Once on board, personal offices open up. Laptop wings unfold, ready to fly the digital sky. Cell phones are fed with loud attention from doting parents. Newspapers pounce and stretch.
Each in his or her own world. So many worlds. Such a small space.
Eyes see the world.
Eyes open and close.
Windows open and close.
Can windows see the world?
I recognize many faces.
My eyes meet those of another and eyebrows are raised in silent greeting. New guy. Whatshisname from Testing. On the edge of my tongue. What is his name?
I’ve been trying a new technique recently. Take the first name and last names of two famous people and imagine them standing on either side of the person you want to remember.
Tina Gibson? No. Silly.
Mel Turner? No no.
George Connery? No no no.
George Turner! Yes, it works. I can clearly see George Clooney and Tina Turner standing either side of geeky George. He smiles his vague smile, peering self-consciously over his glasses before returning to his laptop.
Geeky George Turner from the Testing team. He joined after I left for more interesting pastures. I used to write the tests. Now I run them and analyze the results. I think I was quite good at testing, because I understand how computers work.
People use computers.
Computers run programs.
People run to keep fit.
Are computers trying to keep fit?
Behind Geeky George I see the side of Craig’s face. He looks my way and leans over a little so that I can see him squint and pull a tongue at the back of Geeky George’s head.
I snicker in spite of myself and look away. The middle-aged woman sitting opposite gives me a cold glare.
Craig is one of the smartest people I know, but naughty. He loves his practical jokes, especially on middle managers who never know how to respond. His favourite is sending spoof emails inviting people for coffee and cake at some poor unsuspecting individual’s office.
I keep telling him he’ll get into trouble, but he just shrugs and gets a glint in his eye.
I suspect Bob will be given a wicked sense of humour if Craig has anything to do with it. Bob’s first act will be to send out an email announcing a manager’s sexual-realignment and asking everyone to call him Agnes in future.
People have a sense of humour.
Jokes make people laugh.
Hyenas laugh.
Do hyenas have a sense of humour?
The journey is slow. Progress is tedious. Storm damage on the line. Buildings stroll casually by.
The woman opposite me (Ms. Icy Glare) has picked up her broadsheet and I read the headlines. A hundred people killed by a truck bomb in some city in the Middle East. Further down the page, the search for a missing girl goes on after six weeks. Who was it who said: one death is a tragedy, two deaths a statistic?
The train picks up speed and I watch the houses go by faster and faster until the faces behind the windows become an anonymous blur. I wonder if they wonder about the people on the train. If a bomb exploded in my carriage and I died, would they spare me more than a glance at a headline?
Clocks have working parts.
People have working parts that keep us alive.
When our working parts stop moving we die.
When the working parts in clocks stop moving, do they die?
The train pulls into the station and there is a rush for the doors. Prospects to improve. Resumes to build. The second hand on my watch moves past the six. I hang back with my bag of deadlines. Craig is waiting as well. Bob will have to wait for his sense of humour.
I watch the crowd press into itself. So much anxiety in such a small place.
And why?
What drives us to do anything? What makes what are essentially bags of meat and bones in skirts and suits get up in the morning and do whatever it is we do?
At school my science teacher told us that you could buy all the ingredients for a human for about the same price as a fillet steak. That throw-away remark cost me many nights’ sleep as I pondered my own existence.
Was I nothing more than an extra rare steak?
Rene Descartes tried to find a starting point for his philosophies by asking what exactly it was he could know about himself for sure. He didn’t trust his senses and decided that it was only his ability to think that was proof of his existence.
An extra rare steak that can think? And not just think, but think about thinking, about thinking…
The door is almost clear. Craig is behind Geeky George again, this time mimicking his slightly lopsided shuffle. He throws me a cheeky grin as they step out onto the platform. I hold back, happy with my own thoughts. About life, the universe, and Bob.
Humans exist.
Computers exist.
Humans can think about thinking.
I do not understand…
The office is a block away and I stroll. Rush hour is chasing its last few victims. The sun peeks at me between two skyscrapers and I bask in a moment of warmth.
I offer my badge to the security guard and he barters me a bored nod.
I stand with two others watching the lift numbers jostling each other for position. I know the faces but not the names. We race upwards in awkward silence, offering subdued greetings at each stop.
My floor is already busy with changing the world. People stare closely into computer screens. Managers walk and talk. Messengers dodge and weave.
I find my desk and log in. A post-it note on my screen says: “nice tie”. I see Craig grinning at me from the coffee machine.
I wave my order. Cappuccino, with sugar please waiter.
I check my emails. The data loading job ran all the way through last night. No problems. No hiccups. Enough information to fill a few libraries. Enough to keep every project in the building busy.
But ours is only a small team dealing with basic logic skills. The important work is going on upstairs. Down here we do the baby stuff. The learning-how-to-say-Mama stuff.
“So,” Craig says, wheeling his chair across to my desk. “We ready to wake Bob?”
I load the program. The new improved program. A major upgrade from the last version.
A cursor blinks, waiting for me to type.
I open a slim folder containing a single sheet of paper. A list of trigger words and logic questions prepared by Geeky George and his team.
I tap out the first word: “Square.”
Bob responds.
A geometric shape. Four sides of equal length. Four angles of equal size. An area within a building. A nerd.
I type another word: “River.”
A narrow flowing body of water, moving from a higher elevation to a lower elevation. A final card dealt in poker. A vertical flow of spaces in a body of text.
I type: “Brother.”
A male sibling. A monk. An African American male.
I glance at Craig. Now for something a little harder.
“Love.”
An emotion rising from strong affection for another being. A scoring system in tennis. A county in Oklahoma.
“Happiness.”
An emotion denoted by feelings of pleasure and well-being. A rock band from Finland.
Craig raises an eyebrow.
“Wealth.”
Well-being. The possession of many items or characteristics of value. An abundance.
Good. He seems to able to cope with abstract concepts.
I ask: “What is the time?”
Eight twenty-three.
“How early is it?”
It is mid-morning. It is early in the working day. It is earlier than nine o’clock.
“How long is a piece of string”?
Craig points to the processing meter. This measures how much work the computer is doing. It peaks into the red for a moment.
That question does not make sense.
Good. “How high is up?”
The me
ter stabs into the red.
That question does not make sense.
I chuckle. “If all coal is black and all crows are black, are all crows coal?”
The meter hits the red and stays there for a few moments. One or two people look up from their computers.
No. This is a logic error.
“Give more detail on your last statement.”
If two objects share one characteristic, this does not mean they are the same object.
Excellent. Craig nods his approval.
I am at the end of the list. No more questions. I look at Craig, who seems to know what I’m thinking.
How about something really tough?
I pause, then type. “Who are you?”
Nothing happens. The screen is blank. For a moment it looks as if the program has frozen, or worse, crashed. Suddenly the meter hits the red and stays there.
I am me. I am myself. I am who I am. I think therefore I am. I am Bob…
There are shouts from around the office. People look up from their stations like meerkats trying to locate a yet-unidentified threat. “Who’s using all the processing power?” a manager demands.
I feel the heat rise into my face. The tie becomes a noose around my neck.
Craig sinks lower into his chair. Oh no. What have we done?
“The project upstairs! Dammit! Get me operations!”
Managers move from desk to desk looking panic-stricken. The meerkats search frantically…
I am an entity. I am an object. I am real. I exist. I am alive…
The manager shouts—screams—into the telephone. Just cut it! I don’t care! Shut the program down, dammit!
He looks up at me.
I look from him to my screen then back again. I raise my hand. No, wait.
I am…
~}~~~{~
Gizile cocked her head in thought and looked unseeing at the horizon.
“Worlds both real and unreal,” she murmured. “Life springing out of a machine.” Perhaps life was more than she imagined. Perhaps she was more than she gave herself credit for.
“Focus.”
Master Tok’s solitary word cut through her contemplation. She gritted her teeth, feeling as if she had been robbed of an epiphany that was just beyond reach. She looked down at the pool in time to see the ice form yet again. A steely-eyed woman, a tall man, and a strange horseless coach. Gizille leaned forward on her elbows.
~}~~~{~
When The Game Became Too Real—Ryan Grabow
An excerpt from the novel Caffeine
Virtual reality becomes less virtual every day.
By the end of the twenty-second century, today’s internet has become a universe unto itself: a place where the imagination of mankind is unleashed, where dreams are indistinguishable from reality. Brandon only wants the same as everyone else…to get away from his life for a few days. He’s played these Dynamic Reality games hundreds of times before.
When the AIs start acting strangely and his war-game begins tearing itself apart, Brandon realizes he is trapped in an environment he can’t control; then, finding a way back to a real-world that wasn’t so real, he questions whether he ever made it back at all.
Reality and fantasy have blurred. Brandon has been shut away from everything and everyone he knows. He demands answers, and finally he encounters the woman who had trapped him in the game, someone who is at home in the virtual world, someone who doesn’t seem quite human.
The rain curtain dissolved and I heard the sound of a car behind me. I stood frozen as the amai quietly walked past me.
“If that is the only course of action you will take,” she said in a flatter tone, “then that too is opened to you.”
I slowly turned and saw her holding the open door of a black limousine. The music from the bar behind me became louder. Friendly voices shouted my name and invited me into my captor’s more gentle, intended, method; but the door ahead of me held answers. I knew in my heart that the difficult path was the one I had to follow, even as everything in the place directed me away. Even the amai’s perky voice had become plain and unsympathetic.
“Now choose.”
~}~~~{~
I sat uneasily in the back of the limo, the only company being several monitors set to various cameras and broadcast networks. The door closed and the hologram vanished. The car started moving.
“Hey! Where are we—”
The woman appeared in the seat across from me, staring silently into me with hard green eyes, sitting unnaturally straight and giving off the body language of a statue.
“What do you require?”
“I, uh…” I blinked and remembered to breathe.
“Is aimless wandering all you do, Mr. Dauphin?”
“Yeah. Uh…” I took another breath and summoned my energy, finding anger. “Yeah! When I can’t reach my family or friends! When I’ve been kidnapped and held in DR! Yeah, I guess so!”
A glass of wine appeared in my hand.
“A ’62 Merlot. Good year. Please tell me what I can do to make up for your trouble.”
I let the glass fall. “Let me go and maybe I won’t press charges!”
The woman continued to stare unsympathetically. From her sea of apparent indifference, something rose up, barely detectable, hinting at frustration. Though the tone of her words remained flat, the pauses between them became shorter. “I’ve tried to follow, fool, guide, intimidate then impress you. What other kind of persuasion do I need to give?”
“Persuasion for what?”
She hesitated. “Call it research, for which you are an involuntary subject.”
I held out my hand in mock introduction. “I’m sorry, we still haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Brandon and y—”
“Brandon Sinden Dauphin of Los Angeles, California; born to Paul and Rachel Dauphin in Nampa, Idaho on the date September 12, 2154, as the youngest of two sons and one daughter. Registered to move to Los Angeles County on date September 15, 2177. Present address: 3400A He—”
“How did you learn so much about me? I’ve never even seen you before!”
“That isn’t relevant.”
“You were the one who caused those problems, right? Who caused my Korea simulation to blow itself up? Who caused… whatever that was at the… at the library?”
I detected frustration again and remembered the danger I was in, wondering if the hacker really was the type to kill someone, or if I’d even be her first victim. I realized that her behavior was just as the world outside had been, with everything a little off, cutting along the line between reality and fabrication. I found that I couldn’t read her at all, not because there was nothing to be read, but because I couldn’t understand what I saw.
Who am I up against? Have I done something to her? Is she unstable? Why is she so interested in me? Why won’t she just come out and say it?
“Your Korea program did what it was designed to,” she stated, “though I did not understand its appeal.”
“And when I got dizzy and almost descended?” I asked, remembering that someone had accessed my ascension booth earlier. “Was that you, too?”
“The construct suffered a break in consistency and your readings indicated a medical emergency. You were not experiencing one, and you are okay now.”
“So after this concern for my life, you threaten to kill me?”
“In exchange for your cooperation, I will consider letting you live.”
“You talk about death so casually,” I said. “I have a…”
Family? Friends? Fiancée? What do I have?
I groaned loudly to chase away the tears, wondering if I could even try to make a case to save my life, or if anyone would listen to it.
“I don’t want to die,” I said powerlessly.
“Is it so much of an offense?” she replied. “Death is part of life, thousands have died in the moment we’ve been talking; thousands more have been born to replace them. You are only one life.”
“My life means something to me. Couldn’t you have picked someone else?”
“And if I had, wouldn’t that person ask the same question?”
“I still don’t know who I’m talking to,” I said, less forcefully than I meant to.
“All that you need to know is that I’m not patient.”
I leaned back into the seat, matching eye contact but deciding to leave the next move to her. The eyes of my enemy were sharp and attentive, though I began to consider some naïve quality in her, and I hoped that it would expose a crack in her armor. Several seconds passed quietly before she finally seemed to receive the message I was sending.
The game is over, lady.
A new video monitor materialized between us. It was filled with images of action: happy people doing productive things, joyful jingles, optimistic sales pitches, and more of that which surrounded me on a daily basis. All carried promises of improving the quality of life. All were carefully constructed windows into truth and worlds of happiness.
“They’re all lies, aren’t they?” she said, with what almost seemed like regret.
“They’re commercials,” I replied. “That’s a music video… That’s a comedy… Of course it’s all made up, lady! Everyone knows that!”
“Yes… Perhaps everyone does,” she said, seeming to look for something in the images. “But I have speculated that there is an inspiration within them, some kind of validity. I believe that there are things about life that aren’t captured in media such as this. I want to know of them.” She looked directly at me again. “I want you to tell me the mean—”
“The meaning of life?” I suggested, using Ethan’s words.
“Yes.”
I looked out the window at the nighttime suburban landscape. “This is a joke. I think Dynamic Reality is getting to your head. Descend and get a self-help book, lady. I can’t help you. I won’t help you.”