Post-Human Series Books 1-4 (77 page)

6

Aldous sighed. “I should have done the debriefing alone,” he said, shaking his head as he stepped to the table where Samantha remained, sitting patiently. He pulled a chair to the center of the room and sat down, releasing another sigh as he considered his next words. “You don’t know it, but you and I met once before, just like this—only we were alone that time.”

“I don’t remember,” I said, my eyes narrowing as I searched my jumbled memory. It was like sorting through filing cabinets that had been overturned and spilled, their contents strewn around the room.

“I know. We erased the memory.”

“Why?” I asked. I should have been shocked to hear that I’d been violated in that way, but I was growing numb to the overwhelming violations to which they’d subjected me.

“We needed you to be a clean slate when you entered the sim. You see, the sim was the final hurdle that you needed to overcome. You’d actually overcome many more previously, though you can’t recall them.”

“You’ve overcome fantastic odds,” Sanha piped in.

“How?” I asked.

“You’re the product of digital evolution,” Aldous replied. “You’re a synthetic neural net that we grew inside of a computer program that randomly combined neural patterns, tested them for desirable traits, then combined the best ones together in hopes of creating even better offspring.”

“Offspring?”

“Yes,” Aldous answered. “In a sense, you have parents. You were bred. The difference between you and a biological human is simply that your evolution happened at the speed of light, whereas ours took two billion years.”

“Once we established the testing program,” Sanha chimed in, seemingly unable to contain himself, “we were able to combine billions of neural patterns, testing them at light speed for the qualities we wanted.”

“What qualities?”

“Altruism,” Samantha suddenly interjected. Her sudden reentrance into the conversation took the three of us by surprise. We turned to her. “Selflessness. Decency.”

“Among other qualities,” Aldous added, turning back to me, “but yes, we were looking for a pattern that exhibited humane qualities. This was of paramount importance.
You
exhibited those qualities, though so did many other potential candidates. I’d interviewed more than a hundred, face to face, in circumstances not unlike this. They all failed when it came down to the most important question—all of them but you.” Aldous paused and craned his neck as he pointed with his finger to each corner of the room in succession. Each housed a holographic projector, and it was not lost on me that they were all pointed in my direction. “As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, you’re appearing before us as a hologram. Your body is computer generated. I-uh-apologize for your appearance being a little...plasticky.”

I looked down at my arms and hands. It was true. I didn’t appear real. Somehow, though my skin had pores, freckles, and even faint hair, the texture didn’t appear the way the skin of the humans did. It was as though it was
too
real—
hyperreal
. The lighting was too perfect, the details too crisp. I appeared more human than human—human plus, to borrow the term Haywire had used. It hadn’t bothered me when I was in the sim—everything in the sim had the same hyper level of detail. Now that I was in the real world, I was envious of the human body.
I wanted one
.

“We’re working on improving that,” Aldous said, clearly embarrassed by the limits of their technology. “At any rate, please consider the answer you gave me previously.”

Before I could ask what he was referring to, a second me appeared, sitting at a holographically projected table, and a second Aldous was sitting with him. The conversation played itself out in front of me, and I watched with fascination.

“If,” the holographic Aldous said, his tone somewhat bored, “in the aforementioned scenario, you could save the world by giving your life, would you do it?”

“Of course,” the recorded version of me replied.

“Why?” the holographic Aldous asked.

“To do otherwise would be monstrous. It would be selfish. Billions would die. No one’s life is worth the lives of billions.”

“Indeed,” Aldous replied, though he still appeared bored.

The real Aldous took this moment to add his commentary. “So far so good at that point,” he whispered, as though he were sharing a thought with a friend in a movie theater.

“And what if it weren’t billions?” the holographic Aldous continued. “What if the number were far smaller? What if there were only a 100?”

“The same logic applies,” the me replied.

“Indeed,” Aldous answered again. “And what if there were only two other people. Would you sacrifice yourself for them?”

“Of course.”

“Because the logic holds?” the holographic Aldous spoke to clarify the point.

“Yes.”

“So, if the scenario were changed so that your life would be in exchange for only one other life, you would, of course, save yourself, wouldn’t you? After all, your life is just as valuable as the other person’s life, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” the recorded me replied.

The recorded Aldous nodded. “Thank you,” he said, turning to leave the room.

“But I’d still sacrifice myself,” the recorded me suddenly called after him.

That selfless admission caused the holographic Aldous to turn, his expression intrigued, his interest piqued for the first time in the conversation. “You would?” he asked, titling his head quizzically. “Why? That would be illogical.”

“Would it?” the recorded me reacted, appearing confused. “It appears logical to me.”

“How so?”

“Because the one who has the power to choose who lives and who dies should use that power to save the other. To do otherwise would still be selfish. It would still be monstrous.”

The projected scene ended, and Aldous turned back to me, wearing a slight grin on his face. “No other A.I. answered that question correctly. It was exciting, to say the least.”

“Why did you wipe that memory?” I asked.

“Because we had to be sure you weren’t faking,” Aldous replied. “Answering questions is one thing. You could have outsmarted us, employing your logic and reasoning skills to guess the answers we wanted. No. We needed to see you put your money where your mouth was, so to speak.”

“You had to put your ass on the line,” Samantha echoed.

“So my reward for answering a question correctly was that the three of you collaborated to torture me?” I responded, aghast. “Why? Why was it necessary to put me through that?”

“I’m sorry, my friend, but our objectives were clear and needed to be accomplished via our scenario—they were...nonnegotiable,” Aldous replied. “There was simply no other way.”

“What objectives?” I demanded.

“First off,” Sanha jumped in, “you had to be willing to sacrifice yourself for others. We wrote a scenario that would repeatedly put you in that situation, and you passed with flying colors each time. Think about it. You had the chance to leave with the lynchpin when it was first activated, but you didn’t. That was the first hurdle.”

“But that wasn’t enough,” Samantha added. “You still had hope that if you played your cards right, you could save everyone
and
yourself. That wouldn’t prove your altruism.”

“We gave you plenty more chances though,” Sanha continued. “We feigned Haywire’s injuries when Kali was destroying the building. We wanted to see if you’d save her or simply try to escape on your own.”

“But that wasn’t sufficient proof either,” Aldous added. “After all, Haywire was your ride out of there. Saving her increased your own chances for survival.”

“The fact that you took a risk to care for her injuries revealed a lot, however,” Sanha said, nodding as he did so, “as did your rescue of Patricia, who was merely a stranger to you.”

“Your ultimate test, however, was whether you’d refuse Kali’s offer to not only escape the sim, but to also upgrade your intellect,” Aldous continued. “This was crucial. You could not succumb to the temptation of intelligence upgrades. It was her most tempting fruit.”

“That’s not right,” I contradicted. “That’s not right at all. The most tempting fruit was the avoidance of being burned alive,” I spoke with contempt. I tried to hide it, knowing full well that my testing was still underway, and that the three of them had the power to end my existence right then and there. Still, I couldn’t contain my anger; the trauma was too fresh. They, in turn, suddenly wore expressions of extreme guilt. My words stopped all their boasting about their triumphant success with the sim in their tracks.

“For that, we are truly sorry,” Aldous replied, “but like the other elements of the sim, it was nonnegotiable.”

“Why?” I demanded, nearly seething.

“Because,” he began his explanation, his tone patient, “it is conceivable that you may face such a dire scenario someday for real, and we needed to know how you’d react. I even modeled the incorrect response for you as a further test. Indeed, the John Doe character succumbed under torture. He gave up your location, putting not only you, but also everyone alive in the sim at risk to save himself. I wanted you to have that in mind when you were faced with your own torture. I wanted to test whether my surrender would make your own surrender acceptable to you. Clearly, it did not. In that scenario, you were far more ethical than me.”

I was silenced as a wellspring of thoughts rushed through my mind. It was clear to me that none of these three had ever endured torture. None of them had experienced anything remotely close to what they’d inflicted upon me. If they had, they would’ve known not to make assumptions about a person’s character based on their reactions when enduring unimaginable pain. Their ignorance was maddening.

“We will erase those memories, of course,” Sanha offered like a child offering to replace a broken window with his allowance.

“No,” I replied. “No. I
need
those memories. They’re part of who I am now. Like Aldous said, I could face that scenario someday in the future. If so, I’ll need to draw on that memory.”

Aldous‘s expression filled with surprise. “You continue to impress.”

“He’s certainly made a believer out of me,” Sanha concurred, then turned to address me again. “I didn’t believe it was possible. We’re only human, after all. I didn’t think we could write a scenario in a sim that would be so thorough of a test that it could convince me to put my life in the hands of an A.I., but by God, I think we’ve done it!”

“It was a close one,” Aldous admitted. “This was our third time through,” he related to me.

“What? You mean...
I
failed previously?”

“No, no,” Aldous said, chuckling as he waved my concern away. “
You
didn’t fail.
We
did! But of course, to err is human.” He smiled. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I replied.

“You repeatedly employed your inductive reasoning skills to figure out that you were being tested. We had to wipe your memory and start over each time.”

“You nearly did it again near the end,” Samantha said. “You were demanding to know why we couldn’t heal ourselves. I didn’t have a good answer. You seemed suspicious.” Ironically, it was Samantha who eyed me suspiciously as she spoke, watching carefully for my reaction.

“I thought that was odd,” I decided to admit, “but I didn’t clue in to the larger ruse.”

“Thank goodness!” Sanha exclaimed with a laugh. “I didn’t want to start that all over again!”

Samantha remained silent, continuing to examine my reaction, but as the conversation turned away from the topic, leaving it behind, she seemed to relax.

“So this process—this test...you restarted it from the beginning? You must have spent years—”

“No,” Aldous replied. “It was merely a couple of days each time. The scenario began with your keynote speech.”

“What?” I responded, my breath stolen by the shock. “How is that possible? I remember...” My words drifted away as I tried to remember my life over the last several years. Kali told me the sim had lasted two years. To hear that it had only been two days was incomprehensible.

“Your memories are constructions of your impressively agile mind,” Aldous replied. “They are nothing but fiction.”

“How can that be?”

“We all do it,” Aldous replied. “Memory is at least partially reconstructed. We take the information we experience on a daily basis—the images, sounds, smells, emotions—and store them in our short-term memory. Most of these memories fade to nothing within days, if not hours. However, if we concentrate on a certain memory for some reason, perhaps while retelling an old story with our friends, we solidify the memory, making it permanent. The problem is, between the time we experience the memory and the time we reminisce, information and certain details are lost. The memory fades. We compensate for this by using our imaginations to fill in the gaps. This is why two people who experienced the same event might retell it differently—sometimes drastically so. Either could pass a polygraph test, swearing they were telling the truth. They both genuinely believe they are correct, while, in reality, neither of them are. Their memories are fictional. My friend, it turns out, we’re all great storytellers. Humans are essentially storytelling animals. You’ve proven to be particularly adept at this.”

“How? How could I construct an entire life out of nothing?”

“Oh, it wasn’t out of nothing,” Sanha jumped in. “We overloaded you with basic information—images, short video files, and a truckload of data. Then we put you into a scenario and let your mind do the rest.
You
created your past life.”

“What about Kali?” I asked. “Was she a real person too?”

“Ah, good question,” Aldous answered. “She was both a real person and an actual NPC—a bot, if you will.”

“A sex bot!” Sanha exclaimed before bursting into laughter that verged on cackling.