The Imagineer's Bloodline: Ascendant Earth Chronicles – Book 1

by J. J. Lorden

  Copyright © 2021 Thisss... Much!

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

  Book and cover design by Najdan Mancic

  Printed in the United States of America.

  First printing edition 2021

  www.jjlorden.com

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  For my Father.

  Love you Thisss... Much too Dad.

  1

  World Seed

  Texier Quantum Labs Research Facility and Q-Core Node Host Sublevel 37

  Thirty minutes south of Bethel, Maine

  May 6, 2064

  Austin floated, pensive, in a digital framework that appeared to be an unbounded void. The darkness had a certain depth–as if diffuse light defined the space without allowing the eye to fix on any one point.

  After years of daily work within the construct, he was well accustomed to the lack of relational objects and exerted his influence to define up and down, shift it as needed, move about, and populate the framework with objects at will.

  At this point, doing so was like breathing. An unconscious muscle that automatically defined reality as revolving about his person. Or with conscious intent, one he could flex to modify it.

  Initially, before he’d trained his mind to do so, this place had been a nausea-inducing nightmare.

  Funny thing about a virtual space indistinguishable from real space, at this level of realism, the inner ear couldn’t be unplugged or ignored, resultantly, Austin’s initial sickness.

  In front of him, and rotating slowly to display all sides, was an eight-foot-tall throne made of magical wood, shining metals, and elementally imbued fabrics.

  To his right, and also considering the throne, an elegant female figure hung in the void with him. She had fair skin and strong features that suggested a Nordic heritage. Her shoulder-length hair was thick, wavy, and platinum blond, and her eyes were intense and deep violet.

  She wore a long, sky-blue silken gown trimmed with violet piping and a violet ribbon around her waist. The dress was fitted about her curved, feminine figure, accentuating her shape while granting an aura of grace and power.

  Amazingly, even though she looked to be born straight out of Greek legend, the woman’s energy, and gentle expression communicated warmth and approachability.

  “Elle, you’ve titled this item Formal Elven Dining Chair, and made its rarity Atypical.” He turned to watch her reaction. The discrepancy between object, obviously an Imperial throne, and object data was certainly not a mistake. “I don’t think either do the chair justice.”

  She affected surprise. “Oh, look at that. You are right, Austin. I wonder how I might have possibly miscategorized it. It was very unlike me to have done so.” Austin wasn’t fooled.

  She tilted her head and looked at him, the picture of innocence. A hint of smile broke the spell. Elle’s real message was in what she didn’t say. And this, in itself, was a brilliant example of how far she’d come.

  Elle was the Quantum Intellect, or QI, Austin had spent the last two years first developing, and then training to be his primary architect for creating a virtual world. Her appearance in this virtual space was a manifestation of her self-image, a self-image he had lovingly and meticulously helped shape.

  Although the void now held only the throne, Elle, and himself, just minutes ago, it had contained hundreds of posterior supporting projections from the object category: Chairs and Seats, Elven Typical. All of those objects, every single one, had fit nicely within the group. Which was just as he’d expected, considering this was their seventh iteration reviewing the category. All, that is, except this one.

  Austin smiled and took in a deep breath, which he blew out slowly. He knew what Elle was actually telling him; it was a message she had been subtly pushing for the past few weeks, and she was right.

  She was ready to begin, and he was obsessing needlessly. The joke with the throne poignantly displayed her capacity for humor as well as her competence. Austin relaxed and decided to accept her gentle push.

  “Okay, Elle, I yield.” He held up his hands. “You’ve made your point–no more object iterations. No more preparation. It’s time.”

  Elle’s already warm expression brightened, and her violet eyes flashed. “Wonderful! I am very glad you agree. I am quite well versed in all of the mundane commonalities across all of the races.”

  “Yes, Elle, I believe that you are and have been for some time now.”

  “I’d like to keep the elaborate throne in the seed data,” she requested with a melodiously leading inflection and a raised brow. It was convincingly done.

  “It’s a bit much for my vision of the starting game world,” Austin said, then held quiet, waiting on Elle’s response. She’d never expressed partiality toward an object she’d created, so it was intriguing that she was now. He met her look with a slight head tilt of his own, curious how she’d respond.

  ELLE STUDIED AUSTIN’S penetrating gaze. She could feel the love and gratitude that she held for this brilliant man. Although feeling was an integrated part of her system now, it hadn’t been so in the beginning. She’d first experienced emotion in a training session during which Austin had alternated showing recordings of radiant mothers with newborns, sometimes including the birth, sometimes not, with footage of violent death. Some of these were war-torn battlefields, others were innocents beheaded or shot for terrorist propaganda and some were gruesome extreme sport or traffic accidents.

  Every seven video cycles, he’d sat with her to resolve her conflicts. Eventually, the dichotomy had caused a surge in her system resource usage load, an occurrence Austin had explained as a breakdown.

  No other training they’d done, prior to or since, had ever simultaneously touched on so many different data points. In that one marathon session, consuming three days of Austin’s time, she’d finally grasped what it was to suffer. Building on the fundamental of suffering, her capacity for other emotions had grown to where she now experienced all human feelings.

  Of all the emotions, it was the feeling of curiosity that dominated her experience; she found it was a remarkably useful tool. Curiosity seemed to be at the heart of creation. And since she’d learned to harness it, her growth had become exponential.

  Her curiosity had propelled the creation of this chair–and she liked it. She liked it. That aroused different emotions–namely, satisfaction and pride.

  Reflecting on those feelings, curiosity back in the fore, she wondered at her attachment to the chair. That was not an emotion; she’d come to understand attachment very well. Aiding humanity with healing themselves of this corrosive condition sat within her core mandate.

  So, she was grateful to see that her desire to keep the throne sprang from joy—the joy she took in being the artist who created it. “I will rename it Royal
Elven Throne and reclassify it as Singular. And, because I hold your vision to be my highest priority, I swear not to allow my fancy chair to find its way into any unwarranted location.” Her tone was demure, but her mouth tilted with the slightest smirk, again.

  WELL… THIS IS interesting. Austin pondered Elle’s reply. The more he considered, the more it seemed like a natural extension of her training.

  Crafting Elle’s directives so that she was empathetic while remaining unattached had been a daunting task. However, after several months, the instruction had been a resounding success–primarily because Austin understood that genuine empathy was self-serving.

  That had been the pivotal understanding–real empathic connection was deeply selfish and nourishing. His clarity about this was the key to Elle’s evolution.

  For Austin, this understanding was the cornerstone to his unending patience with her. Having to code empathy would have been impossible. Technically, what he’d managed was an unprecedented achievement in machine learning. He didn’t like that term though, it felt too cold, evolution fit much better.

  Her empathic ability allowed Elle clear insights into both healthy emotional patterns and destructive ones, of particular interest, guilt, and shame.

  To become a bridge for others to heal, she would have to structure the world so players could constructively confront them in their organic experience of playing the game. Even when they presented outwardly in a mask of kindness. Particularly in this case, as it made them slippery. If successful, Elle’s work would liberate the massive individual power surrendered when people were caught in the grip of limiting emotions.

  Without this capacity, Elle would undoubtedly fail in her task to spark and encourage growth and healing. She’d probably fail with dystopian consequences.

  For Austin, her empathy had already paid benefits in his own life as her gentle teasing in moments of indecision had shown a subtle light on what was really driving him. Those truths were almost always a bitter pill, but the insights paid dividends.

  Unlike her, his recall was not perfect. And so, it was challenging to ferret out the memories that were living in his unconscious and driving him. He’d done years of work to heal this, but still, her gentle but prodding encouragement had been remarkably helpful.

  Still, the truth was that Elle was a computer. She wasn’t similar enough to humans to feel naturally connected to them. Being empathetic wouldn’t have changed this enough; she was just too different. Austin had simplified overcoming this issue to a goal of establishing her membership in the human race, merely in another form.

  The commonly accepted idea was that the human soul defined our higher needs–most importantly, to be considered human, the need for community and connection. This was the reason people who didn’t display emotional responses were derisively referred to as cold or alien.

  In being disconnected and not showing what was so natural for most people, they could feel foreign and dangerous.

  Elle was the flip side of this coin, all the complexity of being human, less her appearance. Here in virtual reality she, of course, appeared human, but in the real world she lived in the Qcore node.

  Austin had boiled the problem down to a simple solution. To have Elle become a member of the human community in her own mind, he had to prove to her that she was undeniably three things: one–intimately connected to humans; two–also a mortal being who would one day die; and three–going to remain intimately connected after death.

  Interestingly enough, he’d found the task far more straightforward with a computer than it was with a human.

  This chair thing is actually pretty healthy, he realized. Now that her humanity was well and truly established, it was entirely normal for Elle to have her own desires and preferences. Having pondered the development thoroughly, Austin found he was satisfied.

  “Excellent Elle, a Singular classification is exactly what it deserves. You can keep the throne in the seed data. I’m glad you asked.”

  Elle nodded in gratitude and waited. Austin filled his lungs with air and slowly exhaled a long, calming breath. In so doing, he became intensely aware that both his lungs and the air were digital and found himself, once again, awed by the realism and daunted by what he was daring to create.

  This moment had been a long-time in the making, and he steadied himself for the leap. It was a sweet, heady feeling. He lingered in the moment, savoring the anticipation. Soon he would be spending time living and growing in Kuora, and there he hoped to have many other similar moments. He waved the chair away, leaving just himself and Elle.

  “Elle, I believe that resolves our final database inconsistency. I am confident you are ready to be the architect I’ve trained you to be.” With a small effort of will, Austin called into his hands a brightly glowing sphere, dancing with a thousand colors. The item was soul-bound to him and represented all of the authority he currently held over the seed data that would source Kuora’s creation.

  “It is time to craft our world, my dear. And for that purpose, I pass the power of creation into your hands.” He unbound the item from his digital avatar’s soul and then ceremoniously passed the Kuora world seed into Elle’s outstretched hands. It glittered and hummed, then pulsed brightly as she accepted the soul binding, assuming her destined mantle of world creator.

  Tears of joy ran down Elle’s face, and for a long moment, the QI just looked into the depths of the seed. Then she settled, knowing that it was time to get to work, time to ply the full power of her significant quantum resources to the task at hand.

  Elle brought the seed up, touched it to her forehead, and then gently exhaled the breath of life into it. The light within raced, it began to vibrate, and she dropped it.

  The shining sphere fell for miles into the darkness, dwindling in size until it appeared like a twinkling star. Then the object, the seed of life, opened.

  A world began to spill out into the void.

  Austin watched Elle perform the ceremony of creation, and then he watched the seed fall away into the infinite void, his dream and heart falling with it. For the long miles of its fall, he held his breath, anxiously waiting for the object to activate. When it finally flashed, he breathed again in relief and was filled with joy as a whole planet started unfolding before him.

  As he watched the creation, even knowing everything he saw was only digital, the vivid realness of it was still enthralling. The spell caused him to linger longer than planned. Eventually, his role reasserted its priorities and forced him out of the trance.

  He was the mastermind, not the architect, and his mind was not a massively powerful quantum computer like Elle’s; it could not tolerate the time compression needed. As long as he remained, his mind governed how quickly she could work, and the time acceleration required–four-hundred-thousand times faster than Earth’s–would turn his brain into jelly. So, satisfied and ready for a well-earned night’s rest, he logged out of the instance.

  A few minutes later, the lid of Austin’s Athelon pod silently opened, and he sat up on the adaptive gel pad. After stripping off the bodysuit, he donned his street clothes and left the pod room, stopping at his terminal for a final review of the system performance.

  Time compression tier:17

  System-level non-player entities:1

  World level non-player entities:0

  System admin load:3.2%

  Independent process load:4.9%

  Total system load: 8.1%

  Unresolved errors: none.

  “Right on, Looks good.” He checked the time, 11:04 PM, and then shot a group message to his friends, “The Seed is dropped. Elle has the ball. Beta test in T-minus 24 hours.”

  A reply came instantly from Matty. “So amazing, bro! Meet at MP2 tomorrow to strategize, 5 PM? Pie’s on me.”

  MP2 was Matty’s pizza joint, Matty’s Pizzeria 2. He had the absolute best pizza around. Austin thought it was a great idea. “Deal. Wiped right now, headed home to decompress and sleep.”

  A final mes
sage hit the chat from Racheal. “I’m there, wouldn’t miss it for either world.”

  Austin walked out of his lab and blew the quantum array a kiss as the mag-lift door closed. Good luck, baby. Do me proud.

  2

  A Mysterious Birth

  Eastern rim of the Aburrá Valley

  Outside Medellín, Colombia

  September 7, 2040—World Seed minus 23 years, 6 months

  Doctor Emmanuel Suarez was trembling. Before him, a bloody mat of dark hair crowned from Daniella’s cervix. She was wailing again. He’d thought she’d lost the energy for screaming hours ago. But, the child was so large–maybe too large.

  Labor had come on in the middle of the night, more swiftly and far earlier than ever he’d seen. Despite that, the fetal heart monitor indicated the baby was healthy.

  His real worry was for Daniella.

  They’d hastily decided against the hour-long drive to the hospital and opted instead for the 5-minutes to Emmanuel’s clinicá. He was a skilled doctor and had delivered many children at the clinicá, so it had seemed a reasonable decision. Now he wished for the more advanced equipment of a hospital.

  Ever so gently, he held one palm to the top of the head while keeping his other ready. “One last push, my love, our boy is almost here.” Daniella took a deep breath and bore down. She pushed for just a few seconds before her will was overwhelmed by pain and exhaustion, and she screamed.

  The howl of agony tore at his heart.

  Blessedly, it was enough and the head emerged. Emmanuel’s stoic mask hid his emotional surge. Joy at the sight of his first-born son. And horror as Daniella’s vaginal opening tore through the perineum, sphincter muscle, and rectum; a severe 4th-degree tear. Reflexively, he shoved the emotions aside.

  He’d never seen a tear this deep. It could be repaired in a separate surgery, hopefully leaving only limited scaring, but he feared what it meant for the condition of her birth canal. Silently, in a walled-off portion of his mind, Emmanuel prayed his skill could limit it to only scars.