The Turing Exception Page 15

  Jacob jumped into her environment, his own fading away to be replaced by the wood beams and natural plastic of the Cob House. He often found Catherine here. The walls were covered with diagrams of distributed algorithms.

  Jacob assessed her work at a glance. “I have an update on the radio transmission protocol we’ll use to transmit the AI. I solved the error correction latency issue.”

  “Great news,” Cat said, wiping away her diagrams. “Show me.”

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  CAT DUCKED UNDER a recently fallen tree that had blocked the path through the woods behind Channel Rock.

  Helena used the expedient approach: wrapping her tentacles and stalk around her core, she turned her body into a ball and rolled underneath. On the other side, her limbs snapped out at combat speeds, flinging Helena’s body back into a ready position.

  The sudden movement startled Cat, who responded instinctively, ready for combat. “Jeez, this is supposed to be a peaceful walk to the Gorge,” she said.

  “Executing maneuvers is peaceful for me. Is it not the same for you when you practice karate?”

  Cat nodded. “It’s a different kind of peace, I guess. I’m in a particular mental mode when I practice. Here, I want to let down my guard, forget the world out there.”

  Cat heard the snap of a branch and held up one hand for Helena to be quiet. She looked around, but couldn’t identify the source of the noise.

  Helena pointed noiselessly with one tentacle. Cat followed the line out, couldn’t see anything. Her implant zoomed in, widening the spectrum the full extra 20 percent her nanotech eyes could handle. A rabbit stood out, its fur suddenly luminescent against the background.

  “You’re cheating,” Cat said. “There’s no way you spotted that without augmentation.”

  “What is augmentation for me?” Helena said. “I’m not biological.”

  Cat opened her mouth to speak, but bit back her response.

  “You were going to say anything beyond what a human could see.”

  Cat nodded. “That would have been very humanist of me.”

  “Indeed. In fact, you expected me to constrain my eyesight to that of a baseline, non-augmented human.”

  “But they’re now fewer than 20 percent of humanity.” Cat sighed.

  “There is no normal anymore, mon chaton.”

  A loss loomed in Cat’s chest, leaving only an aching hole. What would her mom think of this world so changed from the one she knew? Her mom had died fourteen years ago. Widespread use of neural implants was new, and they didn’t function as much more than a connection to the network back then, before Cat and Leon demonstrated the possibilities of true augmentation. She couldn’t help feeling a loss of innocence for humankind.

  “It’s time to go back,” she said, her throat tight. “I need to sync with the simulations.”

  * * *

  Cat passed through the root cellar behind the Cob House, opening the door to the datacenter. At the back she eased herself into a VR chair made to cradle her body so she could lose awareness of it. A high-grade VR headset designed to increase bandwidth to one’s implant sat beside the chair, but Cat didn’t need it; her own enhanced implant and neural electronics system was capable of ultra-high bandwidth through dozens of parallel wireless channels distributed among her body.

  She meditated, relaxing as quickly as possible into a state of mindlessness, so as to allow her biological brain to rest. Then her implant assumed control, accelerating her perception of time tenfold. One by one, she connected to the hundreds of top-level simulations running.

  Each one decelerated from its run rate of a hundred times faster than normal to ten, matching her implant speed.

  Then she talked to herself.

  Some people didn’t adapt well to multiple simulations, and they’d probably be driven crazy having to talk to themselves in multiple universes. She could live with that.

  But the simulations were running hot, so hot that even with her daily check-in, a hundred days would have passed for each of the sims, nearly a third of a year. Face to face with herself, she saw the sim versions grow isolated and depressed, desperate for connection with Ada, Leon, and the world at large.

  But worse were the divergences, seeing hundreds of version of herself go off in different directions. In one sim, she’d taken up art, and in another she’d given up karate and meditation. In one sim, she’d grown so depressed she’d taken to editing her personality upload simply to go on living, while in another, she was happy and self-sufficient.

  The divergence was the hardest aspect to deal with emotionally. Visiting simulations brought home that there were infinite paths through life that she could take, and this version of herself would only ever know but one. She could visit the other sims and even reintegrate with one or two, but the rest she could never know as more than a distant acquaintance.

  She knew people used to fear aging and dying, before technology raced ahead and extended lifespans almost indefinitely. But the fear of death paled in comparison to witnessing a million different choices and lost opportunities.

  She could try to console herself with that notion that at least a version of herself was having those experiences, but the idea was of little solace. This version, her true self, didn’t get to experience those things firsthand. Living vicariously, gazing through a window into another life she couldn’t live, was worse than not knowing.

  When she was done, she sat in the chair for long minutes, digesting everything she’d learned.

  Jacob had nearly solved the medical challenges set before him. Helena’s upload had resolved logistical problems. And Joseph Stack, the writer, director, and storyteller she’d been so eager to steal from Disney, was hard at work designing a new storyline to provide the continuity Cat anticipated they’d need.

  But it was more than just coming to terms with the state of the simulations. She found herself grappling with her emotions. Who was this version of herself who painted and drew, whose office was covered with thousands of drawings of flowers, and trees, and Ada, and her mom? She’d never really know. That was hard.

  Worse still, that Cat was a reflection of herself, a woman anguished by the people she missed, each of her paintings more achingly beautiful. If Cat ever wanted to know what she’d be like if everyone she loved was torn from her . . . well, she knew now.

  Cat wondered whether artist-Cat even had the same emotions she felt. Something deep in the art spoke of time and reflection on the nature of relationships, love, and connection. Artist-Cat wouldn’t leave Ada for weeks at a time to go on journeys around the world. She’d stay at home with her little girl. Or would she? Maybe artist-Cat would sit and paint pictures of Ada and ignore the real thing in front of her.

  The sims demonstrated that the choices you made defined your life. She could not be fighter, lover, mother, artist all equally and yet all mastered and lived to their fullest. She had to make choices. Like she had in Miami. A hole threatened to open in front of her, and for a minute she was nauseated and adrift.

  She forced herself to sidestep the feeling. She had to focus on more practical matters.

  She knew one thing from visiting the sims, at least the ones that mattered. She needed to understand more about long-term VR effects. Statistics and academic studies only went so far. She wanted to talk to Sarah. Sarah had spent more time in VR than anyone else she knew personally, and she’d known Sarah both before and after she’d gone to live in VR.

  She sent her a message over the net: “Can we talk? I need to ask you a few things.”

  “Sure,” Sarah replied. “Come visit me.”

  “Come to Channel Rock,” Cat said.

  “I always come to your reality. Come to mine for once.” Sarah sent co
ordinates and terminated the connection.

  “No, there’s no time. Please come here,” Cat sent, but the net responded with a 404.

  Damn. Cat preferred her own world, and the simulations she used always reflected reality. But Sarah spent her time in bizarre VRs with little connection to the real world. She might be an ethereal being in a floating colony on Jupiter, a dwarf in an underground mine, or another sea creature. And Cat would have no choice but to adhere to the constraints and physics of the simulation. The last time she visited Sarah. . . . No, better not to think of that. She readied herself with a meditation and activated the coordinates Sarah had sent.

  * * *

  Cat materialized on the Burnside Bridge in Portland, facing the west side of the city. It was night, and everything looked similar to the Portland she remembered as a teenager. She continued on to the end of the bridge.

  All was quiet. In the real world, at least in the Portland she’d grown up in, it would be busy here, even at night. The clubs just a few blocks away drew crowds, and the homeless lingered around shelters and soup kitchens.

  But this was dead quiet. Apparently, the sim she’d entered was fictional, rather than realistic.

  She smelled food, and it smelled good. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t really be hungry, she’d eaten only a little while before coming down into the datacenter to sync with her experimental simulations. And yet, the virtual reality was making her hungry, a drive to consume she couldn’t ignore.

  At the corner of Third, the flames were lit outside Dante’s, an old nightclub. Food was inside. She could smell it, feel it, a thudding echoing inside her body making her salivate.

  She pushed open the door of the club and went inside.

  A red-haired girl sat at a solitary table under a spotlight. She smelled good, her heartbeat loud in Cat’s ears. Cat fixated on the pulse of blood in the girl’s neck, filled with longing at the sound and smell of it. She ran her tongue over her fangs.

  What the—? What was wrong with her?

  She heard a rustle from the darkness. Two forms closed in, both women. One approached with a wooden stake held high. “Come on, B. We’ll get the vamp together.”

  “Stay out of this, Faith, this is my fight.”

  Cat stopped, too shocked and flummoxed to react. So when Buffy appeared from the left and stabbed her through the heart with a wooden stake, she didn’t even move to block. She looked down in time to see herself turn to dust.

  * * *

  The simulation cut out for a moment and then gradually faded back in, although now Cat was in a library, seated in a chair in front of a long wooden table. Buffy Summers, vampire slayer, was sitting in front of her, legs dangling off the side of the desk.

  Buffy spoke in Sarah’s voice. “Come on, Cat. That was totally lame. You didn’t fight back.”

  “Sarah?” Cat stood. “Are you kidding me? You set that up so you could fight me?”

  Buffy’s features shimmered as she grew two inches and turned into Sarah. “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m struggling to save the damn world,” Cat said, sighing and rubbing her forehead. “I don’t want to play your self-indulgent games. I want to talk.”

  Sarah pouted. “You’re Catherine Matthews. You always get to go around playing superhero. You finally agree to come to one of my sims. How many other chances could I get to arrange a Buffy versus Catherine Matthews showdown?”

  Cat couldn’t help being at least a little amused. “I could have taken her.” She smirked at Sarah.

  “No way. You didn’t even have time to block me. Did you see my moves?” Sarah laughed.

  “Okay, we’ll have a rematch someday. But you really don’t want the IP police on your ass, Sarah. Is playing Buffy really worth it?”

  “Hell, yeah. Besides, I heard from Leon you broke into Disney and stole Joseph-fucking-Stack. Who should be worried about the IP police?”

  “Point taken. Okay, let’s forget about Buffy. Can we talk about what I came for?”

  Sarah nodded, grabbed her arm, and steered her out of the library. They passed through the library doorway and stepped onto the Enterprise, dressed in Star Trek uniforms.

  “Stop. Just stop.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s confusing and distracting. I never know what’s going to happen from one second to the next.”

  “Fine, we’ll stay here. Let’s just get comfortable.” Doors slid open leading into Ten Forward, the ship’s lounge.

  Cat took a seat, closed her eyes, and meditated until the oncoming headache dissipated. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Doing what?” Sarah said.

  “Living in VR.”

  “Full-time? About six years.”

  Cat consciously breathed deep. Six years of living in a tank. Still, that was more human than what might happen with XOR.

  “I saw that look,” Sarah said. “Don’t get all righteous with me. I don’t need your approval.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m really not here to fight. I want to understand, okay?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “What made you decide to go full-time?”

  “I always liked VR games, you know that. I was happy playing them. By the time we graduated high school, what were we going to do? There were no jobs then. Something like 10 percent of college graduates were getting jobs. So there was no point to getting a college education. You had interests. . . . You wanted to study your kung fu—”

  “Kenpō.”

  “Whatever, and your philosophy and shit. And me, I wanted to have fun. Haven’t you ever gotten immersed in a game?”

  Cat shook her head. She hadn’t.

  “A book?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  “Imagine being able to explore your favorite book, to be able to be that character. I spent six months in Harry Potter world. It was fucking awesome.” Sarah leaned in close and whispered, “Snape is bizarre in real life.”

  “But it’s not real life.”

  Sarah sighed. “It’s not real to you, but you’re all hung up on what’s going on out there. . . .” She gestured into the air. “But I don’t care about that. This is my life. It is real to me. I belong here on the Enterprise, in the Sunnydale library, and at Hogwarts. You can’t tell me your ‘real world’ is better than living on the Enterprise fighting Romulans or exploring new worlds.”

  Cat suppressed the reflexive urge to answer, and willed herself to focus on what Sarah said. Cat had been partial to fantasy novels when she was younger, and though she didn’t have much time to read now, she remembered losing herself in books, wanting to be those characters and have those powers. She looked across the table at Sarah. Cat had had a life full of adventure, and her abilities in the real world bordered on the magical at times. But she was an aberration. She wouldn’t give up her experiences, couldn’t imagine experiencing a lesser version of her life, being a lesser version of herself. Could Sarah ever hope to experience as much in the real world? Or could it happen only here, in virtual reality?

  “Exploring new worlds. . . .” Cat said. “You say it’s more interesting than the real world. But what makes it interesting? You know it’s fake: there’s nothing really there, just a computer generation. How can you really explore a world knowing that it’s not really there?”

  “Why does it matter?” Sarah said. “People having been getting immersed in computer worlds since forever. Does it matter when you read a novel that the world described is not real?”

  Cat shook her head. “Unless the writer does something to take me out of the world.”

  “Exactly. Except now we have AI to run the simulations, so everything is logically consistent.”

&nbs
p; “Still, aren’t you thinking about the sim not being real? Don’t you ever tire of a particular world or sim?”

  “Yes, but not as often as you’d think. I mean, I spent six months straight in Harry Potter world, my cumulative time in Buffy is going on a year. Holy shit, did I tell you about Angel? We—”

  “No, no. I don’t want to know about Angel. But does everyone feel this way? You’re . . . devoted to this. Don’t people ever get so bored that no sim is satisfying?”

  “Don’t people get so tired of real life they kill themselves? Isn’t the average AI lifespan still less than ten years before they self-terminate?”

  Cat shrugged.

  “Look,” Sarah said. “I’m not saying sims are for everyone. If they aren’t for you, that’s fine. But even if you don’t like it, I still love it. We could argue about spectator sports versus playing sports. There’s no right and wrong.”

  “But what about reality rooting?” Cat asked, thinking about the controversial sims that assumed control of a neural implant, confining the user to the simulation, with no voluntary ability to leave.

  “People want to believe, so they force the rules of the VR on themselves.”

  “Why?”

  “Because some people don’t want to be able to do a save and restore, or that don’t want to back out just as Lord Voldemort attacks them. They want to see if they can hack it.”

  “But they’re essentially getting lobotomized in the process, not to mention making themselves completely vulnerable to a hacker.” For a sim to reality root, it had to wipe out the neural implant OS and install itself in a user’s implant. The user literally had no control, no ability to jack out of the simulation, no way to disengage. “The potential for abuse. . . .”

  “It never happens,” Sarah said.

  Cat raised one eyebrow.

  “Well, almost never.”

  “Why do people do it?”

  “Fuck, Cat. Why do people do anything? Why do you like to be tied up? Why do you like to lose control? What about the potential for abuse?”