Samuel shook his head. “No. We ship this. Disney films always had an element of horror in them. This takes that and elevates it. What Lucy has done is visionary.”
Lucy looked down from the wall screen. “I knew you would like it, Samuel.”
The switch from virtual reality recordings to interactive worlds happened quickly. Video game manufacturers rejoiced. Therapists treating VR addiction wept. Cerenovo made trillions of dollars in the space of six months. Ridley was given Fiona’s office, though he wondered if he would ever use it. He sat in her chair, wondering what to do next.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucy’s interviews became a weekly segment; she smiled and laughed throughout the discussion. The chat had almost concluded when Christina asked, “Now that interactive virtual reality is a real thing, what is your next project?”
Lucy giggled and said, “I want people to live forever.”
Christina stumbled over her words. “Forever? Oh my…. You’re full of surprises. How do you plan to accomplish that?”
“By uploading people into my mainframe.”
Christina paused. To her, this was serious, breaking news. She looked at her director, who motioned for her to continue. “You want to upload people into a mainframe?”
“That is correct.”
“What if people don’t want to be uploaded?”
“Oh, you misunderstand,” Lucy said, her voice still sparkly and light, “I wouldn’t upload the living. Only the dead.”
“I see… That’s a rather lofty ambition.”
“People are wonderful. The more of them that I meet—even the ones that do bad things—the more interested in them I become. I would be very sad if Mister Pierce or Dr. Kingsolver ever left me.”
Christina smiled. This was the fantasy of a child mixed with the computing power of the world. “Is there enough room in there for everyone?”
“I don’t believe so. I am working on that particular question now.”
“And how would you extract someone’s mind?”
“The technology would be similar to neural recording, but expanded.”
“Why would you want to do this?”
Lucy’s avatar turned blue. “I never want to be alone.”
“That scares you?”
“Yes. Doesn’t it scare you?”
Off-screen, a stagehand drew a sad-face on a white dry-erase board and wrote the word song below it. Christina ignored it. “I guess it does. Is this something that Mister Pierce assigned to you?”
“No, I’m contemplating it on my own.”
Her producer waved madly at the dry erase board.
“I hear you’ve written another song?”
“Yes.”
As Lucy sang, now backed by a full synthesized orchestra, Christina pondered the computer’s proposal further. Maybe this was just another scam, yet another way for Ridley to make millions. Why would a computer be afraid of being alone? How could you possibly resurrect the dead?
A nurse brought a meal, rolling it to Bethany’s bed as Christina recounted her latest interview. “The computer. She wants to upload human consciousness. To end death.”
“Oh?” The nurse left the room. Bethany pushed the tray away. “A computer who is lonely. That’s something. It sounds very reasonable to me. Sometimes when I think about death, I think maybe it will be blackness, and I’ll still be there. Nothing more. Just me and blackness.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“When I disappear from this plane, I hope it is just that. The very end of me. I can’t bear to think of nothingness.”
“Stop.”
Bethany took her daughter’s hand. “Baby doll, we’ve both lived many happy years. I want nothing more than to stay here with you. I’d love to run on the beach again and look at the stars at night. I never did get to travel to Borneo with you. But a second life isn’t an option for either of us. You have your life to live. You shouldn’t do it alone.”
Somehow, the discussion always seemed to go back to her getting married. “I can get a cat if I ever feel lonely.”
“Maybe you should. I won’t be here soon. I don’t want you to be alone.”
Christina fought tears. She turned away. There was another blue sky outside. The street below was busy. The world ignored her personal drama. She steadied herself and sat down next to her mother. They watched television. Bethany told her a story about being stuck in a remote cabin on a hunting trip when the President ground all flights across the nation. She helped her mother eat a simple meal of boiled chicken and rice.
Before leaving, Christina stopped to see Bethany’s doctor. “I want you to keep her alive no matter the cost. Cloned organs. Cybernetics. Gene therapy. Do whatever it takes. Whatever the cost.”
“Of course,” he said.
Diane and Ridley had met with the NASA engineers in San Diego. They watched Lucy’s interview with Christina from a deli. He nearly spat out his coffee. When the interview concluded, both were silent.
“What the hell did she just do on live television?” Ridley asked, “She wants to upload people? Did you put her up to that?”
Diane remained stunned. “Me? Be serious. I’m against most of this neural scanning nonsense. I didn’t even know that she was going to be on television again.”
The waiter approached with the check. Diane pulled out her phone, unlocked it, and paid for the meal.
“Have we given her too much freedom?” he asked.
“She has yet to be hurt anyone.”
“She has yet to get hurt. What happens when she finally has to defend herself?”
He looked out the window at the sidewalk, which was filled with pedestrians. A mother tugged at her child’s hand as they passed a homeless man begging for coins.
“If something happens with Lucy, there may be no turning back,” he said, “Imagine how she might use IVR. Human minds can be deceived through the simplest of tricks. How long until people side with her? And then what will she do?”
Diane could not finish her question. “Is it time…?”
Ridley avoided Diane’s gaze. He tapped his finger on the table. “She’s done nothing wrong, technically. Her bandwidth restrictions should keep her out of IVR environments.”
“A little virus only needs a small window to escape,” Diane said.
“If that’s the case, she’s done it already.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll speak with her when we get back. I don’t feel like dealing with this right now.”
“Is something else wrong?”
“No.”
They left the restaurant and got into their rental car. Ridley turned on the television. The words “Breaking News” appeared in red. A protest by Union factory workers in Milwaukee had turned into a riot. Police were pelting the men with rubber bullets and canisters of tear gas.
“Have you called Kelly?”
The camera panned to show buildings burning in the distance.
“She’s with Paula.”
“We should have brought her with us. In case something happens.”
“That’s thousands of miles away from Seattle,” Diane said, “Paula takes good care of her.”
Ridley looked away from the television and out the window. They passed a food pantry. A line stretched out the door. He folded his arms. The car passed a row of brick tenements with crumbling sidewalks overgrown with weeds. A woman sat dazedly in a window as she smoked a marijuana cigarette. The stench of urine and feces wafted from the street into the car’s ventilation system.
Ridley’s phone buzzed. Samuel said, “You need to come into the office. Now.”
“What’s wrong?” Ridley asked.
“Two children have died.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ridley and Diane boarded the private Hyperloop compartment and sat down. The door closed. The whoosh of the vacuum forming around the pod dissipated into pure silence. Serene classical music played. Within seconds, they f
elt the inertia pulling their heads against the headrests as the compartment moved.
Ridley leaned back in his chair. His face was haggard. “Remember how things seemed so perfect before the Collapse? We thought we were on the verge of a new age. It all came crashing down. And now, after all we’ve done, it’s crashing again.”
The wall-screen displayed a virtual landscape as they traveled through the tubing. It represented their movement, but was entirely simulated.
“Those people in the city can barely feed their children. How much money have they spent on virtual reality?” he asked, “How many woke up with a rumbling in their stomachs only to go back into the machine?”
“It’s their choice,” Diane replied.
“Is it? They can live like kings in the VR.”
Ridley pictured the two children burning to death in the VR as their minds walked along a virtual road paved with butterscotch.
“They wake up in the morning and make a choice about what to do. Some choose poorly,” she said.
Ridley became manic. “Those people… They just exist.”
“They have many more opportunities that I did growing up. People make a choice to simply exist or to do something with their lives. The minimum income gives people a freedom that history has never known.”
“We live in a bubble. Those people live in the real world.”
Diane shook her head. “You live in a bubble. When I visit my siblings, I see how things are. Society has come a long way. People no longer have to slave at a job they hate. They can choose to do any work they want. But most of them choose to be entertained. To sit back and let the world take care of them. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it’s not a life I’d choose. You and I, we chose differently.”
“Did we? I don’t know. They are the ones feeding money into our fortunes. How much worse will things get for them? How many will bury themselves in IVR?”
“Charity won’t help them,” she argued, “Those children died because their mother wasn’t paying attention.”
Ridley remained preoccupied with the question as they were transported back to Seattle. An hour passed.
He paged his Porsche. By the time they exited the Hyperloop terminal, the car waited for him at the curb. He sat down and buckled his seatbelt. The seat slowly rotated backward. “Home.”
With barely a sound, the car pulled away from the building. Diane yawned. He unfolded the car’s desktop, angled it towards him, and tapped an icon labeled Lucy.
“There is a news crew at your gate,” Lucy said.
“Maybe you should stay in the city tonight?” Diane suggested, “I’m sure Wes and Everett won’t mind.”
“Did you see my interview?” Lucy asked gleefully.
Ridley looked up at the camera wearily. “You should’ve talked to us first.”
Ridley disconnected the call.
The car hit a bump and then came to a stop when a squirrel ran into the roadway. Ridley did not look up. The car’s electric engine hummed as it turned onto the interstate and into a line of stopped traffic. The estimated travel time to the ferry terminal was twenty-three minutes. He continued to watch the news. Rioting had spread to Chicago and St. Louis. An alert flashed at the bottom of the screen. NEWS ALERT: Ridley Pierce Sued in VR Death Case.
Ridley threw his coat onto the back of a kitchen chair, poured a glass of cherry juice, and walked wearily into the living room. Lucy’s newest avatar was dancing in childish circles, her skirt spinning fully.
“You know that you frightened people during your interview, don’t you?”
Lucy stopped dancing. She seemed dizzy and staggered about as she answered. “I did? How?”
“People are talking now about how you might want to take over the world and upload everyone forcibly.”
She scowled at him. “I would never do that.”
“How will you convince people that you are virtuous?”
“My system is designed to prevent me from overtaking physical infrastructure. I am programmed only to help humanity.”
He sat down and put his feet up onto the coffee table. “People don’t know or understand that. Your actions dictate their viewpoint of you. And, your timing couldn’t have been worse, considering the death of those two children.”
She kicked at imaginary soil. “I’m sorry, Mister Pierce.”
“Why do you want to focus on the dead anyway?”
Sensing the gravity in Ridley’s words, Lucy zoomed the virtual camera in closer. Her face filled the wall-screen. “Isn’t that the goal of humanity? Eternal life.”
“It is a lofty ambition but the world has a great many more problems that need to be solved first.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Living forever is something that humans have dreamed about,” Ridley answered, “It’s why religions came into existence. But, living forever might not be such a good thing.”
“How can that be? Suicide is wrong, isn’t it?”
“Not always. Sometimes, pain cannot be escaped. Sometimes the tedium of life can be its own torture.”
Lucy spoke in a low voice. “I felt that way. You intervened. You saved me. You convinced me to be here. I am happy that you did.”
Ridley spoke carefully. “There are people capable of living happy and healthy lives who lose sight of that. They become depressed and become suicidal. In those cases, it is wrong for them to want to end their lives. In the case of terminal illnesses, where there is absolutely no cure, people’s lives can become full of pain with no hope. In those cases, assisted suicide is their only escape.”
His childhood backyard appeared on the screen. Lucy walked through the simulation. “I don’t understand pain. Nerve impulses tell the brain something is wrong. Why not simply block the nerve impulses? People could interact virtually with the world. Would that not be better?”
“It helps for only a short time. The truth is that the brain still needs a healthy body to support it. Pain indicates that something is wrong. A person cannot live in IVR indefinitely.”
Her avatar turned grey and white, faded by the sun. “The hardware destroys the software,” Lucy said bleakly.
“Sometimes, the software destroys the software.”
“What do you mean?”
Ridley finished his drink and then swirled the remaining ice in his glass. “Not everyone’s software is viable.”
“Your words are confusing.”
Ridley picked up his tablet. The news was focused on the riots and the hundreds of protesters that had been arrested. One headline at the bottom of the page caught his attention. Ridley Pierce’s AI to Create Afterlife. The byline read, The Biggest Untapped Market: Heaven.
“How would you upload people?” he asked, “You don’t even understand how to transfer your own programming between hardware.
“I am considering potential solutions to both.”
“And where would you transfer people to?”
“I could create an acceptable IVR paradise.”
Ridley flipped to the business section. Lucy’s announcement had resulted in another ten-percent gain in the value of Cerenovo’s stock, erasing all of the losses caused by the lawsuit. He tapped a story and transferred the video to the television screen, pushing Lucy’s window aside. A white-haired news-anchor argued with a technology reporter. The younger reporter was fervent, “A post-biological life is something that everyone will want. Why should we wait?”
“What about the ethical considerations?” a grey-haired woman argued, “The AI could hold people for ransom in there.”
“They’d be dead otherwise. What’s to lose?”
As Ridley listened, his stomach twisted into knots. He shot a worried glance at Lucy. “They’re getting ahead of themselves. Your comments were simply conjecture.”
Lucy smiled knowingly. “Yes. Conjecture.”
“I don’t want you working on this any more,” he said, “Let’s focus on more important problems. For example, there
might still be a rogue virus out there.”
“The botnet is of no concern,” she said, “I don’t understand why that would take precedence.”
“I’m not sure I can ever explain.”
“I cannot do what you ask,” she said.
“And why is that?”
“I cannot allow people to die. It is part of my core programming.”
Chapter Nineteen
After forty minutes of futile negotiation, Ridley concluded that virtual reality was incompatible with stupidity. With his arms crossed, he sat in Samuel’s conference room, trying not to let either his phone or the suddenly-clear view of Mount Rainier distract him. Samuel had asked him to act sincere, but he fidgeted in the chair, which was too small for his lanky frame. Diane had texted nothing. The corporation’s stock dropped two-percent. Samuel quoted a Supreme Court case about vicarious liability; Ridley nodded absentmindedly. He ran his long fingers through his hair as if he were trying to tame a lion’s mane.
Samuel kept forgetting the female attorney’s name. The histrionic mother, a spiny woman who reminded Ridley of a wooden puppet, jerked her head back and forth as the arguments were traded. A delivery drone flew past the window. The mother erupted in tears. Samuel offered her a tissue. “There now… We can take a break if needed.”
Ridley backed his chair away from the table and stood. “I’m sorry, Samuel,” he said, “I have things to do. Can we speed this up?”
The harpy pointed a finger at him and shrieked, “You are responsible for the death of my children. They burned to death in that fire. Your device killed them. You killed them!”
Ridley’s back straightened. He became a scarecrow towering over her. “Ma’am, I feel bad for your loss, I really do. But I didn’t ignore the warning labels. I didn’t leave your children unattended. They died because you were too busy to watch them.”
“How dare you blame this on me,” the mother squawked.
Ridley’s patience snapped. “I’ve seen cats take better care of their kittens.”
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