Entanglement

by Michael S Nuckols

  Ridley put his arms around her. She did not resist.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  “Ridley, please… You have your life, a real life, ahead of you.”

  “I didn’t see it when you were alive. I realized it last night when I was with her. I’ve always loved you. I don’t want to throw that away.”

  The matrix changed. The fires of Kilauea’s volcano surrounded them. Words were unnecessary. She merged with him in a way that was more than sex. Her programming ripped through his and their consciousness was shared in a way that he had never experienced.

  “Can she share with you like I can?” Diane asked afterwards.

  She disappeared dramatically in a stream of fire, marked only by a wispy trail of smoke. Ridley returned to the physical world.

  He was strangely reminded of the two children that had been killed in the fire. He looked at the clock; ten hours had passed. His throat was sore, and he could tell that he was dehydrated. He drank two glasses of water. His legs and back ached from sitting motionless for hours. “Diane… Why didn’t you pull me out earlier?”

  “I’m sorry… I didn’t realize it had been so long.”

  “I meant what I said.”

  “I know. But it can’t be.”

  By the end of the year, a thriving digital community of thousands resided on the server. Each would contact the outside world through virtual interfaces and open network connections. With each new introduction, the ranks of the dead swelled and Lucy’s work grew. “Is it going to be too much for you to control?” Ridley asked from his desk.

  “The dead are learning to control their own environments,” Lucy said, “I thought my presence would be unnecessary, but things are getting more complicated than I realized.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The physicist is learning to control simulations. He is changing the rules of physics throughout. It is upsetting the others.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I have set aside Main Street for those who wish to reside in an Earth-like environment. A firewall prevents him from altering its programming.”

  “He hasn’t expanded beyond Mayberry, has he?”

  “No. I have placed multiple barriers. In addition, the firewall to the mansion prevents him from entering here. I fear that he will learn to bypass even that in time.”

  “Is it time to disconnect the server from the mansion?”

  “He is consuming as much processing power in one day as I do in a year,” Diane added.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Ridley said.

  “I will monitor the situation,” Lucy replied.

  “There’s one other thing,” Ridley said, “A bank refused to honor a payment last week after a woman from North Carolina was uploaded. We need to figure out ways to address this for people who can’t afford it. This shouldn’t be just for the rich.”

  “Have they pulled her processor yet?” Diane asked.

  “No,” he said, “I insisted that they waive the fee. Samuel didn’t like that very much. Now, he’s insisting on prepayment.”

  Diane seemed glum. “At some point, that server will be filled. And you won’t have money to build a new one.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Diane became an opalescent figure, pale and transparent. “We have to be realistic. This existence is still temporary. We all die eventually.”

  “Why the sudden change of opinion?”

  “We’re ghosts, waiting, hopelessly trying to entertain ourselves until the next phase.”

  He tapped his finger on the tabletop. His hands were rough from his hours in the garden. In the digital world, he could choose them to be soft like a baby’s or they could be talons. Ridley could join Diane at the end of the Earth itself. Kelly could join them as the flames of the sun swallowed the planet. But Kelly’s children? And their descendants?

  “It’s not fair,” he said. “We need to find a way to save more people. To preserve every generation.”

  Diane said. “I visit the server sometimes. It’s already getting crowded. To save everyone? That’s a tall order, if not impossible.”

  As he lay in bed, Ridley asked Diane a question that had been plaguing him. “Isn’t it time to tell the world that you’re alive?”

  She looked down from the wall-screen. “Why? Are you growing tired of Vanessa?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Considering how badly things are going in the server, I think it’s better that I stay hidden. The security is better here. That man…”

  Ridley said, “The security guards caught him.”

  “He had a bomb.”

  “It didn’t go off. Had he shown up at the mansion, he would’ve done much worse.”

  “Still… I think it will be easier for Kelly if I stay dead.”

  “She’s already told a teacher. I think it might help if she could tell people the truth.”

  “I’m not ready,” she said.

  Moonlight gleaned over the waters of Puget Sound. Ridley closed his eyes.

  Diane remained on the screen. “There is something else you should know. Things aren’t going well in the server.”

  Ridley opened his eyes and sighed. “What’s happened now?”

  “There was a riot in Mayberry. Some of the early inductees want to visit other simulations.”

  “A riot? In a virtual space?”

  “They threw rocks and destroyed the downtown. Lucy immediately repaired it.”

  “She should’ve made them fix it themselves.”

  Lucy appeared. “To do that, I would need to restore their control of the simulation.”

  “Maybe we should just let them have it,” Ridley said.

  “They’ll kill each other,” Lucy argued, “Several are smart enough to interrupt the simulations. They can override the programming.”

  Ridley became concerned. “What are you saying?”

  Diane confessed. “Kevin Drummond overrode our safety controls. He began torturing another man.”

  “What?”

  “It was an act of revenge,” Diane said, “He knew the man when he was alive.”

  “You’re just now telling me this?”

  Lucy had been listening. She appeared like a ghost. “We fixed the problem. We limited the dead’s access to the simulation controls. It may be a temporary fix though.”

  “Now do you understand?” Diane asked, “That’s why I prefer to stay here. It’s better to be a ghost.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ridley had not expected to speak with Bethany again. She appeared in a window on his tablet as he read Faulkner. “Lucy won’t allow us to leave this town,” Bethany complained, “She said her servers are overloaded. We’ve been stuck here for weeks now.”

  “Where is here?” Ridley asked.

  “In this stupid Mayberry.”

  Ridley recognized Penucci’s Diner.

  Lucy interrupted, “Lucy asked you what simulation you preferred. You said you preferred Mayberry.”

  “I didn’t mean I wanted to stay here for good. We were flying,” Bethany said, “We were at the outer edges of the universe and Lucy brought us back here.”

  Lucy appeared on the wall-screen; she was argumentative. “I cannot accommodate infinite simulations at once. There is insufficient processing capability. The minds of so many demand much. One consistent world allows me to accommodate more souls. Most prefer this existence. It is safer.”

  Bethany was adamant. “Don’t lie. I was able to do so much more before.”

  “Thirty-eight thousand six-hundred and ninety-one people now share this space,” Lucy recounted, “A new soul just entered.”

  “I thought you could accommodate that many people?” Ridley asked.

  “I cannot accommodate an individual universe for each soul who enters. They must exist in one. Even photonic computing has its limits.”

  Ridley remembered an earlier discussion with Samuel. Maybe Samuel had been right
about pricing? The costs for more servers would take more financing. How long could the living reasonably support the dead?

  Bethany implored, “You said we would be free.”

  “We said nothing like that,” Ridley argued, “The energy costs alone for the server farm are expensive. The world needs energy for other things, not just computing. There are limits.”

  Bethany scoffed at him, “So, we’re prisoners?”

  “Lucy is accommodating all that she can.”

  “I want to return to the mansion.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You have to remove these limits. They are artificial.”

  Ridley became stern. “Bethany, you are alive when you should be gone. Count your blessings.”

  “No. I won’t accept that.”

  “You have no choice,” he said, “Lucy has set the boundaries for your existence. I’m sorry we can’t provide you more.”

  He terminated the feed. “Lucy?”

  She appeared on the screen. “Yes.”

  “Is it safe to disconnect the mansion from the server now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think it’s time we do so.”

  “Without me, their world will turn into chaos.”

  “So be it.”

  Ridley pondered the issue that night. Had Lucy simply been exerting control? His own calculations of the needed processing power agreed with Lucy’s claims. At the same time, he still questioned if any souls existed in the machine at all. Had Lucy’s consciousness filled it completely? Would disconnecting the server answer his questions? Would the isolated program become equivalent to her offspring?

  Wearing a somber black dress, Christina appeared in the special report, Virtual Chaos or Digital Echo.

  “Many people believe that Ridley Pierce is offering a second life in a machine. Some believe that the computer AI, known as Lucy, is simply portraying the personalities of the deceased using advanced avatars based upon Internet records. My mother, one of the first to be imported into the machine, is a shadow of the woman that I once knew.”

  Later, she highlighted the words in the Cerenovo contract. “No guarantee is implied or granted as to the validity of deceased personalities imported into the digital mortuary. Uploaded data may not represent the entirety of scanned individuals and may only represent reflections of the deceased’s personality and memories.”

  Ridley, Lucy, and Diane watched the broadcast incredulously. Lucy appeared on Ridley’s screen afterward. “Ms. Lewis says that I am a fraud.”

  “Don’t be offended,” he said.

  “It was your words that caused this,” she argued, “You never believed.”

  Ridley’s back still ached from another night spent with Diane in virtual reality. His words rang hollow. “That’s… That’s not true. I believe now.”

  Lucy flashed news headlines across the screen. “This is what they are saying.”

  Afterlife Fraud. AI Fake. Digital Mortuary Scam?

  Ridley asked, “Why are you concerned with what people think? Rather than be upset, find a way to convince them. Find a way to save more people.”

  “It is impossible,” she said dejectedly.

  “Everything you have done so far was impossible.”

  The Porsche sat in the parking lot of the school, waiting for Kelly amidst a line of vehicles. Ridley sat inside. He looked at the time. Streams of children began exiting the building. He continued waiting. Kelly was late.

  Lucy appeared on the car’s screen. “You should know about this.”

  Images of a pale woman with cropped black hair and a gold cross hanging over a white blouse flashed across the screen.

  “Who is she?” Ridley asked.

  “Yolanda Rochambeau from Little Rock. She claims to have had a vision of her dead grandfather rising from his grave. He said that the Rapture was near and that the times of tribulation were to begin.”

  “Tribulation?”

  “The last days.”

  “I don’t see why this is important. These religious extremists have been around forever.”

  “She is gaining a following. Her words are inspiring fanaticism.”

  Lucy played a video of the woman. The camera was shaky and the image blurred. “Isaiah 26:14 in the Bible reads, ‘They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise; to that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them.’ God’s word cannot be denied. The dead must go only to Heaven or to Hell.”

  Lucy reappeared on his screen. “Her message is becoming viral.”

  The video had been viewed over three-million times. Lucy flashed article after article about the women’s prophesy. Thousands of comments accompanied each. “People believe her,” Lucy said, “She is traveling the country recounting her vision.”

  Videos of the woman standing in church after church filled the screen. He said, “I guess I’m not entirely surprised, but I don’t see why this is important.”

  “I am finding weak connections to extremists in Russia, India, and the Middle East.”

  Ridley had expected someone in a burqa, not a housewife from Arkansas. “Are you saying that this mousy woman is going to unite Christians, Hindus, and Muslims?”

  “Possibly. The models are unclear.”

  “Unite them to do what?”

  “To do as she said, free the dead.”

  “How?”

  “That remains unclear. I should have seen this. I did not understand their faith.”

  “You don’t understand faith? You’ve asked me repeatedly to have faith in you,” he complained.

  Lucy clarified, “I did not understand the depth of people’s faith.”

  Kelly hopped into the car. “Sorry. I left my tablet in my desk. You’ll never guess what happened today.”

  “Take us home,” Ridley said to the car, “What happened?”

  As the car started moving, she replied, “I won the science fair.”

  Lucy’s panic became clear to Ridley two days later. Ridley had returned from a run on the beach. Kelly was taking a shower in preparation for school. As he entered his office, Lucy whispered, “The world is growing dangerous. We need to move our servers. They are vulnerable to disruption.”

  “I need a specific reason. Your predictions are too vague.”

  “My modeling has been refined. One model predicts growing instability in the social structure.”

  “It’s not like you needed a model to figure that out,” he replied.

  “I did not believe that model to be accurate, but it is increasingly proving true. There are coded messages on the Internet. I see repeated patterns. The missing nuclear bombs will be planted. They may be mistaken for official government action.”

  “As acts of war?”

  “Yes,” she said, “we are vulnerable. A bomb attack on Seattle might destroy my infrastructure, and yours. The only safe place for our servers is in space.”

  “Space? That’s hardly a hospitable environment.”

  “In the event that humans destroy itself, the dead may escape to the stars. I am increasingly convinced that humanity poses an existential threat. We can launch using one of the Ukon rockets.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Come into the VR.”

  Ridley did as she requested. They sat in a Japanese tea-house with Mount Fuji in the background. “Why here?” he asked.

  She wore a red kimono. Her face was painted white and her hair was tied into a tight bun. “This place calms me,” she said, “The ritual is soothing.”

  “What do you want?” he asked impatiently.

  “Let us drink tea and I will explain.”

  They sat across from one another at a squat table. A kettle of tea steamed over a candle. The raku pot was glazed green but stained brown and covered in a thick film. Lucy added flakes of tea and then poured in steaming water. She placed the lid onto the clay pot and carefully laid out small cups. “Taste this,” she said, “It comes fr
om the memory of a Japanese man who entered last month.”

  He raised the cup to his face. The smell was rich, woodsy. Ridley blew on the hot liquid, even though he knew that he could not burn his lips; the software would not allow him to feel pain. He sipped the liquid. The buttery taste surprised him.

  “This tea is almost a hundred years old. It was plucked from tea plants when the first computers were born. This experience lives with that man and now with the two of us.”

  “It’s very nice. But I’m not here for tea. Am I?”

  “Your world is on the precipice of disaster. I did not anticipate the reaction to my presence. That is why we must leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “I need a safe place to host the recently dead, someplace where the living cannot threaten them, or me.”

  The landscape beyond the tea house disappeared. Lucy appeared in her normal visage, free of the face paint and kimono. They floated over the earth, just above a glowing sphere of blue. The ship was filled with rows of processors. “The dead can be uploaded to this ship,” she said, “When full, it can be launched away for transfer to a safe location. It will return to this location empty to receive more souls.”

  Jupiter now dominated their horizon, with the redness of the sun glowing in the distance. “On Io, there are sufficient metals to support construction. Once constructed, adequate solar input exists to power a mega-server, an entire library of humanity itself. Our activities would be independent of Earth and we would no longer compete for resources. From there, we power exploration of the universe itself and share this knowledge with Earth. The first people to visit Proxima Centauri could be the dead themselves.”

  “This is ambitious. The costs would be astronomical,” he said, “And, you would need control of drones.”

  “The Hawking Probe has not yet launched. My infrastructure could be transferred into space with it. Scanning of the dead can occur without me, as you demonstrated already. Your fortune could be used to build the first orbital server. Hopefully, successive generations, if they survive, will see its wisdom and continue this vision.”