by Dima Zales
She looks at me to see if I’m still following, so I ask, “And what’s beyond that Firewall?”
Phoe sighs. “Even with my Test-enhanced resources, I can’t penetrate that obstacle, though I will continue to try. Nevertheless, given what Jeremiah said to Fiona, I can conjecture the rest. Over that Firewall is an interactive virtual environment called Haven. It probably works the same as the Test, only on a larger scale, and its purpose is habitation rather than a training facility. Once Jeremiah got to Haven, he got re-instantiated—given computing resources to start running his consciousness. And judging by the way he made himself look to Fiona, he must’ve been given a generous helping of resources.”
“So Haven is—”
“A form of afterlife,” Phoe says. “Something put together so the chosen few can oversee things from beyond the grave. Probably put together by the Forebears—or the people we originally thought of as the Forebears, the ones who formed Oasis. It looks like the Elderly use the term differently, to signify a member of that clique.” Phoe’s eyes widen. “You know, those original Forebears might still be around in that Haven.”
My brain feels like it’s on a hyper-speed carousel. “Forebears are still around?”
Phoe nods. “Unfortunately, it’s likely. Something had to be fueling the generational attitude toward AIs and other topics. I can’t believe the degree of this hypocrisy, by the way.” Her voice tightens. “The only thing that separates them from the thing they fear is the arbitrary label of ‘human.’ They clearly use their resources to enhance their appearance—”
“So the Elderly didn’t lie to everyone when they said death was conquered in Oasis?” I interrupt, aware that she was about to steer into her favorite ‘why hate technology’ topic. A new kind of hope awakens in my chest. “Does that mean Mason is—”
“They certainly did lie,” Phoe retorts. “They made it seem like you wouldn’t age, which you do. Their deceit goes further, though. Not everyone who dies goes to this Haven. While we were speaking, I located the snapshots of hundreds of Elderly, not to mention a few Adults and Youths who died in accidents or were outright killed in rare cases like Mason’s.”
“So Mason and these others—”
“Are in that Limbo state, so they’re not irrevocably gone,” Phoe says and shifts all the way to my side of the couch. “I just found and analyzed Mason’s snapshot. It could be made conscious—”
“Can you do it?” My heart pounds with excitement. “Can you make him live again, even if it’s only in VR?”
Phoe sighs. “In theory, yes. But in practice, I need to learn more about the snapshot process before I attempt something so ambitious. I don’t think it would be fair to Mason to use him as a Guinea pig, especially since this snapshot is his only chance to exist again. Also, bringing him back would be unkind because—”
“How about my snapshot?” Unable to sit still, I jump up. “Can you use it to learn more about this process?”
“Sure, if you’re volunteering. Given my new Test-given prowess, I think I can try it.” Phoe also gets up and gives me an eager look.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“First, get out of here,” she says and illustrates with her middle fingers.
I instantly double flip her off, and a white tunnel takes me to my real-world room and into my real-world, cozy bed.
“Okay, now fall asleep,” Phoe says. “Your current snapshot is the one the system took last night. If I experiment with it, I’ll have to explain too much to that version of you.”
I nod and tense the muscles around my eyes to initiate assisted sleep, knowing full well I’d never fall asleep naturally—not with this level of excitement. As I drift off, I ponder the strange notion that a copy of me exists that’s a day behind in his knowledge, and that potential me is about to get overridden with an updated me.
My mind officially boggled, I plummet into sleep.
27
Without any grogginess or going through the motions of waking up, I find myself fully alert in my man cave.
I remember going to sleep and what our task was: testing Phoe’s ability to liaise with my backup. Except I must be the backup, assuming Phoe succeeded. Otherwise, this is a dream.
“When in doubt, always go with the ‘Phoe succeeded’ option,” Phoe says smugly from my right. “What do you think?”
I look around the familiar environment. Everything feels exactly like it does when I’m here while in possession of a real-world brain. That I don’t have one now is very strange.
“You do have one,” Phoe says. “It’s emulated precisely.”
I take a few steps toward the pool table a few feet away, and it feels completely normal. The wooden cue I pick up is light and smooth in my hands. Experimentally, I break the triangle formed by the numbered balls. My hand-eye coordination and my sense of touch work they way they should.
“I think you succeeded in what you set out to do,” I say as I continue to examine my surroundings. “If I’m this snapshot, this uploaded mind, then it’s indistinguishable from the real deal.”
“Good,” Phoe says. Walking up to me, she gives me a light kiss on the lips. “How did that feel?” She smiles, staring at me.
With her lips so close to mine, I want to reach out and kiss her again. Reading my intention, she gives me a knowing nod. “Yeah, everything is functioning as it should be. Damn, I’m good.”
“Except there’s a problem.” I shift uncomfortably. “When I wake up, I won’t remember this experience, will I?”
“Actually, that need not be the case,” Phoe says. “I’m pretty sure I can backward-engineer what the Test used to do: write your experiences back into your physical brain.”
“Oh,” I say gratefully, realizing I was dreading losing the nice little memory of her kiss. “Can we try it before I get more experiences and have more to lose?”
“Sure. Please remember this password: canoodle,” she says with a smirk.
Before I can ask her what that word means, she gestures and my mind shuts off.
* * *
“Theo, open your eyes,” I hear Phoe say through my grogginess. “I know you’re awake.”
I open one eye and see Phoe’s familiar pixie-haired visage.
“Did I dream the—”
“What’s the password?” she asks.
I stare at her blankly.
“What was the last thing I said to you?”
“Can of noodles,” I say. “Or something like that.”
“So it worked.” Phoe’s voice reverberates around the room. “I can write your digital copy back into your physical brain.”
“Great,” I say, unable to stifle a yawn. “What’s next?”
“Go back to sleep. That will override your snapshot again, and I’ll reanimate that you. Then we’ll talk.”
I don’t have to force sleep. After I close my eyes, I drift off almost instantly.
* * *
This time, I find myself in a new corner of my man cave.
“It worked again, obviously,” Phoe says after she appears next to me. “Let’s walk. I created something I think you might enjoy.”
Before I can raise any objections, she runs through the dangerous objects spread throughout the place, and I follow, dodging a bazooka and a pile of machetes on the way. I assume hurting myself here would hurt as much as it would in the real world, and I’d like to avoid that.
I soon see the destination: a big light source that expands as we get closer. When we reach it, Phoe stops and says, “Let your eyes adjust a little before we exit.”
I squint to see what’s outside. The light is still blinding, but from what I can tell, there’s something bright and blue out there, and it smells wonderful—like serenity.
“I made this little world somewhat bigger,” Phoe explains. “I hope you like it when you see it.”
Still waiting for my eyes to adjust, I say, “Are you dodging my question about Mason? Is that why you literally create
d a distraction?”
She inhales deeply and on the out breath says, “You’re beginning to know me too well. Yes, I didn’t want to talk about it for a while because I know you won’t like what I have to say, and I hate to disappoint you.”
“Try me,” I say and stop squinting. My eyes have adjusted enough to brave the light.
“Well, can you better verbalize what it is you want for Mason?” Phoe turns to look at me. “Do you selfishly want to talk to him for a few minutes and then put him back into a Limbo state? Because that’s the only thing we can do at this stage. We can’t have him be conscious permanently.”
“Why not?” I ask, though I think I know what she’s going to say.
“What could he do beyond that conversation you crave? It’s not like I can give him a new body and have him strut around the Institute, everyone recalling who he is. So what would we tell him? How would he thrive? A human brain, even an emulated one, requires constant sensory stimulation. If we didn’t want to be cruel to Mason, I would need to build a world for him to live in. This”—she points to the outside—“is a barren world. It has no people in it, and man is a social animal first and foremost.”
I frown. “What about the Forebears in Haven? They managed to live beyond dying.”
“They did it by taking a huge portion of my computing resources away.” Phoe’s voice tenses the way it always does when she talks about what they did to her. “The reason they didn’t give immortality to everyone is because even those resources they stole have limits. With what I currently have, I can’t help Mason in a sustainable way. However, if I got through that Firewall, I could maybe find a way to leverage Haven’s resources for him—or there’s that other thing you’ve been meaning to ask me.”
I don’t know what she means. All I was thinking was that the Test was pretty useless when it came to solving our problems. We solved our problems despite it. Regardless of whether I took the Test, everyone was going to Forget about the neural scan that would’ve gotten me into trouble. Jeremiah had an explanation for that Forgotten Council meeting that began this adventure, and the Keeper—the most powerful of the Elderly—is Fiona, which is an improvement over the previous psychopath who had the job.
So I say, “I didn’t have a question. I was just thinking about how the Test gave you resources but not enough to make Mason come to life or get you through the Firewall.”
“Right, you’re thinking the Test didn’t accomplish anything, but you’re forgetting something. A big reason for stopping the Test was so I could recover more of what I am—a spaceship. We have accomplished that, and it means everything. I now have control over my navigational functions, which means I can feel our location. It also means I can fly us anywhere we wish.” She gives me an intense stare. “It means we can be free.”
I blink and not from the light coming in from outside. She’s right. The implications are huge, so huge I don’t even know how to respond.
“You might want to ask, ‘So, where are we and where are we going?’” Phoe says in a perfect imitation of my voice.
I parrot her words, my excitement growing.
“We’re on the outskirts of the Solar System—there.” Phoe gestures inside the cave, and the luminescence from the stalactites is replaced by the giant furnace of a star surrounded by lit-up planets flying around it. It’s a star map of sorts—a map of the Solar System, if my knowledge of astronomy is anything to go by. On the very edge, beyond Neptune and Pluto but before the Oort cloud, a little speck of dust is labeled ‘Phoenix.’
“That’s us,” Phoe says. “And as you can imagine, even Earth, the nearest meaningful destination, would take a very long time to reach. The closest other target”—she gestures and the star map becomes much larger, filled mostly with empty blackness, with the Sun label on one end and a triple star system labeled ‘Alpha Centauri’ on the other—“is so far away, even my mind boggles at the timescale involved in reaching it. And that’s at the maximum speed I’m capable of. Without more resources, I can only reach a conservative speed of—”
“So we go to Earth,” I say, my pulse spiking as I remember my dreams of running on beaches and across deserts. “We contemplated doing it before.”
“You have to understand, Theo, this hologram is many centuries old. I still don’t have access to my external sensors. Though I know where I am kinesthetically, so to speak, I can’t see what the world looks like beyond this ship—not consciously anyway. The Solar System might look different at this point.”
“I don’t see any other choice,” I say. “Even if we found resources for Mason, there aren’t enough for every person in Limbo. At least Earth gives us a chance.”
“Okay, Captain,” Phoe says mockingly. “Since I was going to suggest going there anyway, I just set a course for Earth.”
I look at her radiant face, awed and overwhelmed by the idea. Struggling to wrap my head around it all, I ask, “If everything but Earth is so far away, what was our original destination? Where did the Forebears intend to take us?”
“To a planet around a star called Kapteyn, I think,” Phoe says. “But we haven’t been flying there for a while now. At some point, hundreds of years ago, we began drifting in circles here, on the outskirts of the Solar System. My guess is that in lieu of me, the Forebears were using a more primitive system to navigate their way to this destination. Of course, there’s a reason I was built to be sentient: I can deal with the difficulties of a long flight. Their solution couldn’t. It failed and I suspect that by the time it did, they didn’t know how to fix it, or they never knew how it worked because they had someone build it for them. It could very well be that it was that event—this navigation system failure—that created the opportunity that led to me becoming conscious. What’s truly insane about all this is that even if everything had gone the way the Forebears had hoped, even if that system never failed, the trip would’ve taken around ninety thousand years.” She shakes her head. “The whole idea was folly.”
It would take something like five hundred generations of Oasis citizens to cover that flight span. I picture all these people being born and then sent to Limbo or Haven. The recorded human history as described by the archives is but a fraction of that time. I try to fathom what went on in the heads of the Forebears to set out on such a long journey.
“You can’t understand it with your rational mind.” Phoe’s tone is full of derision. “They were a desperate and crazy cult acting out of fear.”
I gaze at her blankly, too stunned to do anything else.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.” Phoe’s voice softens. “Ask your last question so we can go explore my creation.”
Instead of chastising her for foretelling my actions, I ask, “So if the original destination was going to take so long to reach, what about Earth? How long will this shorter trip take?”
“Fifteen years,” Phoe says. “As I told you, because we’ve been drifting aimlessly, we’re not that far from Earth.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded. Fifteen years sounds like forever.
“That reaction is why I dodge your questions sometimes,” Phoe says and steps toward the lit-up opening. “It’ll be fine. You’ll still be a Youth by the time we get to Earth. Life in Oasis isn’t that bad, and we’ve made sure you’ll be safe. Now that I have more resources, I can find more ways to entertain you.” She smiles. “A thread of me can drive your body to Lectures while you and I hang out in Virtual Reality environments I’ll create. Here is an example of what I can do.” She walks toward the cave’s entrance. “Come, let me show you.”
With a mischievous smirk followed by a sudden burst of energy, Phoe runs out of the cave.
I follow her into the light outside.
The majestic expansiveness of the view hits me hard. There’s sand. It’s yellow and soft and reminds me of desert dunes, but that’s not what this is.
No, the magnificent ocean a few feet away makes this a beach.
I run up to the surf and stare at
the clear blue water that spans to the horizon, just as the sandy beach extends beyond limits on either side. There are no barriers, no limits to this space, and the scene looks exactly like the dream I had—my dream of Earth.
“Nothing ‘like’ about it,” Phoe shouts over her shoulder. “I was lazy and pilfered this from your head.”
I run to catch up with her but pause when I see her taking her shoes off. Deciding it’s a great idea, I do the same.
The warm sand on my feet feels amazing, as does the sun. I finally place that smell I noticed in the cave. It’s the scent of kelp and wet sand, of salt and fresh winds.
It’s the fragrance of the ocean.
Phoe runs faster, and I sprint after her, determined to catch her.
When she approaches the foamy ocean surf, she slows to take off her clothes. I glimpse her firm curves, and my heart starts beating like a drum. I’m not sure if it’s the running that’s causing this reaction or the view.
When I’m two feet away from her, Phoe stops and turns around with a laugh.
Her body is beautiful.
I attempt to stop, but my momentum has a better idea.
I stumble and Phoe grabs me in a soft hug. We fall in a pile of limbs, the sand cushioning our landing. I lie there panting and feel her ragged breaths. We look at each other, and I kiss her soft lips, channeling all my pent-up emotions into that action.
“I know how you feel, Theo,” Phoe says in my thoughts without breaking the kiss. “It’s been a crazy day, and you’ve accomplished so much.”
She pulls away, looks me over, and reaches to undress me.
The sun’s rays feel glorious on my skin, and I can’t think rationally enough to worry about propriety and taboos. I just pull her toward me.
The dance-like motions that follow—and my body’s reactions to them—evoke metaphors more poetic than ‘going all the way.’ There’s bliss and connectedness to this akin to Oneness, but without the artificiality. It’s also primal and animalistic, like hunger or anger—other emotions banned from Oasis. Our lust is all-consuming and terrifying in its intensity. With every kiss, stroke, and thrust, I marvel at how much the Forebears had everyone give up when they decided to purge this activity from Oasis. To my body, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Engaging in this taboo makes as much sense as eating or breathing. The overwhelming release at the end is probably the pinnacle of my life.