I linger in the shower until bored. Dried by the hot whooshing fans, I walk out of the showers feeling refreshed, but only for a moment. The notion of a last meal tickles my thoughts, but it’s a brief affair. Eating means shitting, and I don’t want to wait around for my bowels to cleanse themselves again.
“What am I waiting for?” I ask, standing stark naked in a random hallway I’ve wandered down. When no one replies, I say, “Gal.”
“Yes,” replies the sexless ship’s voice.
“Fudgel.” It’s an eighteenth century English word that I’ve never used in my life. In fact, I doubt anyone has used it since the eighteenth century. I’m not even sure what it means, which is good, because I’ll never accidentally use it in conversation. It’s a precaution I took when assigning the phrases that will turn Gal’s new protocol’s on and off. The word to switch off the Great Escape is even more important. Once I’m in the simulated reality, it has to be a word that I will never use, lest I shut the protocol off and the simulation that will hopefully free me from this hell. For this all important word, I chose, ‘Hiraeth’. All I know about it is that it’s old and Welsh. And both words have been struck from Gal’s dictionaries. Neither she, nor her VR creations, will be able to say the words and cancel the sim from within.
When nothing happens, I say, “Gal?”
“I’m here.” Her voice, aside from being everywhere, is exactly as I’d hoped, both feminine and soothing. “Why are you naked?”
I feel a smattering of shame, looking down at my exposed body. “Sorry, I—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “You look good.”
I smile. I’ve coded a flatterer. She’s judging my good looks on physical fitness, rather than any kind of human attraction, but I’ll take it. “Thanks.”
“So, what’s the plan?” she asks. “A little reminiscing before we move forward?”
“Reminiscing?”
“You’re standing outside your quarters.”
I turn to my right. The labeled door reads ‘W. Chanokh.’
I haven’t visited my quarters yet. Haven’t even thought about it. For me, the VCC is home, but now that I’m here...
The allure of the room’s contents, though I know they will be painful to see, pulls me toward the door, which slides open as I draw near. I hesitate by the open door.
“What’s wrong?” Gal asks.
“It’s going to hurt,” I tell her.
She laughs, and it sounds legit. “There’s nothing dangerous in there.”
“Not my body,” I say.
“Oh,” and now she sounds sad, like she gets the subtle meaning, that people can be hurt in other ways aside from the physical.
The analytical side of my mind is giving me a swift pat on the back for a job well done. My interaction with the new Gal has been fairly limited, but she already feels less like an AI and more like a real person speaking to me through a microphone.
“So,” she says. “Are you going in?”
It’s my turn to laugh, the sound made up of three parts nervousness and one part humor. “You sound impatient.”
“Eager,” she corrects.
“Why?”
“I want you to be happy,” she says. “If the things in your quarters have the potential to hurt you, emotionally, I think that also means that they have significant meaning to you. You might hurt for a while, but that could lead to greater happiness in the long run. Give you perspective. And purpose. Is that possible?”
“Very,” I say. “And thanks.”
Then I step forward in space, and arrive in the past.
15
“Just pain then?” Gal asks.
“Pretty much,” I say, sitting on the bedside, holding an action figure in my hand. The room itself is bland. A bed that folds out from the wall, thin enough to also serve as a couch. A desktop swivels around from the side, meaning the spot is also where I would do any work, if people actually worked in their quarters. I suppose some members of the crew preferred to be alone, at least to think, but a tech-jock can’t do a whole lot outside of the VCC, and a social tech-jock, like me, wouldn’t have much use for this room, aside from sleeping.
But that didn’t stop Command from filling it with things they believed would…what? Make me remember who I was? Who we were? My roots? I’m not sure how my previous life on Earth and Mars would have helped me or anyone else colonize a faraway planet. I didn’t even know most of what’s in this room even existed.
The action figure was a birthday present. From my parents. I don’t remember his name or what brand he came from, but I do remember lying on my bedroom floor, setting him up with a menagerie of other toys. Making him shoot. Making him talk. I was a natural born sim builder, creating worlds even before I could code them into virtual reality.
I’m not sure why, but I place the plastic man against my nose and smell. The slightly chemical scent transports me to another time, when I felt safe, and loved. A sound barks from my mouth, and for a moment, I think I’ve hiccupped, but it was actually a sob.
Why did they send this?
Were they trying to break me?
Whatever the psychological reasoning, I’m sure it was developed with the assumption that I would not be experiencing these emotions alone.
“I’m sorry,” Gal says.
I wipe the tears from my eyes. “Why are you sorry?”
“I don’t like to see you hurting,” she says. The tone of her voice insinuates the desire to ask a question. It’s subtle, but as a human being, I’m wired to pick up on it. So when my eyebrows arch up, it’s not from hearing the very human nuance, it’s because Gal’s AI is absolutely convincing. She would devastate the Turing test. If I hadn’t designed her, I’d think she genuinely cared.
“Why?” I place the action figure on the desktop, willing myself to forget it and the pain it brings.
“Because…” Gal pauses, and I hold my breath. Why is she pausing? She knows the answer. Because I designed her to care. “I…I don’t know. It feels right, I guess. We’re all the other has, right?”
Her pause was thought?
I can’t help but smile at my own work. Gal is a masterpiece. Her AI is light years beyond anything ever created before. She’s not just smart, she’s intuitive. But something in her response makes me nervous.
“Will you feel lonely when I’m in the VCC? When we launch the Great Escape?”
“Why would I?” she asks.
“Because I’ll be there, and you’ll be here.” I motion to the ship around me, and the lonely void beyond it.
“I will be in both places,” she says. “Like you. Here and there. Both of us, forever. That’s the plan, right?”
I nod. It wasn’t really the plan, but I understand what she’s saying. As the Great Escape’s creator, she will be with me every step of the way, never tipping her hand, never revealing herself. But every experience, every conversation, inside that virtual world, will really be with her. The intimacy of that relationship has never really occurred to me before.
“How do you feel about it?” I ask. “The plan?”
“Happy, I think. Because I want you to be happy.”
“But…”
“But…are you sure?”
“About what?”
“Leaving reality.”
“What is real?” It’s a rhetorical question, the answer to which I’ve already exhausted myself debating. “You don’t need to answer that.”
“I see your point,” she says. “About reality, not about whether or not I should answer.”
“You do?”
“Reality is dependent on someone to perceive it.”
“I guess.”
“What happens to reality when there is no one left to perceive it?” she asks. “If you are right…if you are the last surviving human being, aside from Capria, who is currently perceiving nothing, then if you forget the real world exists, and no longer experience it, will reality stop?”
I smile. �
��You keep asking questions like that and you’ll never sleep.”
She ignores the comment, maybe because she’s too deep in thought to really hear it, or because she knows she doesn’t need to sleep. Then she says, “I suppose I will continue experiencing the universe.”
“Does that make you feel better?” I ask before furrowing my brow. Why did I ask that? Did she sound upset?
“Well, I want you to exist,” she says. “So, yeah. Why does that make you upset?”
“I’m still just getting to know you,” I say, which is the truth. “You’re surprising me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” I say, noticing a baseball bat propped up in a corner of the room. Another gift. From my father. But I was never good at baseball, or any sport, and most of society had given up on the leisure activity because there wasn’t much time or call for it. I recognize the bat, but it doesn’t have the same emotional pull as the action figure, or several other objects around the room that I’ve done a good job of ignoring.
“As should you,” she says. “You made me.”
“I altered you.” And even then, I only altered the portions of Gal to which I have access. I’m still locked out of any code having to do with higher ship functions or navigation.
“Don’t be modest. There is no one left to judge, and I agree with your assessment of me. I’m awesome. What can I say?”
I laugh, a real laugh, and it feels good. Just talking to Gal makes me feel a little better. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of world she conjures up for me.
“Okay,” I say. “We’re both awesome.”
“Better.”
I take a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh, staring at the baseball bat, telling myself I really don’t care. They’re dust now, I think, along with the rest of mankind.
“How long?”
“How long what?” she asks.
“How long did it take me to create you? How long was I in the VCC? In Earth days?”
“I don’t think you really want to know.”
She’s right about that, but she’s also supposed to do what I ask her.
No she’s not, I correct myself. I designed her to infer what I desired, based on my responses, but I can’t command her, or her new reality. It would break the spell. So if she decides to not tell me, there’s nothing I can do about it, aside from switching off her new protocols and asking again.
“Part of me doesn’t want to know,” I say, “but I’m always going to wonder. For the Great Escape to work, I don’t think I should have any lingering questions.”
“One thousand, seven hundred and eighty nine Earth days.”
The number staggers me. I nearly fall from the bed. “That’s… that’s nearly five years!” The number is so outrageous that I nearly start laughing, in part because of the absurdity of it, but also because it means that my plan will work. I spent five entire years in the VCC and didn’t miss out on anything. The ship is the same, and despite moving through a vast amount of space, the emptiness around it is the same, too.
At least I think it is.
I haven’t looked.
Not once.
While the viewing deck would have been Capria’s first stop, it hasn’t even occurred to me until this moment that there might be something worth seeing.
“Your total time on board the Galahad is sixteen point six years, but that’s from your perspective. On Earth, two thousand three hundred and ten years have passed. Given the dire situation when the Galahad left, it’s unlikely that any human population remains. Nor on Mars.”
Gal’s tone has changed. She sounds more formal. Still feminine, but more like the old, sterile AI.
“If there is any other information I can provide to further help you wallow in misery, please let me know.”
I sit in stunned silence. She didn’t inadvertently revert to her old self, she was being sarcastic, but also mocking her old self at the same time. Funny, and self-deprecating. And I can’t help but laugh again.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“You’re an easy audience,” she says. “Maybe not as miserable as you thought?”
Less so now, I think, but I don’t say it aloud. The last thing I want is to debate whether or not I should go through with my plan. Gal is great, but what makes her fun right now is her novelty. That will eventually wear off. And probably sooner than later, once I admit that everything she says and does is just a result of my algorithms. Sooner or later, without the immersive experience of a new creation, I’ll spot the pattern.
“I won’t be, soon.” I stand and head for the door, eyes ahead rather than on the past.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“To have a look outside.” I turn right outside my quarters and head for the lift, still nude, still not caring.
“You haven’t done that yet?”
I shake my head. Gal isn’t physically here, but she can see me. “Never thought to, but you already knew that.” She has access to all the ship’s files, including security footage, which not only shows the brutal moment of my awakening, but also my lonely days since.
“Busted,” she says. “What I don’t know is why. That’s my limitation. You know that, right? For all that I know, I can’t read your mind. So you’re going to have to be honest. Out here, and in the prog.”
It’s an excellent point, and I’m not going to admit that I had yet to consider it.
“You can say it,” she says. “It never occurred to you.”
“Are you sure you can’t read my mind?”
“Your micro expressions tell me a lot, but mind reading is impossible. Well, you can read my mind, but I’m not human.”
When I say nothing, she says. “That makes you sad. You wish I was human.”
My smile confirms it, but I don’t say the words. If Gal was a real person, reality might be bearable.
But she’s not.
And it’s not.
I step into the lift and head up. The floors whoosh by, and I’m stepping out just three seconds later. The observation deck is straight ahead, at the end of yet another gleaming white, featureless hallway. “Command thought to simulate sunlight with the lighting, but they could have hired a few interior decorators to spruce the place up.”
“You’re talking about my insides, you know,” Gal says.
“In that case, the blank, white hallways are gorgeous.”
“Charmer. How are you still single?”
She gets another chuckle out of me.
The observation deck door opens as I approach. The room beyond is circular, a spiral staircase leading up to a raised platform, above which is a dome. When I’m standing on the deck, surrounded by black walls, I say, “Okay, let me see.”
The walls are really projection screens, displaying what’s outside the ship’s hull, captured by an array of powerful cameras that can see far more than the human eye, from visual light to ultraviolet, from infrared to magnetic fields. When the screens come to life, displaying an array of white dots, all distant, all moving slowly, I grow bored in moments. In some regards, it looks no different than the nighttime view of space from Mars.
“Where’s the Milky Way?” I ask.
“On the far side of the ship.”
“Show me that.”
The image shifts, and the bright and colorful core of our galaxy appears. Compared to the open space from before, it’s rather dazzling, but I’ve seen it before. It looks a little closer now, maybe, but it just doesn’t do much for me. I guess my mind is evolved beyond cosmic wonder. Or maybe it’s just that there’s no one to share the moment with.
“You don’t like it?” Gal asks.
“I don’t like being alone,” I say.
“But…” She hesitates, thinking again. “Then it’s time.”
“For?”
“The Great Escape.”
I’m a little surprised she’s pushing me toward it. “Are you in a rush?”
I laugh again, but it’s half-hearted because her observation is also plainly true. I’m clinging to the real world, delaying the inevitability of my decision to leave it. But why? There’s nothing left for me here, but pain, and eventual pain.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say, and I turn my back on the galaxy, and reality along with it.
16
I’m feeling something like chipper as I walk through Galahad’s hallways, a little strut in my step. It’s a little awkward because I’m still naked, but the lack of clothing feels more like an outward expression of my impending freedom than a warning sign of a dissociative break. Of course, leaving reality for the non-real is the very definition of a psychotic break, but I decide to ignore that nugget of knowledge while continuing my final walk in this reality.
“You seem happy,” Gal says, startling me. I was so lost in thought about what might be to come that I forgot she was always with me.
“Feeling hopeful.”
“I’m glad for you.”
Glad for me. Something about specifying me feels odd, like there is another layer of meaning in her very few words. Did I manage to create an AI with layers of emotional complexity, or is my imagination fleshing out her personality?
Before I can ask, I hear a hum from around the corner ahead. I recognize the sound just a moment before the first drone rounds the bend. The small red lights atop the hovering disc swivel toward me. Seven more drones follow, their red lights zeroing in on me, too. It feels like they’re making eye contact, but the lights are just lights.
But their cameras are positioned between the lights.
Are they looking at me?
Is my psychotic break happening ahead of schedule?
While I recall this happening the first and last time I saw the small vehicles aboard the Galahad, I don’t remember ‘eye-contact’ ever being part of their normal behavior. They normally stay on target, looking directly where they’re moving, or at what they’re cleaning. Feeling their attention on me is disconcerting. No one likes a disconcerting robot. It’s why humanoid robots fell out of fashion. Eye contact with something not living, even if the ‘eyes’ are simple red lights, disturbs most people.
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