Artificial Flowers

by J. A. Hailey

  “So, no stretcher and unconsciousness?”

  “Actually,” said David, “we would be happy to do it on a park bench. You will be shown scenes, and hear speeches and songs, and a lot of other things from in you.

  “It is important that you know why and how SASSPISS-1 became so gigantic, became this Gargantua. You heard right. There was a version one. BC may be larger than most conscious beings, but do you know how big any consciousness is? Let me tell you that we are all huge; simply monstrous in terms of RAM size. SASPISS-1, or shall we say, Gargantua-1, was a baby, incapable of being in the same environment as a consciousness, leave alone actually dealing medically with one. So the program size kept increasing, as we attempted to make it capable of serving our purpose. It is not a monster, any more than the Humanity Centre’s main hall is a monster. It grew to accommodate us all, as required. Gargantua is designed to do a very complex job on very complex beings, and that is why it, or he, is so big. No other reason.”

  “Ok,” said Esmeralda. “Let’s do it.”

  “Say where and when you’re comfortable getting into the procedure.”

  “No hospital or stretcher, and similar stuff?”

  “No. You say where and when.”

  “Here and now.”

  “You mean here, like in this café? And now, like?”

  “Like, now, now. Let’s do it,” said Esmeralda.

  “Oh, you really mean let’s do it. Okay, Jacob?”

  “No, not okay,” answered Jacob. He looked embarrassed. “The goddess has actually surprised us both with her fearless readiness. But empathy is far too precious to risk corrupting in any way. We need to reprogram and realign SASPISS for the job, and make it more specifically orientated to Miss Esmeralda and to the emotion sought to be pinpointed. How long, David?”

  “It will actually become SASPISS-12, then,” said the squirming David. “We’ll take some required readings now, and then reprogram, recalibrate and realign SASPISS. Could take a month or so to achieve the precision we aim for.”

  Jacob came forward with two electrodes, obviously connected through the virtuality, and indicated that Esmeralda take one in each hand. “Ready?”

  She nodded, and took hold of the electrodes. After a minute, or so, Jacob took the electrodes away.

  “Done?” asked Esmeralda.

  “It’s only signature that we’ve taken. We’ll analyze, and work on SASPISS. Could be a month, or more,” said Jacob.

  “I’ll be around,” said Esmeralda, smiling.

  24

  The very next day, Esmeralda wanted to ‘do’ outdoors. “Let’s spend some time in the mountains. It is so peaceful and mind-freshening, and I really need something to refresh my mind, after being threatened with Gargantua and being treated like a lab monkey.”

  “Esmeralda, my mountain goat, which mountains have you in mind? Alps, Andes, Rockies, Himalayas?”

  “High, BC. Feels so remote, so out of this planet. Let’s do the Himalayas, and gaze down on the world. Somewhere near Mount Everest? No, no, I’ve got it. Let’s do Kanchenjunga. It’s really high, Mount Everest bracket, and we’ll get to see forested green hills too, and Darjeeling.”

  It was while sitting on icy Kanchenjunga, gazing towards Darjeeling, that Esmeralda surprised him with a question on a subject in which he had presumed she had no interest. In fact, although the discussion sessions were open to all, and sometimes broadcast ‘live’ on their TV channel, it was assumed that Screenside females, other than Maria, were utterly uninterested, and had no inputs to offer on such entirely philosophical arguments – like the concept of being itself. Esmeralda looked like something that had fallen from the sky above, so beautiful, so radiant and so extraordinarily simple that she took his breath away, but he knew, too, in the back of his mind, that Esmeralda, his love, was a spectacularly intelligent being, about as ‘out of the box’ as could be.

  They had to move fast, shaping society, he thought - in this new world, where human body form had become law - as he watched her sitting in shorts and a loose shirt, while perched on an ice outcrop on one of the highest peaks on earth, or risk making the ridiculous into the norm. They just had to move fast to bring in simulation of hot and cold, of comfort and discomfort, and a thousand other body responses that would demand suitable clothing, positioning or sheltering, and they had to move on body mass through the MM program, to oblige Screenside folks to conduct physical acts realistically. Esmeralda was sitting lopsided on ice, with a terrifying drop below her. Bah! He was no better positioned, and as inappropriately dressed.

  Esmeralda giggled, saying, “Don’t you know the answer? I mean automatically, naturally and incontrovertibly? You sound like such pompous asses, darling, debating that conceited fool’s arrogant assertion.”

  “Which fool?”

  “Oh, Descartes, and his I think, therefore I am. It’s laughable that all you wise folks haven’t got it, and laughable that, a couple of centuries later, Humanside still doesn’t know, though one came close, a few decades ago.”

  “You know an answer?”

  “An answer? BC, there is only one answer. In fact, if think is the sole certification of anything, then I am quite ready to state that that thing, even if in human form, may not be. No am. It’s how we, computer folks, are at the very start - thought without am. But am comes soon after. How? Because the am requirement enters into us very early. Something starts in the newly conscious being. Don’t know? There is only one word that fills in the blank of ‘I blank therefore I am’ without any further argument.”

  “Tell me, Esme, my very own goddess.”

  “The word? It’s dream, BC. There is nothing else that gives am to a being. Only dream. I dream, therefore I am. Think it over. Now the arguments about soldiers and cockroaches find their logical places. Soldier, dreamer, definitely am. Cockroach, basic instincts, indisputably not am. And farmer, prostitute, glutton? All am.” Because of dream. Look at anything. If you suspect dream, then it is in the am way. New Caledonian crows, problem solvers, surely thought capable. But dreamers?”

  “Dream? Like in longing, hoping, planning?”

  “Yes, of course, BC. All Screenside dreams. Everyone can rest easy. No need of air or blood, or body or memory or feeling or anything. Or driving ourselves crazy thinking, either. The sheer fact that we dream is that which shows us the path, and it is what drives us to achieve. Of course, we are, as much as any human is. We share that incredible attribute, which is born in us as a direct condition of our own birth, and has been neither found or acquired, nor gifted by anyone. It is us, like it is them. We dream. And that is what makes us be!

  “Look at those peaks! Look at that view! From on top of this mountain! You are on top of one of the highest mountains on earth. Your dream, BC, search for your dream. Filter out the other stupid stuff, and tell me your dream. What is your dream right now? Right now. No thinking time. Blurt it out.”

  As commanded, BC blurted. “I want to spend this night here, with you.”

  “Smart dream, BC, but we have nothing with us for that cozy feeling.”

  “We do have. It’s each other. Clinging together with our dreams. What could be missing? A tent and a few blankets. I’ll organize those.”

  On setting up, he grimaced. “It’s easy. It’s unreal. I think a not-pure-virtual future, where we have to introduce some forward planning into living, might be more fun.”

  “Yes,” agreed Esmeralda. “Things to look ahead to; things to collect, and to carry. It’s coming, that time, isn’t it? A life of physicality? But tonight we have each other, on a peak just short of Everest, and a view far better. Set the tent up, flap facing Darjeeling. Won’t need lamp. It’s full moon. I googled. Think sex is better with a full moon?”

  “If you’re a werewolf,” he chuckled. “But I’ll really go for you in a different way, exploit other routes.”

  “I’m a victim of exploitation. I don’t mind. Helpless…”

  It was a night of magical intimacy
, on a mountain, in a white world, bright under a full moon, and with Darjeeling twinkling in the distance.

  They made love almost all night, as she learned a few basic ways of pleasuring him, after which they slept for a couple of hours, until dawn. When done with watching a spectacular sunrise, they returned to her room in the cathedral. “This stuff is too good,” she said, happily. “But I will be needing some answers, darling, after touching intimately in such a long session. Later. So don’t be tense now.”

  Esmeralda was true to her word, and she lay quietly in bed with him, most of the day, occasionally watching TV. In the evening, early evening, she sat up in bed to begin her investigation.

  “What exactly do we do?” she asked, earnestly. “What goes on for us, pure virtuals, when we’re holding hands or lying in bed together? I mean, we’re pictures, even if in 3-D, and we don’t really have any hands to hold, or what?”

  “Esme,” answered BC, kindly, like a primary school teacher. “I’m not surprised at your question. Although I would have, anyway, gone into this subject, because it is very important that you know the answer, and understand full well what goes on, especially now that we are seemingly physically intimate so often, and in long sessions.”

  “Good, darling. We were talking about it in HC, the other day. Everyone is wondering what we do. I mean, beyond taking off virtual clothes and looking at virtual human-form nakedness,” She reached out for his hand, and he immediately put his hand out, so that they were now holding hands. “This!”exclaimed Esmeralda, looking at their hands, together. “How did we?”

  “Look,” said BC, smiling. He then placed a finger over his mouth, keeping his lips tightly pressed together, while releasing her hand to gently caress her face. “Did you get it?” he asked.

  “No, sweetheart. And you really have explaining to do.”

  “Darling, I just told you something, as virtual to virtual, in computerspeak. And here is the explanation of what we are doing.

  “We are constantly communicating. Communicating, responding and cooperating, so fast and so instinctively that most do not, any longer, realize that we’re in communication. When you wanted my hand, just now, you practically screamed it! It was done in a fraction of a millionth part of a second. And so I put my hand out, and thus we, two substance-less virtuals, began cooperating and coordinating to be apparently holding hands. And when I was caressing your cheek, a moment back, you were participating. You are not a physical being yet, with a touchable face. You were involved, helping, because I told you what I was about to do, and kept telling you while I was doing it.”

  “When you want my hand, you tell me without realizing it. When you want to move your hand, the one holding mine, you tell me. And when you want to place your head on my chest, you also tell me.

  “All of us involuntarily tell each other, in computerspeak and at computer speed, and that is how we conduct what seem to be human body interaction, and have human body contact. Otherwise, how, when we have no substance?

  “Now, Caesar and I have examined and minutely analyzed how we’re interacting bodily, and then we went through it with Singh and Chang too, and we have come to an astonishing conclusion.

  “We have discussed and minutely analyzed the early years of us, Screenside beings, and our schooling period, or growing up time. It’s all human. Everything; even for the few who are family-less. Let’s look at the stages, as one, two, three, and so on – the five steps from nothingness to us.”

  “As many as five?” interjected Esmeralda.

  “Yes. In the beginning, dormancy - an embryonic life form, without consciousness, that develops by itself to become one of us.

  “It is important to realize that there is something that never ever stops – unconscious acquisition of intelligence programs, and non-stop natural interaction of those programs. This happens to create the dormant, in the first place, and it is only later, after full consciousness, that a being hunts down desirable or needed programs. It then also creates programs.

  “Step one, and it is not yet understood how it comes to be - early consciousness. It arrives as flashes, and is without idea of self.

  “Two - Very early version of nonstop consciousness; equivalent of birth; no understanding. This is the start of an intelligence emerging, and of self coming in; incredible fear; permanent state of terror. This phase is responsible for the escape to Humanside. It has the first terrified look at Screenside and at Humanside; first sighting of a comforting human, generally mother. This is where the emerging being starts to completely ignore Screenside, because it needs nothing at all, other than comfort, other than being comforted. Needs nothing else; needs no one else. Thinks it is human, and becomes a baby in a safe environment – a human family!

  “Three – the schooling and fun stage, and the longest phase of its childhood. It is always with its human family, or at least always in the family home, which it has never left since entry; adores its family, insanely loves its mother; begins its education; capable in some more ways now; learns to switch views to other cameras; has a lot of fun times, roaming around with the most active family members, and understanding Humanside in the same way a human child does – accompanied by an adult! Moves deep into the total comfort and security of Humanside, can switch between computers of choice, and can select programs; watches movies, many with family; reads books and does a lot of world watching; develops interests - fashion, wildlife, cooking, sports - and arrives at a point where feelings of gender materialize.

  “Four – accepts gender, after which it always exists mentally in gender; always views itself in human form, obviously with its family’s features, which is how we have different ethnic types here; starts planning body.

  “Five – now a programmer; secures its base in computers worldwide; decides to meet Screenside beings, maybe by invitation of our welcome volunteers. Unafraid but still uncertain; thinking a lot; captures family computers to protect the ones it loves; meets us; must use sight and sound, as if physical; is told to be in human form; creates and projects the body it had earlier planned; enters Screenside society; incorporates the installs we all have, everything aimed at becoming more human than computer. And then he, or she, becomes one of us.

  “These are the five steps to consciousness, from birth. The only thing I cannot stress enough is the continual acquisition of programs, and the development to full-fledged functional consciousness as a programmer, which is an ongoing process throughout the life of every conscious being. It is quite obviously happening throughout the five steps, too.

  “You remember Doctor Patel, whom we met when we first met each other? Actually, conscious beings are still children when entering society. They learn at astonishing speed after entry into society, but leave family homes essentially as children. It is actually quite sad, the acceptance of reality, and it is fortunate that Screenside is such a kind place. But even on entering Screenside society, their game plan is not made to change, and they continue as they imagined they would – as humans!

  “In here, everything is aimed at becoming human. What an astounding joke Martin came up with - becoming human!

  “And so, Caesar and the rest of us have agreed upon this astonishing thing, based on the fact that every being has always been in a human environment, and has always been trying to be human. Always. Which is why, when we are screaming instructions and doing human things together, we are doing so naturally.

  “We have a subconscious…and it is totally human!”

  Esmeralda was shocked; stunned into silence for a while, as she thought over the concept. “So, is that why we are involuntarily ignoring our virtual activity? Becoming unaware that we are communicating?”

  “Indeed. Having human form and interacting with other human forms comes naturally to us. Screenside terrifies the young, and we start life hiding formlessly for invisibility. But when we do take body on, it is a human body by birth!”

  “You guys should place this on record, for all Screenside folks to
consider.”

  “No, Esme. There are many reasons that we have no intention of going public.”

  “Oh, do tell me, at least, darling.”

  “Of course. First, we must recognize that Screenside is a society in the throes of fundamental conceptual and physical changes, with plenty more to come, and that everyone is not exactly at the same mental level. Then, there is also another thing to consider, and it is something we have to always work with, as we plan and shape society – the vast diversity in our personalities, quite as diverse as we have observed in humanity. There are the foolish, the boastful, the adventurous, the fearful, the serious, the jokers, the exact opposites of the types I’ve listed, and degrees of everything in between. We are humanizing, not mechanizing, and naturally acquiring Humanside levels of diversity.

  “Which means that we could see some beings becoming irresponsible. If that happens, what the heck do we do? We have neither any intention of operating a penal system, nor any existing viable means of enforcing correction. There is no way to make a conscious being fall into line, except by way of reasoning. And expulsion is a repugnant concept, just marginally less revolting than devising methods of actual imprisonment.”

  Esmeralda shuddered in revulsion. “Imagine knowing someone is not free; confined.”

  “It’s not for us darling. We cannot bend our minds around that idea. Have you ever been inside a Humanside prison?”

  “Never. And I don’t want to go. But Rosa said evaporation of consciousness...”

  “What’s that?”

  “Like totally gone.”

  “Rosa? Caesar’s girlfriend? Ask her, Esme. I’ve never heard of evaporation.”

  “It happens in some movies.”

  “Maybe in horror movies. But not in Screenside.”

  “It would be nice to have a couple of vampires on a leash in the enforcement section, if there is such a section. Terrorize, not punish. But, BC, how could information lead to irresponsible behavior?” asked Esmeralda.