It was an autumn evening in the year 2115. New York was cold but not lethally cold yet. The wind was blowing outside, but a light jacket and scarf could counter the chill it brought.
Ajay, an Indian immigrant, shuffled into his apartment. As apartments went, it was not too shabby. It was a far cry from the comparatively luxurious one he used to rent when he worked in the finance sector two years ago, but those were memories kept well at bay.
Ajay, who owned an electric car which he maintained in as good a condition as possible given his economic status, worked as a driver for an internet-based cab company.
Of course, it helped that he had his own electric car, so the overheads that he paid to the company became minimal. But still, it was not easy making ends meet comfortably.
Ajay had a bag of groceries with him that he had picked up from the farmer’s union market. Ajay tried his level best to stay fit. He had a regular gym schedule and was an avid runner. Weather permitting he would go out for daily runs. These would allow him time to sink into his own inner world of dreams and plans. This was when Ajay would try to come up with ways to salvage his seemingly impossible position of inexorably sliding down the socio-economic gradient.
He had been working as a market analyst in one of the middling firms on Wall Street, but in the economic crash of 2092, he and hundreds of others like him had lost their jobs in a few days. His firm was one of the small ones who
Ajay, being prudent and having a typical Indian upbringing, had been bought up to save and clear himself of all loans. So he had skimped and saved and slaved away to earn enough to pay back his student loan, as well as the funds that his father had raised through personal loans the year before.
Born in a middle-class family in India, like most people his age, he had tried his hardest to excel in academics and then leave India for better job prospects. He had achieved mixed success in that. He had failed to obtain a full scholarship and had to take one sizeable student loan to survive, but things had worked out in the end.
He had arrived in the US 9 years ago. 3 years and a masters degree later, he had been hired by a company.
He worked hard and was a diligent if not a stellar performer. He got one raise and made some successful investments which paid off. This had saved him when and he was able to start his new life with a decent amount of savings.
After he realised that the job market for an immigrant was dismal, he swallowed his pride and decided to use his only asset as his livelihood.
Four months after he had cleared off his loans, Ajay had purchased a Tesla Model 9X. One year later he had paid off the mortgage on his car, and one month later, he had been downsized.
The car was the one luxury he had allowed himself. He loved his car, and he maintained it well. This made an impact, and he would be a regularly requested ride. He was intelligent and loved to read. Coupled with this, he had taken courses in public communication in his college days. The skills he had learnt in those days had been useful, both when talking to clients and his passengers. He was happy to receive extra tips from wealthy people who liked him.
As the days went by, he had learnt the ways of being an effective cabbie, and he was able to make ends meet working 8-hour shifts for 6 days a week. And unlike most people, Ajay chose Wednesday to be his day off.
He was not in deep water financially, but if he took more than 3 days a week off, he would have trouble making ends meet.
To save his car from vandals that frequented his poor neighbourhood, Ajay rented a parking garage in a more secure part of the city. 30% of his monthly income was spent in making sure his car was in good condition and safe. But this allowed him to just survive, not flourish. He had come to this ‘land of the free’ to thrive and grow rich.
He groaned as he removed his shoes and his jacket and then let it slide onto the floor. He was supposed to give for a 3-mile run, but a combination of cold winds and lousy news had conspired to make his mind turn to other things.
“And now this,” Ajay muttered to himself as he lowered his tired frame into the room’s single chair. His SmartWear, a wearable version of what used to be called a ‘smartphone’ had updated him of a particular piece of news that he had been following obsessively.
The rise of driverless cars had been threatening the cab industry for a time now, but intense lobbying and chaotic human behaviour had prevented any cab company from legally operating a fleet of driverless cars.
But now, this last bastion had seemingly been breached. Ajay’s favourite Tesla had just released the perfected version of an AI that could drive with an astronomically low probability of mishap, even in NY traffic.
They also had made the AI substrate incredibly secure against attacks that could render it inoperable or subject to tampering.
The legislation that would allow this to happen was still in discussion in the house of parliament, but Ajay knew in his gut that his last remaining prospect of a reasonably comfortable life was slipping away. He had to find another career before it was too late. He had been lucky once, he would not be lucky again.
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On his various runs, Ajay had thought about multiple career options where he could use his skills as an investment analyst or his degrees in computer science. But try as he might, he could not come with something that did not already exist. Ajay even decided to design a SmartWear app for predicting the density of cabs in a certain radius so that his cab could get there ahead of the competition. This idea though interesting, was also bordering on the illegal because Ajay had carefully gone through his contract with the cab company he worked for.
It had clearly stated that any tampering with the algorithm of assigning cabs would result in legal persecution.
With a sigh, he skimmed the other news, and as usual, the user content from the video game ‘Samsara’ was among the top viewed on the web. He had growled in frustration at this. Why would anyone want to watch what other people do in a bloody game!
Samsara was a full immersion VR Game that was the rage.
Since the “birth” of Vishwāmitra, the MindNet had taken on a new form, human minds in stasis, used for computation and memory as a global Neural Network.
With Samsaāra as an option, it became the worlds largest employer of millions of people with immersion plans ranging from a few weeks for the curious to a permanent integration or being a “Perma” as it was called. But, the cruel truth was that an increasing number of people kept joining because there was simply nothing left for the human mind to do. Jobs were automated, Production, Research, Analysis, all of which AI would do better.
Ajay chafed at this and had tried his hardest to stay away, stay in the real world. He knew that once he had a taste for the immersive reality, he would never come back to the real world. Well, at least he was happy until the news about the driverless cabs came through.
Growling in frustration, he decided to take a soak in his cramped bathtub. Ajay never drank alcohol, because he had a terrible head for it. He would get nauseated just after a can of beer. So, taking the next best thing, Ajay carried a can of Ginger Ale, the non-alcoholic version they sold in convenience stores with him to his bath.
Up to his chin in hot water, sipping on carbonated water with lemon in it, Ajay drifted amidst his thoughts. He had left his SmartWear band and contact lenses on the table in his bathroom, so he was cut off from the internet, alone with his own thoughts.
‘Samsara, huh?’, he had chuckled to himself. It was really ironic. ‘Samsara’ meant ‘Everyday Life’ in most languages in India. It was originally a Sanskrit word, and it meant the world that everyone gets entangled with as they live their lives.
Only those who walk the path of emancipation are freed from the trappings of ‘Samsara’.
The game contrary to all MMORPGs was not designed on the European Middle Ages but on a fictional version of ancient India. The company that made the game ‘Vishwamitra Inc.’ was started by an Indian, Kalyani Joglekar. Kalyani had assembled her first computer when she was 9, and she was a prodigy. She brought together a group of highly talented people and had developed the game. Then, to everyone’s surprise, ‘Vishwamitra Inc.’ had built an AI core to run the game and had removed themselves from almost all administration.
This had caused an uproar, but when the first footage of the Beta version was released 3 years ago, people were astounded with the results. Within one year, the number of subscribers had reached 1 billion.
He laughed out loud at the name too. ‘Vishwamitra’ was a supposed to be a sage in Hindu mythology and he had tried to create a parallel world for himself. He believed he could do better than ‘Brahma’ the god of creation. Kalyani definitely had a wry sense of humour, naming a gaming company that created a world after a mythical creator of worlds who did so just because he did not like the world he lived in.
It was poignant because Vishwamitra’s world was imperfect as compared to Brahma’s and he was cursed for being so brash in the first place.
Ajay hated risks, and in his days as a financial analyst, he had always been the regular kind, who would identify a low-risk investment as opposed to a high-risk investment. This has helped him to some extent, but he had never been exceptional.
On some level, he was ok with this. He was doing what most of us do when we leave our college days behind. He was ‘living’. He was building himself up for some nebulous ‘future’.
But then the crash had happened, and the reason for it was the AI boom.
Since all human activities were slowly being taken over by intelligent algorithms, this was a rising concern. A lack of employment in the real world meant poverty and a life of hopelessness for a large chunk of the world.
But, on the contrary, the human race adapted. Just like it changed in the early 2000s when the ‘computer revolution’ had bloomed.
Vishwamitra Inc. was owned by the AI now termed as Vishwamitra, operated in low orbit around the Moon.
‘More and more of us will be drawn to the world of Samsara. If there is nothing available here, where could one escape?’. Ajay had said in a loud and profound sounding voice while resting his head on the edge of the tub with his eyes closed.
Could it really be possible? Was there really no escape?