I was somewhat surprised as I showed up the following day to the other four huddled around the table. After a night of forcing myself to eat, failing to get lost in a TV show (playing any video game was utterly unreasonable at the moment), and tossing and turning in bed, I finally gave up and drove back to the office. It wasn’t even twilight outside.
I still felt that it didn't matter. Or at least, it shouldn't matter. So what if I was just data in some computer program written to simulate the real world? I felt real, and I wanted to continue to exist. That was all that really mattered to me.
As I arrived at their table, their conversation stopped, and they looked up at me. They looked expectant. He wasn't sure why. Most of them outranked me on the corporate ladder, but they all seemed curious to hear what I would say.
“Ok, I know this is difficult,” he started.
“Clint,” signed Wade. “Just pull up the results of your scan.”
Oh, right, I guess that would be why they were waiting. I shrugged and sat down, pulled out my laptop while the rest of the group gathered around me. The scan was still going, dumping all the data into a storage array. He also had another process running that dumped any readable text into another database that let them search for and find the location in memory.
“Ok, what do we want to look at first?” I asked.
“Our current assumption,” said Wade, ”is that we are somehow interacting with the system that is simulating our world.” He spoke as if he’d rehearsed this. “If this is true, we should find examples of us in the real world.”
“That sounds reasonable,” I said.
Rebekah gave a small shriek and shouted, “So look us up!”
“Oh, right,” I said slowly. Despite my own impatience, I couldn’t help milking the moment. “What should I look up first?”
“IQuantum,” said Selene.
“Ok, looks like there is one entry here. If I look at the text around it, I see the address. Nothing else really stands out. If I look at the data section nearby, I don't see anything specific. Just a lot of numbers. They might be pointers, but it would be hard to figure out where they're pointed to. But I do see the names of other companies, so we can probably use that to figure out some of the structures in the middle.”
“Well, that's better than I expected,” said Wade. “Honestly, it seems too easy.”
“Yeah. There are probably billions of companies over the history of the world. I guess we might have gotten lucky.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” said Rebekah, “Search for me!”
“You?”
“Yeah, google me.. or whatever you're doing.”
“Um... sure.”
I typed her name in the system and had one result. “What the.. how is that possible.”
“What? What is it?” Rebekah was practically bouncing over his shoulder.
“What are the chances that someone has the same name as you?”
“There are a few others. One is an animator at Pixar. Another is an actor. Why?”
“I only got one result.”
I pulled up the data where the name was found. The name itself was clear, but it was surrounded by a bunch of unreadable data. “That's my social security number.” she pointed. “And that's my birthday.” She had stopped bouncing. “Um, this is getting creepy.”
I typed my own name in and, again, got one response. Scrolling through the data he saw a few identifiers he recognized, but there was a lot of data that was undecipherable. Another strange thing was that each entry was massive. Each person somehow distilled down to a huge block of data on a cosmic hard drive. He sighed and looked back. “Ok, I propose that the first step is to start analyzing the data and attempt to figure out where it all goes and what it means.”
“What should we do,” asked Rebekah.
“I'll copy each of your data and send it to you. See if you can flag any key data in it. For now, I'll start writing a program that tries to link all the data and form unique entries. We're lucky that some of these entries have identifying variables that will let us distinguish them. But we still need to figure out where the boundaries start and end. Hopefully, I can find some boundaries between sections, but it probably won't be easy.”
Wade shrugged, “I guess we have a new assignment.”
“What about our real work,” asked Selene.
“Does it matter,” said Vanessa, speaking up for the first time.
“I mean... I .. I don't know.” said Selene.
“This,” said Wade, “is our official job. For now, anyway. Since Tim left, I went straight to the top, and we've been given any resources we need. I need to keep them in the loop, but we've been considered a research team for now.”
“What about me,” asked Rebekah. “I'm not part of the team.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Everyone here is on the team,” Wade replied. “Until further notice.”
“What should I do, then?”
“Look at your data. Help any way you can.”
“Oh, I can play the guitar for everyone.”
This seemed to stump Wade, and I started laughing. “Do you take requests?”
Months later, there was still little progress. We could map a lot of the data together and found entries pointing to our job, various places they frequented, and even entries to their vehicles. Wade had his wife and children prominently linked to his profile, and Rebekah had a section for her dog. I found a link to my volunteer activity as an EMT at the local volunteer firehouse. There were lots of little links and minor data points, but the massive section of data was still an unknown jumble of data. The worst part of all was that it seemed to be compressed in some way. It was indecipherable until Vanessa suddenly shouted, “DNA!” Everything seemed to click after that. The repeating sections, the smaller sections of data. We were basically looking at our genome. Or at least a section of it. Perhaps the parts that made us different from everyone else?
“Well, that's a relief,” I muttered
“Why is that a relief,” asked Vanessa. “What can we do with DNA?”
“I don't know, but at least now I can stop trying to figure out what it is.”
“Can we change it,” asked Wade.
“What do you mean,” I said.
“I mean,” said Wade as he moved to stand before me. “if someone has a genetic issue, can we remove it.”
“I don't know. I think we would have to find out where this data is and what it maps to. We'll probably have to get a geneticist. Even then, I don’t understand how our genes match who we are.”
“What would happen if we tried?”
“Other than accidentally killing each other?”
“But,” Wade looked miserable for a second but nodded. “I can see if we can find a geneticist who is willing to look over the data. I'll get right on that.”
I nodded. “Still, we discovered a lot. I think I have most of it mapped. We all have a unique ID, followed by a template ID. Our name and social. Phone numbers. Links to addresses and other places we go. It's huge.”
“What's the template ID,” asked Selene.
“Oh, it's 07 for all of us. It matches the data at the beginning of the code. 07 is Technology.”
“Technology?” asked Vanessa.
Wade shrugged. “I guess it's because we're in a technology-based world. This is just a guess, but it matches the list in the help file.”
“What are the other options,” asked Vanessa.
“Um, Fantasy, Medieval, Cyberpunk, stuff like that.”
“Cyberpunk?” asked Selene at the same time that Rebekah said, “Fantasy?”
“Hold on.. let me get the list.” After a few seconds and a quick search, he read: “Paranormal, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Cartoon, Steampunk, Technology, RPG, Space Opera, Superhero...”
“Superhero?” interrupted Rebekah. “What is ‘superhero’? Can I become Supergirl?”
“I don't know. I don't know how that affects things. We're still getting data. We have terabits of information, but most of it hasn't been figured out. We need to understand more before we start making decisions about changing anything.”
There were nods around the room, but I could still see the look of wonder in their eyes. I didn't blame them. I had it, too. The thought of being able to bring ghosts or advanced cyberpunk technology into our world was enticing, but I didn't really know how it all related. I was determined to find out, though.
“Ok, Clint,” said Rebekah as they broke for lunch. “What type of superpowers do you want?”
“Superpowers?”
“Sure. Everyone asks this question, but we can LIVE it! So which one? Invisibility? Flight? Laser eyes? Turn into fire?”
“Um, healing, I guess?
“Like, you can heal really fast? Like Wolverine?”
“No, like I want to touch people and heal them.”
“Oh, that's nice,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “Just like you. What about you, Vanessa?”
“Invisibility. Get people to leave me alone.”
“What? I thought you were good with people!”
“I'm good with people I like. You guys are all acceptable.”
Rebekah laughed and pointed to Wade. “Next!”
“I want to heal, too.”
“Really?” huffed Rebekah. “You too?”
“Not just wounds, but genetic issues as well.”
“Like what?”
“My daughter is sick. I want to cure it.”
“Woah. Oh, sorry.”
“Hey,” said Wade, “This is the closest I've come to hope in years. We might actually find a way to fix it.”
“Yeah!” Rebekah beamed. “Let's do it!” Not missing a beat, she turned to Selene. “Your turn.”
“I don't know. I'd probably do invisibility as well.”
“That's boring,” replied Rebekah. “Oh, no offense, Vanessa.”
“I could go where I want, get rich, learn secrets. It would be neat.”
“Oh. I guess that's not as bad. Secret Agent Woman!”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Ninja Selene,” I said.
“That's fun.” Rebekah nodded. “We should all become superheroes!”
“What about you,” I asked Rebekah.
“Oh, I want to read minds and be able to make people do what I want.”
“Woah,” I said, “now that's creepy!”
“It's not creepy. It's.., maybe a little creepy.” She sat back and looked at the ceiling. “Ok, then I want to make people like me.”
“Everyone likes you, Rebekah,” I said. “It's probably hard written in the code.
“You think?”
“Of course.”
“Ok, I also want to be an amazing singer.”
“Wait,” said Wade. “I didn't know you could sing.”
“I can’t. Didn't you just hear me? I said I wanted to be a singer.”
“Gotta start somewhere,” I said. “Where's your guitar?”
With that the team devolved into laughter as we all took turns singing while trying to get Rebekah to join in. None of us were very good, to be honest, but when Rebekah joined in at a whisper, we all considered it a win.