Back on earth, in the large immaculate and virtually abandoned office building, a lone wander prepares to leave the claustrophobic confines of an elevator, without the even more suffocating AI that inhabited it.

"Welcome to floor 12 Dr. Wakamina. Please note the food court is currently offline, but vending machines are available for use. Have a good day!"

The food courts had been offline since the building was first opened in 2083. It never had enough occupants to justify turning everything on. But, for some reason, they still staffed the kitchens with robotics. Perhaps, just in case more than one person was ever in the building. It wasn’t like the machines cared in the end.

To be fair though, she doubted she was truly alone in the building. On very rare occasions, she could see the elevators would move to shuttle other people between floors, and once, months ago she even spotted a ghostly figure standing on this very floor in front of a vending machine. Her hopes of it being an actual ghost were quickly dashed when he ordered his own coffee and ran off back to wherever he came from.

In fact, it didn’t even matter that the kitchens were permanently offline, the vending machines were more than capable of preparing an actual meal if you wanted it. There was one that even produced synthetic smoked pork ribs if you felt like barbeque. Used the same vat grown meat as anywhere else, since animal meat was technically illegal in most of the states.

Yun struggled to remember a time when she had even seen a pig in real life. Some people still kept them as pets, but aside from the luddite collectives in the south, no one kept animals for food anymore.

Regardless, that's not why she was here. Her foot falls echoed in the pristine white and black hallway. The otherwise silent walk punctuated only by the occasional murmurings from digital sign that no one cared about. Finally, near the end of the hallway a set of bright and clear glass windows appeared, bright LED tubes lit the space up with a cool white light, picked specifically since most people became more alter and awake around this spectrum of light.

The building quickly recognized it was her and knew that she had access. The doors opened almost silently, allowing her in the stale room that held a light odder of metal and volatile organics. The AI Greg was in control of most building access, but it didn't say anything to her as he opened the doors. Probably because there weren't any speakers nearby, thankfully.

Inside, there wasn't a speck of dust or a smidge of fingerprints anywhere, and not just because it was cleaned multiple times a day. Weights that had been sitting around since the building opened had long since started to leave permanent imprints in the otherwise immaculate foam floor. Never touched in their near decade of existence.

The weights weren't what she was looking for though, around the corner, hidden behind opaque glass was the shower room, at least that's what she remembered from her tour years ago. Again, the doors opened, and two banks of shower stalls were available for use. Technically, one was for men, and the other women, but like most things gender was not enforced, and each stall was isolated anyway so it's not like it mattered much.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the whole space though, was the soap vending machine near one of the shower banks. Had she known there was body and hair wash, she very well may have never left the building.

The showers were nice, for a gym anyway. Perhaps it was just because they were never used. The water flow was a little weak and the lather sat a bit longer than she liked on her skin and in her hair. But it got the job done and in the end she was clean. Did she even need to go home after this?

A part of her mused about living life in the massive building. It's not like she hadn't slept in her office before, and now with a known working shower it seemed almost enticing. For just a moment the thought seriously crossed her mind.

Her father's word echoed in her head once more. No, she couldn't stay here; home and work need to be separate. Shaking her head, the thoughts left her mind. Beside, who would take care of Bob if she lived at work. Maybe her sister?

Passing a mirror, she couldn't help but stare at her own reflection. She was perfectly middle height for the era, about five feet ten inches or so, her body wasn't much to speak of, but some might have liked it. Her shoulder length dark brown hair had natural curls in it, thanks to her mother's side. There were dark circles under her deep brown eyes. Eyes which seemed a bit more sunken than they had only a year ago, a reminder that she was exhausted, and that she was getting older. The subtle signs of wrinkles had just begun to make themselves known when she smiled or frowned. Which was fine since she always had the same flat expression anyway. Her Asian descent was obvious from her face but mixed with various the various other American nationalities. She was a healthy late 30s human mut, like many others in America.

And this mut needed coffee if she was going to be awake for that stupid meeting.

Back in the food court some of the robots had moved around. Preforming their daily, possibly even hourly cleaning and preparation for an opening that would not come. Yun didn't think they cared; at most they were just dumb AIs. Simple foundation models and visual systems running on a postage size processor that probably costs a few dollars at most.

They were irrelevant anyway, what she needed was in this vending machine right in front of her.

"Good morning Dr. Wakamina. Would you like a latte, or perhaps a cappuccino?"

Sometimes she seriously thought the AI was messing with her, since she couldn't handle milk very well. Even the synthetic stuff. Add to that she always ordered the same thing.

"Coffee, black. Light roast. 20 ozs."

"Coming right up!"

The smell of coffee and steam vented from the sides of the unit, and after about two minutes and half, a moderately sized compressed paper cup appeared. Greg might have been annoying, but he could at least brew coffee well enough.

"Thanks George."

"My name is Greg, and you're welcome Dr. Wakamina!"

Glancing at another sign, she spent a considerable amount of time in the shower, and it was getting dangerously close to 7:00, Yun hurried back to her office.

The time to finish the simulation had dropped to 1 hour and 23 minutes.

Yun put the very thin almost weightless head set on her head and over her eyes. In a second, the system dropped her into the building's virtual shard. Technically, there was a second delay between the quantum processors around the moon and the ones on earth, but you would never feel it because of all the advanced predictive processing systems on the planet. Which is what most people actually connected to.

Things like the gargantuan processors in the base of this building. All based on early generations of plasmatic quantum processors. And even in some spaces, like this building, based upon her own work early. It would be impressive, assuming anyone actually knew or cared.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Around her visions of digital ghost began to appear. Outside her office in that synthetic landscape, almost every cube was filled with fake people and fake props. Even many of the hoteling cubes had people sitting by. A few of the figments even waved to her. In theory, she oversaw a few of them. But it never felt that way, the AIs did most of the managing for her, she just rubber stamped the paperwork.

Even her own supervisor rarely did any actual supervising, maybe a question here or there. That was it.

In the virtual world, each cube was decorated with things that may have come from the real world at one time others, were likely from Virtual worlds. Photos and frames of people that might not even really exist. To her though, they were all little more than digital dust.

Suddenly all the ghosts were blocked from her vision as a video square appeared over top of everything else.

Ardman, the CEO of the company appeared, surrounded by other executive types at a large stable. Ardman was a strange person. Not a bad person per-say, but someone who was terminally online and never disconnected. He even slept with his headset on, which was becoming a growing trend. No one wanted to be part of the real world anymore. Yun couldn't really blame them, but it seemed sad. Like this was how her species would end, with a whimper as they all faded into this new digital oblivion, and here she was on the ground floor helping with that. Well, the 64th floor anyway.

Behind Ardman, a boardroom table and its members appeared. Names, she didn't give a damn about, aside from one. Theo. Who she also didn’t give a damn about, but at least knew.

"Good morning, everybody!" Ardman's energy reminded her of Greg turned up to 11.

"As you all know, second quarter growth has exceeded our wildest expectations!"

Of course, it did, they had brought the central core online about five years ago, but finally opened it up to the general public just last year. Not that it really mattered, finances today were all a dog and pony show. Ony the dog wasn't real, and pony was an AI who insisted you liked cream in your coffee. The point being, it didn’t really matter. Everyone’s basic needs were meet, and anything they could want existed in the virtual world.

"We have another 100 million people online, and will soon see a population over 3 billion!"

The human race numbered about 9.1 billion, down from its peak of just over 10 billion. Not because of war or famine, though mother nature certainly was trying on that last one. People just weren't having kids like they once did. Why would they? That would mean leaving the comfort of their own personal hideaways.

"The goal for this next quarter is going to be 200 million more online in our worlds!"

The sound of hands clapping rang through her headset, how many of those claps were real and how many were added by the AI administrating this meeting? Who could say. Many of the people here had long drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

“I’d like Theo to discuss some amazing news on a new breakthrough with the Dreamgate that will get us there, Theo?”

A disgusted sigh left Yun as she watched her former friend and romantic interest start talking. The man was just as squirrelly as he was back then. A part of her hated that she still found it endearing. That was then, this is now, she tried to remind herself. He was her boss or more accurately, her boss’ boss’ boss.

“We’ve made some new progress on the base technology used in the Dreamgate. As many of you know we’ve built the quantum processor around the moon to help limit and mitigate terrestrial interference. This allowed for our processors operate at densities that were unimaginable a decade ago. Well, we believe we’ve found a way to further remove some of the background noise and increase computational density by thousands, maybe even more!”

Suddenly Yun’s view of Theo as being squirrelly changed, he wasn’t a squirrel, he was just a rat in a tree. “Bunch of bullshit”, she mumbled to herself. He was lying to everyone.

The central core wasn’t kept in orbit because of interference. It was kept there because it a fucking black hole. Far larger than any quantum singularities they made on earth. Those were tiny by comparison, boarding on non-existent. The central core was much, much larger, and semi-stable. A true micro blackhole.

Theo knew that, and it was disturbing how few of those present really understood the gravity of that fact. He was also about having “found” extra processing capacity. Her own research wasn’t done, they had no hard proof of it. What if it turned out to be nothing? Suddenly she hoped that was the case.

Her mind tuned out the rest of the conversation. Listening only in the off chance her name was called. It happened before, once. Thankfully this wasn't such an occasion.

As the meeting ended, Yun was about to rip off her headset. Only to be stopped by a knock on her virtual door. It was Gloria, her immediate boss, the one that was right above her, unlike Theo who towered farther away. She must have been either waiting or used a command to “teleport” outside her office. In the virtual world, she always kept her door shut, locked and protected. No one could enter that space without talking to her. Not even security. At least, not technically.

“Yun, I need to talk to you.” Gloria was a generic office drone. Nice, but her manner and mind stuck in a time that no longer existed. But, her talents did find a spot in the larger corporation. Even in the late 21st century, they still needed pencil pushers, even if the pencils were just lines on a screen.

Her eyes peaked at her quantum frame, there was still several minutes to run the simulation. No doubt that's what she was here to talk about. "Ok, but my simulation is going to finish in a few minutes. I’ll need to work on that when it’s done…"

The office drone nodded her head like she understood. But even with the VR filters, it was obvious in her glazed eyes she had no idea what simulation Yun was talking about. “I understand there might be excess processing capacity in Dreamgate?” A complex question from a simple mind.

“Uh, maybe? Theo is jumping the gun a bit." Again, Yun looked at her quantum frame. After this was done, she'd have a better understanding of what was actually happening. Without that data though, this was still guessing work based upon hunches. Why was Theo already telling people this was a sure thing?

"That's not a yes or no."

"Like I said, I'm still running the simulation. The transaction records we have don’t make a lot of sense, there seems to be more qubits passed around than should be but-“

“Excellent! So that does means room for expansion!"

"MAYBE!" Yun practically shouted. "I'm not going to know for sure until my system is done with this partial transaction record. If anything does come from it, I'll have to run a simulation on a full record.” Yun paused, this seemed like a good time to bring up the next thing she’d need. “I'll need access to one of the main quantum frames in the basement if that’s the case. It’s too much data for my frame."

Gloria nodded. Yun was half expecting to hear a rattling sound from it as she moved. "Keep me informed. I'll let Jordin and Theo know it's a possibility!"

It took all of Yun effort not to scream. "Fine. Just… let me work and I'll get back to you."

She had no intention of getting back to her. If anything, she'd go to Jordin first.

With what little restrain she could manage, Yun pulled off her head set and sat it down on the desk. In the real world, her office was dead silent, only the hum of the optical resonators and fans in the quantum frame next to her gave a background static to the otherwise quite existence. Unlike the VR world, her actual door remained shut, mostly out of habit.

Something in her compelled her to open that door and peak outside. Empty cubes, and the early streams of the morning light. That was good, it meant she could now yell without anyone hearing her. Yun hated talking to Gloria. Jordin was at least bearable, in the rare cases she got to talk to him. As for Theo, they never talked anymore. Which was probably a good thing for the both of them.

On her screen, the greenish blue numbers ticked down until they hit zero. The system paused, passing its observed quantum data off to the classical computer next to it.

With the simulation finished, a single message appeared. "Transactions are not equal. Unknown error." That was it. A single message, telling her something she was hoping wouldn't appear. A few taps on the keyboard brought up a bit more information on the partial transaction. Not only were the numbers not equal, but they also weren't even close to the same ballpark. A single transaction should have had hundreds of trillions of Qubits, but these record fragments, had trillions upon trillions of times that density. Physically, it should not have been possible. Like asking for a cup of water and getting the Pacific Ocean several times over handed to you.

What’s worse, this was just the surface. It was a partial transaction, that number would almost certainly grow if she dug deeper. Which she now had to. Getting access to the processors in the basement would mean going through Jordin most likely. Which was still better than Gloria. It was also still possible that this was an anomaly, a single set of over loaded records, but that was unlikely.

Yun rubbed at her face, spreading wrinkles around as she contemplated just quitting. At the very least, she'd need more coffee.