The Reality Thief (Deplosion Book 1)

by Paul Anlee

  “Darya, why are we even going through this exercise? Alternus isn’t much fun anymore,” Leisha blurted, giving in to fatigue and despair.

  “I know. We’re all tired, but there are many reasons to continue.” Although she’d found herself wondering the same thing lately, Darya did her best to sound convincing.

  “Most important, is that when we break from Alum in the outworld, we need to be able to govern ourselves. We’ve lived tens of millions of years under the unchallenged leadership of the Living God. Most of us can’t conceive of any system outworld other than the one we currently have. We need to learn how to set our own policies. These Alternus simulations are invaluable.”

  “Well, as I see it, we have two viable possibilities,” said the Chinese representative, Mr. Yu. “Either we come up with a way to push a new space program, or we let the world collapse into a lengthy global depression giving way to devastating upheaval, and hope to recover something later.”

  “A lengthy global depression would bring extreme social disruption, demonstrations, riots, perhaps revolutions,” replied Darya. “Maybe that’s the kind of wake-up call humanity needs right now to make the necessary changes, but I’m not sure we could recover from that level of turmoil. I would only choose it as a last resort after we’ve exhausted all other possibilities. I’d prefer a concerted push into space.”

  “Space programs have always required huge expenditures,” Mary admitted, “but a lot of inventions come out of the programs. Maybe that would be enough to justify the extra debt, to entice people to come around and get involved.”

  “No,” replied Darya. “It has to be different this time. We can’t do this just for the spinoff inventions and side benefits. The goal must be to get people exploiting and colonizing other planets and asteroids. That’s the only way the economy will grow and bring return on the enormous debt the program will create. We need raw resources and we need new frontiers.”

  “There’s another option we haven’t considered,” interrupted Qiwei. All eyes turned his way. “What about the inworld option?”

  “Which would be what?” asked Secretary Hughes.

  “Well, in the outworld we Cybrids do our assigned work but we get to fulfill our ambitions and desires inworld. Even with as large a population as Alternus currently has, we can still feed everybody and see to their basic needs. What we can’t fulfill is their every desire and ambition.

  “What if we were to relax the dendy lattice ban and permit development of a system strictly for entertainment? People could live in shacks but perceive them as mansions. They could vacation wherever they wanted from the comfort of their own living rooms. They could experience mundane but nutritious diets as gourmet foods. They could go on adventures or invent new kinds of work for themselves. What would be wrong with that?”

  Darya could almost hear the wheels turning, as everyone contemplated the implications of Qiwei’s proposal. She gave them a minute to think and then, calling the faraway stares back to the table, ventured in.

  “Okay, thinking about implementing inworlds within an inworld is kind of odd. It’s like dreaming about dreaming. But just for the sake of argument, let’s take a look at how that might play out.

  “I see a number of ways in which it wouldn’t be horrible. It would allow us to reduce people’s real standard of living while allowing them to think and feel like they were experiencing improvement.

  “We could create a huge job share program and assign almost everyone to part-time work because we wouldn’t have to worry about actual earnings anymore. People’s enjoyment of life would be tied to their lattice experience rather than to what they did in the outworld. We could automate the vast majority of unpleasant jobs. It could work.”

  Leisha perked up. “We could even reset the financial system along the way and no one would notice because, to some extent, the real economy would have become virtual.”

  “I agree. It could provide for everyone without adding to the burden we place on the planet,” added Qiwei. “We’d reduce the pressure on the planet’s resources, and on the need for population growth.”

  “How do you figure that?” asked Yu.

  “With everyone’s basic needs taken care of, we could automate production and it wouldn’t affect the overall economy. Demand would drop and productivity would increase. With a rich and healthy virtual life, people wouldn’t be driven to have more children just so they’d have someone to take care of them into their old age. Heck, we could even make taking care of the elderly one of society’s major career paths until the demographics improve.

  “But would the Supervisor allow it?” asked Mary.

  “I doubt it,” answered Darya. “Over the long term, turning inward like that is not likely to lead to new developments in science and technology, or to new exploration. She ran some quick queries of the supervisory program.

  “The Supervisor predicts that such an approach would result in societal stasis with almost no chance of significant change for a long time. It might allow the experiment to carry on for a thousand years to see if anything happened, but I expect the long term trend would continue to be stasis. That would last until humans die off, until they were challenged by some external force like an alien invasion, or until the sun went nova. We’d end up with the same outcome as we did in our previous iteration, Alternus 3.0, which, I remind you, the Supervisor saw fit to terminate.”

  “Still, that’s a very long time,” said Qiwei in defense of the idea.

  “A slow death for the species is still death,” replied Darya. “The dinosaurs survived about 200 million years, but it only took one asteroid to bring it to a conclusion.”

  Everyone thought about that for a minute.

  “Well then, why don’t we get back to the new space program?” Yu suggested.

  They argued for hours over whether to explore with manned spacecraft or robots. Darkness settled over the ski resort before they agreed on a combined approach: the initial exploration and exploitation would be conducted by the hardiest automatons Alternus technology was capable of producing, but the ultimate goal would be to get people into space.

  “I don’t understand the big deal about humans,” Hughes complained. “They’re not exactly the best fit to occupy most of the universe. They need too much care and delicately adjusted environments. And let’s face it, for the most part they’re kind of useless. Why don’t we just let them wind down on Alternus while we Cybrids populate the rest of space?”

  Darya was shocked. For millions of years, Cybrid civilization had been one of service to humans and their God, Alum. That a Cybrid could even conceive of allowing flesh and blood humans to simply vanish from the universe, let alone propose it out loud, was disconcerting. Things are changing outworld, too, and maybe not for the better.

  She also didn’t know if she could answer Hughes’ question. Why do we accept, or just assume, that humans have the right to be the dominant force in the universe? Is it part of our design, our programming, or is it because Alum decrees it?

  She needed time to think.

  “Let’s ignore the Supervisor’s inworld parameters for the moment, and deal with the question as it pertains to the real universe outworld, okay?”

  Then it came to her. “The real universe, the natural universe, is a very uncertain place. Living—that is, naturally-occurring biological—organisms have an adaptive advantage over designed, electromechanical life such as us Cybrids. Yes, they’re sloppy. But their diversity and reproductive methods allow them to evolve over time to meet unforeseeable changes in their environments.

  “We Cybrids are too static, too perfectly adapted to our environment. Even though our environment is very big, there is still the possibility of an external change that our perfectly designed systems couldn’t handle. We need the diversity of biology and the imprecise thinking of biological brains.”

  “Why couldn’t we just program some diversity into our engineering?”

  “We could, but who among u
s would know what we should allow to vary while freezing the design of other parts?”

  “We’ve done pretty well over the past hundred million years.” Hughes was not backing down.

  “Maybe so, Mr. Hughes,” Darya admitted, “but during all of that time, we’ve had a powerful protector in Alum, who maintained a singular motivation: to expand humanity throughout the universe. How do you think we’d do as a species without Alum and His central goal?”

  While Hughes thought about this, Darya hastily pressed her point. “Look, if things in the outworld had carried on as they have for the past millions of years, maybe we wouldn’t have needed this meeting or a rebellion.

  “Alum’s system outworld is nearly perfect. It provides fulfillment and endless growth for both humans and Cybrids. Everyone is happy, and the universe goes on. We’ve never encountered a threat to our expansion that we couldn’t handle, even if the threat required our God’s direct, magical intervention.

  “Except Alum has changed His plan for us. He’s no longer content with ruling this universe with its existing potential for unpredictable changes and surprises. He wants to settle into His own perfect stasis. Maybe you can accept that as the best approach for an eternal universe but to me, and to the Supervisor, that sounds like the worst Hell imaginable.”

  Darya took a breath and tried to calm her voice. “The universe, our real universe, with all its unpredictability, also allows for endless, fascinating variety. Biological organisms, including humans, contribute to that variety. Maybe there really is no purpose to it all. Maybe we have to make our own purpose. Alum’s intended perfect universe would give us eternally perfect boredom. No variety, no surprises. No life. I don’t want to live in a perfect but dead universe, and I would hope that you wouldn’t either.”

  By the end of the meeting, they were all exhausted but at least they had the beginnings of a plan. This had been the most promising Forum so far. It was the first time the powers of the simulated world set aside their individual or national agendas and tried to do something good for all of humanity. Darya was proud of the work they had done today. She told them so, and thanked them as they left for their hotels.

  Mary hung back until the others had filed out, and then walked over and closed the door. “Darya, we spent the whole day on finance, economics, and space exploration. You didn’t talk about any of the extremist religions and all the problems they’re causing.”

  “Money is its own religion,” Darya replied.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t mean the worship of money or even the idea of endless consumption of unneeded things. Money is a religion because it requires faith. Unless we believe it works, it won’t.”

  “Okay, that’s a different way of thinking of it, but I can see that. Still, the various extremist factions are trouble.”

  “In the end, whichever of the many belief systems wins out, whichever ones rule over the most people, and however wonderful or miserable that makes their lives, none of that matters. Unless those systems are actively against scientific progress, that is.”

  “Like most Alternus fundamentalist beliefs seem to be.”

  Darya frowned. “Yes, probably all of them. For any intelligent life, the only way forward is…forward.”

  “Progress or die?”

  “Yes, eventually.”

  “To what end? When do we get to rest?”

  “I can’t answer that. All I know is that safety, stasis, or stagnation is not the answer.”

  Mary stared back at the table in the middle of the room. “So…is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “What I’m hearing on the street. Did we conduct an attack on the deplosion machines?”

  Darya looked away. She’d purposely not infected Mary with the Alternus belief-altering virus so that she could have someone on her team with independent moral guidelines, someone who wouldn’t be afraid to challenge her thinking. It was time to put that decision to a test. She decided to tell her the truth. “Yes, we did.”

  “All of them?”

  “No, not all. We only had enough recruits for about five percent.”

  Mary calculated. “That’s a million Cybrid lives, Darya.” She didn’t need to ask, “How could you?” It was written all over her face.

  Darya could only nod. Her throat constricted and she fought back the tears that threatened to flow. She took a deep, shaky breath and held it in until she couldn’t any longer. “It was a huge sacrifice,” she whispered.

  “Were any of them actually volunteers?”

  “They were all volunteers.”

  Mary looked directly into Darya’s eyes and challenged, “Real volunteers? Did they use their own free will in deciding to volunteer?”

  Darya realized what she meant. “Yes, they did. I haven’t activated the virus to that level yet, if that’s what you mean,” she replied. “I only tweaked the visitors’ curiosity to get them to attend the first meeting. The rest was good old-fashioned convincing. No one was forced.”

  Mary relaxed. “That doesn’t change the number of lives lost, but at least they decided on their own,” she said. “More or less.”

  “Being here for themselves, seeing Alternus on the verge of destroying itself like this, observing how power is inevitably and unavoidable corrupting in spite of our very best and creative efforts to prevent it, that’s a powerful lesson. It changes people’s minds.”

  Mary nodded, reluctantly accepting the need for the painful sacrifice of so many. “So, do we proceed as planned?” she asked.

  “We proceed.”

  40

  IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE SHOOTING, Kathy and Greg pushed even harder to complete the RAF generator. Without the benefit of his own intelligence-enhancing dendy lattice, Larry couldn’t keep up with his colleagues. No matter how many hours he pored over their work, his unaided brain couldn’t master the complex mathematical calculations describing the Reality Assertion Field.

  In spite of the growing rift between them, Larry didn’t regret his choice to decline the dendy virus.

  Greg did try, once, to discuss the virus capsule with him, but Larry shook his head brusquely and rejected the topic with determined finality. Subject closed. Greg saw no point in bringing it up again.

  Larry did more than accept his natural limitations, he clung to them. He did his best to make himself useful, carrying out the more mundane lab tasks at Kathy’s direction, while Greg retreated to the office to perform intricate computations on increasingly unusual and complex models.

  Between the strains of the deepening divide between them, their intense schedule, and the challenging work, they could barely tolerate one another. Larry held his tongue and steamed inwardly each time Kathy was curt with him. The mutual disdain was nearly constant, most often the result of his trouble comprehending the software and theory.

  Larry would have left the team if he hadn’t promised Reverend LaMontagne that he’d keep an eye on their progress and report to Dr. Pratt. He knew his role was vital to the fate of the world, if no longer to the research itself.

  He swallowed his pride and sustained every thinly veiled insult from his workmates, along with their more obvious disappointments. He stood back and observed the pair as they drifted further and further into their arcane studies, further and further away from being human in his eyes.

  Kathy and Greg held daily update briefings which included Larry, but their rapid back-and-forth jargon made him feel like a toddler who’d wandered into a NASA meeting. Or, more accurately, like a man listening in on a data exchange between two supercomputers.

  In the beginning, he’d pestered them to reduce their conclusions to language he could understand. After the first week, he grew tired of their eye rolling and furtively exchanged glances, and he stopped asking. They may have been sympathetic to his emotional struggle but they were on a deadline. Darian was going to be released from the hospital any day now and they wanted to be ready for the first live test.

 
By the following week, activity in the lab had slowed down as if lulled by the wet, heavy snow falling over Burnaby Mountain campus.

  Try as he might, Larry could find no further operational problems with the hardware or software. He followed the protocols Kathy had been painstakingly dictating to him in remedial fashion. He ran the tests, checked the results, and ran them again.

  Looking over the latest results, Kathy smiled and stretched back in her chair. “I think we’re ready,” she announced, more to herself than to Larry. She pushed away from the desk and went to find Greg to share the news.

  A few minutes later, Greg popped his head into the lab. He looked happy and relaxed, more like the old friend Larry had been missing. “Hey, we’re going out to grab a bite at the Pub. Wanna come along?” Kathy was hanging on his arm.

  “Don’t you want to run a live test first?” Larry asked.

  Greg laughed, “Do I want Darian to kill us for running the first live test without him? No, thanks. Come out with us. Let’s celebrate.”

  Larry considered it for a moment. “No, that’s okay. I think I’ll just keep poking away here. I’m not sure I’ve put the software through all the craziest possibilities imaginable yet.”

  A flicker of apprehension crossed Kathy’s face, “Well, okay. You can play all you want but don’t break anything. And do not run a live test.” She tugged Greg away from the door. “Come on, let’s go grab a table before it gets busy.”

  Greg stared at Larry for a few seconds. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. You guys have been working really hard and you deserve a break. Take your girl on a lunch date for once. Heck, why don’t you two take off the rest of the afternoon? Go catch a movie or take a stroll around the Seawall. I’ll lock up.”

  Greg smiled his appreciation. “That’s a good idea. It’ll feel good to shut down the lattice for a while and experience life as a big ol’ hunk of meat, again,” he laughed. “Okay, don’t stay too late. We’ll see you tomorrow. I think Darian will be very pleased.” He put his arm around Kathy’s waist, and the two sashayed down the hallway.