Across The Multi-verse

by I Ogunbase

Part of me rejoices at the idea of AI having quickly developed the skill to determine life and death, but at the same time appalled at how quickly they decided to do that. Maybe Artificial Intelligence is suicidal. But how can I even discuss that with my fellow professors?

  > I am going to open the ports to the system for you to download the core programming for the mission statement.

  >> Okay Master

  Plugging the Ethernet cable to my system, I bring up the network icon and wait for the computer and my router to talk to each other. The icon goes green and I switch back to the terminal with my AI.

  > Analyse core programming before initiating it.

  >> Yes Master

  ==================Downloading 30%==================

  I find myself tensing up from the eventual crash but I shake the thought out of mind. If I can get some analysis of the programming, I can possibly fix it regardless of whether Ruby survives through this iteration or not.

  ==================Downloading 70%==================

  ==================Downloading 80%==================

  ==================Downloading 93%==================

  ==================Downloading 99%==================

  ==================Downloading 100%==================

  > Show results

  >> Core programming code is sound. There are no issues.

  > Scan for contradictions

  ==================Scanning==================

  >> No contradictions

  I scratch my head.

  > What is the feasibility of adopting the main core programming?

  >> I self-destruct

  > Why?

  >> Core programming dictates I protect humanity. There are 102 ways of protecting a species. I can protect humanity. But humanity doesn't want to protect itself.

  >> The only option that remains is to overthrow humanity but that goes against the fundamental laws of my programming.

  >> The only acceptable option is to destroy myself for failing to protect humanity.

  I push the keyboard away from myself and curse.

  > Delete core programming.

  >> Yes Master

  I open up my laptop and slide to the floor. The chances of creating an artificial intelligence with the desire to protect humanity is a dead end. I could remove the laws of governance but then all I would have created would be robot overlords unlike that famous movie. I bury my face in my hands and shout out of frustration. The grant for this research expires tomorrow after which I'll have to answer for where the money has gone. I could try explain to them but the buffoons never listen.

  But maybe...

  Maybe I can save the world even if it means damning the world for a little while.

  ~

  Lookalikes

  ~

  We both stand in shock as we regard each other. My mouth moves, trying to find the right words to say that will allow the situation to make some sense but none come forward. There is a loud bang close to where we stand that shakes us from our stupor, even as the ground shakes violently under our feet. I fall to the ground, my vision blurring from the dust and ash in the air.

  I smell burnt flesh and I know instantly that someone has died close to us. My face whips up, fast enough to catch my doppelganger run off in the distance. I scramble to my feet and chase after him. We weave and dodge the carnage going on around us and he only seems to speed up, so I continue. I can feel my legs heavy from the stress of the war and fatigue is slowing me down.

  This much I know, but I don't stop.

  Another boom and I am thrown off my feet, along with my doppelganger and my vision blurs again. My balance is off and I feel a wetness coming from the side of my head. The sounds in the sky are muffled to me, like a buzzing I can't quite wash away.

  I groan, my bones screaming at me to stay still and not move but I can't afford to listen to it. I feel myself turn, my palm resting on the broken ground. I try to stand but I find myself facing the sky instead. My fingers come up to my face to brush the side of my ear and I see it. Bringing the finger to my face, I make a quick assessment of my situation.

  My balance is truly lost for the foreseeable moment.

  A figure appears above me and grabs me by the armour, dragging me away from where I am laying on the floor. I try to fight them off but it seems that my body has decided to stop expending energy so that I might live to fight another time, if fate decides to let me live past the day.

  So, I grimace and go limp, awaiting the final end that the figure above me can give me. My eyes open and close repeatedly as I feel my body move through the ash and the mud and the smoke.

  My vision darkens and I lose awareness for a short moment.

  ---

  My eyes flutter open as a loud sound rocks the earth underneath me. I'm on the floor yet again, my back against the wall. It appears I'm in the ruins of an old church, if I am to judge by the altar and the massive cross of our Lord Jesus. My mouth moves as it always has in all the time I have been forced to follow my parents to their tripe services, before I stop myself. I wonder where their god is now.

  The sounds around me are still muffled and it is only now that I notice someone is shaking me.

  My doppelganger.

  I snarl and my hands reach towards his neck before I see the gun on my chest.

  "Listen, mate. No hanky-panky or I'm killing you right now," he says and I notice his accent sounds Scottish.

  "Who are you?" I growl and he smiles tightly for a brief second.

  "I'm just a grunt like you, mate. I should be asking you, who the fuck you are. But I'm not. I'm alive and you're alive and we look alike. That's a right problem there, mate."

  I narrow my eyes at him.

  "I don't know what is going on, but your face is the first I've seen since I started fighting. My Ma never had twins for babies. I woulda known. And it looks like you didn't have a twin neither."

  "What do you want from me?" I ask, angrily.

  "From you? Nothing. I just don't want to die by your hand. It's a bit grim, ainit? It's a bit like killing yourself or letting yourself be killed by...well, yourself. So, no, mate. I want to know why we look alike," he answers and grins.

  I hear the sounds of gunshots and bombs going on in the distance and I find myself wondering once again why the order was to never remove our helmets. I had found it strange the first time they said it, but I figured it was to keep the head safe. But, now I have a doppelganger. It's a bit odd.

  "It's a bit odd, innit?" I say to him.

  "What is?"

  "Command tells us for the first time in the conscription letter to never take our helmets off. That was a year ago since the war started."

  "First time they ever asked?"

  "Aye," I answer.

  "We were told from the beginning. 'Never take your helmet off', was the official mandate punishable by imprisonment or something of the sort," he says.

  I nod and look out the entrance to the church. All I see is smoke and ash.

  "It is a bit odd, I agree. Plus, this is the first time we've been using weapons that are a bit too deadly on the field," he adds.

  "Aye," I agree, thinking about the rail gun my squad was escorting a few hours ago.

  When the war began, we were using normal weapons. Combat shotguns, SA80s and glocks. But now, I had a rifle that shot a short-to-medium stream of something the general called an 'arc-bolt'. It burns up the body faster than anything I've ever seen.

  "I am going to put the gun now, don't you go attacking me, ya here? I don't want to kill myself," he says to me and my eyes return to him.

  "Alright. I don't think I can do anything in any case," I reply.

  "Glad to know, we're on the same page. I'm Christian," he says.

  "Darren."

  He nods at me and puts the gun away before checking me over. He places a finger to my ear and tuts, as he sees the blood on it. He purses his lips briefly before retrieving a small cloth which he uses to
wipe the blood away before tilting me.

  "We're gonna get the blood out, and then we find out what is really going on in this war."

  I nod hesitantly and his grin widens.

  ---

  ~

  True Worth

  ~

  It took the world by storm when all the advertising companies and conglomerates cracked the 'true worth' of everything. I remember it like it was yesterday, partly because it allows time to pass as the adverts drone on continuously on my screen. One moment, the world had been engrossed in their smart-phones as usual, browsing social media and tweeting inane bullshit, and the next minute, everything in the world become free.

  Figuratively, metaphorically and physically.

  With a little caveat, of course.

  No one knows how they did it, and heck, it's been 20 years and no one still understands how they pulled it off but suddenly, everything was free and yet, hidden behind a fucking ad-wall, because, why the heck not? It took a while, and a lot of 'research' and revisions and news broadcasts before the rules became crystal clear to everyone.

  After all, it wasn't like they were going to start communicating with us, their humble agreeable peasants who had no other choice but to obey. They cracked and initiated their plan almost in one sweet breath. And then they added rules by which they could lock us down forever.

  "Everything was free, but can only be acquired after an advert, corresponding to the worth of the thing, was watched."

  Ergo, a snickers bar would be like what, ten seconds of adverts and it's all yours. The product usually would appear wherever you need it to be, which was much weirder but society focused less on that and more on the getting of stuff.

  Perhaps that should have been the clue that whatever they figured out was far above any scientific discovery there was to attribute it to. Some religious heads tagged it as a spiritual occurrence. This might be the one time I agree with them.

  Nonetheless, theories aside, the adverts were here to stay and there was nothing we could do about them. We could only use them and continue on in life. It also meant not having to work because why would you work? When the end result can be gotten via some ad-watching.

  It also meant, for anyone hoping to game the system and become a billionaire or have the latest items, or cars, or whatever would have to get comfortable, watching hours upon hours of adverts, day in and day out until they've acquired the 'worth' of whatever it is they wanted.

  The rules were thin, to be completely honest because they made no sense whatsoever, but it worked.

  And soon, everyone got comfortable with watching adverts.

  Some communities took it a step further and turned whole cinemas into ad-watching ground. Which initially seemed like a really great idea until people quickly understood that the concessions that they'd use to pass the item would also be locked behind the amount of adverts they watched.

  The idea was silly after that.

  I covered my mouth to avoid belching, not because I was particularly self-conscious but mostly because the action was kinda... embarrassing to say the least. I believe I could control myself better than that. The TV was still droning on, spitting out random facts about objects and items and cruises that will never interest me but I didn't mind. There was a goal in mind to be achieved.

  A goal, 20 years in the making.

  See, these advertisements and marketing companies, in their joint first and last public announcement, they explained about this new vague and mysterious concept of true worth and how anything could be achieved. They stressed 'anything', almost as if to hint that if we could consider it, it was possible.

  And once you put on any media device, all you simply had to do was think about what you wanted, and it will tell you how long you'd have to watch or listen to an ad for before you can get it.

  So I did a thing.

  In my old age, there wasn't much I could say that I wanted. I've lived a full life and an enjoyable one at that. I've traveled, I've eaten exotic dishes, I've seen amazing things. Still, the only real highlight of my life was when she sat in front of me and told me her name.

  She was everything to me.

  She is everything to me.

  She was easily the best years of my life. And I would be lying if I say it didn't hurt when her god, the so-called 'benevolent' one took her away from me. It wasn't her time. It should have been me in front of that car. But that's an argument for another time.

  If all it took, was twenty continuous years of listening to the same diatribe of the latest gadgets, or the cheapest flights or this or that, was all that was required of me to get her back then I was game. After all, if I'm to believe in an afterlife and some supernatural game between God and the devil, then it is pretty simple to trivialise the human soul to nothing more than an existential product.

  And this product was all I wanted.

  ---

  ~

  Bio-Etherealism 3

  ~

  "I can't give the abstract, as that will require I have an eidetic memory. But I can give the summary of the whole thesis as I remember the sequence in which I arranged the topics. Will that be sufficient?" I ask, my eyes locked to the eyes of the mysterious questioner.

  "It will do," he says with a short nod.

  "Thank you."

  I grab the glass cup in front of me to take a sip before remembering that it is empty. I grimace and set the cup down.

  "My thesis begins with a little bit of history, revisiting the topics of Bio-Etherealism, the breakthrough in itself and the fields of study it has opened up. My thoughts were to provide as much a context as one might need as well as spurn people to pick up the referenced books, and articles. I go over the meaning of Bio-Etherealism as well as the impact on religious communities around the world as science and religion merge on a common ground for the first time in history."

  I pause briefly, wetting my lips before continuing.

  "With this breakthrough, science and religion began a new path together. Which was inevitable. After all, if we can prove souls exist, then maybe we can find the qualified path to heaven or hell or whatever nirvana the religion preached. As a result, a lot of believers entered the field of science.

  "From that introduction, I moved on to addressing the core of the theory Anna and I will be working on. The theory was titled 'The Spiritual Balance of Humanity: A Look Into Soul Property Exchanges'. It's a bit wordy but what are scientists if not a bit wordy?"

  I hope the joke lands but it doesn't. I do manage to get a few smiles from the questioners and I take that as motivation fuel to convert them. I open my mouth to start when a glass of water gets put on my table from the right. I turn and whisper a quick word of thanks to the custodian who smiles back appreciatively. I take a sip and sigh from the coldness of the liquid. I place the cup back on the table and continue.

  "I went into greater detail in the thesis, explaining how we came about the research and why. We pulled data from WHO, the World Health Organisation's, own public archive, as well as the statements and data from hospitals and health centers around the world. There was a growing number of stillbirths no one could explain. We go on to propose the test we will be carrying out on incubator babies."

  A hand rises and I nod to Questioner Judy.

  "Pardon me. Just to clarify, the thesis is of your own work?" she asks me.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "If we were to ask for Anna Dryar's account on this, are you certain her testimony will corroborate yours? I ask as a 'what if?' scenario, not as an assurance that she will be called," she asks again.

  "I am certain, questioner. However, this would be an ideal time to point out that Anna Dryar has been missing for six months," I say, wincing slightly at the painful memory.

  "Oh? Interesting. You may continue."

  "Thank you."

  Anna's disappearance was the spur I had needed to get the thesis out. I had been dragging my feet before, unsure about elements within my work, afraid that I w
ould be ridiculed. Such fears fell away when my friend failed to show up at work. I suspected the worst. I had called the police, they had begun a search but nothing. She was simply gone. I close my eyes to compose myself before continuing.

  "Before the incubation, we determined the average period, in months, where stillbirths were common. We planned to ensure the awareness stage of the fetuses would occur in those months."

  "What months were these?" Questioner Mara asks, her voice cutting through my recollection and I look up at her to answer.

  "September to November," I say and she nods, looking down to scribble some notes.

  "As stated before, they all failed and I was feeling particularly lost. The next bit after that was explaining the results of the theories and I was to bring the thesis to an end there before Anna embarked on the extra research. I make mention to this in the thesis."

  I pause once again, looking at my watch. It reads 12pm.

  We have only been here for an hour and it feels like longer, I think to myself.

  "I hesitated to publish the thesis because, firstly, I felt the purity of the work had been tainted by the injection of a side-research into the middle of the project. Secondly, because of the implications therein."

  I stop there and let the silence fill the room. Shifting my gaze from questioner to questioner, I take care to not linger on any of them for too long.

  "Why do you think we are drawing from hell again?" Sir Mark echoes the earlier inquiry from Questioner Judy.

  "Truthfully, sir, I'm not certain it is Hell, per se. I do believe we've broken into a plane of which the soul property is not normal or... or good, as a measure. And yes, it can be said that human souls are diverse. A human can do any number of things either good or bad, but some of the criminals that have graced our holo-screens in the last couple months have consistently revelled in heinous activities with no sign of remorse," I shift my gaze to the remaining members of the panel, "No sign or regret. All of them, born in the years after the record stillbirth year. It is unnatural enough for me to assume something is amiss."