Chapter 29 #5
I found a locked storeroom behind the cafeteria and forced the door with the sword.
Inside were rows of shelves, still piled with containers of food.
I used the touchpad, found some canned beans and vacuum-suctioned dried fruit I hoped hadn’t gone bad, and, still carrying the sword, went back to the cafeteria.
After consulting with Lyle, I peeled back the survival suit’s mask.
As best we could determine from the suit’s sensors, nothing in the air would kill me.
Clear of the mask, the air smelled musty, like a basement left unused for years.
Gray waves churned and frothed under dark clouds.
From this angle, I couldn’t see the huge object hovering over the city, and I didn’t want to.
I wanted to sit and not think for as long as possible.
The food didn’t taste like it had gone bad.
“Dad,” Lyle said.
“Yeah.”
“Now seems like a good time to have that talk.”
I finished the last bite and pulled the mask back on. “I think we already did.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I was silent for a long moment. “What’s it like?”
“What?”
“Being inside a computer. Being a computer. I don’t know. Whatever you are now.”
“I’m an emulated consciousness with memories from when I was human,” Lyle said.
“I laid the groundwork on the quantum algorithms and underlying systems when I was sixty-eight as part of my research into what became Yggdrasil. Finishing it took me the rest of my natural life, off and on, between wars and all the other preparations. But it was only after the last transit, where it seemed we almost stopped it, that I put the last pieces together. Shortly before I died. Jennifer helped. She bought me the time, kept me safe from the Legion long enough for me to make a copy of my consciousness before I expired.”
I shuddered at the matter-of-fact way he talked about his own death. “So, it, uh … it helped a little. In a way. Even though we didn’t stop the jump. The Second Device helped get you here, now.”
“Yes. And to answer your question: it’s odd.”
“Odd?”
“Odd. Very odd. I made a lot of assumptions when I designed the emulation systems. Now I can see some of those assumptions were wrong or misguided. Not that I had any precedents to follow. It was uncharted scientific territory. I was building the plane as I flew it.”
“Assumptions about what it would be to live in a computer? Is it like being inside a game?”
“Even in a computer game, the inhabitants still have a form, however emulated.” I could hear him breathe, as one would expect when speaking to a real human. Simulated breaths. Taken at the right intervals. He could have been on the other end of a telephone.
“So, it’s not like a computer game.”
“No. I don’t have a body here. I don’t occupy space.
I don’t have a physical form to visualize.
” He stopped. When he resumed, his voice sounded strained.
“So much of human life, how we understand the world, how we think, is predicated on our senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, even proprioception. In here, I have none of that. I am an amalgamation of a simulated consciousness with the memories and beliefs and tendencies of the human I was before. But I have no arm to move, although I remember moving my arms. I have no eyes to see, and although I can interpret the data from your suit’s optics, it is not seeing as I remember seeing.
Even now, I don’t have a mouth with which to say these words.
It is code, complicated algorithms, and dense memory coming together to form … me.”
I swallowed. Looked out across the rolling gray waves, under the increasingly dark, ashen sky. “That sounds awful.”
“I anticipated the cognitive-physiological dissonance when I designed the emulation systems. I restricted my ability to be disturbed by the sensations, or the lack thereof. In essence, although my situation is somewhat akin to being trapped in a sensory deprivation chamber, wallowing in darkness, I am by design unable to be driven mad by the deprivation.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, I would have done things differently if I’d known what it was really going to be like.”
“So, it’s—it’s odd.”
“There aren’t words in any human language to describe it. But, Dad, I have no regrets. I’m here, with you, even if not quite in the fashion I would have preferred.”
“That’s good.”
We lapsed into silence. The ocean liner burned in the distance.
Waves crashed relentlessly against the transparent dome.
Eventually, I pulled myself from the chair and walked back to the exhibits.
I went by the giant photo of myself without stopping and found the model Impala.
I had to work on the rear door for a few minutes with the sword, but the lock gave, and the door opened with a squeal.
I climbed inside, set the sword on the floor, and closed the door behind me.
Inside, it was cool and quiet, like a cave.
With Lyle’s help, I set an alarm on the forearm touchpad to wake me.
It took only a few minutes for me to fall into an exhausted, uneven sleep.