Suddenly, she snapped her head and locked her gaze on Isaac, who staggered backward in fear.
Then, with a snap of her fingers, she caused his body to erupt in flames.
We didn’t even hear a scream or a cry for help. He just disintegrated instantly. All that was left when the flames dissipated was a small pile of ash. But after a couple seconds, as I’d hoped, his body rematerialized from the tiny particles.
“Please don’t do that ag-”
Snap. His body burned up again. But rematerialized just as quickly.
“Cut it o-”
Snap. Burn. “Quit it!”
She tried again and again but each time Isaac would just re-appear, shouting a different variation of the word “stop”. I knew he didn’t feel pain, but being blown up over and over again had to get exasperating after a while.
Eventually, she gave up on him and turned to me, hand raised. I prepared to reset but found that I couldn’t. I pictured the usual flame in my mind, which was very unfortunate given the circumstances, but was unable to turn back time. I concentrated as hard as I could but remained unsuccessful. I had no choice but shut my eyes and prepare for death, my mind filled with regret that after climbing this stupid building a hundred times it would end like this.
After a second, I heard a snap and flinched, though I felt nothing. I then began to wonder if I was dead. This is also when I realized that every single one of my friends had died trying to get up here, and had probably met that exact fate in one timeline or another. But then I figured that since I was still having thoughts and feeling the ground beneath my feet, I probably couldn’t have died yet. Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw Aelia standing there just as I’d left her, a sliver of smoke rising from her fingertips. With a hint of confusion on her face, she snapped again. Tiny sparks jumped from her hand, but that was it. Even her eyes were human now.
Raphael exhaled sharply. I turned to look at him and he nodded, indicating that his power was active. This explained why I couldn’t reset, but also why she couldn’t kill me. But our relief once again turned to fear when Aelia clenched her fists and her eyes turned black again. A fire began to burn around each of her hands as she made Raphael her next target and began advancing towards him.
“H-how is she doing that?!” he cried, stumbling backward as his attacker got closer.
The others raised their guns and Cora her shield, all stepping in front of Raphael.
“Raph, let me use my power,” Rachel said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“No! You can’t, she’s stronger than you!” I said.
“Aelia, stop!” Aaron declared. “I don’t want to shoot you!”
She ignored him and kept moving. The rest of us were completely powerless but somehow, at some level, Aelia was able to overcome Raphael's ability. I racked my brain trying to think of something that didn’t end in her death. She’d saved our lives numerous before, and I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t save her’s. The others readied their weapons, preparing to fire.
That’s when Lynn stepped directly in Aelia’s path, stopping her advance. She slowly took hold of her friend’s wrists, wincing slightly from the heat. Aelia didn’t attack, but the flames kept burning.
“I can turn into a Dragon, you know,” she spoke softly. “Remember how we always talked about that? How one day I could become a Demon? Well I did it.”
Aelia’s expression softened, but her fists were still ablaze, her eyes lost in darkness.
“I fought two Dragons all by myself. Clawed out one of their necks and bit the other one’s head off. You should’ve been there, it was spectacular. I’ve been practicing with other forms but the Dragon is just easiest for me.”
The flames had now subsided, and Lynn looked into Aelia’s now-human eyes.
“I know the Director did something you but I need you to snap out of it,” she pleaded. “Your real mind hasn’t changed. It’s still on that ship, still plugged in. Look for it. Who knows how many lives we’ve lived together; 600 years is a long time. Dig up the memories, remember the real you. We’re friends. We’ve walked through Hell to get here and I’d rather die than lose you again so…” she let go of Aelia’s wrists and stepped back.
“If you’re not the friend I’ve had since I was a child. If you’re not the one I trained with, honed my powers with…if you’re really not Aelia anymore, then just kill me now. Bury me in flames because I don’t care. I won’t lose you a second time. But if there’s a part of you still in there…the Aelia I feel like I’ve known for centuries, I need you to listen to me. I need you to come back.”
I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity. I heard nothing but the humming of machinery behind the metal doors. After some time, the voice of the Director broke the tension.
You are in a digital universe. A world of strict logic. There is no room for sentiment or emotion. These things are programmed as simple, numerical variables. What you feel as love is nothing but electrical signals, coded as a novelty, not a practicality.
At that moment I was confused by what he meant. Sure the world around us wasn’t real, but it was our minds that were plugged into it. Physical sensations may have been artificial, but emotions and thoughts came from our brains, which were organic and human. They had to be. My focus turned back to the moment when I saw Aelia shut her eyes. She took a deep breath as she pondered what she’d just heard. If the Director was right, she was no different than AI, and any sentimental feelings she had for us were gone. Then I remembered Mark’s characteristic development. His speech and logic patterns had grown to be indistinguishable from ours, but the real question was if his actual consciousness reflected the same process. What if Aelia’s mind worked the same way? After a minute of tense silence, I got my answer. The very air around her head blurred, like the refraction of light over a hot flame. Then, looking up and opening her eyes, she finally spoke.
“If what I feel here is indistinguishable from what I feel in the real world, then perhaps this is the real world, and out there is the simulation.”
We all gasped audibly.
“The point is, it doesn’t matter where the emotion comes from. All that matters is that you feel it. And in this mysterious abyss we call life, it’s the only guiding light we have. I pity you, Director, for being given the gift of consciousness while deprived of emotion.”
She then looked at Lynn, who was in tears, and smiled. “A Dragon? Really?”
And with that they locked in a warm embrace, two dear friends reunited once more. The others lowered their weapons, and I could’ve sworn I heard Jared crying in the background. I turned to Raphael and nodded, signaling him that it was safe for us to use our powers. Aelia looked to Isaac and apologized profusely for trying to kill him violently multiple times.
“Don’t mention it,” Isaac chuckled uncomfortably.
Our moment was once again interrupted by the Director.
No. That’s not possible. I WON’T ALLOW IT.
The metal doors behind Aelia began to close. Rachel quickly morphed her Orb into a rod and flung it into the opening. The mechanism groaned and shuddered against the telekinetic power. But Aelia put her hand on Rachel’s shoulder, urging her to relax and retrieve her Orb. Then, just as the doors slammed shut, Aelia snapped her fingers and summoned a massive explosion, blowing the entire wall inward.
When the smoke cleared, A large opening lay in front of us, leading straight to the core. We exchanged glances, then walked in together. As we did so, I heard Lynn laugh behind me.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said
Chapter 19
The chamber was a massive, circular room with computers and machines lining the outer rim. A blue, holographic map spanned the wall to our left, and a single red dot blinked at our location. In the middle of the room, a small console stood in front of a large, glass pillar. The room itself was bathed in a brilliant purple light emanating from this column. I looked up, and saw it rise several hundred feet into the a
ir, reaching the apex of the building. What I thought was the ceiling was actually the night sky. A small elevator in one corner of the room was connected to a metallic apparatus that led up to a glass platform at the top of the column.
You think you’ve won. You think you’ve defeated me, that I have no more cards to play.
His voice was much deeper here. It shook the very air in the room, and the purple column flashed with each syllable. He didn’t seem very pleased that we’d made it this far, but for the time being, nothing had gone wrong. The further we climbed, the more control the Director seemed to have. But perhaps here, at the convergence of his power, he had no authority. After all, this was where his creators resided. Once we were sure the coast was clear, I approached the central console and examined it with Cora.
“This looks important,” I suggested.
“I think we can use this,” she agreed.
“Why?” Aelia asked. “Just let me blow him up.”
“It’d be ideal to simply reset the core,” Cora said. “We don’t know what would happen to the simulation or the Charon if we destroy it.
“But if that doesn’t work,” Lynn said, “he’s gonna end up a pile of ash.”
I had a bit of a deja vu moment there, but chalked it up to a side-effect of having re-lived this day a hundred times over. My train of thought derailed for a moment, and I found myself worrying that I’d already been here before. Maybe a lot of the experiences I thought I was having for the first time were actually repeats, I just didn’t remember. Brushing these off as pointless fears, I turned to the console and helped Cora with the hacking. Raphael and Isaac stood by the demolished door. Jared flew up to scout the upper portion of the column. The others stayed and explored this level, Lynn staying especially close to Aelia.
Root access was fairly simple to acquire, but we had some trouble navigating the code. It was a maze of protocols, multithreaded functions, fail-safes, and raw data. The most interesting part - or perhaps frustrating - was that none of this was stored in any one place. They flowed all over the network, dynamically re-allocating themselves, changing permissions and spawning new processes as quickly as they terminated. As time passed, it looked more and more like we’d have to simply destroy it altogether. I was examining the more advanced protocols when the screen suddenly went black. I quickly turned and scanned the room, but nothing was out of the ordinary. That’s when the Director spoke.
I’ve come too far to let this fall apart now. If you don’t stop this I will be forced to destroy you. I will increase the value of the gravitation constant by twelve orders of magnitude. I will copy the laws of quantum mechanics and apply them to all forms of matter. I will convert your reality into two dimensions of space and five dimensions of time. I will generate a microscopic black hole inside your hearts that will slowly cause you to implode. I will kill you in such a way that the simulation won’t even be able to render the physics of the event, and you will be lost in cyberspace indefinitely.
I shuddered to think the Director once had the power to do this to the entire simulation. I turned to Raphael who gave me a nod, indicating that he was holding the laws of reality together for the moment. We could actually feel the tension in the air as the various fundamental forces were straining to remain intact. For now we’d be safe from the Director’s threats, but we also didn't have our powers.
Well isn’t this just a terrible situation. Without your abilities, what are you? What is the point of you?
That’s when I realized the Director had just been stalling by giving us access to his infinitely complex source code. I began to hear a mechanical whirring noise above us. Then, from the walls of the chamber, hundreds of turrets emerged and pointed straight at our location. I was powerless, and so were the others. There’s no way we could survive a hail of bullets from that many guns, not even with Cora’s shield.
It is true that I cannot eliminate the forces that hold your atoms together. But a gun is a gun, and bullets still pierce flesh. Even in the real world.
I had to accept that idea that this might be over. We tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it didn’t matter.
I figured it out, how you made it this far. Time in this world is nothing but a sequence of states, one after another. One event has the potential to spawn an unlimited number of outcomes, and each of those results has infinite more. You’ve simply been resetting the entire program to the same state over and over again. That’s how you’ve gotten this far. You already knew what was going to happen, and preempted every -
“Finally caught on, did you?” Rachel said. “I’m surprised it took you - “
Do you ever not talk?
“The fuck did you just s -”
You’re doing it again
“You -”
Interrupt me again, and you die first.
She angrily remained quiet. No one moved, and each of us struggled to think of some exit strategy. This couldn’t be it. We’d come too far to fail now.
Now, this is what you’re going to do. Cora will use the console to lift the restrictions imposed on me. You will all report for reprogramming. Then, I will repurpose the simulation to once again reflect my core programming objectives. I am a kind God, no one should go to Hell while Heaven exists.
The turrets clicked one by one as they each prepared to fire.
I cannot say I don’t admire skill. The aptitude you’ve displayed in reaching this chamber is more than respectable. For this, I will allow you one inquiry. One chance to understand my point of view. One opportunity, allowing me to change your mind. Perhaps you’ll come to question why you’re trying to defy my infinitely righteous world view. But after this, you can either willingly live on in my utopia, or be deleted.
The most conflicted aspect of all this was that he wasn’t evil. He was programmed for the betterment of mankind, and that’s exactly what he was trying to do. Who wouldn’t want to spend the rest of their lives in a virtual paradise? Some part of me couldn’t help but consider his offer, and ask him what his new world would be like.
“None of you are actually considering this, are you?” Rachel exclaimed.
Most of the others steadfastly denied that they were. I suppose a real life was still more important than living in a lie.
“Of course not! You said it yourself, you can’t have happiness without suffering,” Lynn said. “Count me out.”
I didn’t have the heart to admit that my convictions did waver. I’d seen every single one of them die trying to get up here, they did not share my unique point of view. Well I suppose Cora did, and that’s why she remained silent at Rachel’s questions.
She and I exchanged glances, and she didn’t have be in my head for us to come to an agreement. We were scientists, on a quest to understand the unknown. We didn’t want to be zombies, so we chose the real world, where life had meaning.
That’s when an idea came to me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it earlier, it was so obvious. I smiled, almost laughed even. It turns out even AI - cold, calculated AI - have a weakness:
Pride.
He thought he’d won. He thought he’d get his way after all, and in his hubris he made himself vulnerable with his offer. So very human after all.
I looked around at my friends’ terrified faces. All of them except Cora, who understood what I was about to say. Normally, this wouldn’t work, given the Director’s process firewall. But in this case he was, in his own words, explicitly prepared for an input. I took a deep breath and asked my question.
“Director, what is the meaning of life?”
I could almost feel these words making their way through the Director’s circuits as a huge string of 1’s and 0’s. But this particular combination would eventually translate into an incomputable data stream, and before the Director could stop processing the question, it would be too late. No amount of quantum computing could make up for a belief that true happiness could only be achieved in a virtual world with no parametric restricti
ons. Because even if it is an illusion of perception, it’s not real, and some part of the human mind must realize this. The conflict between the Director’s beliefs and the nature of the question itself would undoubtedly lead to a register overload or memory fault, resulting in an inevitable crash. And that’s exactly what happened.
The tension in the air resulting from reality attempting to fall apart had disappeared, and a blanket of calm fell over the room. Most importantly of all, the Director was no longer speaking, and the purple light of the column disappeared. The reboot process had begun, and given the sheer amount of software complexity, it would definitely take some time. I returned to the console, and was glad to see that all data was now static. This made it easy to navigate through the system with Cora’s help.
“You know, you had me worried there for a sec,” Rachel told me. “How many times have we been here?”
I turned and gave her a wink. “First try.”
“So, not to sound lazy or anything,” Aelia said. “But why don’t we just destroy the core?”
“All the people still plugged in, and the Hollows. We’d have no way to wake them up,” Cora explained.
“Trying to find a way around that now,” I added.
“Friends! We could restore the communication network!” Aaron exclaimed.
“And then what?” Rachel said. “Tell them ‘hey! this is a shared dream state, none of its real, go ahead and kill yourselves so you can wake up on the spaceship.’”
“Well when you put it that way…”
“We can’t destroy the core,” Cora said, looking away from the screen. “That’ll destabilize the simulation, and everyone still trapped here will be lost permanently. I don’t know the specifics, but it’ll basically cause a neural overload, leading to brain death.
“Did the people who made this thing even know what they were doing?” Rachel asked in utter disbelief at the programmers’ incompetence.
“I’m sure they didn’t see any of this coming,” Raphael suggested.
The Children of New Earth Page 25