“Hmm,” John reacted, his lips slightly pursed, indicating that he was impressed that I had an answer ready. “It sounds like you are personally familiar with the real estate market on the harbor front?”
“Kali and I explored buying a penthouse here. Even with my considerable fortune and pull, we were unable to pry anything loose from foreign investors.”
“Do you feel confident in your answer?”
It was clear that John Doe was toying with me. I didn’t like being toyed with. “Clearly, you don’t think my answer is right.”
“I don’t think you’re not right. I know you’re not right. Would you like to know where you’ve made your error in reasoning?”
My lips pulled back into a slight grimace, despite my best efforts to contain it. It wasn’t my intention to be rude, but I wasn’t used to being treated like a pupil—like a child. “Sure,” I replied flatly.
“Surely renting is not illegal.”
“I suppose not.”
“Yet these unnamed foreign investors, who are so concentrated on accruing monetary wealth that they, every single one of them, will not relinquish even one penthouse on the harbor, are somehow content with leaving their properties empty, when they could be renting them to maximize the profitability of their investments?”
My grimace tightened. “There could be a reasonable explanation—”
“There is. It’s quite obvious, actually. Do you know what it is?”
The car pulled over and parked at the curb of the long, empty street. I looked up through the invisible roof of my car at the black shapes of the buildings that loomed above us, almost all of them completely devoid of light. “Kali has limitations.”
Again, John’s lips pursed slightly as he seemed impressed. “Go on, Professor.”
“Keeping the downtown core empty saves memory. She doesn’t have to populate the buildings with unnecessarily complex entities.” I paused for a moment when the absurdity of my own words registered. “With conscious entities,” I added.
“Very good,” John replied, “though, not entirely accurate.”
“How so?” I asked.
“While you’re correct that Kali does have some limitations, keeping the downtown core largely empty isn’t a necessity for her. She could have populated it, as her mental capacity would easily have allowed for it. She simply assumed she didn’t need to.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it,” Haywire chimed in, “when was the last time you were downtown in the middle of the night?”
I did think about it, and I found myself bowing my head as I racked my brain to conjure a memory of being downtown at an hour later than midnight. I came up empty. “I-I don’t think I’ve ever—”
“So no need to populate the downtown core,” Mr. Big noted.
“It’s just an elaborate Hollywood backdrop,” Haywire added.
“In the movie of my life,” I realized, barely able to find my voice.
“And not just your life, my friend,” John continued. “There are thousands of fully formed human consciousnesses in this sim, and every one of their lives depends on us.”
“I-I just can’t believe...” I tried to say as I shook my head. “I understand the logic. I understand the science. But this? It just can’t be.”
“We assumed you’d need more proof,” Haywire said, her tone tinged with a calm sympathy.
“That’s precisely why we’re here,” John added.
“Speaking of which, we’ve got a bite,” Mr. Big announced, nodding as he looked over my shoulder toward the sidewalk.
I turned my head to see a dark figure strolling through the night.
“Indeed,” John said as the car door opened, again without a command from me or any audible command from the bizarre trio with whom I was reluctantly keeping company. “Time for a demonstration,” he added, gesturing with his hand for me to exit the vehicle.
I stepped out into the night as the figure continued to plod forward, with her shoulders slumped and black hair hanging in front of her head. “What...?” I began as I turned to see John Doe stepping briskly past me on an intercept course.
“Pardon me, miss!” John called to her. She didn’t turn or acknowledge him.
Haywire sidled up to me, as was becoming her custom.
“What the hell is going on?” I said in a low tone.
“You’re gonna love this,” she replied, her black lipstick forming an almost Cheshire grin. “Come on.”
She hooked her arm in mine and brought me toward the unfolding accosting of the poor woman on the street, whom John and Mr. Big were now blocking from moving forward on the sidewalk, like bullies in a schoolyard.
“Excuse me,” she said as she tried to move around them while John and Mr. Big, in turn, moved to block her progress. “Excuse me,” she repeated.
Suddenly, Mr. Big grabbed the woman hard under the arm, causing her to yelp in pain as the gigantic man held her in place. She struggled hopelessly and pathetically. To me, the weakness of her struggle suggested that she must have been infirmed to some degree.
“Please let her go,” I said in a calm, yet forceful tone.
“This is an example of what we call an ‘NPC,’” John announced, ignoring my protestations. “Also known as a non-player character, or, perhaps more appropriately, a non-person character.”
“Wh-what?” I whispered as Haywire nearly dragged me the rest of the way to them, my legs rubberized to the point where I wasn’t altogether sure that I wouldn’t collapse.
“Here,” Mr. Big said, turning the woman around roughly to face me. “See for yourself.”
The woman’s face was only inches from my own. She continued to whimper, and her eyes fleetingly met mine, but I had the sense that they only met by mere coincidence, as though she didn’t even register that I was there. It reminded me of the blank expression on Kali’s face earlier in the evening.
“Go ahead and speak to her,” Haywire said calmly, her arm still hooked in mine.
“Wh-what do you want me to say?”
“Anything. Ask her how she is.”
I turned back to the woman, who continued to struggle like a dying animal in a trap, and I longed to free her. At that moment, I would’ve done anything to rescue her from the vice grip of Mr. Big. “I...how are you, miss?” I asked.
The woman continued to struggle against Mr. Big, but she didn’t respond to me.
“She can’t respond to you,” John informed me. “Her capabilities are extremely limited. Like the empty buildings that surround you, she’s just a piece of the setting.”
“Like an extra in a movie,” Haywire added in elaboration, “without any speaking parts—no script.”
I locked my eyes on hers, looking for any sign of consciousness, but the woman seemed almost oblivious to her surroundings. Other than the fact that she was being impeded from going where she wished and that she clearly didn’t like it, there didn’t appear to be any outward sign that she knew what was happening to her.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Big said. “Mess up her hair. Stick your finger in her eye. Do whatever you like. You won’t get a human reaction out of her.” He demonstrated by slapping the poor woman across the face.
He was right. She hardly reacted. Her whimpers continued, but the smack on her face hadn’t increased their volume or urgency.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Big repeated.
Everything changed for me in that moment. The sympathy I’d felt for the woman didn’t just melt; it vanished in an instant, as though it had never been there. I was suddenly furious. It was clear to me that if there was going to be a reasonable explanation for what I’d seen and experienced that evening, it would revolve around those people attempting to play me for a fool. Kali had read my musings about the future implications of technology and, in conjunction with whichever of my competitors was bankrolling the ridiculous ruse, had conjured up a plan in which a few actors and a mild dose of hallucinogenic drugs were supposed to convince me that
I was stuck in a computer simulation. To what end the farce was leading I had no idea. Perhaps I was supposed to humiliate myself publicly so I would be removed as the head of my company. Regardless of the motives or the means behind their scheme, I had no intention of seeing it through to its end.
The gall of those people incensed me. Somehow, this woman, pretending not to be human—pretending to be a character from a video game—even allowing herself to be struck and prodded to sell the illusion—as though I were a complete fool...unhinged me. The utter lack of human decency was abhorrent. They deserved no mercy.
I grabbed the woman by both shoulders and wrenched her free from Mr. Big, who didn’t resist my fury. I began driving the woman back, over a small hedge, across a lawn, and toward the illuminated fountain that adorned the landscaping of one of the luxury high-rises that loomed over us.
Haywire laughed. “Do it, Professor! Show her who’s boss!”
The woman struggled pathetically against me, but it wasn’t enough to even slow me down. How much are they paying her not to break character? I wondered. How much were they paying her to risk enduring physical harm? Perhaps she wanted me to hurt her? Perhaps there was a bonus involved?
We reached the concrete foot of the fountain, and she backpedaled and tripped over the lip and splashed loudly into the illuminated, turquoise liquid. In the final moment before she’d gone in, I’d tried to relent, but it was as though she wanted to hurl herself into the water.
Haywire laughed. “Oh my God! Awesome!”
I watched the woman struggle pathetically in water that had to be only a few degrees above freezing, but she didn’t get up. She kept slapping the surface with her flailing arms and legs, seemingly incapable of negotiating her way out of her new, strange surroundings.
I gritted my teeth as I turned back to the three figures behind me. “What the hell is going on?” I seethed.
“We told you,” John replied emotionlessly. “NPC.”
I turned back to the woman in the fountain, who continued to froth the water as though she were trying to make snow angels. “Get out of there!” I nearly screamed.
“Even if you put a gun to her head, she couldn’t get out,” John said calmly. “She doesn’t have the neural patterning required to learn from her mistakes and figure out how to make her way out. She’ll stay in there until someone pulls her free.”
“You’re lying,” I replied. “You paid her!”
“That’s plausible,” John responded, tilting his head as though he were considering the possibility right along with me. “But how do you explain the NPC you called on this afternoon at your keynote?”
My mouth fell open once again. The image of the plain-looking woman who had frozen during my impromptu calling on her during the Q and A appeared before my eyes, as vividly as though it were occurring again at that moment.
My eyes darted to Haywire. Her eyebrows knitted as she seemed to study me. “She was a non-person character too,” she said.
I looked down at my feet, as though an answer were written on my shoes, shaking my head as I tried to assemble a response. The thought, “Coincidence?” suddenly crossed my mind, but before I could even utter the words, someone spoke up.
“You picked her out of the crowd yourself,” John stated, an accurate account.
“How could we have known which woman you’d select?” Haywire added.
I placed both of my hands up to my temples and began to squeeze the front of my cranium, as though I could somehow block out their words. It had to be a trick, I told myself. It just had to be! Yet it was too much of a coincidence that the one time that I’d chosen my own person to call upon during my Q and A, I’d been met with a deer-in-headlights expression and inexplicable silence. I’d written on this exact subject. I’d speculated on just this sort of eventual outcome—the building of individual sims, indistinguishable from the real world. Kali had read it—I had to consider the possibility that they were working together to trick me. But what if they weren’t? What if the eventual outcome of virtual technology—an outcome made certain by the continuation of Moore’s Law and the exponential increase of computer processing capability—what if it was already here? What if I was part of it? What if I was just part of someone’s augmented imagination? What if I wasn’t real?
“Uh-oh,” Mr. Big suddenly said in an urgent, low tone. “Cops.”
I whirled to see what he was talking about. A police cruiser was making its way down the dark, empty street toward us. The three post-humans were immediately fixated on the cruiser and made sure to walk as inconspicuously as possible away from the bright floodlights of the fountain and toward the nearly black shadow of a nearby hedge.
Haywire stretched her hand out toward me. “Get out of the light...quick!” she whispered urgently.
I backed away from her, shunning her hand as her eyes suddenly became desperate.
“What are you doing?” she called out to me, her whisper harsh.
“Are the police non-person characters?” I asked.
“Mostly, but not always. It’s best to play it safe!”
John and Mr. Big looked equally as desperate, their eyes darting between me out in the open, and the approaching police car. The very fact that they looked so distressed by the police officer was what pushed me to turn my back on them and begin striding down the slight slope of the front lawn of the building, down toward the black, wet street. I heard more desperate whispers emanating from the darkness near the hedge, but they were, indiscernible, almost inaudible. I waved my hands over my head to get the police officer’s attention and, almost immediately, the red and blue lights came to life and began to spin. The car came to a halt in the street as I continued to move toward it.
“Please stay where you are, sir,” came a loudspeaker voice from within the car.
I stopped in my tracks and cocked my head to the side as I tried to peer inside the vehicle. The interior of the car was obscured by the reflection of the dazzling lights, making it impossible to make out anything within. Was there even anyone inside? Was this just another prop? I waited for a few more moments for someone to exit the car, but nothing happened. Out of sheer desperation, I did something stupid.
I took three more steps forward until I reached the car, then I took yet another step right up over the front bumper of the car and onto the hood. I hoped it would provoke a response—a response beyond the capability of a non-person character. I succeeded.
Almost instantly, the police officer exited the car, his taser at his side. My eyes widened in the moment between when I realized what was about to happen and when it actually began. The taser hit me in the thigh before I could protest and the blinding, searing pain caused me to lose control of my body. I remember landing on the hood on my back, hitting my head, and then sliding off of the hood and onto the pavement, head first, unable to protect myself. As if that weren’t bad enough, the next and last thing I felt before the world went black once again was a nightstick against my jaw.
PART 2
1
WAKING UP didn’t end the nightmare; it only made it worse. The light stung my eyes so that water quickly welled in them and trickled down each cheek. The concrete walls of the room were coated in a thick, white paint that reflected the bright, buzzing, flickering fluorescents, increasing the harshness of the room. I was on a hard cot and turned slowly and carefully, so as not to exacerbate the full pain of my battered jaw as it shot throughout my skull and down the back of my neck.
Halfway through my turn, I froze, the corner of my eye suddenly filled with a blurred, red smudge. I knew it was her immediately. It was Kali.
I gulped down my fear and continued the turn gingerly, completing it as Kali’s LED-like eyes stayed perfectly locked on mine, unblinking. I didn’t know what to say. So many questions shot through my mind at once. How much did she know? Was she aware of what had happened? Did she know who I’d been with? Was she working with them, or were they, as they claimed, working against her in secr
et? Could anyone really keep a secret from God? It was impossible to read those green, electric, luminescent eyes.
“Well? Is it out of your system?” she asked me finally.
“I-I’m sorry,” I replied, my voice muffled by the swelling of my jaw and mouth.
She sighed and mercifully released me from her gaze as she shut her eyes and shook her head. “It’s understandable. I’m not mad.”
I stayed as still as I could, nearly praying that Kali wasn’t toying with me, yet not ready to sigh in relief.
“It was a lot to take in, to say the least,” she said, following it up with a smile. She tilted her head as she looked down at me as though I were a frightened child being spared from the wrath of an understanding parent.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, not knowing what else to say.
She audibly clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth before stepping toward me in her red pumps and her nearly skintight red dress. She crouched in front of me and outstretched her right hand, lightly touching my injured face with her palm, the gentle contact sending a burning sensation where the night stick had done its damage. “I think they broke your jaw.”
“I’ve been unconscious,” I mumbled, trying not to drool.
“Police brutality exists in every universe, I guess,” Kali observed. “Lucky for you, you have friends in high places—or one friend, at least.” She winked at me before smiling, tilting her head back, and closing her eyes.
I watched as her eyes moved rapidly under her lids—it was like watching someone in REM sleep. Is that what it’s like for her? I wondered. Was this her dream?
Then, amazingly, the pain in my jaw melted away. Within mere seconds, the agonizing, stabbing pain that had settled in my jawbone withdrew, the swelling of my lips retreated, and the salty, metallic taste of blood from the open wound on the inside of my mouth evaporated. My eyes opened in disbelief, meeting Kali’s as she blinked hers open.
Post-Human Series Books 1-4 Page 61