She threw her head back, and a shrill laughter erupted from her so quickly that she nearly spasmed. It took her a moment to regain her composure.
Again, I was left dumbfounded.
“You’re worried about your investors? Darling, you have much more dire things to worry about now.”
I shook my head. It has to be a trick, I thought to myself. For her to have infiltrated my files—it was almost unimaginable. Even with direct access to my computer, the protection software was so utterly advanced, so ridiculously next-generation, that it should have been impossible to crack—I should know—I wrote it. My thoughts were suddenly filled with suspects, people who had the resources necessary and the lack of scruples required to have masterminded such a plot—to have found a woman like Kali, who had infiltrated my life and had been performing the most sophisticated industrial espionage I could ever imagine. Kali had been in my life for two years. We lived together. We slept in the same bed every night unless I was away on business. How much were they paying her to hack my computers? I asked myself. To sleep with me? To taser me? A thought suddenly occurred to me and I turned to the empty champagne glass. Had she drugged me too?
She saw my eye line and chuckled. “Don’t be idiotic. I didn’t drug you.”
“Who are you working for?” I demanded.
“I said, don’t be idiotic. It’s unbecoming.”
I stormed toward her and reached out to grab hold of her forearm. I don’t know what I was thinking; I suppose I was in denial. I was desperate to form an explanation founded in the real world. If that world were real, then the taser and drugged champagne were obstacles I could overcome, and ultimately, I could still physically dominate a woman. Unfortunately for me, the real explanation had very little to do with the real world.
As soon as my hand grasped her arm, she yanked it away before winding up and slapping me harder than I’d ever been hit in my life. An instant later, my body collided against the side of the bar, and I slumped with a wheeze to the ground, desperately trying to recapture my breath.
“Let’s stop pussyfooting around the issue, shall we?” Kali announced, not even bothering to check to see if I were okay. “You wrote about this scenario yourself. You took your mathematical models for predicting the future of technological progress to their logical conclusions and dreamed up a future that would be possible within your lifetime. You remember that, don’t you?”
I wiped blood from my lip and nodded. Indeed, inspired by Einstein’s tendency to do daily mental exercises—exercises that led to his realization that nothing could move faster than light—I too, did my own daily mental exercises. One such exercise was to postulate what would be possible with technology that was only thirty years more advanced than our own. The conclusions were fantastic, if not also alarming.
“According to Moore’s Law,” Kali continued, “which has held or been exceeded in the future, you’ll be glad to know, a computer’s processing power doubles annually. Thirty doublings leaves you with processing power more than one billion times as powerful as current technology. You speculated that, with processing power of that magnitude, entire virtual worlds could be constructed—worlds indistinguishable from reality.” She held her hands up and looked around the room. “Looks pretty real, doesn’t it?”
I still couldn’t believe it. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, propping my back against the bar, the toppled barstool supporting my elbow.
“But, ever the overachiever, you went further than just speculating about a super virtual world that would kick Second Life’s virtual ass. You, darling, made a connection that was revolutionary. You connected the expected mental enhancements of humans and the eventual transition from organic to machine brains to the creation of these virtual worlds. You speculated that, with enough enhancement, people would eventually be able to create these worlds in their own minds. You speculated that daydreams could become as real as the real world.”
She was right: I’d written about it feverishly on the night I’d first conceived of it. It didn’t make her story any easier for me to accept.
“Then, you went even further. You speculated that the characters in these virtual dream worlds could be created or re-created so accurately—not just on their surface, but also in their cognitive abilities, that they could pass the Turing test—that they could become conscious entities.”
I was terrified. I knew where this was leading. The logic of her assertions—of what I had previously thought was only my speculations about fantastic future possibilities—was flawless. It was possible. Not only that—it was inevitable.
“Professor,” Kali continued, leaning down to speak to me as if I were a frightened child, which I suppose I was, at least from her perspective. “You really are living in the future. The only problem is,” she said, tapping her temple, “you’re just a character in my daydream...and now you’ve gone and made me want to wake up.”
5
“WAKE UP?” I reacted, gripped by a mixture of confusion and terror. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m going to have to start over.” She sighed and shook her head, frustrated. “I’ve failed again. Just another failed experiment on my way to discovering the key.”
“Failed what? What key? What are you talking about?” I leaned forward and tried to get to my feet but my chest was still burning from the blow, and my legs weren’t ready to hold me up just yet.
“I’ve failed to make you love me,” she replied, her eyes turned back to mine, appearing earnest.
“I-I don’t understand this. I—”
“You understand,” she interrupted. “You just don’t believe. There’s a big difference between understanding and belief. Would you like some proof?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Did proof mean she intended to do something horrible to me? I tried to respond, but the conflict in my thought process kept me from settling on an answer. Not fond of the idea of signing my own death warrant, I kept quiet.
“Here’s a quick and easy one,” she replied, not waiting for my response. “Honey, what color do you think we should pick for our apartment?” She stared straight at me as the walls began to fluctuate through a rainbow of colors.
The walls had been a slate gray, matching our floor, but every half-second, they switched to a new shade. Absurdly, as they rolled through the myriad of hues, I found myself thinking that the scarlet looked particularly sharp. Nevertheless, I kept my lips sealed.
“Of course that didn’t convince you,” Kali correctly guessed. “You need something a little more dramatic, don’t you? Not just some illusion that a hack in Vegas could pull off. You need to see real magic.”
My lips remained sealed, but my eyes told a different story, one Kali easily read: I hungered for proof. I needed proof.
“Follow me,” she said, motioning for me to follow her with her index finger before striding to our balcony. The view from our condo was of the downtown core across the bay. As on most days, it was a concrete and glass metropolis, shrouded in dark gray clouds, and the steady beat of billions of raindrops impacting in a staccato. “Ever wonder why it rains almost every day in our fair city?” she asked as the fresh sea air filled my lungs and mussed my hair. “It’s because I’m only happy when it rains. For you, however, I’ll make an exception.”
In only seconds, the cloud cover dispersed, opening into a crystal-blue sky, backdropped by an orb so yellow and bright that I had to shield my eyes and turn away, tearing up immediately.
“Let’s see Houdini pull that one off,” she said.
My mouth was ajar once again. It occurred to me that I’d never seen the sun so bright or the sky so blue. I’d never seen the bay sparkle so brightly, almost like a second sun, nor the mountains lit up with such an emerald green. “It-it can’t be.”
“Sure it can,” Kali replied. “I’m God.” She snapped her fingers, and the clouds came back, rushing in from all directions, stamping out the sunshine and the blue and replacing them with the same dul
l, dark, gothic sky to which I’d grown so accustomed. “But as I said, I’m only happy when it rains.”
Shaking, I backpedalled into the apartment. For some reason, I thought of running, as though if I made it to the elevator and escaped the apartment before this monster caught me, it might make a difference. It wouldn’t, however. I was trapped. There was no escaping God.
“Convinced?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Good. Now, I need to know what you want in a perfect woman. I’m tired of failing. This is a puzzle I must solve.”
“I-I don’t really know,” I replied, my lips quivering as I tried not to fall flat on the floor. I suddenly had the feeling that I didn’t have a body—as though my arms and legs were just an illusion, like I was a floating consciousness on a sea of empty space. It was terrifying.
“You have a real opportunity here,” she told me. “You can save the life of your next iteration. You can make sure he doesn’t make the same mistake you and your predecessors have.”
“What? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I have to start over,” she replied, holding up her hands, as though her statement were obvious. “I can’t stay here, can I? The whole point of this world is to win your heart. If I fail, it’s game over, and I have to play again.”
“Kali. Seriously. What the hell?”
She tilted her head to the side, again hinting at some level of sympathy for my situation. “This is my dream. I want you, Professor. I want you to love me. I’ve wanted it for so long.” She grabbed me by the arm, just as I’d tried to grab her earlier. She guided me back to my barstool and sat me down like a mother pulling her stubborn son to the corner. “Would you like another glass of champagne?” she offered in an unsettlingly casual tone. “It’ll be your last.”
My heart beat with the rhythm of pure horror. I nodded because I believed her. I believed everything she told me. She’d left me no alternative.
She poured the glass and handed it to me.
I found myself suddenly focusing on the fizz of the carbonation. So many details—it was a remarkable simulation in which I found myself. Simply remarkable.
“So now you understand,” Kali said, her voice breathy, “and you understand the self-sacrifice you could make,” she continued, handing me my last glass of champagne.
I closed my eyes and put the glass to my lips. I took in every sensation; the rim of the glass, cold against my lips, and the tingle of the carbonation as it filled my mouth and tickled my throat. Every sensation was suddenly more important than anything that had ever occurred in my life. I wanted to drink up every breath, every taste, every sensory perception that suddenly seemed to bombard me in that moment. Indeed, nothing makes you more aware of the senses life offers than your impending death.
“I want this to be the last world I have to shut down,” she said. “You can help me, Professor. You can save your next iteration’s life.”
I believed her. In that moment, I believed in God. I had to. I’d seen enough. It was possible that I’d been drugged, that I‘d hallucinated the sky change and her power to knock me senseless at will, but I knew it would be suicide to resist her game. I’d play. I’d play.
“Don’t shut this world down, Kali,” I said, calmly but earnestly. “This iteration isn’t over—not just yet.”
Kali tilted her head again, her demeanor surprised and questioning.
“I’m alive, Kali. If you end this world, you’ll kill me. You’ll have murdered me.”
Her mouth formed a half-smile. “Alive? I’m sorry, darling, but from my perspective, you’re really nothing at this point but potential. Your consciousness, in its current form, is worthless. You’re a mosquito.”
Again, her logic was flawless. It was true. To a sufficiently advanced consciousness, a human intellect, no matter how advanced it was in relation to its peers, would be nothing in comparison. For her, turning off my world was as easy a decision as the decision made by multitudes of pimply teenagers closing their latest edition of HALO or Black OPS. Why should she care? We were nothing, and our world was a fabrication that could be restarted at her will.
“Kali, I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “You’re right. I’m nothing. I understand that now. My next iteration will be nothing either. But the one thing I value above all else is intellect, and I understand now that yours far outweighs mine.”
Her face suddenly became stone. Everything in her countenance funneled through her eyes, which locked perfectly on mine and shone with the beauty of self-idealized fiction, urging me to continue my flattery.
“You’ve solved your puzzle. Your failure in past simulations was that you weren’t honest with me. This time, you told me the truth. You admitted your brilliance. That’s always been my Achilles’ heel. I had no idea what you were before. Now I know. How could I reject your love? How could I reject the love of a goddess—the one true Goddess?”
There was a moment of silence. Then her chest heaved with a sigh that told me she’d been waiting, breathlessly, for that success for a long, long time. She wrapped her arms around me and placed her cheek against mine.
“I’ve wanted this so badly,” she admitted. “I failed in the real world, and I’ve failed a half a dozen times since in the virtual world, but I’ve finally found the key to your heart.” She rocked me in her arms. “I should’ve known that the key to a genius’s heart would be through his intellect.”
The only thing that mattered to me at that moment was survival. I would’ve said anything to keep her virtual dream in motion. My life would continue, and that was all that mattered. She pulled back and looked deeply into my eyes. “Now, we should celebrate. This is an important day.” I smiled up at her, doing everything I could to affect true joy, while pure terror gripped my heart.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” she said, suddenly returning to the form I’d seen her in so many times previously. Domineering. Unstoppable. She grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me across the room, toward the bedroom. She pushed me into the darkness. “Strip,” she insisted, her mouth open in a Cheshire Cat grin, wolfish and evil, as she slipped off her coat.
I smiled. I removed my shirt. My legs were shaking from fear.
I smiled.
�6
I watched Kali, the city lights conjuring a soft glow on her skin. I marveled that God could sleep.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t slept at all. I’d performed. Like an automaton, I’d smiled, kissed, caressed, and even soothed. It wasn’t difficult to pretend that I was okay with all of it; when life is on the line, one inevitably finds a way.
Now that she was asleep however, all I wanted was escape. I slipped out of our bed as carefully as possible and grabbed my clothes, not daring to put them on yet, keeping a watchful eye on her the entire time as I backed into the hallway and then ran to the elevator. I slipped on my clothes as the elevator made its way up to the penthouse, and I put my aug glasses back on so the car could detect my location and pick me up out front. As the elevator doors closed behind me, my relief was overwhelming. I doubled over and began shaking, allowing the pent-up terror the release it had so desperately sought for hours.
The car was ready as I bustled out of the building and into the dark, wet night. I found myself looking at everything, at every blade of grass, at every drop of rain as it hit the pavement, astounded that I had Kali to thank for all of it. Even the air that filled my lungs came from her mind—her majestic, horrific mind.
“Hello, Professor,” the car said, greeting me with a calm that I suddenly cherished. “Where would you like to go?”
“Waves Coffee Shop,” I said quietly in reply, naming the only public place that I knew to be open at that time of night.
“Okay. Waves Coffee Shop it is.”
As the car rolled forward, I shut my eyes, blocking Kali’s world from my view. I wanted, desperately, for it all to have been a sick joke. I wanted to be the victim of the most elaborate corporate espionage in history; I w
anted the mafia to be in on it; I wanted it to go to the highest levels of international government. I’d take any of those scenarios over the one I faced now—I’d take any of them over the truth.
“Here you go. We’ve arrived at Waves Coffee Shop,” the car told me, pulling me out of my worried trance as the car door opened, letting the wet air waft in.
I opened my eyes and looked up at the neon sign. I stepped out of the car in a daze, marveled at the detail of the shop as it glowed, brilliant like Hopper’s Nighthawks painting in the otherwise dark street.
I stepped inside, and the fresh sea air was replaced by the familiar, earthy odor of coffee and sugary baked goods. I stepped into the shop for what had to be the thousandth time in my life, yet it felt like I were traversing the surface of an as-of-yet undiscovered planet for the first time. My visage appeared, wobbled and faded, in the glass case behind which were housed cookies, cakes, donuts and sandwiches. Suddenly transfixed by the image, I leaned in, trying to get a clear view of my eyes to make sure that they were still there, desperate for evidence that I was real.
“I bet I know what you want,” the young woman behind the counter said pleasantly.
My back suddenly stiffened, and I jolted upright.
“Chocolate cake, right?” she suggested with a smile. “Warm?”
I couldn’t reply. Again, I found myself dumbfounded as I studied her face. The same, young, dark-haired woman with the dark brown eyes had helped me hundreds of times. I’d smiled at her so many, many times: smiles that I didn’t mean; smiles that she’d returned, likely with even less meaning. However, I’d never seen her before—never really seen her. I’m not sure I would’ve even noticed her if I’d seen her on the street some afternoon. Yet in the wake of Kali’s revelation to me, after my rude awakening, I couldn’t get enough of the details. Every freckle, every pore on her skin, the pliability of the soft, youthful skin on her cheeks as she moved her lips to speak: I was transfixed.
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