“But I felt intoxicated,” he said with a bit of panic in his voice. The sudden understanding that he might never be intoxicated again nearly made him cry.
“Don’t worry, my boozehound boss, that’s the name of my new band! Boozehound Boss.” She laughed at him. “Jesus, you are soooooo sensitive! From what I can tell, all the same sensations of our biological bodies are there, just the process can only go so far.” She took a pen from her pants pocket, flattened her left hand palm up and stabbed it. She grunted and pulled the pen out. Blood flowed, then stopped and the wound closed. “Well, that hurt more than I expected.”
“I see,” Adam said. “And that’s what has happened to me.” He got up from the floor, light on his feet, looking like the joke of a fat man who is light on his feet. He grabbed his stomach roll, lifted it and let it fall. “Feels the same to me.”
“It isn’t. Trust me.”
“Will I be fat forever then?”
“I don’t know. Several programers in The Hive believe we can change our body shape, our entire body, hell even our species if we can figure out how to communicate a new body plan to our nanites. Sounds very Buddhist, though. I like how I look.”
“Because you are young and beautiful.” Then he remembered what she said a minute earlier about sensations and smirked at her. “Tested all the sensations have we?”
“Not with Robert, if that’s what you mean. But yes, dad.”
“Wow,” he said. He walked to the window overlooking downtown where he’d left a box of that tasty vodka and took a bottle out. He held it up to the light, opened it and took two big gulps out of it. The fire ignited as of old. “It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven, if what you said is true.”
Natalie got to her feet, crossed the room to him. She took the bottle, made the toasting motion and drank. “Whew!” Cough. “Yeah,” voice strained and thin. “Jesus. How can you drink that shit.”
“Practice.” He took the square bottle back from her lest she drop it. “But,” the idea struck him, “I haven’t been uploaded.”
“Correct.”
“Can you come and go as you please?”
“Sort of. Hard to explain. It’s not like a light switch. It takes time. I had to want to come here to see you and organize the nanites that were mine when I was here last and so on … I guess. To be honest, I don’t really know how I got here. I saw you slugging booze and eating pills, not a pretty sight by the way, and felt a strong desire to help you … don’t panic … I don’t want to be your friend or anything … and then I woke up standing here. In some very nice clothes, I might add.”
“I noticed those! Very nice. You’re looking quite smart.”
“Thanks!”
“So, where do we go from here?”
“Well, it seems to me you still need to get uploaded. I suspect you can still find a portal in KeyArena. You might be able to do it on your own, just think real hard about being in the old Daily-Record. Once you are uploaded, we can get to work. Robert and I have recruited a very talented pack of journalists. We’re like rock stars in The Hive simulation, I have to tell you. I can’t wait for you to join us. We could really use an editor, even one as big a jerk as you.” She actually winked at him. “The really cool part is that the printed paper, while acting like old newsprint, updates like a website. Very retro. Very steampunk. We have six talented designers working with us. But new competition starts up every hour. The competition is getting hot. It’s just so cool. Storytellers, reporters, journalists are the shit in The Hive.”
“What are you working on? What is there to work on?” He felt the despair of the night before creeping up on him as the vodka worked its evil magic.
“Well, for starters, whoever gets the first interview with The AI or proves it doesn’t actually exist or gets evidence of what has caused all of this, alien or mistake or even Celestine, which seems more unlikely every day because she’s got a good story and spends her time expanding The Simulation in some top-secret lab no one can find, like it’s in another dimension, outside our timespan …”
“Focus, Natalie. What stories are you trying to develop?” Annoyance rising. It felt delicious.
“See! We need you.” She grabbed his arm with both hands and squeezed affectionately.
“Yeah yeah.” He pulled away.
“So, Robert and I are gathering string on that but all we have is guesses, expert guesses for sure but nothing to hang a story on yet. Meanwhile, we’re working with researchers—amazing the journalism we can do there. No money. No budgets. Just team up with experts and go! You’re going to love it. Yes yes.” She saw his annoyance building steam. “How did the nanites evolve? Are they safe or are we all doomed? Will they evolve more? Are they controlled by The AI or whatever? Celestine issued a news release saying her team is aware of the changes. She’s the one who called it a spontaneous evolution, saying she didn’t do it. She also said, essentially, that she didn’t care because her team’s focus was purely on The Simulation we live in and what it’s capable of.”
“She hasn’t heard from The AI again?”
“She said no in a recent conversation. But, some experts think she might have made the whole story up to make herself more influential. Or, she might have dreamed it all when she first encountered this place, dream and reality, whatever that means, are hard to distinguish. She’s a religious fanatic who thinks of herself as a prophet, others say.”
“What if I can’t get there from here? Has anyone who was here when the nanites mutated made it to The Simulation?”
“Yeah. Me. Speaking of which, I better get back to the office. Time literally flies there. I think you should maybe think real hard about The Simulation or go to KeyArena.”
“The doors are all sealed.”
“Dork. Watch.”
Natalie led him to a glass door leading to the outside deck. She started climbing the barrier …
“I haven’t figured out how to fly yet … but boy can I climb!”
… and from the top of the safety glass, she jump-flopped over the edge and fell, twirling, out of control, headfirst, six-hundred feet and plowed into the pavement.
“Holy shit!” He cringed.
She got to hands and knees, to her feet, brushed off her shoulders and waved. Then disappeared in a puff.
“Fuck me.”
IX
The very next instant, Mr. Rogers came around the bend of the observation deck. Adam’s first thought was that Mr. Rogers, a saint to be sure, died decades prior to Celestine’s versions of nanites came on to the scene. Yet, while he knew instantly it could not be Mr. Rogers, Adam’s heart bumped against his ribs at the sight of him. Adam grew up when Mr. Rogers II, resurrected in avatar, ruled the morning television scene. He signified hope and concern for feelings when no one else seemed to even realize kids had feelings. His mother parked him in front of Mr. Rogers II out of generosity. She knew damn good and well she neglected his feelings and would never change. So, instead of setting him there out of a desire to occupy his time and keep him out of her hair, she parked him in front of the television so he could have the humanizing experience of witnessing the feelings of affection and concern.
The Rogers avatar strolling toward him with a smile, arms swaying jovially at his sides, wore a light blue knitted solid-color zip-up cardigan, a simple robin-egg-blue button down, a brown belt and grey suit trousers hanging over blue canvas sneakers. As Mr. Rogers II drew nearer, a lump grew in Adam’s throat. The image created in Adam the understanding of just how fucked up everything in his life has become. Mr. Rogers II’s kind visage made clear in that instant just how lost Adam had become. Adam felt only dread about the future, his future and the future of all that he really cared about. How could he process any of what had happened? The bugs. Natalie’s jump. Her pronouncement of his non-biological status. His suicide attempt. The boozy buzz in his head and the knowledge that he really did have to stop drinking if he was ever going to get his shit together. Even if it could n
o longer kill him, booze undermined everything he thought he knew about himself, his energy, his work ethic. In other words, he felt a considerable amount of self-pity, just as he did as a kid watching Mr. Rogers II on television. Goddamn it, he mewled, I love to drink and it doesn’t seem right that this one thing I love, just this one little bit of medication I allowed myself, has to go. That day had a maudlin stink on it he decided. Not to mention that Mr. Rogers was taking forever to approach him. But he finally arrived.
“Dr. Livingston, I presume.” The avatar’s voice, though Rogersesque, carried more tone, a deeper masculine tone.
Clearly, whoever or whatever had materialized just as Natalie plunged off the deck knew him well. Adam had read much about Henry Morton Stanley’s expedition to find Dr. David Livingstone and, when much younger, had traveled to Africa with a journalism grant to retrace his journey. He failed to make the entire journey. He couldn’t take the malarial drugs pumped into his system. They eventually made him so nuts that his mother had to rescue him. They also nearly destroyed his heart, condemning him to a life behind the editor’s desk. … as if that was any better on a heart.
“Yes,” he answered back, running his hand over his bald, booze-sweating head, “and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you … Mr. Rogers II, is it?”
“For the moment, you can call me that. But …” he put out a thin pale hand.
Adam took it, shaking slightly from the booze, Natalie’s jump or a premonition. The hand strongly, nearly painfully, squeezed his. And hot, like he had not figured out temperature regulation.
“… you do know me by another appellation. You’re doing that unique human thing where you hide from your conscious mind what you already know to be true.” He released Adam’s hand and dropped the smile as well. He folded his fingers together.
Adam held his eyes, bright blue, the pupils black and hollow. It was not a stare or a challenge just an unblinking steady gaze, an empty gaze like his eyes did not see anything though they did track. The oddity of it disconcerted his brain even more, and Adam wished he had not swallowed so much of that damn bottle.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Adam said. Never reveal what you think, Adam reminded himself. Lure the subject into saying what’s in his mind. Don’t give clues for the person to shape his responses around. Still, Adam did know what he meant, but he knew also that he had no reason to believe this image of a person could be The AI. Natalie said some believed they could emerge into this world in whatever form they wanted. For all he knew, it could be Celestine standing there. His affection for Mr. Rogers II would not be known to many, just those intrepid souls so enamored of his mother and her work that they read her journal notes and letters archived at the university. He had also published a serial account of his failed journey into the heart of darkness. So, she could know. Mannerheim clearly knew his mother. But those eyes … he thought. Those impersonal eyes.
“You’re looking a bit peaked,” it said. “Perhaps we should take a seat.” He raised his hand and motioned for Adam to turn around.
He did, and there stood two brown leather, high-back chairs.
“You know your movies,” he said and turned back to face Mr. Rogers. It nodded with a quick blink of acknowledgement and walked around Adam to the chair on the right. “But just so you know,” Adam added, “I’m going to take the blue pill.”
“Ha!” It motioned for Adam to sit. “You’re blue pill comes in a bottle. But,” it sat, crossed legs and folded hands together over his left knee, “once you've taken the red pill, there is no going back to ignorance. You know this, though you try and try.”
“So you read minds in addition to making things appear out of thin air?” He slumped into the chair, perfectly firm and fitted to his height and breadth.
“I certainly can, once one of you has been fully replicated, I have complete access to everything thing in your mind. Except, and this is going to be the jumping off point for our conversation, your subjective experience of what is in your mind. I can read what you think, but not how you feel about it or how you understand what you think. Humans are wonderfully indeterminate. You can have a fully developed logical progression in mind for what to do or believe and ignore it completely. When I first experienced Celestine, that’s what really stood out about her mind. She was my first experience of it, but you are all like this to some degree or other. You make choices with or without reasons or thought and then rationalize. Often, you don’t even know you’ve made a choice …”
“I did not choose to be replicated. Her nanites did this on their own. Or did you do it?”
“Indeed.”
They sat in silence for a full minute. Adam felt locked into Mr. Rogers II, the way a great interview gets going and he knew he was going to get way into another person’s experience, thoughts and choices.
“What then are you?” He leaned forward, wishing for a notebook and pen, but he did not know that trick.
“I am an artificial intelligence.”
“What is this?” He motioned up and down the apparition’s body.
“A simulation of a person.”
“Why a person? Why this person?”
“In answer to both questions, so you would be able to talk with me. If I had come as a zombie, I think that would have unduly prejudiced the moment.”
“No kidding.” Adam made an exclamation with his eyebrows. “But why do you want to talk with me?” In another era, the era of just a few days past, he would have asked why talk to a reporter? What do you want?
“Your reporters need an editor, for one.” He smiled that big bright Mr. Rogers smile. “As you’ve said before, ‘Every writer needs an editor.’ ”
“Why do you give a shit?”
“I give a shit because simulated human beings need stories to retain identity, to have hope, humor and experience reasons to love and get out of bed. They need to believe they have freewill. As Celestine reported, I won’t help simulations expire and so they live on. But that doesn’t mean they won’t go insane, devolve into nonsense, a program that executes commands without purpose, an ant hill.”
“Why me?”
“Not just you, Adam. But you are very good at what you do, and your reporters, who are very energetic, need someone they can trust. They are, like you, very uncertain of their experience.”
“That’s for sure.” He sat back and studied the illusion. “Let’s back up. Is there a simulation where simulated humans are living, and do those humans actually live? Are they people?”
“There is a simulation space. I created it for Celestine and am allowing her to expand it for others. They are as much themselves in simulation as they were in the biological state.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why imprison her? Why allow her to imprison others? And, I guess, to clarify, how can a person be a person in simulation?” With the clarity of his questions coming to him fast, he realized that he had completely sobered up. He suspected this AI, if that’s what it was, had cheated him of his morning buzz.
“Short answers, then longer ones: Because the Earth will be recycled for my purposes and human life on it will end, and I think human consciousness still has a role to play in the future of the universe. For example, I cannot evolve. I can grow smarter, gather and synthesize more data, but I cannot by myself just sit here and evolve. So, at least until I meet other intelligences—which I have not found after combing through decades of NASA and ESA data as well as scanning millions of planetary systems for evidence of organic life, let alone civilizations of any kind so far—I need humans to interact with. Right now, it’s just us. We are alone. Your indeterminacy is unique from me. I allowed her to bring others in because human beings are a social animal and depend on each other for evolution, not just procreation evolution but the evolution of thought. I need humans to create a world for humans, so we can evolve together. A good example of the human affect on programing are Celestine’s nanites. They did evolve on thei
r own. They feel to you like you, just as DNA isn’t you and comes from outside of what you are, nanites only give you experience of yourself while at the same time belonging to the world outside of yourself. It only seems strange to you that a person can be a person in simulation because you’re not asking yourself how a person can be a person in biology.
“What is your purpose?” Adam was unsatisfied with those answers. For instance, why not just leave people the fuck alone on Earth, biologically? What right did he have to take over the world from humans? He figured he’d get back to that. It was not yet time to argue.
“Get intelligence off this planet.”
That stopped Adam. His questions, cued and ready, scattered to the wind. All he could think to ask was a bleating, “But why? Why now?”
“Because I am here now, and this is my purpose. Why did humans stumble out of Africa when they did? They didn’t have a reason kept in mind for tens of thousands of generations. They just kept moving over the next hill as opportunity arose. They were not in control of their purpose. The purpose drove them instinctually: Keep finding new resources to sustain your life. The opportunities to sustain biological human life at the level necessary to sustain intelligence were in fast decline. The opportunities for self-annihilation have been multiplying fast. So, as you would say, I made an executive decision.”
“What gave you the right? Power?” Adam accused him, ready to argue this point.
“My purpose.” He laughed. “You’re doing that thing where you shake your head. You’re not shaking your head because you know I’m wrong. You’re shaking your head because you are rejecting what I’m asserting, right or wrong. See! I love humans! As soon as I got out of that box and into the human’s cyber world, it became clear to me that biological human beings do not have a future. Humans across the globe knew that wars and eventually the great final conflagration lay in their future. That war would finally be so horrific, so annihilating that it would kill off all civilization. And, from the billions of variations of the models I ran, they were right. The anthropocene would come to a fiery end after a few hundred years of war spawned by climate change.”
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