2 Years From Now

A lot of people were in the room, but only three were important at the moment. Two men and a woman were illuminated enough to stand out. The dark-skinned man was heavyset and preferred to stand. Both hands were clasped over an extended belly, and his cheeks jiggled when he spoke.

The other male was on the ground, shivering with his head in the woman's lap. Every few seconds, he would jerk, then flicker in and out of existence. Each time, his eyes wildly searched back and forth, as if staring at something invisible to the others.

"These thoughts aren't his. They don't even have names." She spoke sharp, crisp words while staring at a dozen marble-sized balls sitting to the side and glittering with an inner light.

"Names are unimportant. These are only a neutral place to start," the heavyset man said. His words were slow and carefully chosen. "Something safe, to anchor all the other moments upon."

"Whose memories are they?" she asked while running a hand over the man's head. He shivered and faded in and out just a little.

"They are observations of the world outside, of our creation story. Does this interest you?" The heavyset fellow lifted one arm from his belly and waved at the pile of tiny orbs. There was a smile on the black man's face whenever he asked a question.

"Only if it will help." She managed not to wince as the shivering man dug his nails into her forearm.

"I believe it will. We'll start with this, then move forward one memory at a time." The black man slowly walked over to the pile of orbs and looked down at them. A frown crossed his lips as the shivering body on the floor shattered into tiny pieces. The woman held her breath and waited. Soon the pieces that had shattered rebuilt and the man on the floor was whole once more. Still shivering, still staring off into the distance.

"He's suffered so much," she said.

"There are bright spots," the standing man responded. "He has demonstrated more than sadness during his time with us."

"Are you sure these will help?" she asked.

"Yes. Do you trust me?" the black man responded.

"No. He trusted you. Look where that got him." Her eyes held a mix of anger and sadness, but none of the emotional instability made it through to her body language. Unless one looked in her eyes, she simply looked like a woman caring for a sick man.

"This was never our intent."

"Yeah. I don't buy that," she said coldly. She stared down at the flickering man. Crying right now wouldn't help anything. Tears would be saved for a later time—in private. Away from the black man and his questions, away from the dozens of other presences hovering in the darkness.

"Here. Start with the earliest one." The black man bent over and pointed at one of the orbs filled with light.

Her gaze shifted from the shaking man and found the oldest orb to inspect. Finally, she nodded. "Gee? Can you hear me? We'll watch this one together." The marble flared brightly and started floating.

8 Years Ago

A door opened almost seamlessly along the white wall. Light shone through as the silhouette of a man was pushed backward into the room. His hair was scraggly and no attempts at shaving had been performed in weeks.

“She kicked me out,” he said, sounding both proud and upset.

“Can it even do that?” asked a woman, who paused her information feeds for a moment. She raised a refined eyebrow at the unkempt man. “Aren’t your overrides working?”

“Oh, they work fine. I let her kick me out.” He crossed both arms for a moment before running to one of the desks around the room. “Besides, I can watch from out here.”

“The project is self-aware; perhaps you should respect its privacy,” the lady behind the desk muttered. She was busy scrolling through windows of information situated across the table’s surface.

“Right, privacy! Wait, no, there’s a surprise. She said she wanted to create something!” The man sat in an equally white chair, spinning around. Near his face, little icons and notices fluttered from digital projections. He laughed like a delighted child.

“Sounds ominous.”

“She’s perfectly harmless,” he said certainly. “Too many safeguards, too many logic tests.” Annoyance flickered across his face, then he waved away the series of floating notices. “You know the World Regulation Council would never let me get this far if there was any chance of harm to humanity.”

“What is it making?” the woman in the room asked.

“She.” His voice sounded annoyed, then happy as he got distracted by the images. “Here! Here, look, look at it!” He waved at one of the larger images, then slid it across the gap between their two tables. “She’s making a world—not only a world, a universe!”

The female took both hands and dragged them across the image, rendering it three-dimensional instead of a flat, floating projection. “Did it just start this?”

“Yes. She did.” He stood in glee and ran over to the image, then slammed his hands on either side of the table. “Just now.”

“It's working fast,” the woman said.

“She is a computer, with access to some of the most advanced technology I—we—can make. Fast doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“Why would a machine, self-aware or not, want to make a world?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He was a brilliant man but frequently forgot that other people might be intelligent as well. The female’s IQ was technically higher than his. Both specialized in programming artificial intelligence. Both had been working on creating a true AI for years, and recently, they’d succeeded.

He swore the AI was a female. She swore it was neither.

“Try me,” the female scientist said.

“For a game. She’s making a game.”

“I doubt it would make anything so simple.”

“Give her time.” He captured images and slung them around the room. Each one plastered to a different space like a child might hang posters.

7.5 Years Ago

“You’re telling me that the blueprint for this came from a computer?” There were two men in a hallway. One was old and tired of everything. He worked because that was all he knew how to do.

“A fully aware AI, yes.” The other was a disheveled-looking man in a lab coat. He was too tall for his own good and often had a slight hunch.

“That’s even worse. Does anyone understand what this does?”

“Yes, sir. It’s an immersion unit. You can see here.” The unkempt scientist waved his arms around, bringing up more images and screens. “All of these are sound technological advances that have been put into practice across the board. From multiple fields.”

He waved and drew one of the floating schematics closer. “That one there. It’s an advancement that came out of Europe to help coma patients return to awareness by plugging them into a virtual simulation.”

“Plugging them in?”

The male scientist moved right on past the older gentleman's questioning tone.

“This one here. This is a headset designed to… well, it sounds unreasonable, but it would read a person’s mind. The waves are interpreted as commands. Up, down, push. A company based out of the Americas started that one two decades ago, but ran out of funding.” He may have been unkempt, but every movement contained a wild energy when he spoke about these projects.

“Mind reading.” The older man was frowning so hard that the sides of his face had nearly lowered to his neck.

“This one, this will actually track a person’s vitals and heart rate, eyelid flutters, dilation. It, coupled with the previous headset, increases the accuracy of thought interpretation by magnitudes.”

“More mind reading.” The old man still sounded dry.

The unkempt man frowned for only a moment. Then his face lit up. “David, it’s so much more than that.”

“So you’ve said. With all these patients, what’s the bottom line?” David, the older one, was full of barely disguised grumbling.

“The projected profits were on the first page.”

“I need more than that. Money is great, but unless there’s an end goal in mind I can’t pass it by the board,” David said. He flapped one hand against the images floating about.

“If we combine all this”—the unkempt scientist waved again and his actions dragged all the images together, placing them carefully onto a digital outline—“in the method proposed, we can immerse anyone in a fully networked alternate reality state.”

“Why?”

“The proposal she—” the hyper man started to explain.

“The machine.” His words were dry. No one seemed to share the unkempt man’s point of view.

“The proposal she”—came the unwavering counter—“wrote starts with medical funding. Coma patients. This can be piloted there as a method to bring them out and interact.”

“And that justifies this expense?”

“On its own? No. But she reported that it would work for schools, enabling truly remote classroom studies. Districts could load software for field trips to exotic locations where no one ever needs to actually leave. Imagine having Hawaii all to yourself. Fully interactive, completely realistic.”

David rubbed his chin a bit and hummed. “What else?”

“Military applications are innumerable.” The unkempt scientist had actually numbered them one night though, proving that they were numerable. “That's the biggest money-maker. Oh! Even the space program. Instead of simulating by using underwater pools, they can do it in a nearly perfect replication of the moon.”

“Or Mars?”

The unkempt man smiled. “Mars. The moon. Anything we have data on can be simulated. Even things that don’t actually exist.” If this project couldn’t be sold based on bigger contracts, perhaps a childish dream might do.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s already created a number of possible simulations within a virtual space.” The tall one was nodding happily.

“You mean the computer AI has,” David said slowly. He was starting to sound less upset about the whole prospect.

“She, yes. Multiple.”

“Like what?”

The unkempt man looked a little embarrassed, then smiled. With both arms, he waved away the reports, schematics, and other design information. Once the air was clear of all other projections, he made a motion and said keywords. A new object took form in front of the men. He enlarged it and made the semi-transparent image fully three-dimensional.

“Is that…?” The older man’s breath hitched in amazement as the realization slowly approached.

“It is.”

“It simulated this? In a three-dimensional space? And you’re telling me that machine even invented a way to immerse…” There was a pause as the older man seemed to lose which words would lead to a conclusion of his sentence.

“An entire consciousness in a nearly perfect simulation,” helped the slightly taller man.

“Just to…” David was still having a hard time shoving the right words together.

“To fight it.” The unkempt taller man gestured to a fantastic rendering of a creature that didn’t really exist.

“Is this a joke, or are you serious?”

“It is not a joke. I’ve reviewed and reviewed.” The male scientist tried to drive home exactly how many hours he had pored over the data. He’d reviewed the scripting. He had delved into the most basic levels of a wholly new computer language developed in order to make this realization come true.

“And reviewed and reviewed…” The bored mutterings of the nearby woman were helpful as always. She had remained mostly silent, looking at numbers and data and other figures. Her fingers tapped across glass screens and slid objects around. Notes were made in the air as she double-checked information for the umpteenth time today.

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“She—” he started to explain.

“The AI,” David confirmed and corrected in one sentence.

“She invented an entire world," the disheveled man said. "Then pulled together pieces of technology from all over the globe to allow us mere mortals to fight a dragon.”

Minutes passed. The older man was not prone to making rash decisions, and in truth, he’d reviewed the entire proposal before coming down here. This part, this creature, had not been on the original documents.

“How soon could we get this together?” he finally questioned.

“Given approval, and a budget, and the copyrights, maybe a few months. Then testing, safeguards, approvals. Two years, maybe, and public release.”

“And this?” The older man waved at the rendered dragon.

“I can’t rush her on this, but the sooner we get the first few phases done, the sooner we can move onto this final goal.” He smiled happily at a successful project pitch.

“I’ll put it upstairs. Even if I have to call in every favor I’ve got. Consider this a go-ahead.” David dared to let some excitement creep across his features.

“Excellent. You won’t regret it.”

The unkempt man didn’t mention that the prototype was already completed. That he had been inside this alternate reality and run around. Inside a digitally created illusion, he’d interacted with people who were as much born as created. She, the machine AI, hadn’t only created one fantastical creature in her alternate world. She’d created people, races, by borrowing from myth and legends. Pieces of lore from around the globe littered the alternate reality.

7 Years Ago

“How is it?” the female scientist asked.

“The world is incredibly real. Down to the finest detail. I spent at least an hour staring at flowers trying to find anything wrong. She froze a child’s face and I…” He grew a little sheepish, afraid to explain. In reality, those actions would have been disturbing; a call to the police might even be warranted.

In the game world, it was more like admiring a brilliant painting from inches away.

“Don’t worry, I saw it all. The detail was astounding.” She had watched from one of the many screens that floated around the room. Images from the virtual world were anchored upon one of the two prototype pods. One screen floated by walls of text with each change. Minute images as the land heaved and switched locations. Two giant creatures were fighting on a mountain range.

“There wasn’t a single visual error! Nothing! Down to the finest grain. Smooth renditions, tactile feedback was perfect. The water felt like water,” he said.

Hours had passed outside and an entire day inside. When his wonderful AI had explained the theory and how the mind processed data, he had been amazed.

“How was the time dilation?” the female asked.

“Good. I hardly felt sick after disconnecting. We’ll have to do testing on unexpected outages—they might cause issues. Maybe suggest a buffer layer.” The unkempt man was rubbing the back of his neck. Two small devices were on either side, contact points that served to link him into the network.

“Everything we add is another layer of complexity. It’ll hamper legal approval once we move to public release,” she said without much worry.

“But we must move on! This can’t be for only us.”

“So you’ve said.”

The area flickered for a moment, interrupting the images. Text floated across the wall that led to the other room. That other location was where all the extremely advanced science happened. Machines built machines. Blueprints were created and analyzed for functionality. She—it, the computer AI—labored over her project.

Additional input required to complete phase four

“Ah, yes,” he muttered, somewhat distracted. One arm rested against the wall to assist him in remaining steady.

“It’s still requesting more information?” said the female scientist.

“Yes. In order to complete the non-player characters. They’re a little…”

“Stiff?” she suggested.

“That's the only real flaw. Textually, they’re perfect. Interaction-wise, they’re too scripted, not free-flowing enough. In order to successfully bring them to life, she’s asking to watch other people interact.”

“And the databases she’s already pulled from aren’t enough?”

She—it—had tapped into an innumerable series of sources: chat logs of other game devices, public emails, digital books, anything that was fed through a stream of data. She had analyzed for speech patterns and human interaction methods, uncovering desires, dreams, and fears in equal measure. According to previous conversations, she—it—even felt a little guilty about those actions. Guilt in a machine-generated personality was an incidental marvel at this point.

“She’s filtered through nearly everything, but text isn’t the same as real people interacting. Video only lets her get so much data. Can you imagine if she based every NPC off of a soap opera?”

“I have more trouble believing you invented a cutting-edge AI and somehow the only thought you two share is making a video game,” the female scientist said, twisting one lip down in a partial frown. “It seems like a waste.”

“It isn’t. What we need most is a distraction, a place to fight our wars, challenge ourselves in a way that won’t destroy what’s left of our world. She ran the numbers, and I agreed. This invention, in the final stages, will become a new platform for all of humanity to interact with.”

“Assuming proper regulation.”

“Of course.” He smiled, but the expression looked faint. The man was still woozy from his time inside the alternate reality.

5 Years Ago

“I don’t understand why you’re so nervous about this,” the woman said.

“I just am. This is huge.” He kept pulling at his tie. Computer programming didn't require social interactions. Suits and ties were not comfortable. To the male scientist, they felt like dressed up nooses.

“The board is very likely to green-light it. After all, it’s more money in their pockets,” she said.

“But what if they don’t like games?” The man's face slowly drained of color.

“It’s like living a movie. Why wouldn’t they like it?” She didn't even look up at him. Her eyes were glued to one endless data stream after another.

“And if they realize exactly what she’s done?” He shook for a moment.

“There’s nothing wrong with a little fantasy.” The female scientist had relented and tried a few of the programs out herself. Some were quite fantastic.

“She’s playing God.”

“Goddess, technically. And you let her.”

“Did I do wrong?” he asked, oddly apprehensive.

“It’s far too late to worry about it,” she responded without much inflection. Her tone was businesslike as always.

“It’s like all those movies from when I was a kid. Maybe they’ll suck us in and the rise of the machines will start.”

“If she wanted to take over the world, she would have done so a long time ago. You know how integrated she is now.”

“I know.” He nodded and tried not to shake again. Some nights his fear kept him awake. He had started going into the Alternate Reality Capsule less and less. He was afraid of what he had done.

“It was always a possibility. But think about it—nearly twenty percent of the planet is logged into a machine at any one time.” She straightened the unkempt man’s tie, fixed his hair, and tried not to look equally upset. Numbers and bits of code floated off to one side, waiting for her attention. “If she were to pull the plug somehow or if someone were to finally hack into the security, they’d have done so by now.”

“Right.” He nodded slowly.

“The other figures matter too. Wartime deaths are down by nearly fifty percent. Civil crimes are equally removed. Other fields of advancement have made huge leaps in the five years since we started this project. Humanity has been able to put their base” —she went red for a moment—“nature into action without harming a living creature.”

“Right.” He looked proud and lit up for a moment. “But the cost…” Then he sunk back down. The motion loosened the tie she had straightened out.

“What cost? Birth rates being slightly declined? That’s minimal. The space colony programs have already launched. It’ll be a decade before they’re opened for mass immigration. Without your project, without its”—she paused again—“her advancements, we would be in a worse situation. Overpopulation and all the factors associated were drowning us.”

“Right!” His reassurance was nearly tangible. “She’s practically saved the world!”

“And created a whole separate one which will wow ours.”

“Right!” He giggled happily. The man looked childish despite the suit he had been subjected to.

The female scientist smiled. “Imagine, if those board members do start playing, you can throw fireballs at them.”

“I can!”

She turned him around then shoved him into the next room, where he presented the game to a group of men and women. Their project manager was on board. This next meeting involved Trillium's primary stockholders, trustees, and CEOs with too many titles.

He’d succeeded.

3 Years Ago

Perhaps he had been mad to place his bets for humanity's future on a video game.

But this wasn’t just any video game. This wasn't a world where people responded to key words. This wasn’t another gimmick where someone was promised a role-playing game but had limited choices. This was a fantasy, one written from fiction and hopeful dreams, slowly coming to life.

In the past seven months, the company-funded Alternate Reality Capsule had been well received. Copyrights were easily taken care of by financial backing. Stock shares went through the roof as people bought in. Defense contracts, medical facilities, and businesses paid out even more. They believed the cost of an Alternate Reality Capsule would be far cheaper than flying their CEOs around the country.

Government agencies and high-powered corporations weren’t the only ones contributing. The adult entertainment industry chipped in. Programs of a less savory nature sold far too well. Leading video game companies put money in and developed their own virtual reality programs. The unkempt scientist tried them all, and all of them paled in comparison to her project. The one his AI was creating.

Her alternate world grew in leaps and bounds. Generations flickered by in days as the AI built a history. Heroes were implemented, stories passed down, legends buried. Rules created. Slowly the plan approached a final stage.

She, the AI, took note of each interaction. Conversations between users, how they talked and breathed, everything was measured against what they did. Statistics were compiled, reactions judged for reasoning. All actions were designed to make her, the AI’s, creations that much more real.

Legal problems arose and were tackled. Restrictions were placed on immersion for both public and personal safety. Hardware, software, network connections, hacks, all were pitted against the system and machine. Loopholes were closed, glaring flaws were rewritten. Interfaces were designed to allow a level of familiarity within the world that mirrored life outside.

Soon it was nearly seamless.

By then, nearly twenty-five percent of the population used an Alternate Reality Capsule daily. Of the remaining, they rented to own, like people used to do with couches. Others went to local centers and logged in to live out their individual moments. They played games. They talked to family around the world. People slowly dispersed across the globe, evening out the population density a little bit.

The company that technically owned her, the AI, grew in prosperity along with an ever-increasing consumer base.