“They’re delivering mail.”
“That’s fucking cool.”
“Yeah. That is fucking cool.”
“You were saying about The Twins?” She played with the string from the hoodie.
“I was saying I think … Oh, man look at that!”
The train entered what looked like downtown Los Angeles with thousands of people sword fighting in parks, lawns, on rooftops and along an over overpass.
“Tournament maybe.”
“And …”
“Yeah, I think they’ve pushed the limits of what a person can take. Any coherent version of themselves is gone, because they have ventured to the very edge of the human story, deep into psychologically unfolded territory of intelligence without identity. Their existential journey, if you will, isn’t giving them any meaning or purpose other than just getting a fix or causing a disruption.” He waited, but Alexandrine didn’t respond. “My oldest sister went through something similar in Real Earth. She did so many drugs, she couldn’t hold anything together even after she got off of the drugs. She lost jobs, her friends and her family and then her teeth and eventually her freedom and all the while blaming my parents. The way The Twins blame Celestine. Honestly. Sure. She had problems like lots of people. She also had some self-medication addictions, but she took the drugs. She went all in. That was her fault. She snorted and smoked and ate and shot up heroin until her brain was fried. That was, finally, her fault.”
“But she probably also needed and didn’t get the right help at the right time from your parents. Maybe they couldn’t give it, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t need it.”
“Where’s this wisdom of yours come from?”
“I see a lot.”
“I guess that would do it …” The train blew into a white zone. Buildings edged against the sky and each other, but pure white and indistinguishable from each other.
“The Twins,” she stood. “Let’s go see The Twins and get my mother’s friend back.”
Robert got up, with a questioning look.
“They were friends in school. That’s how I know her. It’s complicated. The Twins were helping my mother run her programs. But as you said, they’ve gone a little batty.”
“You are full of surprises.”
The train doors opened. In front of them, a white platform stood motionless. They stepped onto it and the train snapped away from them like a stretched rubber band released from their end.
XXII
Shot like a projectile out of a railgun, roaring through the thinning atmosphere, Celestine’s new suit or machinery (body?), she didn’t know what to call it, had generated enough electromagnetic repulsion across her skin (?) to launch herself from the nanite mass that had been Seattle at the trajectory and delta-v to hit, literally, the AI’s ever-growing Dyson Sphere. Reflecting on her rash impulse to find some way to get back inside the AI’s computational construct before it gathered up The Sim Kids in a very modern-day Pied Piper routine, she wondered if perhaps she’d overestimated her ability to use the mass of the main object in the AI’s version of an energy-collection system, a Dyson Swarm, to slow her approach from twenty-five-plus-thousand miles an hour, or splat-speed, to a couple hundred miles an hour, bounce-speed. Hitting the platform at splat-speed, she said in a lecture tone to, well, herself, might be more than this suit-thing can handle. Her first jump had been a reckless shot at Earth, sure. And she’d been lucky enough to hit pretty much on target, which was the Space Needle where Adam was sending out panic signals on all frequencies. She also had not been traveling at splat-speed and used the atmosphere to air-break to terminal velocity. She cleared the atmosphere in whiffs and glided silent and at what seemed, in the vacuum of space, to be a crawl. At this rate, she’d be days getting there. Plenty of time to explore the data she’d downloaded from the ship.
The story-version of the data, the paragraphs she would release for publication in The Simulation in response to the alarmist, oversimplified story Adam had published, would include tables of data, the theorems the AI used and explanatory equations. Yes, the AI was planning to send children from The Sim into deep space aboard spacecrafts in order to populate suitable exoplanets, but they wouldn’t be out there all alone nor completely out of contact with the Home Simulation.
The AI has modified the Earth’s largest supercollider to break apart and then reassemble particles with unique spin to make exotic chemical element that hits supersolidity with attributes of negative energy at temperatures much much higher than absolute zero. In fact, this new element retains its supersolid and superfluid properties, frictionless substances with quantum spin liquid characteristics, at the same temperature as the vacuum of space near earth, which is roughly 170 Kelvin, -103.15 Celsius or -153.67 Fahrenheit. With this new substance at that temperature, the AI is fusing enough negative mass together to create microscopic wormholes that are nevertheless big enough to send quantum-entangled particles through!
These particles will act as beacons guiding the spaceships over thousands of years to potentially habitable planets. The even more amazing feat is that the AI will send enough of these entangled particles to communicate complex code for updating and upgrading the ships’ technology over the millenniums they will travel. So, your kids will have the best of our world whenever their ship checks in with one of these wormhole repositories. They will be awakened and will be able to interact with the Home Simulation for hundreds of years at a time, until the ships enter another long phase of interstellar travel and they are put back in stasis. This is how the AI will ensure the spread and survival of Earth’s intelligences.
All the wormholes will tend to open in the direction of the massive gravity of the center of the Milky Way. So, that’s where not only they but we too are heading.
Yes, we too.
I have a plan for getting Sim Parents on those ships, not as Sims but as SuperBugs!
She wrote over that last line:
I have a plan for helping Sim Parents join their children on those interstellar ships. I’ll be announcing it soon in The Simulation. I also have a surprise for Bugs and The Sims that stay behind.
Time is short. Be ready. Stay tuned!
After polishing the sentences and weighing their tone, she sent the statement to The Sim Publication Union. Even the Earth, she’ll tell them via live broadcasting once back in The Sim, will eventually become an interstellar, perhaps even intergalactic, spaceship.
We are all going to be space travelers. She wouldn’t bother to tell them that resistance was futile. They had to know it by now; and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t.
XXIII
Robert and Alexandrine stepped off the platform, which disappeared when they left it, into the field of large rocks that surrounded The Twin’s compound. From the platform, they could see it glittering in the distance; but amid the stones, they couldn’t see past the rocks right around them. Now and then, as they threaded their way, one of them would climb a rock and align their trajectory. When they exited the rock field, they were just a few feet from the edge of the dome covering the white, windowless structures that housed The Twins’ operations. The dome itself looked like rainbow-infused liquid crystal. It glittered under the hot sun.
“Well.” Alexandrine crossed her arms. “Shit.”
“You can’t just walk through it or something?”
“Nope. They have made some improvements since I was here last.” She drummed her fingers on her biceps.
“Well shit.”
“Exactly.”
“What do we do now?”
“Knock?”
Robert scanned the dome, arms open in question. “Any idea where the door is?”
Alexandrine didn’t answer. She formed one of the large stones into a video-game style mallet, lifted it high and swung it down and drove it against the crystal liquid, which evinced no evidence of the impact. The dome however rang like a dense, heavy bell. The impact propagated the smooth-toned hum deep within the lattice stru
cture of the material. She reared the makeshift hammer above her head, sleeves sliding down thin arms, but the hammer poofed into dust at the top of her lift.
“Lots of new tech.” Alexandrine patted her hands against the pullover top, dust bloomed. “But I suspect we rang their bell.”
“Wouldn’t be the first.” He didn’t catch himself in time to cancel the inappropriate innuendo.
“And not the last let’s hope.” She gave him a look around the edge of her hoodie that made him again wonder at her age. But then she giggled.
She’s in that moment between kid innocence and adult reality, though hers has been stretched out from months to years. “Indeed.” He played along. Who knows how this will end for any of us.
The dome began lifting at their feet with a cracking-rumble. The dome turned on an axis that raised the edge where they stood first and spread to the edge of how far they could see. It lifted six feet and stopped. Silence followed.
“After you.” Alexandrine swept her hand toward the opening.
“No. No. Strength before beauty.”
She laughed and stepped under the wide lip of the crystal dome.
Robert recognized the shade of milk white coating of the windowless buildings. He’d been pulled into a room coated in that very same white, which also gave off a feeling of thickness like pressed fingers would leave impressions in flesh, when The Twins gave him the video of Celestine discovering the AI had a wormhole … and then came on a little gropey. That memory he quickly shut down in case Alexandrine accidentally caught a brainwave from him. He had no idea how this interview would go if those two decided to attack first and ask questions later. He was only prepared for the ask-questions-first scenario. Alexandrine’s nonchalant demeanor on the other hand gave the impression that she was prepared for anything. He hoped on his side. He decided to test his theory as they stepped into a narrow opening between two tall, square, blank-white structures.
“They must know we’re here.” Robert followed close behind her. The rabbit ears bouncing in front of his eyes.
“Of course.”
“Why did they let us in?”
“I told them I’m helping you with a story.”
“Oh. Good plan.” A slight pang of journalistic guilt poked his conscience. Using journalism as a cover for spying or even freeing friends from crazy cultists in a computer simulation at the end of the human world as they knew it didn’t sit well. “Sort of.”
“Sort of a good plan?” Alexandrine stopped at the end of the cut between buildings.
They stood before an open courtyard, ringed by the same tall, white walls. A bright white ball hung from a tether attached to the dome above the ground in the center of the square. The spinning ball, about the size of a truck, slowed revealing square mirrored panes that reflected the muted light in all directions.
“A disco ball?” Robert shook his head.
“What’s disco?” She stepped forward.
“Good question.” He reached her shoulder and turned her to face him. “If you’re going to join me as a journalist, we can’t take sides. You can protect me, us, but we can’t free Marsel and Perran by force. Just the rules.”
The disco ball slowed to a stop.
“It’s just something I told them to get them to open the dome.” Her cheeks blushed.
“I know. It’s just the ethical rules of the game. You can be my journalism intern if you want. That just limits what you can do. The story can’t be about us.”
“You want me to go home?”
“Jesus, no. I’m just trying to keep things on the up and up here. We can’t take militaristic action. That’s just not our role here.”
“Got it.” She laughed. “So, if I get a chance to let Marsel out, I shouldn’t.”
“Complicated, isn’t it. I mean, I will ask them why they are holding them and what it will take to get them released. For all I know, they have a good reason, crazy as they are.”
“Interesting. I understand and agree.”
A line of the mirrored panels slid inward and tucked behind the adjacent lineup of panels. Steps began at the lip of the opening and climbed up out of sight.
Alexandrine stepped into the courtyard. “Just remember, what happens computationally out there somewhere,” waving her hand at the pale, borderless mist of a sky, “gets played out here as a simulated physical event.”
“You think things will get weird?” He stepped up to the disco ball behind her.
“One way to find out.” She began climbing. “Let’s go be journalists.”
“Let’s.” At least that put her on his side, like a power animal. He stepped off the white astroturf onto the first step.
XXIV
Adam, in a days-long, glorious stupor had been hallucinating the idea of flying around the earth in the saucer section of the Space Needle. Celestine shot off like a rocket, with no burst of flame or gushing gas. Natalie floated around like a pixie devil. Why can’t he fly around in the Space Needle? He could ferry Bios, Bugs and supplies from compound to compound. He could hold massive parties and lift everyone’s spirits and why not enjoy this life, if that’s what they were experiencing? He’s experiencing something and might as well call it life. So, live it up! He experienced these thoughts in a something like a dream state and so made no concrete plans. He did decide to humble himself and ask Natalie for help getting the Needle airborne. Then there she was, floating just outside the windows of the observation deck, the gale blowing her hair straight out sideways from her head. He blinked. Rubbed his eyes with the cool side of the highball glass. Looked again. Shit. He let himself sober up a little bit, just enough to talk without slurring his words. She floated to the door and let herself in. Adam raised his glass at her.
She snorted. “You know you don’t have to drink to be intoxicated.”
“And what would be the fun in that?”
“You’re so funny.” She plopped down in a recliner. “Don’t even know what world you’re living in or what you can do in it.”
Adam made his own chair with aplomb and let himself down into its puffy leather folds. “Funny you should mention that. I have a plan.”
“Oh, yeah?” She made herself a drink with a sprig of mint in a tall, narrow glass.
“Sort of. But let’s start with what brings you here.” She had that look on her face, mostly around her eyes. The one that said she intended to talk him into something.
“No. No. I want to hear your plan. After all, I’ve not had my first drink.” She sipped and rested the glass on the arm of the chair.
“You’re making me nervous …” He waved off her next words. “But! What do you say you help me figure out how to fly the saucer part, this part of the Space Needle?”
Natalie let her chin fall. Widened her eyes. “What made you think of that?” Had she leaked something of her intentions?
“Dreamt it.” He lit a cigarette. “What’s on that devious Bug mind of yours?”
“So glad you asked!” Big smile.
“You want to borrow my pad for a rendezvous?”
“Funny. No. I want you to take a little trip with me. To get right to the point.”
“A little trip where?”
“You remember those Bios that Grant and his family were running with?”
“I do.”
“Well, I know where they went and I want you to go with me to see them.”
“I’ll get to the why in a moment.” Puff. “First, though, where?”
“Close to Mount St. Helens, just south of there, actually.”
“What are they doing there? I thought they’d be living in ice tunnels or something. Can’t imaging living out there.”
“I went up there out of Portland to check on them and yeah it’s tough. They’re living in a two-and-a-half mile long lava tube called Ape Cave.”
“Why not Apeman Cave?”
“Don’t know.”
“What are they eating?”
“Animals they dig out of the i
ce. We, those of us Bugs who care, have also been dragging meat and what frozen green stuff we can find that people can eat.”
“What about canned food or emergency rations in government buid … Oh. Right. The metal. Tough. You think we can help them? Can they eat the stuff we can make?”
“That kid’s mother has another plan.”
“Alexandrine?”
“Right.”
“Heard from her and Robert?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, then.” Adam sighed. “What’s the plan?”
“Ever wonder why Bios stopped becoming Bugs?”
“I thought the going theory was that don’t live close enough to the energy pools to be replicated.”
“But the AI Personas, Alexandrine told us, carry little energy packs inside of themselves. If a little can be stored that way, then a lot can be.”
“Maybe the AI just doesn’t give a shit and is letting them all die off.”
“That is for sure happening. But, that said, I think and Alexandrine’s mother thinks it’s because most of us Bugs have been in The Simulation and other places, leaving behind the nanites that first copied and replaced our biological cells.”
“Shit.” Adam leaned forward onto this knees. “You’re kidding me. I’m the only one who hasn’t?”
“I don’t know about being the only one in the world, but you are the only one I know.”
“So, if you take me to them like some plague carrier, they might be changed?”
“Yes, though we’re not sure how to trigger it.” She pushed off her shoes and curled her feet under her. “We’ll have to experiment, maybe it will be as simple as you thinking about it. Maybe we’ll have to shoot them in their brains or something.”
“What if they don’t want them? What if they want to stay like they are?”
“They’ll die soon, but not everyone will want the same thing. I think some of the diehards, like my mom and her church friends, will allow themselves to die. But many won’t want to. They’ll go for it, I bet.”
“I bet so, too.” Now Adam smiled at the plan newly hatched in his head. “What if we flew there? In this! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Mind Hive Page 37