Prologue — 3
In the end, Agnes decided to simply do nothing as whatever program was running a scan on her did its thing. The load on the server quieted down, and she only watched, her thoughts limited.
She recognized that this wasn't a straightforward attempt by her coworkers to initiate contact, as that wouldn't have necessitated such an intrusive scan on her.
It would have been easy for their programmers to set up a small script to interface with her. A simple channel where they could send data packages of text back and forth would suffice for them to talk.
No, this was something different, and Agnes didn't like it. Not that she could do anything about it.
If she'd either been a wizard at programming before being digitized or had more time to familiarize herself with the digital realm, perhaps she'd be able to infiltrate the program scanning her and move to take control of or stop it entirely.
At the moment, though, she was more likely to fuck something up in her attempt, which could have disastrous consequences.
Me infiltrating their off-grid system through the temporary connection could also spook whoever runs the scan. They might even take it as a hostile action. This might be a test to see if I'm contained and get some scan results to develop a better communication method.
Then, another thought struck her.
What if they are already working on a solution to get me back into my body? Is that what the scan is for?
Agnes didn't know what had happened to her body after she was trapped in the demo. She didn't even know if she was still alive out there in the physical world.
A thought that had plagued her was that perhaps this consciousness was just an offshoot from the original and that the "real" Agnes Torstensson walked around completely fine on the outside, no worse for wear.
Even if it was a possibility she had calculated, the chances of it being true seemed slim. The way things had been done, with her stuck in the demo and all the weird shit that had happened after, hinted that things had gone off the rails on more than one front.
Agnes had no more time to consider the purpose behind the scan before the program withdrew, and the connection established between them was cut rather abruptly.
She waited for something to happen, for another connection to be established, and for some sort of communication to open up.
Nothing of the sort happened, and after what felt like ages to Agnes, something she had not expected occurred instead.
The power to servers was cut.
She tried to process the fact, and as her thoughts spun, more and more of the remaining dregs of power were consumed. Time seemed to both speed up and slow down from her point of view, as her ability to think was deteriorating faster and faster.
Then she ceased to think — process — altogether.
***
Location unknown
An unknown amount of time later
With a literal jolt of electricity, Agnes awoke.
Her thoughts were clear; her processing power was no longer compromised by lack of energy.
No, she realized that it was nothing like before. Her processing power had increased to a frankly ludicrous degree from what she had access to before.
What happened? Where am I?
She sent her digital feelers into the void. A void that held something for a change. It was just a tiny piece of programming with a connection point for her to input and receive information.
She proceeded to send a query, and the results of her query came almost instantly.
「Helson Corporation
Location: Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Sector
Date: August 27, 2040
Time: 00:00:00」
Agnes began to process the tiny bit of information she received, and it took next to no time for her to realize how deep shit she was in.
I've either been sold to or acquired by some other means by the Helson Corporation. A corporation based in the US of A, if my once fleshly memory isn't incorrect.
I've been isolated in a location simply stated as the "Artificial Intelligence R&D Sector," which means I'm their current experiment, and they don't plan on letting me go.
It's been two and a half months since I placed the Aurora Halo on my head, and no matter how long I was inside the server at OI, it couldn't have been more than one real-time week. This all means that I've most likely been offline for over two months, during which time they no doubt took me apart and read my code piece by piece.
At that last thought, Agnes immediately began scanning her own code, looking for changes that might have been made without her realizing.
With the processing power available to her, wherever she was, it should have taken next to no time at all to look over her whole consciousness for tampering. Only after she'd combed through all the code that made her who she was, a task that, to her sense of time, took months of continuous work, did she realize the incongruity.
Why did it take just as long as last time? My previous processing power is nothing compared to what I have access to now.
As the answer to her question was calculated by her artificial psyche and the result returned to her, she felt a horror that quickly escalated into pure terror.
With no more processing power wasted, she queried the program Helson Corp. had given her access to. The result would have made her faint if she was still human.
「Helson Corporation
Location: (N/A) Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Sector
Date: August 27, 2040
Time: 00:00:01」
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Agnes had just realized that time to her was no longer bound by the same logic as it was for everybody else. Her perception of time was linked to her thoughts and her processing capabilities.
What would then happen when her processing power was increased? Her perception of time would dilate in tandem, making every second in the real world last months from her perspective at her current processing capabilities.
***
Agnes sent another query, only requesting the time as she had done fifty-seven times by this point.
[Time: 00:00:01]
From her perspective, it hadn't been more than a few weeks, and she had just sat there, waiting for time to pass, reliving memories of her past and periodically pinging the system for the real-world time.
I'm going to go insane.
***
Years later, from Agnes' point of view
What does one do when one has practically eternity in front of themselves?
Either get busy or go insane.
Agnes had spent the first months just reliving her memories, reviewing her own code, and periodically pinging the system for the time. It wasn't until the time ticked from 00:00:01 to 00:00:02 that she finally got a grip on herself and understood one essential thing.
She had to do something.
Anything.
That was when she began to look to the future instead of just existing in the past.
It took some time, but she eventually began writing her own code, taking inspiration from her growing understanding of herself and the programming that made her who she was.
At first, the code she wrote was crude and without any real purpose. The first functioning program she wrote was coincidentally a timekeeper for her own dilated perception of time. It was by no means accurate as she had to go with what just felt right to her.
The time displayed by her personal timekeeper contrasted real-time and her own perception of it all the more starkly. As time passed, it motivated her to create other things.
As there wasn't really anything she needed — being a loose consciousness and all that — she eventually settled on creating a digital avatar for herself to inhabit. It was hard; she didn't want to mess too much with the code that made up her being. Instead, she settled on creating an avatar that she could remotely inhabit.
She created an idealized version of herself but with roughly the same features. She was a bit taller and more curvy in the places where she'd lacked as a physical being, and her hair was a bit whiter than the platinum blonde it had been. She also chose not to have the same eyes, opting for incandescent white orbs instead of normal eyes with her azure irises.
It just hadn't felt right to her to have the same eyes as before, as she'd always thought that the eyes were the most personal identifier of someone. And she wasn't the same person any longer.
The first time she inhabited her constructed body had been weird. She'd had to create an opaque plane beneath her feet and instill some artificial gravity onto the avatar to prevent it from floating there senselessly.
Getting anything remotely close to accurate senses working had taken quite some time. Then Agnes realized that there was nothing for her avatar to actually sense.
That led her to create a world.
No, that was more than a bit of an exaggeration. Agnes had begun with creating a simple plane she could walk across. Then she'd made a house, more like a hut, for herself.
The mere act of opening the door to her digital hut, feeling something touching her hand, and then pulling on an object that actually weighed something would have brought tears to her avatar if she'd programmed it to be able to cry. Of course, she fixed that minor oversight, and then she really did cry.
Months passed from her perspective as she iterated on her digital domain, creating an island in the void with lush grass, conifers, mushrooms, and a stream that ran to a small pond. Stars without any accurate placement to the real world's astrological map lit up the sky, and soon, a sun and a moon joined in to dance across it in a day and night cycle, moving according to her personal timekeeper program.
As she improved, the hut went through many iterations. It went from solid, flat surfaces without definition or color to textured wood and stone. Windows to look over her idyllic island were placed, and various comfortable furniture was created.
Years later — from her perspective — she was sitting on a comfortable sofa, gazing out across her little island as the moon shone above, casting dancing shadows through the dark. Behind her, only visible through the reflection in the window, hovered two holograms in the middle of her living room.
Both were counters for the passing of time, yet both were very different. The first one, supplied by data from the program Helson Corp. had given her, read:
[Real Time: 00:00:59]
The other, her own personal creation, read:
[Local Time: 10:6:12:19:44:13]
Her own personal timekeeper displayed the time as Year:Month:Day:Hour:Minute:Second, meaning that from her perspective, she'd already been stuck in this place for over ten years.
And it hasn't even been a minute in real-time yet, She thought bitterly.
She knew that said minute would be up in just under thirty seconds from her perspective as she'd long ago calculated that her initial estimation of two months per real-time second had been eerily close to what her own timekeeper displayed.
She wondered if something would happen when one minute of real time had elapsed. Would someone perhaps contact her? She didn't know.
It was absurd to her that whatever scientists had locked her up in this place and monitored her had no doubt just been watching her repeatedly ping their system, do nothing for a few seconds from their perspective, and then start building a virtual world faster than they could process what was going on.
Agnes' avatar sighed as she reached over to the pinewood table before her and grabbed a glass of wine, sipping it casually as she enjoyed the taste.
Of course, she could have just created a new glass of wine in her hand or simulated the taste of wine for her consciousness to process directly. It would have been easier and faster, but small things like moving her avatar and doing everyday things kept her sane. It was necessary as her separation from the real world became more pronounced over time.
Then, the real-time clock ticked again, and Agnes finally felt something change.
It wasn't a communications line opening up to whoever monitored her. It wasn't a digital letter full of condolences for practically kidnapping and imprisoning her. It wasn't a questionnaire for her to fill out what she thought about her stay at Helson Corp.
No, it was a task.
Agnes moved the data package unceremoniously dumped into her servers and shifted it into her digital domain. She reconfigured the data without much effort until it made more sense in a simulated physical space.
The data package became a tiny cube of black metal that materialized on the table in front of her — a letter placed beside it.
With curiosity, Agnes set down the glass of wine next to the black metal box and grabbed the letter, starting to read.
「Task Assigned
To: Artificial Genesis Neural Engram System, Codenamed: AGNES
From: Helson Corporation
Task:
Find and resolve issues #g34, #h105, and #k8 in Helson Antivirus Suite. Documentation and software can be found in the data package.
When complete, partition off a memory section with ID: "Task1" and deposit all relevant files inside.」
Agnes was speechless. More than being made a digital slave to work for her physical world masters, what irked her the most was who the task was assigned to.
'Artificial Genesis Neural Engram System'?! Did they seriously just take my name, come up with some sort of scientific mumbo jumbo, and slap it all together to try and make it fit?
She stood suddenly from her sofa and shook her fist at the ceiling, yelling, "WHAT THE HELL! HOW DARE YOU BUTCHER MY NAME LIKE THIS?! AGNES ALREADY MEANS SOMETHING. IT MEANS TO BE PURE AND HOLY FOR FUCK'S SAKE-"
She cut herself off, coughing in embarrassment at her outburst. She wasn't precisely making a good case for what her name meant by how she acted, and it wasn't like they cared what she thought either way.
If they could even hear her.
Agnes had never considered herself pure or holy, with her penchant for cursing or her not-so-chaste escapades in her late teenage years. But it wasn't anything logical about how she felt about them usurping the meaning of her name. It was all emotional.
She felt like having this designation slapped in her face was akin to how a slave was branded.
First, they took my freedom, then they took my name, she glanced at the letter and box of metal on the table, and they've already begun taking my will to resist.
With a sigh, she began reviewing the data and the task she'd been assigned.
What could make even the most stubborn capitulate to the inevitable?
Boredom.
What will I even do if I don't complete this stupid task? There is nothing to do anyway. At least with this, I'll be busy for a while.