Escape The Grid: Volume 1

by Patrick F. Kelly

  Poor Song. She was always nice to me. She said that her father was nice.

  Then a torrent of feelings crowded Sofia’s mind.

  I shouldn’t feel sad for her, they did something illegal.

  What must it be like to have a father? Do all families in China have fathers?

  Will Song come back to school or will she get in trouble too?

  Was it right for Daisy to tell on her?

  Of course it’s right. Daisy is reporting illegal activity, which is what we’ve always been told to do.

  Sofia was brimming with questions for her mom. She was pretending to read a book and suddenly realized she hadn’t turned the page in about five minutes. She glanced in the other room, where her mom seemed way too distracted to notice anything Sofia did.

  Sofia couldn’t get rid of the tidal wave of questions in her mind. She remembered something her friend Sierra had told her last year, about where babies came from. Could it be true that men and women spent time together and had babies? That some babies were boys and some were girls? That in some countries, there were fathers?

  Having a man in your house as a father seemed as preposterous as having a grizzly bear in your house as a pet. Nothing good could come from it. Eventually, the grizzly would kill the mother and the daughters. Why would anyone do it?

  But what if Sierra was telling the truth? What if Song really had a father and… What would all of it mean?

  She had to ask her mom.

  And then the doorbell rang and her mom yelled from the other room for Sofia to get it.

  Approaching the door, the dark upper window became translucent and Sofia could see the outside. A drone was flying off, having left a package containing their dinner on the patio. She opened the door, picked up the container and brought it into the kitchen.

  Her mother looked up, “Hey, sweetie. Thanks for bringing that in.”

  “You’re welcome. Mom…” Sofia started to say something but trailed off.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sofia, are you thinking about what happened at school today?”

  “Nuh uh,” Sofia shook her head.

  “Baby, you can tell mommy the truth. You are thinking about the girl Song, right?”

  Sofia stood still, numb, and then nodded reluctantly and ever-so-slightly.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I found out?” her mom asked.

  Sofia nodded again.

  “OK, let’s get out the food, and I’ll tell you while we eat. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  Sofia grabbed her food, opening the plastic cover, ripping the wooden chop sticks from the paper container. She made a little bowl of soy sauce and put wasabi in it. Sofia loved sushi. She ate no meat and not even fish except for sushi.

  “I realize that you don’t know much about men,” her mom said. “A long time ago, men and women lived together more freely than they do today. They got married and had babies and the man would be called a father or daddy.”

  So Sierra was telling the truth.

  Sofia looked shocked and her mommy stopped for a moment.

  “I realize that this is scary news for you. You probably have some questions.”

  “Do I have a daddy?” Sofia asked.

  “No, dear. I thought you might ask me that. Women today don’t need men for babies. I took genes from my body and from your grandmother and some others, and I worked with my doctor to create a beautiful genetic baby that had all of my best qualities and none of my bad qualities. And that baby is you, sweetheart. You are the best thing that ever happened and I love you so much, and so does your aunt and your grandmother and your godmother. You have genes from all of us.”

  Sofia felt pleased. Then she thought of another question. “Are daddy’s dangerous? Song said that her daddy was nice.”

  Sofia’s mommy sighed. “Song may have felt that way. But society learned long ago not to take unnecessary risks with men. For thousands of years, men did terrible things to other men and especially to women. Women were treated horribly by men. I’m sure there are men who have moments when they are nice, but it is too dangerous to go back to a society where men can freely walk around. Too many wars, violence, terrorism and other horrible acts have been perpetrated by males. Today, we have a great solution. Men live in the camps where they are happy. If they want to be violent, there are simulations they can play on the grid.”

  “They work on the grid too?” Sofia asked. She had heard this at school today.

  “Yes, the men in the camps, we call them ‘campers’, they do a lot of the work that the women don’t want to do and that we can’t effectively automate. There are real differences between men and women, and there are valuable things that men can do for society. By having them in the camps, we protect the women from their violence while still reaping the good that they can do in their work.”

  “What kind of work can they do?”

  “Well, there is much work to be done to keep a society like ours in proper order. Someone has to grow the food in the fields and pick it, so that we can eat.”

  “Or fish for sushi?” Sofia asked.

  “That’s right. We need fishermen who catch the fish and get it to the restaurant to make into sushi. We have energy plants to produce electricity. We have…”

  “But how can they fish if they are in a camp? Is the camp on the lake?” Sofia inquired.

  “No silly, the camps are far away from cities, to keep the men far from the women. They are in areas with lots of sun or wind, so they can get electric power. They need the electricity because the men spend most of their waking hours on the grid.”

  “Why? Why would they spend so much time online?” Sofia was confused.

  “The men have really sophisticated virtual reality equipment that covers their bodies, so it feels like real life to them. They play games online and do lots of things that are fun for men online. But during the day, they work to pay for the camp life. So, for example, there are ships in the ocean run by robots and constantly fishing. But the robots sometimes malfunction, so the men log into the ships and verify that everything is functioning properly.”

  “Like with my sushi?”

  “Well, with your sushi, a ship in the ocean needs to position itself away from bad weather, which computers and robots can do. And then it sends out aqua drones to seek areas with the best fish. Your tuna, for example, was probably caught by a ship that specializes in finding the best tuna. Its aqua drones are programmed to look for patterns in the weather and sea that indicate places where the best tuna may be. A ship will send out 20 aqua drones and then pick the one with the best results. The computer on the ship then re-routes it to that part of the ocean. Once found, robots will lower nets and pull in the tuna. There are other robots that move the big tuna to areas where they are cut, frozen, and packaged. The ships make sure to not take all of the tuna from ocean regions, leaving enough to reproduce so they can come back to that area in a few years for more food. Transporter aqua drones on the ship navigate the packaged tuna out to the coast where the restaurants get it. When they float back to the ship, they bring key supplies.”

  “So what do the camper men do?” Sofia asked.

  “The camper men get access to all of the different computers, drones and cameras on the ships and make sure that everything is operating properly. When it isn’t, they figure out what is broken and dispatch replacement parts. They also monitor robot repairmen that do the replacements.”

  “But that isn’t much work.”

  “You are very smart, my dear. Much of the work is automated, so a few men can handle many boats. Of course, we can’t totally trust the men, so we usually have three men for every job.”

  “Why does it take three men?”

  “Well, there is software that assigns work to random men throughout the US, making sure that all three men are in different parts of the country and don’t know each other. They all get the same job, so they should all come up with the sam
e answer. When they do, the computer assumes that it is the right answer. When they don’t, it gets looked at by females.”

  “Because maybe the men will cheat on the job?”

  “Very smart. They may cheat, or maybe just not pay close enough attention. Or maybe they are trying to do something wrong. The system of redundancy helps prevent one bad actor from causing damage. In any case, the men don’t have to work many hours. Maybe a couple hours a day on average, which means they can spend most of their time playing games and doing stuff men like.”

  “What kinds of stuff do men like that girls don’t like?”

  “Now THAT is a conversation for another day, my dear.”

  There was a pause while they both ate. Then Sofia thought of another question: “Is Song’s dad going to a camp to work on fish boats?”

  “Huh? Uhh… that is a good question, dear.”

  Sofia knew that her mom was holding something back. She pleaded, “But you asked the woman at your work. What did she say?”

  Sofia’s mom looked uncomfortable. “Sofia, I’m going to tell you a secret, and you may not be ready for it. Can you promise mommy that you’ll be OK with this secret? Otherwise, we can discuss it another day.”

  “I promise.”

  “Your friend, Song, is… Is she your friend?”

  “Yes, well, maybe a little. She doesn’t talk much because her English isn’t very good. She’s not like my best friend or anything.”

  “OK, well that’s a relief. The girl Song is being sent back to China with her whole family. She won’t be going back to your school.”

  Sofia was in shock. Within seconds, tears gushed from her eyes.

  “Sofia, it’s okay, baby. Don’t cry.”

  “Why can’t Song have a daddy?” she cried. “The daddy could be sent to a camp. Why does Song have to leave? It’s not fair.”

  “Sofia, I’m so sorry that you have to hear this,” Susan put her hands on each arm and looked in her eyes. “You’re twelve years old – practically a teenager. People are going to tell you that ‘Life isn’t fair.’ And it isn’t. Life isn’t fair, Sofia. I’m sorry that you’ll miss Song, but luckily she wasn’t a close friend. Let this be a lesson that everyone has to follow the law.”

  “Song didn’t do anything wrong,” Sofia looked down and continued crying.

  “Sweetie, look at me,” Susan said, lifting her head. “Men are not allowed to be in cities. If a woman like Song’s mother harbors a man, she is breaking the law. Unfortunately for Song, the whole family will be punished.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the mom has to be punished for what she did. And the dad. And we can’t leave Song by herself in the house. She’s your age. She can’t live by herself. Since they are immigrants, there are other rules. In the case of China, the rule is to send the whole family back. You wouldn’t want Song to be split up from her mother would you?”

  Sofia cried less and less as her mom finished. “No,” she answered.

  “Life isn’t fair. But if we follow the rules, things tend to work out well for us. Do you understand?”

  Sofia wiped the tears from her face and nodded. “I’ll always follow the rules,” she said.

  11

  THOMAS SAT in his virtual ski lodge looking out the large windows at the snow-covered mountains. He liked to spend time in this snow villa when he wasn’t playing or working on the grid. There was a fire burning on one side of the room, with the wood crackling and popping just a bit more than it might in real life.

  Along one wall was his library, which contained thousands of virtual books that Thomas had gathered over the last twenty years. It was an old-fashioned library, with two stories of books and a spiral staircase that moved along a ridge in the middle of the wall. Some of the books were actually text only, antiquities from a time before videos and VR. Most of them were videos of some kind, either 2D, 3D or VR interactive. Thomas didn’t spend much time in his library, but he did like to learn from the past, and these books represented original sources of content. There were books on philosophy and religion here with content that was 2000 years old. There were writings from every century for the past 2500 years.

  Thomas walked up to a dusty, medieval book shelved about waist high in the center of the wall. It was Descartes’ “Meditations on First Philosophy,” the famous writing that put everything around us in doubt and coined the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes had said that we can’t know if anything around us is real, or if it is all a trick that our senses are playing on us.

  But I can know for sure that I am real. I think, therefore I am.

  Thomas pulled the book about halfway from the shelf, and it unlocked a hinge which allowed him to push the wooden shelf forward. Suddenly, several of the shelves became a hidden door, which Thomas walked through into a secret room.

  Having a hidden door, or even a library, was silly, since no one had ever been in Thomas’ virtual ski lodge. In all likelihood, no one would ever come here in the future. He had seen a library and hidden door like this in a movie when he was a kid and had always wanted to have one. So now he did.

  The secret room was just as big as the ski lodge itself, since the VR world didn’t have the constraints of physics or geography to hold it back. Thomas walked in and plopped down on a comfortable sofa in the middle of the main room. In real life, some wires above his outfit latched so that he sat at precisely the spot where the sofa would have stopped his body. The feedback sensors in his shirt and pants made his body feel like he was sitting on a leather sofa. Descartes would have been proud of the sensory tricks that modern VR had accomplished.

  Thomas looked at a large screen TV in front of him and waved his hands. This was why he came to the hidden room. He wanted to review some old videos.

  Secret recordings.

  A listing came on the screen, with selected images next to each text description. These were recorded memories from his life on the grid over the last twenty years. Resort World allowed its users to store a certain amount of memories for free. Thomas had maxed out their generosity, and the results were staring him in the face.

  The first memory was an orgy scene between himself, Maggy Malone and a girl named Asia. It had been an overwhelming sexual experience from about fifteen years ago, one that seemed too amazing to delete. So he hadn’t. Instead, he had re-lived the memory hundreds of times.

  Thomas thought about the Sexaholics Anonymous meeting. He had lied to all of those people. It hadn’t been 407 days. It hadn’t even been 47 or 4.7 days. He felt like a hopeless addict.

  He couldn’t control his sexual desires, and the grid gave him little assistance or motivation. He could be anything and do anything in this world, as long as it didn’t interfere with other human beings. He could have as many avatar slaves as he wanted, and he could spend his time in any way desired.

  What he had said to the SA group wasn’t a complete lie however. He had been serious about the meaningless of many of his past choices. He truly was trying to change his life and replace these empty experiences with productive ones. He did feel a love for Julia and he was spending time learning and choosing meaningful activities.

  But he couldn’t find the will power to delete these old VR recordings from his hidden trove of storage. He knew that it was time to move on in his life. He believed the words that he told the SA group.

  In some ways, it had been 407 days. If you only counted new events, then 407 was the true number. Where he kept backsliding was on re-living the old memories. Coming into this hidden room, pulling up past events in VR and re-experiencing them.

  There was the philosophical question about why any of it was wrong. These weren’t real human beings. No one was being exploited. These girls weren’t daughters or wives. Thomas had no wife of his own that he was cheating on. Every event was essentially in his mind, heavily aided by VR to the point that it felt real. Almost like a hallucination or a wet dream.

  You’re trying to talk yourself out of
it.

  Thomas had gone through the history of philosophy and religion to understand why this would be wrong. And he had found very little. The most famous was a reference to Jesus saying that lusting for a woman in your mind was similar to adultery. But everything he found had to do with real acts and real people. Even the woman in Jesus’ warning was the real wife of someone.

  Stop rationalizing. You know why you came here, Thomas.

  He didn’t decide to be sexually sober because of guilt or religion or philosophy. Thomas’ problem was a legitimate emptiness that he felt and that other men in SA had expressed. On the one hand, they could live like Roman emperors and have everything their hearts desired. On the other hand, having everything felt a lot like having nothing.

  Maybe you gotta ask yourself what you mean by ‘good thing’, good buddy.

  Thomas had slowly realized over the last two years that the problem was what his heart desired. In his time on the grid, his heart had desired all the wrong things. All the empty, meaningless things. And so, even though he had checked off every item on his bucket list, he accepted now that he was working with a flawed list.

  Just do it already!

  The solution, he had decided, was to get off the grid. To escape the grid. Not because the grid was inherently bad, but because Thomas had all the wrong habits when he used the grid.

  He had to transform himself, and then he might be able to handle life on the grid. He had spent two years trying to transform himself while still being part of the grid, but it didn’t seem to be working. On days like today, his hypocracy was too much to bear.

  Do it! Do it before you capitulate again.

  He took a deep breath. He had made his decision. Actions, not words, were needed now. He moved his hands and selected the last six memories on the screen, the ones that he had been unable to delete. He looked at them and remembered the times spent. They represented his wild and crazy past. His empty and meaningless past. They didn’t represent his future.

  He wasn’t going to be a hypocrite any longer. He waved his hands and was prompted to delete the six memories. He confirmed the deletion. He then purged the items from the recycle bin.