“So you’re saying that our reality, and everything in it, including us, is—”
Capria turns her eyes on me. “Entertainment.”
“For God,” I say.
“Yep.” Eyes back on the stars, she adds, “And I think he deserves a good ending. The last two survivors of the human race, made in his image, racing toward the edge of reality, their fates uncertain.” Eyes back to me. “What are you afraid of? Not existing? Because that’s pretty much already true. It’s not like hitting a wall faster than the speed of light will hurt. We’ll simply cease to be.”
If there is a wall, I think, but I keep it to myself. Capria wants a way out. And she’s right, as far as suicide goes, being atomized by the end of the universe would be a fairly unique and painless way to go. The problem is, if there are collision boxes surrounding the simulation, designed to keep us contained, then we already passed through them…assuming God adheres to game design logic, and what I’ve seen thus far suggests he does. Two dimensional elements, like the pancake planet, are used outside the explorable map. Otherwise, the illusion of a three dimensional world is ruined.
When I consider the idea of plowing past the galaxy’s background, I’m not worried about dying, I’m worried about how Capria will respond when she doesn’t.
“I agree,” Gal says, “with Cap.”
Gal, unlike Capria, is not feeling suicidal. She has lived with the idea of being composed of data since the first moment she became sentient. And I’m pretty sure she’s come to the same conclusions as me.
“To boldly go,” I say, quoting Star Trek, “where no man has gone before.”
Capria smiles, though she’s clearly resisting it. “I hated those movies. The science was great, but the characters…ugh. You know, I never understood why Tom watched them with you. I think some part of him wished you could be friends. Probably would have been, if not for me. And it’s, ‘where no one has gone before.’ Political correctness was a big deal back then, you know.”
“Where no intelligence has gone before,” Gal says with mock offense. “Philistines.”
“Where no simulation has gone before,” Capria adds, gaining a hearty laugh from Gal. Cap then opens her fist in the air and makes an explosion noise. Smiling, but with tears still in her eyes, she looks at me again, the darkness of her eyes sucking me in. Twin black holes. “Can we just plow into the edge of reality now? Get this over with?”
“Sure,” I say, feeling no need to drag this out. It’s the only course of action that’s guaranteed to either give us more information about reality, or grant us peace through a quick death. “Gal?”
“Already on it.”
There is the subtlest shift of motion through the ship and our bodies, and then the field of stars outside the dome begins to move. It’s subtle at first, but then the points of light start to move apart, like the universe is stretching out.
But it’s not expanding. We’re just getting closer to the map of stars, planets, and galaxies wrapped around the simulation. Even the Milky Way is just one big texture painting.
Within thirty seconds, what looked like a vast sheet of stars is now mostly empty space. The star at the center of this solar system has doubled in size, but it quickly becomes alone in the universe. We’re headed straight for it. “Gal, I know that star isn’t really a burning ball of nuclear power, but is it still emitting energy and heat?”
“Yes,” Gal says.
“Might be a good idea to not fly through it,” I say with just seconds left.
“Might be,” she says with just seconds to spare, but doesn’t course correct.
“Gal.” I’m growing nervous. Even if reality isn’t real, I’m not ready to die. Not ready to meet our maker, if that is, in fact, what happens when a character exits the simulation. “Gal!”
Luminous yellow, filtered by Gal so it won’t blind us, fills the dome’s view.
The time it will take for the star’s sixty-thousand-degree heat, struck at faster than light speed, won’t even register, but I brace for it anyway.
I flinch when a hand takes hold of mine. It’s Cap, looking calm, waiting to be erased. Her grip tightens as the unending starlight grows steadily brighter.
And then breaks apart.
Black specks emerge across the luminous surface, slowly expanding and stretching out, forming hexagonal seams. A single hexagon expands until it, too, like the star, fills our view with yellow light. And then, nothing.
Capria and I both flinch back as stark, endless darkness fills our view. The observation deck is pitch black for a moment, and then lights, orange like a sunrise, slowly illuminate around the fringe.
“Gal, what the hell was that? You could have killed us.”
“I thought that was the idea,” Capria says, and I do my best to ignore the fact that she was willing to die.
“Testing a theory,” Gal says.
“With our lives,” I complain.
“We were never in danger?” Capria asks.
“No,” Gal and I say together, and I add, “We were already outside the simulation. We’re no-clipping reality.”
“Meaning,” Gal says, “we were outside the physical world and the laws that govern it. Will knew that the texture map surrounding the simulation would be intangible, but he didn’t fully realize that things like heat and gravity would also have no effect on us.”
Capria punches my shoulder. Hard. I reel away from her, clutching the bruised muscle. “The hell, Cap?”
“Testing a theory,” she says, mimicking Gal. “The laws of the universe, beyond Galahad, might no longer exist, but we’re still bound by them. If we weren’t, our bodies and this ship would have fallen apart the moment we crossed the threshold.”
I rub my shoulder. “There were probably a hundred different ways you could have tested that theory, including just looking around.”
“But all of them less cathartic.” Capria pushes herself to her feet. “Next time we’re not going to die, tell me in advance. I’m not a fan of false hope.”
“If you want to be dead,” I say, losing my patience, “I can put you back in a cryo-bed and you can sleep your way through eternity. We’ve been given a gift. Not only are we the first people to really understand the machinations of the universe, we’re now free to explore it, to wonder about its creation, and what might lie beyond it. We’ve just been handed the keys to infinity, and you just want it all to end?”
Capria glares, but says nothing.
“Will,” Gal says.
“Not now,” I grumble, working up to a tirade that will either open Capria’s mind to the possibilities before us, or make her hate me forever.
“Will,” Gal says again, her voice projected a bit louder.
“What?” I shout.
“The nothing beyond reality isn’t quite nothing.”
Even Capria perks up at this revelation.
I look at the darkness above, but I see a ‘nothing’ so complete it gives me goosebumps. “What is it?”
“Data,” Gal says. “Raw data. I didn’t detect it at first, because it only exists at precisely 160.23 GHz.”
“That’s where the CMBR’s spectral radiance peaks,” Capria says.
“CMBR?” I ask.
“Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation,” Capria explains.
“That’s what you said was missing,” I point out. “From the holes in reality.”
“It is missing,” Gal says. “Most of it. Only 160.23 GHz exists beyond the sim.”
“And that’s significant because…”
Capria answers me, but isn’t thrilled about it. “It permeates everything and can be traced back to the Big Bang.”
“To when some super nerd God executed his prog,” I say, but I’m undaunted by the revelation. “Gal, you know what this means, right?”
Gal is silent.
Capria asks, “What does it mean?”
I feel like I shouldn’t be smiling, but I am. “Gal, please show me.”
The dome is suddenly filled with points of light, millions of them, scrolling past in streams moving in every direction. “This is the closest approximation to what I’m detecting that I can visualize for you.”
It’s a mess. It looks like chaos. But just like the tiniest bit of the reality created for us, if you look close enough, all that’s left is math.
“What is it?” Capria asks, as I get to my feet and hurry for the exit.
“Microwaves are perfect carriers for containing data. It’s why people started using them for wireless tech in the twenty-first century. The range was 2.4 GHz to 5GHz. But we can transmit at any frequency we want, including 160.23 GHz. If we can decode the code… If we can read and write…”
“Read and write what?” Capria asks.
By the time I answer, I’m running for the exit. “The source code!”
36
“I feel like I need to point out that this could be a very bad idea,” Gal says. “Perhaps the worst of your bad ideas.”
I tug my virtual skin over my legs, grunting as the stretchy material catches on my bare toes. VISAs are a modern technological wonder, but if you’re in a hurry, they rarely cooperate. If I were doing this right, my body would be clean shaven and covered in light oil, but I haven’t followed that procedure since waking up, and shaving would take even longer than dry-wrapping myself. I make an effort to slow down and wiggle my feet, one at a time, into the form fitting legs.
“And now I’m being ignored,” Gal says. “Great. Don’t come crying to me when you accidentally erase a portion of the galaxy. You won’t know how to undo anything you change, you know that, right?”
“I’m not going to change anything.” I hop up and down as I tug the VISA over my ass. “But if we can understand it—”
“Then you’ll change it. Will, I know you. I know what you want, and the lengths you’ll go to get it. Editing reality is taking it too far.”
“I swear I won’t change anything.”
“Then what are you after?”
The virtual skin rolls up over my torso and I start wiggling into the sleeves. “You mean aside from understanding the very nature of reality and our purpose in life?”
“We both know that’s not what you’re after.”
My smile is impossible to hide. Gal does know me. “I’ll tell you when I find it.”
“Is this going to be a multi-year journey into the realm of code?” Gal asks.
“I don’t know how long it will take,” I say, “But I do know that you are already sifting through it, looking for answers without me. I know you, too.”
“I can multitask,” Gal says. “I can work on deciphering the language while having a conversation with you, and with Capria.”
Capria. I left her on the observation deck, and I’m prepping to enter the VCC for who knows how long. Before she woke up, this was nothing unusual. I’ve grown accustomed to long stints of virtual living and coding without having to worry about the state of things in my absence. But now there’s a person with me, who might not appreciate being alone for a long period of time, especially after finding out that our reality is separated from actual reality by one to an infinite number of degrees.
I finish tugging on the VISA. “I can’t not see it for myself.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Gal says. “I’m just slowing you down.”
“Wait, what?”
The staging area doors slide open. Capria enters with an ‘I don’t think so’ look on her face and a VISA in her arms.
“What…are you doing?” I ask.
She unseals the magnetic zipper down the front of her coveralls and peels out of it. Her sudden nakedness holds my gaze for just a moment before I remember I’m a decent person and look away. I’ve seen her nude on several occasions in the past, but only when she was helpless or afraid, and not since she woke up in Medical. Seeing her now, awake and strong, triggers old feelings.
“I’m coming with you,” she says. “Obviously.”
“The VCC was designed for a single user,” I point out.
“Never stopped Tom,” Capria says.
I glance in her direction to level an argument, but I’m defeated by the image of her slipping into Tom’s VISA. “Will that even fit you?”
“It’s a little snug,” she says, “but Tom only had a few pounds on me. We’re shaped differently, but it will stretch where it needs to.”
Her confidence is the kind that either comes from a lot of experience or raw ignorance. “How many times have you done this?”
“I was with Tom for three years,” she says. “Six months in, we got serious. A few times a week after that. He could alter the security feeds. They could see him, but no one ever knew I was there. Best guess, I’ve been in the VCC nearly five hundred times.”
“But the interface was designed for one person,” I say. “Or did Tom alter that, too?”
“The only thing that limits the number of users is the ego of the tech-jock running the scenario. You have to want me there. Have to accept any changes to the digital world that might be created by my presence.”
None of this would have been a problem before, but now I’m not sure how I feel. While recent events have improved the depth of our relationship, I’m also thrown by the quickness with which she has accepted reality 2.0. All the fear and uncertainty from the observation deck is gone.
She turns around after slipping her arms into the sleeves and covering her chest. The tight, translucent virtual skin doesn’t fully cover the features of her body, or her dark skin. I’ve never seen a woman in a VISA, and the tech-jock in me finds it alluring, the way men once ogled women who dressed as comic book heroines.
“What’s different?” I ask.
She looks down at her body, misunderstanding the question because of where my eyes are traveling.
“About you,” I say. “You don’t seem afraid anymore.”
“I got over it.”
“You were suicidal,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I didn’t think we would die.”
“But you hoped we would.”
Capria places a hand on my shoulder, looks me dead in the eyes. “The difference between you and me is that I say what I’m thinking. What I’m feeling. You…at least when you’re around me, try to be someone you’re not.”
It takes all of my willpower to not remove her hand and spit verbal venom. Mostly because she’s right.
“She has a point,” Gal says, returning to the conversation. “You are more open with me than you are with her.”
“Thank you, Gal.” I glance toward the ceiling, and I miss being able to look Gal in the eyes. “Your timing is as impeccable as ever.”
“Really?” Gal says. “I was trying to make things awkward.”
The mood is quickly lightened, and with a smile on her face, Capria says, “Just admit it. You hoped we would die, too. That all of this would end. That a new and better and less alone life would come next.”
My smile fades, but I nod. “It’s what I’ve wanted for nearly a decade.”
Capria claps my shoulder and moves around me, picking up a headset and entering the VCC. I watch her walk for a moment and then follow. In some ways, she and Gal have a lot in common. They both know how to make me smile, how to cut deep to the crux of my emotions, and how to shift my point of view with just a few poignant words.
I follow her in, ready to protest one last time. Ego or not, this is my space. My job.
“The key to making this work, aside from you not freaking out that you’re not in complete control of everything in the VCC, is to avoid real world…or whatever it is…physical contact. It’s disorienting for tech-jocks. Made Tom puke. Gal, a little mobility please?”
The floor’s cells flip, spreading toward the walls. I look down as I step over the shifting pattern and note the design. Hexagons. Just like the giant pixels making up the background patter
n of the universe now in our rearview. Does that mean human design was influenced by the creator, or does it mean the creator of my reality is human?
The answers to these questions don’t exist in my reality, but they might in the source code. I place my headset on without another complaint.
“Welcome back, babe.” The sultry voice puts me in full panic mode. I created Cherry Bomb, the virtual assistant welcoming me back, during my younger years. She’s a tall, slender blonde wearing a tight red dress that looks about ready to fall off, and sometimes does. The last time I visited the VCC, I was feeling alone and bored, so I launched her prog and enjoyed the distraction. Clearly, I forgot to shut her down, and now I’m horrified by her appearance. I swipe my hand to the right, chopping the air. The movement should close the prog, but I do it too fast, and have to swipe three times before she disappears.
“Classy,” Capria says.
I spin around so fast that I nearly fall over in the real world. Cap is looking around the game room, walking toward the pool table, oblivious to Cherry Bomb’s departure.
“Not the word I would use,” Gal says, but says nothing more. She’s seen Cherry Bomb before. She’s seen everything in the VCC. It’s all part of her system, after all.
Cap’s avatar, the digital representation of her real self, is dressed in a form-fitting black outfit that looks battle-ready, and vaguely familiar. Her hair is pulled back tight, held in place by two long, black hair pins. That she even has an avatar confirms her story about using the VCC with Tom. She notes my attention and says, “Dark Wars Five. I played with Tom.”
“Wow,” I say, genuinely impressed by the revelation that Cap is also a gamer. “Old school, but wow.”
Capria points at me. “What’s that get up supposed to be?”
I look down at myself. I’m dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, clothing that went out of style two hundred years before our mission departed Mars. “Comfortable.”
“How is mine?” Gal asks, her voice no longer coming from every direction, but from directly behind me. I turn and flinch back, once again looking into the blue eyes of Cherry Bomb. But now she’s dressed like Capria, hair tied back in a ponytail, and a wicked grin on her face. “Ch-ch-cherry bomb,” she sings and then laughs.
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