Vyvani

Sabina and I stroll through the city. The sun has just begun to dip beneath the horizon—the sky is a collage of purples and reds and yellows. We no longer have our nightly dinners. I no longer exist in the organic—rather, my entire being has been written into a special database located within Sabina’s research center. The knowledge that I have no need to eat or sleep is unnerving; the fact that I would not be able to taste food or feel the satisfaction of a good night’s sleep is one that the human side of me, yet retained in my memories, has yet to come to terms with. A part of me feels powerful, and yet a smaller part of me realizes that to any other, I might be seen as uncanny and unnatural.

“The entire city is a fragment of the virtual that we have siphoned off from the rest of the web,” Sabina explains.

“What was the original point of it all?” I ask. “When I existed only as a brain?”

“What we were attempting to do was to evoke an emotional response from all different sorts of stimuli,” Sabina explains. “That is why this virtual city existed, nearly identical to its physical form. We wanted to observe your hormone levels, the emotions you were experiencing before making a decision, what you felt and thought while you looked at art, or even when you did something as simple as crossing the street.” She gestures around her at the AI NPCs walking in our midst. “The city was intentionally left empty in the beginning as well—to draw from you the reaction of loneliness you felt at the lack of signs of life and humanlike entities—to see the sort of response a lack of stimuli would draw.”

I nod. During our cognitive exercises, one of the exercises I would partake in would be those in which I would observe artworks from all throughout history, or watch videos and holograms of scenes which were meant to evoke different types of emotion.

“The data that Vermeta Corporation had gathered from their VR pods was refined to create the most advanced sorts of algorithms which were utilized to predict human behavior and preferences,” Sabina says. “But these algorithms are nowhere near perfect. There are always, always anomalies, and it was up to us to discover what caused those anomalies.”

Sabina leads me into an art gallery located within a cubicle building in the wealthy Andaka District. We gaze at a famous painting of a night sky. The stars appear as brilliant yellow suns floating within the swirling, frothy heavens. I can see the individual strokes of the painter's brush throughout the celestial scene.

“One of the most important things, Vyvani, the very core of what makes us human, is our emotions. Take this painting, for example. The artist was never appreciated during his lifetime. But now, it is considered a revolutionary work, comprised of artistic styles which broke new ground at the time. The works of this artist are among the most expensive paintings ever sold.”

Sabina turns to me, her face one of restrained exhilaration.

“So, this begs the question. What made it so great? The greatness of art is something that is difficult to break down into formula. What changed the public’s perception into considering this a masterpiece? Was it a shift in the societal flow, or was it the growth in the popularity of this style of painting within the mainstream which allowed his style to be recognized as pioneering? Or was it the artist’s own suicide which acted as the final required ingredient to wholly complete his body of work and catapult it into masterpiece status? Or even perhaps, if the same work was introduced into a totally different culture, would it have been as appreciated?”

I ponder her series of questions.

“There is an undefinable ‘sweet spot’ within us all, Vyvani. Tastes change over time, and as tastes are refined, we cast away those things which we no longer consider relevant or too childish, and accept new pleasures into our lives. And yet there are those who hold onto their nostalgia, and there are those who rediscover their 'childish' tastes even in old age; there are those who enjoy something because it is so bad, whereas others would not even deign it a second glance.

“This is one of the main missions of the Crystalline Towers. Our aim is to define that unexplainable part of the human soul, attempting to create a formula which we might insert into our own algorithms to perfect the ones already written by the Vermeta Corporation. You, as a whole, your whole being, is now within our systems. Using that data, we hope to be able to sift through and analyze the connections between your experiences and your preferences, the things that are the sum of Vyvani the human, to create code that might emulate emotional response.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“That is why we at first inserted you into this virtual world—to also determine how extraneous factors affect decision making. For instance, you may not enjoy pasta too much, but at times, the intake of a certain sort of stimuli sets off an insatiable hunger for pasta. We are trying to determine the parts which make up the sum in those decision-making processes.”

It is at that moment that I realize their true intent. “You are trying to create an omniscient AI.”

Sabina laughs. “We are. But not so that we might use it ourselves, but so that we can define a core set of tenets and guidelines that corporations must follow when developing their own algorithms down the line. Because no one, no one, would benefit from a single corporation being able to develop an algorithm so powerful. The corporate entity with such power over our lives would have the ability to control the flow of society and use that to define the world according to their own devices. It is a tragedy of humankind, Vyvani, that we must first develop terrible weapons to prevent others from utilizing them, for it is impossible to halt the relentless march of technological advancement. Nuclear apocalypse in the Atomic Age was only prevented when the superpowers with the biggest guns, to the best of their abilities, prevented bad players from developing their own.

“The one advantage we have over such corporations at this time is that none of them have yet dared try their hand at human experimentation. That is still something that only government institutions, not corporations, have the power to engage in.” Sabina gives a wry smile. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”

I shake my head in disbelief and continue gazing at the painting. “Shora really had no idea what she was getting me into, did she.”

Sabina smiles sadly at the mention of Shora. “Like I said, no one knows of the depth or the true nature of this project. Most, including Shora and Anzano, only thought of it as a way to keep the brain alive separate body, to preserve human consciousness within the virtual when living in the physical is no longer possible. Treating the brain as a swappable hard drive, if you will.”

“I understand,” I say. “It’s quite interesting, really, your research.”

Sabina sighs happily. “You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that, Vyvani.”

I turn to her. “Why is that?”

“My son…” Sabina shakes her head. “He’s different. It’s very difficult to hold a conversation with him. Sometimes I wonder if I made him that way. When he was younger, I was quite the demanding mother.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” I offer the most comforting of smiles I can manage. “I’m sure you tried your best, and did what you thought was right. You can’t control all outcomes.”

Sabina’s eyes are glistening. “Thank you, Vyvani.”

***

Soon, Sabina clocks out for the night, her silhouette shimmering into a million pixels as she exits the VR pod she uses to access my world. As soon as she has gone, I manipulate the code—a circle widens before me out of thin air, and I walk through it, right into the database city. I have learned much since the first time my consciousness was copied into this place; I have taught myself to work through the obstacles in the code to allow myself to bend the laws of physics in order to do the impossible—teleportation, flying, etc.

A memory echoes from the crevices of my mind, and I remember that Vyvani in the real world had wanted to join the world of law and politics because of her father. Her father had once worked as a pilot of flightCraft, and the family had lived a relatively affluent lifestyle. Then, there came the consolidation of flight systems by Vermeta Corporation, allowing for the control of flightCraft through their own VRcomm systems. Technical skill and ability became legacy knowledge, and her father had lost his job to some kid in a VR pod.

Vyvani of the Crystalline Towers was no longer sure whether she was driven by such elementary desires as that, but she did remember the anger she had felt due to the disappearance of one of her classmates, Vorin, at the hands of the Shampai Group, or so she had expected.

And now, it appeared she might have a way to truly begin her desired work of unearthing the sins of corporations, rather than toiling as an intern with no real power or control.

During my time here, I have come to suspect that a consciousness or entity which dwells here in the virtual needs a physical space to which they are tied. For me, that would be the Crystalline Towers; and I believe that the holoViewers here, as well as the server towers, are linked to those who are somehow existing in the physical world while having their minds tied to this place. As for the existence of these holoViewers, I have yet to discover the reason for their placement here, and who else besides me, if anyone, is viewing them.

It would appear that the Kargu clan have somehow discovered a backdoor into the research of the Crystalline Towers and are utilizing it for their own purposes. That they have those with such technical expertise among their number shocks me. I had come to this conclusion one day during my observations of the holoViewers.

The holoViewer linked to the Kargu member named Baku had stopped playing following an incident in which he was shot several times in the head by another Joryoku woman. What was interesting, however, is that he appeared to have been revived soon afterwards, and his holoViewer resumed playing scenes of his daily activities. It would appear, however, that he retains no memories of the day he was killed. It seems as if the memories of the Joryoku linked to each holoViewer are uploaded to the database each night, else they are not retained.

But there is one, main thought which gnaws at the back of my mind, and that is that Kazin Moyashino yet lives. Seeing him was an infinitely pleasant surprise, and the fact that he was a Joryoku with an altered body captured my interest. It is my desire to somehow make contact with him, and converse with him.

He is, after all, Joryoku now, and those in the holoViewers seem to be his enemies. Perhaps, I might even be of help to his mission, whatever that may be.