it acceptable. It’s nowhere near as detailed as Sophia’s but it will do.
“Did you get all that?” I ask. No reply. I had expected Alexia to figure out communicating within the Controller domain but she hasn’t. I reach for her mind and introduce abstract directives her encephalon will understand. Only the basics for now. Communications and actor-constructing.
I sit by the lake and play with the water. The ripples my hand creates move unnaturally. I already miss Sophia’s virtual constructs. Finally, I sense her presence coming in. Alexia materializes by my side. Apparently, her mind chose the last image of her own body she perceived and so her actor has been constructed wearing the isolation chamber suit. Even her hair appears damp with salt water. She stands there confused and I wonder if that’s how I reacted when Sophia taught me how to construct my actor. I return my attention to the water while I give her time to settle in. She looks around and touches her actor as if testing the difference between this domain and the physical one. Oddly enough, our minds seem to be isolated from each other here and so I cannot read her thoughts.
“Are you done?” I ask, trying to sound impatient but at the same time this could be one of my last conscious moments so I don’t mind her taking as long as she needs to.
“I’m sorry, it’s just so… surreal. I see my hands touching my arms but I don’t feel anything,” she says. Then she touches her face and realizes she is not wearing her glasses. “I can see clearly,” she adds amazed.
“Your actor is a polygonal model that lacks the sensory feedback of a real body,” I explain. “But one of its purposes is interaction within the Controller domain, which explains your relatively better eyesight here.”
“I see,” she says then walks closer to me with caution.
“Focus. You’ll need to remember what you saw here to report to Ethan as he ordered.”
“I don’t know what to make of this Gea entity,” she says. “But still, it told Sophia it was the zero-point reactor that wiped the atmosphere all those years ago and not the sync incident.”
“Nothing makes sense. Not this information nor the entity. But that’s for him to worry about.” I say then stand up and prepare to end the simulation. There’s nothing else for us here.
“Wait,” she interrupts then kneels next to me to touch the water.
“What now?”
“Time runs faster here, right? Every minute we spend here is only a microsecond out there.”
“The correct ratio is a millisecond. A thousandth of a real time second.”
She nods then experiments with the surreal flow of the water.
“Then what’s the hurry?”
Alexia’s fascination with the Controller domain is understandable. This is the only reality I’ve ever known. It is second nature to me. But for her it’s a new experience. There really is no hurry so I silently agree and sit down on the grass. Perhaps the scenery really is that interesting. I look around but nothing surprises me since I built it all in the first place.
“I thought you were going to ask her how to escape deletion,” she says.
“She changed my mind before we touched on the subject.”
“Really?”
“Ethan is right. My existence is an accident. These daemon instances he intends to use will make me obsolete. I will have no purpose.”
“So you’re giving up, just like that,” she points out casually, pretending to care.
“When he spoke about replacing your stemlink with a daemon, your reaction was fear,” I say. She looks down, embarrassed. Time and again she tries to hide her true feelings from me as if she forgets I have direct access to her mind out there. “After all, being bound to the Citadel makes you special. Take that out of the picture and you are not much else but just another human surviving under the barrier. You enjoy the attention, crave their admiration and revel in other people’s jealousy. Don’t try to pretend you care what happens to me, you just don’t want your special status to change.”
“It’s true but… It’s all I’ve ever known,” she says absentmindedly.
I’m surprised she doesn’t react with the usual emotional outburst. She doesn’t try to deny it either. I’m not sure what’s going on.
“And I do care,” she adds. “You are a part of me after all, something about simply erasing you from existence feels wrong.”
“Are you saying you disagree with Ethan?”
“I guess I do.”
I can’t take much of her hypocrisy any longer so I stand up then again prepare to end the simulation.
“I don’t understand your intentions. I want you out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your attitude confuses me. After all that’s happened between us. What are you trying to do?”
“You don’t get it, do you? This is how relationships between people work,” she says standing up.
“I am not people,” I say, the words just coming out without thinking.
Alexia takes a deep breath, approaches me and reaches for my shoulder while looking straight into my eyes. This whole situation escapes my understanding. I stand there frozen, unable to react.
“It’s alright, little sister,” she says. “You’ve made my life a living hell but I forgive you.”
A million things race through my mind as I pull away, disturbed. I was not prepared for this scenario.
“Look,” she adds. “I just figured maybe the answer is not to remove you from my head but rather to reunify us into one as we were before. Maybe the first step is to accept each other as we are.”
“That’s your conclusion?” I ask while looking away and crossing my arms. She came too close for comfort. “What do you know about neuropsychology?”
“Not much, really. All I can do is hope for the best.”
Just by considering her words, a certain serenity invades my mind. The options are now clear. Either we continue as we are and I face oblivion or we find a way to undo the psychological damage done by the Controller Program. All my instincts and available knowledge tell me reunification is extremely unlikely but hope is a powerful thing.
“After everything I’ve done to you,” I finally say. “Why would you even consider preserving me through reunification?”
“I saw you talking with your friend,” she says. “All these years I thought of you as some angry ghost I was cursed to live with. But just now I saw you as a person for the first time. You know, a human being.”
“Well, I am not one.”
“You talk and act like one, that’s all that matters.”
A person. I’ve never seen myself as one. Us Controllers are more easily defined as sentient software, one step above the impossibility of true artificial intelligence. Software that runs on an encephalon and makes use of it as hardware, but nothing else.
“Very well. Let’s try it your way,” I say. “Your brain- “
“Our brain,” she interrupts.
“The brain…” I continue. “… takes about six to seven hours to regain motor control of the body after convergence is completed. While your mind gets back to normal, I shall research all matters pertinent to our condition. I am isolated from controlling Citadel systems but I can still browse my embedded Library. Six hours should be more than enough.”
“Alright,” she says then looks away, admiring the virtual environment. “Where are we, anyway? It’s a beautiful scene.”
“It’s a simulation of an urban recreational area they once called Echo Park,” I reply. “Sophia’s was much more detailed. I can’t construct the wind or the water properly. Nor the animals. She was always good at building primitive artificial intelligences in real time.”
“You must miss her. I’m sorry for your loss.”
There she goes again. I have to get used to this kind of dialogue I am not familiar with. Sophia once taught me how to be a Controller. Perhaps in time Alexia could teach me how to be human.
“We grew up together, so to speak,” I reply. She seems pleased.
We stand there for a moment in silence, surrounded by the crudely constructed world.
“It’s time we get back,” I say.
“Yes,” she replies with a nod.
I initiate convergence closure protocols and Alexia’s mind is returned to the upper layers of her consciousness while I wonder how much of this will she remember and how much will she think of as a dream. Reunification would require our minds to meld together in permanent gestalt. I doubt that’s even possible. But I have nothing to lose at this point. The constructed recreation of Echo Park begins dissolving and as it goes out it once again feels the same as when Sophia was erased. Ethan will pay for this. Somehow.
Ethan
EVEN AFTER ALL those years, it was still not any easier for Ethan to go down to the 9th floor. There had been a time when receiving a phone call from one of the training labs meant that another test subject had failed the Program. Sometimes their fragile minds would break past the point of recovery and they wouldn’t even wake up from convergence sessions. For others, the awakening of the alternate personality construct had led to an instinctual struggle for control of the body inside their minds that caused the nervous system to collapse. It was a dreadful thing to answer the phone knowing that one day it could be Alexia he had to bury or worse. Fortunately, his stepdaughter had endured the Program. Not only that but she had become host to the third viable Controller ever produced by it.
About an hour before, he received a call to report Alexia had woken up from daemon convergence and was starting motor cortex recovery. As he made his way to the lab, every locked door reminded him of a boy or girl that had passed away or gone insane in one of those rooms. The names of each one of the orphans had been burned into his mind. For years he had tried to convince himself there were no regrets. Their short lives had been sacrificed for the greater good. They were martyrs who paid the ultimate price to ensure there was a future for mankind. And yet, every locked door brought up a name and with that name came the memory of the moment when he had carried them away.
Instrumental music was playing in the lab when he arrived. Alexia had once asked for it. She needed something to distract her mind from the unsettling body paralysis that lingered immediately after waking up. Ethan had recommended that piece in particular. Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto number 1 was the most obvious choice. Its notes contained just the right balance of tranquil violins and fast, momentous piano guaranteed to keep her mind busy. He couldn’t help but smile with pride when he realized it was still her first choice. Despite her unconventional upbringing, she still had managed to develop good musical taste. The isolation chamber was open. Ethan approached to greet Alexia but was disappointed when he found it to be empty.
“Director Sommers,” Mark greeted Ethan then shook his hand.
“Hello, Mark. How is she doing?”
“Good, even though it’s been her second convergence in the last 12 hours she pulled through just fine.”
“Thanks,” Ethan replied as he looked around the lab. “I take it she’s changing?”
“Yes, sir. Shouldn’t be much longer now.”
“Why don’t you guys wrap up for the day? I need to talk to her in private.”
“Sure thing, sir. Just a couple of things to take care of then we’ll close shop.”
“Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it.”
One by one, the technicians left the lab until he was standing next to the capsule by himself. Its insides were still damp with saltwater. The isolation chambers had been used centuries ago for bogus psychotherapy treatments. It was appropriate that they now served an actual purpose. The Program team had been extremely lucky they had been preserved so well in a warehouse somewhere under the barrier. As he waited for Alexia to return from the changing room, he grabbed a tablet from one of the desks nearby to check whatever data had been produced by the last couple convergence events.
“Hey dad,” Alexia said as she walked towards him with careful steps.
“Alexia,” Ethan returned the greeting and put the tablet away. “Do you want to sit down for a minute?”
“No, I’m good,” she said, her speech still slightly slurred. “If you don’t mind, I want to wash off the salt water as soon as possible,” she added with a faint smile.
Ethan nodded and motioned for her to follow out of the lab and towards the elevator. As they walked down the hall, Alexia lost her footing but Ethan c
aught her on time.
“I told you, you should sit down for a few minutes. Drink some water too.”
“You worry too much,” she said, grabbing his arm for balance.
“Hey I’m the neuropsychologist here, I know what your brain is going through.”
Alexia chuckled and let him run her arm around his waist. She rarely asked for help or admitted she needed it at least not in his presence. It was a trait she had exhibited even as a little girl, perhaps a defense mechanism leftover from the days when she had been on her own in the alleys. The pair eventually arrived at the elevator doors and Ethan pushed the call button. Alexia let go of him but still grabbed his arm for balance.
“You used Aurora,” his stepdaughter said. “You used her to deliver a viral infection and erase the daemon.”
Ethan nodded and looked her in the eyes.
“Had to be done,” he said. “We tried many times to reach out to it but its defenses were too strong. And we knew it would open a path for Aurora.”
“She had a name. She was called Sophia. And she was Aurora’s childhood friend.”
“It was a daemon instance taken off a rogue Controller that committed genocide,” Ethan replied, doing his best to control the severity of his words. “It had no friends and no childhood.”
Alexia broke eye contact and faced the elevator doors. Ethan could see the conflict growing inside her. It hurt to realize a rift had been opened between them and it was going to be very hard to close it. But it was all for the greater good.
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