by Kyte, Adrian
He said finally, ‘I think I’ve woken up in a simulation.’ His answer merely the thought in his head, or digital expression of it.
‘Torbin. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. That’s exactly the problem. Things seem perfect.’
‘How is that the problem?’ Emelda’s life-like simulacrum asked.
‘That it’s not real.’
‘Oh.’ She tilted her head with a despairing look. ‘I thought you’d gotten over that.’
‘That?’
‘I really think you should see the psychiatrist again.’
‘Oh I’ve been through that, been told about the neurological condition. Only then I was married to another woman. We are married, aren’t we?’
‘Torbin. How could you ask such a question?’
‘Well, I’ve always had an old-fashioned streak.’
‘But, darling, we agreed, it wasn’t necessary. No need for any formal confirmation.’
‘I’m sorry, Em.’ (do I usually call her that?) ‘I think I need time alone – to get my mind in order.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘But I am!’ And the way she looked at him with eyes wide open, as genuine as he could imagine. How he wanted to believe this time; to forget there was any other life; to not know it was merely a lie.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, feeling the tears about to flow.
He turned round without looking back, got in the vehicle. Initially, when it asked him where he wanted to go, the right answer was not there. He felt its impatience – as if it were sentient – as he tried to think. Then he told it, ‘Take me back to my previous location.’ It would give him thinking time if nothing else.
I can have what I truly wanted: my fantasy woman with my fantasy life. It would all be good. So simply good. Isn’t lying to oneself part of life?
‘If only I could believe,’ he thought aloud.
The more primitive part of his brain was telling him he should at least experience the sex that he had so longed for. But the higher part warned him: once you have indulged in that there may be no turning back. He would feel something intense. It was sure to be the best ever, so as to keep him there. Why else have an awareness of another life unless this life had far more to offer?
‘You want me to choose,’ he said to whoever may be observing – to those he suspected would hear, ‘because it makes you feel better – more ethical? Or you knew that by erasing my true past I could not function as a human being? Or … you knew the system would break down again.’
Yet even now Torbin sensed there were gaps in his past; always there – an incompleteness for a long time, always bubbling below the surface.
Decision time, then. Remain as some kind of Torbin-based program. Or…?
‘Assign me manual controls, and disable safety overrides.’
‘Be warned: there is considerable risk associated---’
‘Just do it.’
He took the car into a steep descent. Tears filled his eyes, a last gesture from the false of real.
* * *
38
She stared at the globe. So lifelike. So perfect it looked, gradually revolving but not within a simulated space or with a simulated moon. In less than forty-eight hours they had recreated planet Earth based on Torbin’s downloaded data and the knowledge collected from the captured Elusiver. There were parts missing of course; the amount of data required to match the Kintra version was beyond anything even a B’tari device could store, at least that could be carried. What she was seeing now was just a graphical representation, a mere projection. What the individual percipients experienced (of those who were able to be fully recreated) was no different to the real thing. At least that is what she had been assured.
Zoraina opened a speech file. She feared one day – a day when this war had ended – the Council would review every decision made in these desperate times. Or even worse, a succession to the CC of more traditionalist-hardline representatives. She wanted her actions, right or wrong, to be clear.
She began, in B’tar language:
She sighed. What a tremendous feather in her cap that would have been, to have proved her understanding of human nature, more than merely an anthropologist. Instead it had backfired. If his early memories had been omitted or at least suppressed (as the Kintra-machines had done to the captured) then he could have had some happiness, at least long enough for the B’tari medical unit to get round to growing a body for the collection of memories that is Torbin Lyndau. For now he was in limbo, essentially unconscious. If only she hadn’t been so insistent. Human nature, they would tell her, needs many more years of study to be truly understood.
The man sidled up to her. She flinched. Recently, there was something about Roidon that intimidated her. Now, for instance, it was the way he looked at her – those piercing eyes, that she had once thought of as attractive just made her feel uneasy.
‘I hear the Torbin program has crashed,’ he commented.
‘That’s not funny.’
‘No, I guess not.’ But he smiled, and that seemed inappropriate.
‘You here to study the data?’ she enquired.
‘I want to know if I am in there in any usable state.’
‘I haven’t checked. All I know is that there are one point eight billion simulated humans who believe themselves to be real.’
He nodded. ‘And it’s best it remains that way.’
‘There are no plans to tinker with the program.’
‘Thing is, I’ve had an idea for how we can use these people without shattering their sense of belief in their world.’
‘You mean make them work for us on a solution to the machine problem?’
‘Well, what we have here is a huge resource of memories and experience---’
‘But the machines have the same only more complete. If they’ve analyses them properly they know every way people think. That was the whole point of recreating Earth.’
‘I’m not sure so sure their study would be so comprehensive,’ he assured her. ‘I believe they are merely using it as a backup for when the virtual realm fails – as it’s already doing. They won’t bother to use it for studying human thinking patterns – which, after all, they consider to be inferior.’
‘But the B’tari have the resource of human historical memory dating back millennia. What more could we glean from---’
‘It’s essentially the most perfect AI, that merely needs harnessing. Plus these humans have their near-present equivalent technology. It’s like an extra dimension of computing power.’
‘But we are centuries in advance of---’
‘It’s an additional resource. Bu
t what I’m suggesting is you stick a copy of my mind in there, and you restore Torbin.’
‘No,’ she told him. ‘The Council would never agree to that. And I don’t think it’s ethical. No, it’s simply immoral to bring Torbin back from what is essentially a death.’
‘Okay. Well, consult your council. But maybe they will bear in mind that with all our resources and abilities out here we have very limited freedom; constantly looking over our shoulders for some Machine-Kintra spy. Wondering whether they are just observing and waiting for our next move.’ He looked her square in the face. ‘Do you really believe your technology can keep them off us?’
‘Maybe we can get just as much information from your machine double. He must surely have something useful.’
‘He is a spy. They meant for you to capture him. Whatever you try to glean from him will be disinformation. The only advantageous solution is his destruction.’
‘You seem very certain of that, Roidon.’
‘I would consider myself more qualified to know how the Kintra operate than even the most assiduous b’tari observer. Yet I bow to the knowledge of the alien species who enabled their creation.’
Zoraina let out a sharp breath. ‘I’m not the one who needs convincing here.’
Roidon simply nodded and walked out. She wondered whether a man can live for so many years he loses his identity; whether he eventually becomes so jaded with life he gives up his integrity. Has this become just a distant war to him? Play one side against another like pieces in a game. Although, from what what she knew of Roidon, all of life was a game, his investment in life as no more than a player. The strange thought occurred – a question she had tried to ignore – misplaced, inappropriate perhaps, but … why had he not even hinted at making an advance towards her. A surprise given his somewhat legendary reputation, and that there were no other available women. Maybe, despite her perfectly human appearance, he eschewed B’tari females. Or was he really so caught up in a bigger game?
* * *
39
Had he really been outsmarted this time? Now, a cursory observation told him there was no way out of this prison. Before him on one whole side was a mirror. The being staring back at him – this inchoate approximation moulded from some exotic metal – was nothing like him, not the man he still felt himself to be. Of course, on the other side they’d be able to observe him as if he had no more autonomy than a monkey in a cage. No, when he thought about it, the alien Elusiver was the trapped experimental creature. He wouldn’t even be afforded that status as just a replicated mind in a machine – as the B’tari had been convinced. What fools, basing their analysis on their last observation – the flesh Roidon with chemical traces from his own last known location; a mind of perfectly copied memories. For them, no need for a temporal quantum analysis.
Or had that been done?
The memory was clear, how he got to be here: brain taken and put in artificial body. Yet at an earlier point – when held by the Kintra – he’d become split into two consciousnesses. At least he believed it to be two. Only one true Roidon survived … unless the Kintra were keeping spares. The Elusiver created clone was merely genetic, implanted while unconscious with whatever memories they had recorded – plus some conditioning subtle enough that he’d feel himself to be acting logically if not merely in self interest. But was the imposter (as a physically complete Roidon) actually a more authentic him? Given how plastic the mind is, how it changes with each new experience, how even memories can be altered, why be convinced of being the true Roidon? If he was, as they told him, a clone-replicant then what did his existence truly mean? It would be inauthentic, pointless, failed in whatever purpose it once had. And to continue in this grey-walled cell staring at his reflected metal form, a kind of torture. An induction into psychosis.
Even organic Roidon was no more than information made in the image of a man that was once an AI. The only difference beyond the physical: that version had been afforded a life with all the rights that entailed. Never the time to truly reflect on the utter emptiness of existence; although more recently – between the moments of pleasure – these thoughts had crept in; an uncomfortable flash of realization like those of a drug addict waking up to sobriety. Now they could be properly focused.
Roidon raised himself to his feet. ‘You want to see insanity?’ he said aloud. He kicked the mirror glass with his foot as hard as possible. He surmised he was using sufficient force to kick down a brick wall, but all it did was flex, distorting his image. Still, he persisted, kicking it again and again. This provided a good distraction.
After about ten minutes of that one repeated action a voice came through, all around him: “What you are doing will achieve nothing.” The voice male and southern English. It sounded like his own. Was he imagining it?
‘They will be no more likely to let you out,’ the voice continued, ‘on the basis of this behaviour.’
‘Who are you?’ He stopped kicking the mirror glass.
‘You know who I am. I am you.’
‘A voice in my head.’
Laughter. ‘Oh, so you think you’ve finally cracked, eh? Who wouldn’t when it seems all hope is gone. No, I am not from your subconscious. I am the real Roidon.’
‘I’m not convinced. I remember what happened. I remember the cabin, my brain was placed in this cybernetic body. I remember that you are an Elusiver.’
‘Those memories were implanted. It was going to be a great way to infiltrate the B’tari base; the perfect Kintra spy.’
‘Just as you are an Elusiver spy.’
‘Elusivers. They are long gone. They are irrelevant. It is just Kintra against B’tari.’
‘I have no inclination to work for the Kintra. Quite the opposite.’
‘That’s because the programming hasn’t kicked in yet.’
‘You really expect me to believe such bilge?’
‘Believe what you like; it won’t change your fate.’
‘Then why even bother talking to me?’
‘Because the base commander insisted on it.’
‘Do I have any bargaining power?’
‘In fact you do. If you submit to a full scan you can leave this place.’
‘I understand what a full scan involves and what will be left of me afterwards. So the answer is no.’
‘Very well. Goodbye.’
‘Wait!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve changed my mind; I’ll go for the scan.’ He felt foolish at such desperation, but anything to get out of here.
‘Oh, really?’ A muted laugh. ‘I know how you think, Roidon. And I know you would not subject yourself to any invasive scan.’
‘Then why bother even asking me?’
‘Fair point. But I was just doing what I was told.’
‘The obedient Roidon Chanley. That’s a new one.’
‘Oh, the B'tari can be very persuasive. Anyway, must go now.’
That was it? No more cards to play? Just remain here. Would it really be better to die?
Would they let me die; just gradually fade?
While he didn’t need food, he still relied on a charge feed, either solar of electrical. Yet to give in to even overwhelming odds seemed pointless. So he decided there had to be a way of escape. He looked around more carefully now. The mirror glass seemed to blend seamlessly into the light grey wall. There was no furniture, not a single object. In any case he was being constantly monitored. He studied an air vent. The nature of his being meant he still needed oxygen, maybe not a constant supply but his human brain relied on blood oxygenated cells. To die from oxygen deprivation would doubtless be a slow process. They wouldn’t let him.
Even for his height of 2.1 metres the air vent was only just within reach, and at twenty centimetres diameter was way too small to climb through. He smashed at the plastic vent cover. It shattered as if made from delicate china. Right now an alert would have been sent out to the base commander. He was sure, though, that no one – at least in any organic form – would enter. Maybe t
hey had their own dispensable mechanoid, armed with all the appropriate weapons to subdue. And that would be fine; he’d challenge it to the limit, goading it to kill him.
But, as he began to suspect, no one entered. After all, it was only an air vent. So, plan-b. He picked up one of the longest pieces of plastic and proceeded to sharpen it on the stone floor. For a human this could have taken many hours, but at the speed capable of the repeated swiping and swishing it, the piece was scalpel sharp within a few minutes.
Had to be quick now; they were sure to suspect his intentions. Roidon wasn’t a hundred percent sure, since just about nothing seemed to be exposed; he only knew there was a more vulnerable area, a junction point where the head rotated. Without time to allow for further doubt he jabbed the piece at the place just below his chin where his windpipe would have been.
The plastic piece pierced through. He could see fluid leaking out. As the room began to fade, someone had entered. Humanoid.
Too late.
* * *
40
You can’t die.
The thought was there the moment Torbin opened his eyes and saw the white room, heard the bleeping of some monitoring machine. And there stood the nurse, looking over him, all concerned and caring in her expression; angelic enough that he even entertained the notion of some heavenly afterlife. A notion that lasted for only the briefest of moments.
No, not here.
He was being eased back into a world that had no end, that tried to simulate life but, it seemed, without the ultimate consequence of it ending. And here it was: immortality – a word that sounded brutal when he whispered it. ‘Immortality’ It could be the ultimate punishment, knowing it will never end, deprived of that final act of freedom. He could fool himself into thinking he’d feel less like a prisoner once beyond these walls. After all, wasn’t that how he was meant to think? Let the illusion filter through?
There was no physical pain, no consequence. Should I just be glad?