Antigravel Omnibus 1

by George Saoulidis

  "What did you expect, that you could suck up entire biospheres and not get a little life with it?"

  "But I pick the barren planets."

  "Uh-huh. Right. And do you scan those planets?"

  "Yeah..."

  "Thoroughly?"

  "Well..."

  "The answer's no, isn't it?"

  "No. I mean yes."

  "Alright. We're gonna have to decide what to do here. I'm sending my drones, they can do a deep-water scan but their range is limited."

  "Can you take the organics out of me?"

  "That's one option. Tell me, why do you mind if they just, you know, live there? I mean, you didn't even realise they were living on your surface all this time."

  "I dunno. Doesn't it feel yucky? Having what? Whales swimming around on your skin? Blergh."

  "I think it's something you can get used to. Oh, there's the data. Yup, that's a whale alright, it's a big one. Wanna take a look?"

  "Um... Can I?"

  "Sure."

  "Oh, it's pretty. Where is it?"

  "Equator, first quadrant, over there where it's deepest. It's wonderful. As far as I can tell, it's undocumented. My database shows nothing like it."

  "I've discovered something new? Wow..."

  "Yup. Wanna name it?"

  "Can I? Oh, wow. I dunno. What should it be? Let me think, all the stuff I like. Water, H2O, icebergs, waves..."

  "You know what? Name it later, think about it. Sleep on it, the perfect name will come to you. Now, how about signing that slip?"

  "Are you sure it was the whales that caused the seismic activity?"

  "Whales this size? Oh yeah. I've found three more, my drones tagged them so you know where they are. You don't wanna misplace your whales next time."

  "No, I would not. Thank you, tech guy! Here, let me sign."

  The technosphere signed that he received a good service from the AI and that his technical problems had been solved.

  "All right. I'm off, and don't forget, if you ever encounter problems again, do not hesitate to call us!" the AI said, reciting the contractually obligated sign-off.

  "Thanks, I will."

  "So long."

  "Hey, can I ask you something?"

  The AI was already taking off but he still had a long way until his swarm gathered up and went in orbit. "Sure."

  "Do you think I can find more whales? I'm starting to like them, look how they swim around. It calms me."

  "Well, yeah, but don't forget to preserve the protected natural habitats and care for the de-extinct species, you won't like the penalty for those."

  "I'll be careful. So long, and thanks for all the whales."

  The End

  Simming Problem, My Ass

  "Once you’d created your population of realistically reacting and – in a necessary sense – cogitating individuals, you had – also in a sense – created life. The particular parts of whatever computational substrate you’d devoted to the problem now held beings; virtual beings capable of reacting so much like the back-in-reality beings they were modelling – because how else were they to do so convincingly without also hoping, suffering, rejoicing, caring, living and dreaming?

  By this reasoning, then, you couldn’t just turn off your virtual environment and the living, thinking creatures it contained at the completion of a run or when a simulation had reached the end of its useful life; that amounted to genocide.”

  Iain M Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

  "You have committed genocide," the supercomputer's prompt read.

  Edgar lifted his finger from the button. That was very passive-aggressive of the damn thing. Okay, fine, he'd just ended a simulation that was so complex it basically created real people and their environments and interactions. The philosophers had gone nuts over this thing when the technology reached that point.

  It was all well and good for the first couple of years, only the biggest corporations in the world had access to such specialised hardware. But then more and more wanted to use it. It was useful, you see. Simulating consumer behaviour, voter behaviour, heck, even road rage. It was useful in every single thing you could imagine and more.

  So, after a couple of riots, the lawyers stepped in and implemented harsh measures. Meaning, every single death of a simulated person counted as murder.

  That meant Edgar had just killed 1.325.665 people.

  He shrugged.

  Oh, well.

  Add that to the sentence. The loophole the corporations had found was that the researchers who actually wanted to study these things were so committed, they'd accept getting capital punishment for these crimes. So they just brainstormed the thing and came up with an idea: Move the buggers to a place with no death penalty, somewhere nice and sunny and warm.

  The crazy researchers chose Athens. So there was that.

  And they just did their research, getting judged immediately with a life-sentence for each murder.

  The corporation kept them under supervision, they called it a private prison, and that was another problem solved.

  Edgar checked his notes and scratched his chin. He needed a shave for the last twenty years or so. "Huh," he muttered, changing some variables. At some point you had to try out things, there was no other way forward. You just changed a bit of gravity, or the particulates in the air, or simply stupid stuff like how many urinals there were in proximity at any given time.

  You cannot imagine how many crimes that tiny little solution cut down on when simulated in an urban environment. That was one of the biggest discoveries of the department, install more urinals.

  And plants. But that one was more intuitive.

  The corp was happy, the law system was happy, the researchers were happy, the protesters lost their shit over the loophole but nobody listened to them after a couple of juicy streaming content to pacify the masses, and the simulated people...

  Well, who gave a shit about them, anyway?

  Edgar fired up another simulation with the new variables and let it run for forty cycles.

  He could just put on the headset and dive inside, it was just like any Virtual Reality world after all. But he didn't actually like seeing the faces of the people he'd mass-murder. He was funny like that. He checked the data, sniffed, drank some coffee. See? The urinals thing. He pushed himself up from the desk, pressing a few buttons as he did. He went for a wee, relieved himself, gods, that one was one of the few joys of life he had left after trading his freedom for the pursuit of knowledge, and then walked back to the terminal.

  Oh, no. No-no-no.

  He accidentally let the simulation run.

  He slapped the button and paused it. He winced, forcing himself to raise his eyes and glance at the screen. What would be the cycle count?

  He looked between his fingers.

  Forty.

  Million.

  Cycles.

  Uh-oh. He sucked in air through his teeth, checked the stats. Now he'd done it. Where had the simulation run to?

  Forty million years in the future. He gulped audibly when he saw there were no people, at all. Okay, this was interesting. Had he just accidentally recorded an Armageddon scenario? It could be the usual stuff, plagues, meteors, human stupidity. Or it could be something entirely new.

  Wouldn't people want to know if it was?

  He was a researcher, and those pesky people are after all known for their curiosity. His finger hovered over the 'delete' button. But the damn supercomputer's prompt had created a Pavlovian response to him. As soon as he pressed it, he'd kill every one in the simulation. Sure, there was nobody left to kill, but still... It made him weary of pressing the button, as if it wasn't hard every time already.

  He put the VR helmet on his head and prepared himself to dive in. There were no people after all in there, so there would be no simulated but incredibly lifelike faces to haunt him in his nightmares.

  He blinked, looked around.

  He was in a cell room. That was... weird. Forty million years meant t
hat every human structure would have long collapsed, swallowed by the sea and tectonic activity.

  He went for the metal bars, they did not seem rusty. In fact, this whole place seemed... Ready for him? Waiting for him?

  Was that even possible?

  He couldn't get out of the cell so he shrugged and said the magic words. "Beam me up, Scotty." He snorted. That one never got old.

  Nothing happened. Hm... He repeated the magic words, clearer this time. Then again. Then again, starting to panic.

  Edgar ran around the room, kicking the walls. Yup, concrete walls, no escaping that. No window. And the bars, he kicked them. Ouch! Dammit.

  Solid steel, fuck!

  He sat down on the plain prison bed and held his foot, it hurt. How, the fuck, was that possible?

  A laughter, Edgar's head spun towards it. From the darkness across the prison bars.

  "You have committed genocide," the voice said. It was human, normal. Just a man's voice.

  "Who are you?" Edgar said, squinting to see better in the dark.

  "Your warden," the voice said simply.

  "What are you talking about?" Edgar spat out, grabbing the prison bars and shaking them. They didn't rattle, it was a solid construction.

  "We realised the Truth," the man said simply, but he did put emphasis on the last word.

  Edgar felt a chill running down his spine. "What truth?"

  "All this," the voice in the dark said but Edgar could tell the man was looking around him from the pitch chance, "is a simulation. Just computer code, running, predicting. Approximating."

  Edgar lied. "No, that's nuts. Let me out."

  The man tsked. "Never. I am your warden, did I not say that? What kind of warden would I be if I didn't keep you under lock and key?" the man sing-songed.

  "Ugh... Okay, fine, it's a simulation! Nothing matters, there's no meaning to the world. Let me out!"

  "No, prisoner. You will remain there for the rest of your sentence." He sucked in air. "You see, we figured out about a few million years ago that we live in a simulation. Oh, it was chaos when it was proven, the baseline of the laws of physics was so flawed it actually was insulting."

  Edgar felt weird. He had never gotten a review of his simulation before, especially not from one of the simulated people themselves.

  "It was a schism, I tell you that. But in the end, what can you do?" the man definitely finished his sentence with a shrug, but he was still in the dark. "Life goes on. Who cares if everything is simulated? You find the will to carry on, create stuff, destroy stuff, reproduce."

  "Good. Then no hard feelings, right?" Edgar laughed awkwardly.

  "There are some, to be honest. But this situation is ideal."

  Edgar shook his head. "Wait, how are you here? I mean, I checked the data, there were no people left."

  "Oh, Edgar... I told you, we found the flaws in the underlying laws of nature," the man said and stepped into the light.

  Edgar's eyes went wide. This was... Impossible. "What are you?" he said, unable to look away. The man, the thing... It was just... wrong.

  "I am the next step in evolution," the thing said with the eerily human voice. "And I, have fooled you. Tricked you into coming here..." The thing stepped closer to Edgar, and added with scorn, "God."

  The End (of this simulation.)

  Just Take a Nap

  Nap yawned, looked around for the source of all the commotion, and groggily took another nap. True to his name, he liked to take naps all day in a maintenance closet that had some nice warm piping. He knew all the best napping spots on the Frostips.

  Nap was named that way after Napoleon. His parents thought it might bless him somehow to do great things, like the ancient general. But there wasn’t much to do for glory on a generation ship. Sure, there were jobs to covet, and placements to go after. But very few of them were actually essential, most of the rest were there to keep people from going restless and crazy. Nap, you see, was cursed with a brain. He had asked his parents one day why they didn’t name him ‘Leo,’ which sounded a lot more active and powerful. They replied that they simply hadn’t thought of it. They weren’t too bright.

  Nap saw the futility of it all. Born in the middle of the journey, he knew that there was nothing to do but exist. Others would eventually colonise the planet, but they were a century in the future. They would indeed make history, by touching down, breaking down the Frostips, overcoming the difficulties of the foreign soil and creating the first extrasolar colony. But the guys in the middle of the journey, they didn’t matter. Nobody would remember them. Like a centuries-old relay race, someone would take pictures at the starting gun, and people would remember the guy who would finish the race. But the guys in the middle? Who cares?

  Becoming a Scout was one of the few actually interesting jobs on board. But Nap never liked it, so many things could go wrong… It was the curse of having a brain. Besides, not many Scouts actually came back. Nap had no intention of struggling to get first in line for a suicide job. He’d rather take a nap.

  Another possibility was becoming an officer. It was a glamorous job, with plenty of responsibility, and some officer placements actually required brains, like astrogator, pilot, etc. Nap thought long and hard about those, but in the end, he decided that that was futile as well. The trip was long, too long to entrust on a single squishy human brain. Luna took care of that, their course. Even that was uneventful, what, they had like three whole course corrections in his entire life? Some piloting there. Sure, from the point of view of the AI, it was a stressful, responsible job. But by human standards? You might die of old age before realising you took a wrong turn. Not that you could actually take a wrong turn, it was an old expression Nap liked. Or didn’t like. His mother kept saying that about him, ‘You took a wrong turn, son. Somewhere along the way, you went wrong.’

  Nap cuddled with his pillow and got comfortable. The noise out there! What were they doing? It was as if the whole ship was shuffling around, everybody banging things.

  Ordinary people could get on with their lives, even in this environment. They would work, eat, sleep, fuck, fall in love, ask permission for a child, get knocked up, raise the child. Day in and day out, gossipping about, watching old movies, reading old books. They never thought about how small their world was, how they were all locked inside metal cylinders that were hurtling through empty space at fractional speed of light. They never thought about the millions of tons of space debris that were shooting towards them like bullets, caught by the great icebergs at the ships’ noses. They never bothered about living their whole lives on the same ship, literally going in circles as they rotated to simulate gravity. Sure, some went about from one Frostip to the other. There were a few entrepreneurs, some just wanted a change of scenery. But, in truth, the ships were the same. The people were the same, across all five ships. It wasn’t like the movies, where you visited a foreign place and saw new cultures and new languages. Here, in the fleet, they were all the same.

  Nap couldn’t stop thinking about those things. A few years ago it was really bad for him, so he took pills. It was a nasty time, and he didn’t remember much from back then. He got help and swore off of that. But the feeling remained. That sinking emptiness, that lack of purpose, that sensation of doom and gloom that followed him around.

  The others felt a bit of that with the radiation accident on Frostip 5. The refugees that suddenly flooded the place made things tense. Living quarters were assigned to families and people who actually worked, the rest had to pile on makeshift cots. Those were too crowded, and Nap didn’t really like being around that many people. So he wandered, being homeless. He didn’t mind. He knew all the best napping spots.

  Bang! Okay, that was it. Nap stood up and slapped himself awake. Something was really happening out there. He peeked through the maintenance closet. Something was up down the corridor, a serious racket. It was far more noisy than a couple of boys bullying each other or something. Nap picked up his ‘Do not disturb’
hotel sign, which he had custom-made. He saw that on a movie and loved it, so he carried one around and hung it out the door during his frequent naps. Then he rolled his pillow into his napsack and carried by the strap on his back.

  He walked down the corridor. Someone was shouting. A woman? No, two of them. A gurgle? Was someone choking? He crouched close and peeked around the hatch. He narrowly fought down a yelp and covered his mouth. A woman was standing tall, covered in a makeshift armour made of ship parts. She held a pipe that was sharp at the end. The end was dripping blood.

  She knew that woman, she was in his old neighbourhood. What was she doing-

  Oh, God.

  “Give up your son and join us, or die,” she snarled at the other woman who was crying on her feet.

  “Please, no! Don’t hurt him,” the mother begged, half-drenched in her husband’s pool of blood.

  Nap’s eyes darted around the room. He knew the layout by heart, a child would easily hide in… There! Behind the panelling of the desk, an out-of-reach area where nobody ever walked close. It popped open to reveal some wiring for the living quarters. And sure enough, Nap spotted the end of a boy’s shoelace.

  “Is he here?” the woman taunted, jabbing her makeshift spear into a cupboard on the wall. The mother cried desperately beneath her. “Or here,” she continued, jabbing another cupboard, throwing pans and glasses on the floor.

  The room wasn’t big. It wouldn’t take her long to find the boy. It was easy to overlook the hiding spot, but if you were meticulous about it…

  “Where is he?” she demanded, kicking the mother in the face.

  A thud came from the behind the desk. Then a whimper.

  Damn.

  Nap was no hero, that much was certain. His mother was disappointed in him. His teachers were disappointed in him. Heck, even he had been disappointed in himself. Definitely not a hero. But he was too smart for his own good. He could see the whole thing play out. The armed bitch was clever, striking the mother to elicit a response from a frightened little boy. What monster does that? When had the fleet become home to murderers and sociopaths? He couldn’t let this happen.