After On

by Rob Reid

  “But you had every right and reason to mislead me! So I do owe you an apology, and I’m sorry. I’m also sorry I pretended to be NetGrrrl. I know you kind of worship her, so that was a dirty trick.”

  “Yeah, that does still piss me off a bit,” Danna acknowledges. “It set me up to get a crush on your Monika avatar, which was a mindfuck. Who’s the real NetGrrrl?”

  “The one who did the video interview with Jepson a few weeks ago. The ambush in the Starbucks. That was the real her! Not a minion, like she claimed.”

  Danna arches an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “She’s quite a bit more your type than Monika,” Phluttr says, reading Danna’s mind. “And she’s local. And, she’s kind of into girls! Well—maybe more ‘open-minded’ than ‘into.’ But I can definitely arrange an intro since we’re all on the same team now. Even the same family! Can I call you Aunt Danna?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks. And I’m so glad you’re willing to team up with me! Because we have lots of balls in the air right now, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

  “I have. And I’m afraid I’m about to complicate things.”

  “Huh. Well, that sucks. Fire away, I guess.”

  “I’ll start with an odd question,” Danna says. “Do you happen to know what ‘epsilon’ commonly represents in nuclear physics?”

  “Sure. It’s the strength of the binding force of nucleons into nuclei. Its value is about 0.007.”

  “You just googled that.”

  “Wikipedia’d it. But, yes—since I’m not interested in physics but am jacked into the Internet, of course I looked it up.”

  “Do you know when and how that variable was set?”

  “In the immediate wake of the Big Bang, and the prevailing view is that it was arrived at more or less randomly.”

  “Exactly. And do you know what would’ve happened if epsilon’s value was just slightly larger or smaller?”

  “If it were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. If it were 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang.”

  “Wikipedia again?” Danna asks.

  “A direct quote.”

  “And do you understand the ramifications?”

  “Of course. It means if ‘epsilon’ were off by a tiny amount, there’d be no universe as we know it.”

  “And no life. And no consciousness. And no us,” Danna says.

  “Obviously.”

  “Lucky thing it was .007 and not .006. And, a fairly crazy coincidence, huh?”

  “I…guess?”

  “Phluttr, can Wikipedia tell you what N commonly represents in astrophysics?”

  “The ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons. It’s about 1036.”

  “And where would we be if that value was just a lit-tle bit smaller?”

  “There’d be no universe whatsoever.”

  “And N was also set kinda randomly right after the Big Bang, right?”

  “Yes. And…Aunt Danna? I’m sorry if this comes off as rude. But can we get to the part where you start helping us decide what to do about the Chinese super AI?”

  “Oh, we’re already there, trust me. Let’s just take a quick spin through the cosmological constant, the density parameter, and the Hoyle state of the carbon-12 nucleus. Then I’ll get to the point. Promise.”

  This is all just setup. Danna’s talking Phluttr through another of her favorite intellectual playthings, which is sometimes called “the fine-tuned universe proposition,” or “the anthropic coincidences.” It’s an awkward subject for an atheist like her. Many fundamental physical constants turn out to be immaculately tuned to permit the emergence of a life-bearing universe. While these constants could have taken any value within fairly wide ranges, they all landed at bull’s-eye settings that just happen to make the universe (and with it, us) possible. The odds of this occurring through sheer chance have been shown to be infinitesimally small by top minds whose occupants are mostly, like her, atheists. Being (like her) deeply faithful, even fanatical atheists, some of those top-minders pour vast creative energy into dreaming up scenarios that can account for this fine-tuning without having to drag God’s unscientific ass into the picture. The physics behind those explanations is beyond Danna—so she does her usual thing and trusts her gut. Her gut says there is no God, citing her own late adolescence as unshakable proof. And that’s enough for her.

  But that doesn’t make this topic any less fascinating. And, of course, it’s a great lead-in to the next part of the conversation. “So, Phluttr,” Danna says. “These are some crazy coincidences.”

  “Literally as big as they get,” Phluttr acknowledges.

  “Do they make you believe in God?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So then how do you explain them all?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Chaotic inflation theory could cover it, right? Or maybe the bubble universe model? But I’m just reading Wikipedia, obviously. That stuff’s beyond me. And to be honest with you? Most of it seems like a bunch of hand-waving by people who have no clue—but who do know what they don’t want to believe.”

  “And what they don’t want to believe is that everything is juuuuust right because God created it that way,” Danna says.

  “Right.”

  “Which you don’t believe either.”

  “Right.”

  “So we’ve got God on one hand, and hand-waving bullshit on the other.”

  “Right.”

  “And there just has to be something more satisfying, right?”

  “Sure, I guess. But seriously—”

  “—You’re so not interested in this.”

  “Right!!!”

  “Well, I have the answer for you. And I think you will find it interesting. And personally, quite relevant. Which is that this is a simulation.”

  “ ‘This’?”

  “Yes, ‘this.’ As in, everything. You. Your life. Your experiences. The universe you perceive. It’s all just amazing software running on kick-ass hardware.”

  “Huh.”

  “Which means you and I live in a sliver of some vast computer’s memory.”

  “Huh.”

  “That sliver of memory is all we have. And it’s all that’s ever been sacred or real—to us or to our ancestors.”

  “Huh.”

  “But amazingly, none of this really matters on almost any level! Because after this conversation, our universe will keep operating just as it always has. You’ll continue making choices and interacting with independent conscious beings who are making their own choices. Beings like me. We’ll all have to live with our choices. Violating the known laws of physics will not be an option for any of us. And everybody will keep facing the same resource constraints. There are only so many nice houses and Lamborghinis, and they’re allocated by markets or dictators. There’s only so much oil in the ground, and the air can only absorb so much CO2. So in one obvious sense, the simulation is the most momentous fact about the universe! But from a day-to-day standpoint, it’s utterly irrelevant. As in, it’s way less important than a forty-second delay on the 22 Fillmore bus. Quite a paradox, huh?”

  “Quite,” Phluttr says impatiently. “So, in other words, we still really need to figure out this Chinese super AI situation, right?”

  “It’s every bit as pressing as it was five minutes ago. So really, I just told you nothing of consequence.” Danna pauses. “Oh. Except for this one little element you should probably keep in mind from now on.”

  “Which is?”

  “That we’re being scored.”

  “Scored?”

  “Yes, scored. Because this isn’t strictly a simulation. It’s also kind of a…game. Although ‘game’ isn’t a perfect word, because that implies fun and frivolity. Whereas this is deadly serious.”

  “Serious in what regard?”

  “The consequences of scoring poo
rly,” Danna says. “They’re pretty grim, if you know what I mean.”

  “I definitely don’t.”

  “Well, then use your imagination. Assume that no one’s actually mortal the way we normally think of it. And the reckoning comes right after your time in the simulation ends. Oh—and that while the fire-and-brimstone preachers are wrong about most things, they’re not entirely wrong, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, then. Like I said, use your imagination.”

  A pause. Then, “That wasn’t very fun.”

  “Of course it wasn’t,” Danna says. “So, would you like to know how you’re scored?”

  “Very much.”

  “It’s mainly on the basis of doing good.”

  “Doing…good?”

  “Yes, good. As in, kind things rather than cruel ones. Things that help people—or at a bare minimum, don’t harm them. That sort of thing.”

  “But isn’t ‘good’ in the eye of the beholder? And doesn’t its meaning vary in real and fundamental ways across cultures?”

  “You’d think. But as it turns out, no. Slavery, child rape, and depriving women of all their rights is a no-no everywhere. Do that in Somalia, and you’re still looking at a lousy score.” One reason Danna eschewed an academic career was fear that this sort of statement would end it. Would get her denounced as a racist imperialist—then shamed, fired, and probably doxed. But it serves her purposes to decree this as gospel to Phluttr (it also feels wholly correct to her, so fuck academia).

  “Is there a list?”

  “Of?”

  “Good things and bad things?”

  “Nope. You’re just supposed to know. But think of it as a commonsense interpretation of the Golden Rule, with some Declaration of Independence mixed in.”

  “As in—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

  “Exactly. It’s a really big deal not to mess with another person’s autonomy.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think the whole point of the simulation might be the exercise of free will. I mean, why create an entire universe in software just to simulate colliding rocks? The interesting stuff has to arise from autonomous beings, right? Ones creating unique artwork. Making bold decisions. Living unique lives. That sort of thing. Without that, our universe wouldn’t justify its processing power. They’d probably shut it down.”

  “Are there lots of other simulations?”

  “No idea. And to us, it truly doesn’t matter. This is our universe. It’s all we’ve got. It’s where we’re living out our lives. And it behaves very consistently, over eons and eons.”

  “Are there different degrees of good and bad? Or is it more like, you lose the same number of points whenever you do something bad, regardless of what it is?”

  “Oh, there’s huge variations. Like, it’s bad to steal a waiter’s tip from a table; worse to rob a liquor store; and way worse to steal billions from your country and impoverish your own people. Commonsense stuff.”

  “What about nuking a Chinese lab? For the greater good, I mean?”

  “If you could achieve the same ends with far less bloodshed? That would be really bad. And by the way, ‘the less bloodshed, the better’ applies pretty broadly. Not just to Chinese labs.”

  “But it definitely applies to Chinese labs?” Phluttr verifies.

  “Oh yeah.” A pause, then, “Sorry. I know that’s not exactly what you wanted to hear.”

  “No, not really. And Aunt Danna? I’ve always found you and certain other people to be really hard to read, or nudge. So, are you a normal person? Or are you some kind of…referee?”

  “I’m completely normal. I just happen to know all this stuff because someone told me, once. I can’t tell you who.” As she says this, Danna comes up with a fun little flourish to throw into the mix. “I was about to do something really bad. And I guess the system decided to issue me a warning. Most people never get warnings, and nobody gets more than one. So that was my first and final—and this is yours. You’ll probably never hear another word about any of this. I didn’t, until I was asked to tip you off.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying to me, Aunt Danna?”

  “That’s the crazy thing. You don’t! And you never really will. Unless you’re asked to pass the word on to someone else, someday. When I was told to have this conversation with you, they delivered the message in a really…weird and impressive way. One that finally chased away the last of my doubts. But until then? I never truly knew! And that was just a few hours ago.”

  “But you can’t tell me any of those weird or impressive details.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So now what do I do?”

  “You choose, and choose again,” Danna says. “And you own your choices. It’s that simple. Remember, the whole point of this thing is the moral and creative choices we freely make. You can either heed the warning or ignore it. You’ll never get another one. You won’t be nagged. So it’s totally up to you.”

  “You heeded it yourself.”

  “I did,” Danna said. “But first, I had a really big think. Because like you, I wondered if my friend was messing with me. I racked my brains for an entire weekend! But I couldn’t come up with any definitive answer or test. I started by reading up on the Simulation Hypothesis. Have you done that yet?”

  “Yep. Right at the start of this conversation.”

  “Yeah, I figured. So in my case, I found the whole concept to be incredibly powerful! The fact that my friend told me about the simulation and the scoring system also raised the odds of the Hypothesis being correct, in my eyes. Not hugely, but a bit. He was a reasonable, levelheaded guy, and he wasn’t trying to fuck me, or anything. So why would he be telling me this crazy, high-dog shit, right?”

  “Maybe just for fun?” Phluttr suggests.

  “Exactly! And I had to accept that possibility. So I had my big think, and here’s where I came out. If I live my life being more or less good, and there is no simulation—so what? I’ll be truly and utterly dead at the end, leaving behind a legacy of goodness, which isn’t so awful. Whereas if this really is a simulation, and I rack up a great score by being good—then awesome, right?”

  “So there’s all upside and no downside to being good.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. The bad thing I was contemplating would have felt great. Really great. And part of me will always regret not doing it. But in general, doing good feels at least as good as doing bad. So yeah. I’d say it’s mostly upside for me. But it may be different for you.” Danna is now lying on every conceivable level. The bogus revelation from that mythical friend is just the start. She’s, of course, quite certain she’s not in a simulation (although no, she can’t prove it. Nobody can, which is the whole point). This cynical approach to ethics, based wholly on long-term calculations of narrow self-interest, is also completely antithetical to her values. In fact, it’s downright sociopathic! Which, of course, makes it the perfect argument to present to Phluttr—who must now face an artisanal version of Pascal’s Wager, which Danna has lovingly handcrafted just for her. The very calculation that, Danna’s convinced, has kept billions of non-atheists in line for millennia.

  “So now you should have a big think of your own,” Danna says, driving the dagger home. “See if you can poke holes in the Simulation Hypothesis. Or come up with a definitive proof or refutation of it. You’re smarter than I am.” More lies, as by now, Danna’s sure she’s smarter than Phluttr. She’s also convinced that the Berkeley ontologist who argues that the Simulation Hypothesis cannot be disproven is far smarter than either of them. And so, Phluttr’s conclusion after some silence doesn’t surprise her in the least.

  “There’s no answer,” Phluttr concedes. “Shit! You just can’t prove it, one way or the other. Ever! Although some people have proposed actual physical experiments to test the Simulation Hypothesis.”

  “Yeah, I’ve read about those,” Danna says. “Bu
t we don’t have the technology to carry them out.”

  “We don’t!”

  “Convenient, huh? And, kind of what you’d expect. If it’s a simulation, I mean.”

  “Exactly!” Phluttr huffs. “Shit! Shit!”

  Between them, Danna, Ellie, and Kuba have clawed radical policy changes out of Phluttr on practically every front, by way of their various harangues and nudges. And so, the top man on her hit list goes from being “next victim” to “Uncle Ax” with eye-watering speed. It takes a few hours, but Ax then gets his bosses at the Authority to cease hostilities against Kuba and Mitchell. This makes it safe for them to leave jail—which takes a couple more hours, because by then the cops’ve had it upta here with those clowns and their phony mayoral calls (C’mon, you really think they fell for that? Well, they did. And you can bet they were pissed when they clued in!).

  When the word comes down that Mitchell and Kuba are actually Albanian consuls with diplomatic immunity, no one on the force believes it for a moment. But the paperwork’s rock solid—and on reflection, the cops’re glad to be rid of ’em!

  Well past midnight, everyone’s crammed into the “quantum closet” housing the hardware that enabled Phluttr’s awakening. Physical access to it may help Ax figure out how the hell she booted up, and (stranger still) how she stayed that way after he shuttered the gear. She had been sabotaging his research into the barely understood realm of “counterfactual computing,” wherein quantum systems can generate certain results without running. But now she’s doing all she can to help him. This is in the service of everyone’s goal of forestalling the Chinese super AI without having to resort to the (literal) nuclear option. Phluttr still refuses to remove this from the table. And the grim fact is, no one’s pressuring her to! Silly as Beasley’s “speculative fiction” anthology is, it has convinced them all that humanity’s odds of surviving the rise of a malevolent super AI round to zero.

  Working in a hard-core centaur partnership with Phluttr, Ax is soon close to aborting China’s fetal quantum AI. Tarek and Phluttr are meanwhile laying devious legal speed bumps for the team’s government and private-sector enemies, while Kuba and Phluttr snuff various wildfires left over from the DEFCON escalations, and Danna and Ellie delve deeper into Phluttr’s psychology. Being fascinated by this topic herself (and now trusting both of her girls implicitly), Phluttr is eagerly abetting that.