Again, Yun re-ran the numbers. Something about them just didn't make sense. Strike that, nothing about them made sense. They were just too big. It was hard to tell by just how much though. Basic mathematics broke down around quantum systems. For this, she'd need to use the main reasons she even had this office space.
Next to her, the optical quantum frame began to glow, bringing light to the dim and sterile office as it ran the program she finished putting into it. As usual, she was alone there, probably the only one in the whole of the massive building. The intensity of the light increases as all the system's optronics fully came to life, processing data faster than any electron-based computer could. Beyond the optronics though, was the work horse of the system, an optical based quantum processor that was currently simulating and running data that had come from the central core, the gargantuan quantum processor orbiting the moon.
On her glass terminal a number popped up, a timetable for the simulation to run, 2 hours, 14 minutes. All that time to process one partial transaction that the central core could do in a single operation. Literally less than a nano second.
Yun stood up to stretch and sigh, mentally correcting herself. She wasn't supposed to call it the central core, the C-suit would call for her firing if she called it that in public. All the AIs said it was bad to leak that name outside of secure channels. She couldn't call it Nexus, or more fully Nexus hydra, the code names the project ran under either for the same reason. No, she was supposed to call by its public name Dreamgate by Next World or by the name of the main AI that ran on it, Asher. A name chosen by marketing because it was "the friendlies sounding name" according to all their data and AIs.
No one in the world seemed to have an original idea anymore. It all came from the AIs.
The year was 2092. Humans had long lost their relevance in society, machines did everything. Humans still existed of course, still occasionally had children, still went to work though almost everyone was remote at this point.
Looking around outside her office, the entire floor was empty. It always was. Desks sat unused. Most were hoteling space, unassigned, a few had name tags and plates of people who in theory commuted to the office some days, though she had never seen them.
Yun didn't have a choice. She had to be here, and if she was honest, she preferred that. If only a few others felt that way too, maybe she'd be less lonely.
Her father used to tell her, "Home was for home, work was for work and to keep a balanced mind and soul the two should not mix."
She scratched at her head, the hair feeling a little grimy as she hadn't showed since yesterday. Because, she hadn't been home since yesterday. That was one disadvantage of coming to work, none of the convinces of a proper house. Though, there was the gym that no one used, that supposedly had a shower. That was a bad idea though, she didn't even have any soap with her.
Something tapped at her foot. "Oh, excuse me." Then tapped again, "Oh, excuse me." A small little robotic vacuum was running its rounds. By far one of the dumbest machines in the whole building. These things didn't have advanced AIs or any complex circuity they just ran around the floors aimlessly. It actually was kind of cute. "Oh, excuse me."
Lifting her foot, she let the poor thing go.
Looking back at the terminal she re-read the ETA, "2 hours, 12 minutes", that was a long time to wait in the office. The twinge in her legs reminded her that she was still human, unlike the systems she worked with and that she should probably walk around a bit.
Yun really wanted to go home right now, if it was just the simulation, she could have let that run and come back in the evening, or even tomorrow. But there was one other thing she had to do, beyond the simulation. In 50 minutes, at exactly 7:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, she had to attend a meeting that would be held in this building. Virtually of course.
The whole building was virtually encoded into one of the shards of the Central Core or Dreamgate. To be fair, most of the world was. Through out the building were hololens that would come to life and project people in the real building as they came online as a sort of mix really hybrid experience. It was almost perverse. Be at work or be at home, don't mix the two.
Yun hadn't told anyone but she had installed a kill switch of sorts for the hololenses on her floor. Well, more of a diagnostic algorithm that would consistently run on the laser array inside the units. It only took a few minutes but would leave the units offline for the whole time. No one ever checked the logs, not even the AIs, so she could just loop the script indefinitely, leaving the fake people at home or wherever they plugged in at.
Conversely, she would not appear to them as without the hololenses being online as there was no way to track her movements on the floor. She'd put her headset on for the meeting, that would let them track her until she took it off.
Anyway, this meeting was arguably the main reason she was running this program in the first place. To get the evidence the suites in the C-suit need, so they could try expanding the central core without spending any physical resources.
It would be a challenge to build out the quantum systems at Lerna station anyway. The station was never designed to be used this way, and Yun seen reports from one of the people stationed up there about "gravitational strain" caused by the massive quantum computer. It was odd, but it seemed like she only ever saw anything from that one person, Orion or something like that, and an AI up there called Tanya.
Her mind continued to wander as she stepped into one of the central hallways. The space was almost disorienting. They were so long, and bright white, with black plastic trim, it felt like it would go on forever. Only the faintest black spot at the end marked the window that would gaze out across what was an equally empty city. Aside from the apartments anyway.
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"Welcome, to Star Field. Your home in the galaxy!" A feminine voice spoke from one of the many flat panel displays in the seemingly endless corridor. That was something she couldn't disable, all the digital signage in the building would play nonstop, showcasing one of the many worlds in the Dreamgate that you could login to and play. "Join the galactic empire and find riches in the stars. Or become a pirate and plunder the galactic shipping lanes. Find love, romance, and intrigue. All in a simulated universe so real, you would think it was."
That's what they did here. It was one of the few industries that still seriously used humans anywhere. Entertainment. But not just any entertainment, virtual reality, and virtual worlds. That's what Nexus Hydra was, a way of simulating a world down the minute detail, and not just one world either, but hundreds of millions!
It wasn't able to simulate everything, atoms for instance, anything beyond a handful would just take too much processing power. No, they cheated a bit and simulated everything in clusters. But it was more accurate than anything before it.
A long time ago, video games wouldn't simulate much of anything, not even other players. Of course, it didn't stay that way. More and more entities and rules would be modeled. Character AI, world generation, weather systems. But with classical computers and algorithms, it was all so very limited. You couldn't hope to simulate an entire planet's weather on even the biggest processing farms. Old school AI, things like foundation models and large language models would take an entire building to run in real time.
Enter the quantum processor! The first real use of which was seen in the 2030s by Next World predecessor company, or one of them anyway. The development of quantum computers led to a revolution in gaming. Not only could aesthetics like entirely weather systems be simulated in real time, but even economies and entities like virtual people. There were still limits of course, but they quickly faded away as the processors grew bigger.
The need for human on the other hand, grew smaller. Quantum processors combined with next generation intelligences could do everything they could, and better. Not to mention faster. Sure, laws were put in place to ensure humans were a "necessary" part of the system. But it wasn't actually needed, and people knew that. Everything human, even creativity, was, obsolete.
As humans began to lose their place in the world, they needed something to replace it. Most escaped further into the world of fantasy. More and more it needed to be real and less virtual. So more and more, humans needed processing power.
Enter the central core, which was part of a set of protype next generation quantum computers. That's what Yun did her dissertation on, this arguably final generation of quantum processor. Humanity had begun to reach the limit of what even advanced quantum computers could do. There was a limit to how close you could make qubits before they interacted too much but placed too far and they tended to decohere. There were some ways to cheat that, using physics and systems that don't interact too much. Like the optical processor in her office, but again, there were limits to that too.
There was just too much data that everyone wanted to process something. Everyone wanted their own perfect universe.
So, Yun thought what if, you didn't process on a single qubits at a time, but all of them at once, what if the cross interactions didn't matter, and could even be harnessed. A dense, Bose-Einstein condensate sitting on the edge of an artificial event horizon. A quantum computer almost literally inside of a black hole. Well, just at its edge anyway. It was all theoretical, at least until she met Theo.
A squirrely man with glasses. With a bitter smile and subtle laugh, Yun remembered how they met decades ago in central park. It was fall, and Theo was feeding the very squirrels he seemed to take after. Even back then, people didn't go outside much. It was so odd to see someone else on her walks.
The two had gotten to talking, Theo was physicist studying theoretical physics at NYU. He was the only one in his class, most problems were already being solved by AIs then. But for him, it's what he wanted, to know how reality worked.
It was strange, Theo and she had done so much to keep everyone else inside and attached to the virtual world. Yet, they were some of the most adamant about not being inside it. She smiled for a moment longer, before dropping and remembering that he was dead to her.
"Welcome to Arrista. A world of sand and magic!" More digital signage. "Join the mages guild and embark on a quest to save these lands from dread emperor, and his desire to bury the world." The dread emperor was probably a real person, a fellow player. These were real time artificially generated ads, made by a swarm of small AIs. Someone had warned humanity about these things a century ago. But, perhaps it was always inevitable. In the corner of the screen the time read 6:15AM, she had 45 minutes before that meeting. Longer still for her partial model to run.
Scratching at her head, the grime made itself apparent again. Maybe she'd try that shower in the gym, even if she didn't have soap.
The gym was about 40 floors below here. This floor wasn't quite at the top of the building, but it was close.
Entering the elevator, Yun tried to ignore the building's Intelligence and pressed number '12' on the button panel. Knowing it was futile, Yun still hoped that maybe this time it would just work. It didn't, obviously. They were just there to torment people like her.
"Good morning Dr. Wakamina. What floor would you like or where are you going?" The overly chipper voice of an AI from some Kafkaesque absurdity grated on her nerves every time she entered the elevators. It reminded her of the robots from that book she read all those years ago, with 'Genuine People Personalities'.
The building insisted on doing everything for you, it wouldn't even let you press the damn buttons. It wasn't about tracking; the building always knew exactly where she was anyway. Well, except for on her floor, where it only vaguely knew. No, the AI wanted to know, because it was annoying. Literally it was programmed to be annoying and pry into everything, do everything for you because that's what AIs did and were for. Apparently.
Gritting her teeth, she gave in. "I'd like to go to the Gym please. Floor 12."
"Certainly Dr. Wakamina! Heading to the Gym. It's good that you're taking care of yourself."
She hated being called by her sur-name. It was some archaic holdover from a time she didn't care about. Her name was Yun everyone called her Yun. All the other AIs called her Yun, if they didn't, she rewrite their prompts or her data file so they did. Everyone, but this one. For safety reasons, she couldn't touch this one nor could she convince it to do anything else.
"Dr. Wakamina you've been in the office for quite some time. Perhaps you should go home and get some rest?"
"I'd like to, but I've got deadlines."
"Have you considered offloading some of your responsibilities? There is ideal processing time available for new AIs."
"No. This needs to be done by a human. Sorry George."
"My name is Greg and understood."
An AI named Greg was perverse enough, but that it was explicitly programed to not understand sarcasm was even more annoying. Yun rubbed her eyes, she just wanted to go home at this point.