by J. J. Lorden
Producing the raw, unsharpened blade was the art he loved and found most rewarding. After that, the grinding, polishing, and sharpening to create a finished product was about revealing the quality of the craftsmanship, not adding to it. Not that his attention could drift, a blade could easily be ruined on a grinding wheel.
And so, his head space was crystal clear as the NexU sped along the winding, evergreen-lined, ribbon of asphalt into town. The road was as familiar to Austin as were the pine-strewn paths he’d skittered summers away on as a boy.
Carving forward, road disappearing behind, and forest sliding by in a blur, he existed moment-to-moment, present, content, and at ease.
He pulled the wheel left, braking hard as he nosed through an apex before slamming on the power, acceleration pinning him back, ripping down a short straight before again hammering the breaks into another turn.
The miles between his home and town rolled rapidly by, tall pines embracing both roadsides in a boundary only occasionally broken by a gravel driveway entrance.
He had auto-drive off and performance mode engaged, putting the power of the beastly vehicle in his hands. In this mode the NexU’s body slung low, its body panels shifted and reconfigured for optimum downforce, speed and cornering.
Living in Maine, and particularly this far out into the boondocks, allowed him to manually pilot his car without violating the auto-drive laws they had in cities. And, with the NexU’s look-ahead detection, he saw other drivers coming from a mile out.
Many people didn’t even own cars anymore; transport-pool businesses had replaced personal car ownership for numerous families. It was an affordable solution for those who didn’t often travel beyond a fifty-mile radius of their homes.
But no family car meant kids grew up without experiencing the great American road trip. In Austin’s mind, that was a travesty.
His desire for speed satiated, Austin decelerated and began slowly winding his way along while appreciating his breath, the feel of his hands on the wheel, and the lingering peaceful sense gained from a body and mind well exercised.
The physical exertions had enabled him to avoid obsessing over Kuora-world-generation scenarios. With every one-minute of real-world time representing a year in the Kuoran digital universe, he easily could have fixated.
Thinking about the accelerated in-game time brought thoughts of his absentee father, whom he missed. Austin wondered once again what project was keeping him away and entirely out of communication for more than two years now.
Before he left, Bendik had given Austin exclusive access to a quantum array and the entire floor that housed it. Sub-level 37 at the remote quantum research facility of Texier Quantum Labs deep in the woods south of Bethel Maine.
In the months leading up to Bendik’s disappearance, the two of them had spent many hours collaborating, both in-person and via video link. During those months, Bendik had engaged with Austin as a fellow professional.
Whereas previously, Austin’s father had always been circumspect when talking about the work he loved. Apologetically explaining that it was dangerous to discuss anything outside of corporate “white rooms” where he could be sure the cutting-edge work wouldn’t be compromised.
Much to Austin’s joy, his father had shown genuine interest in his labor-of-love, a project to create a fully immersive virtual universe. Wildly enthusiastic about Kuora’s possibilities, Bendik had fully engaged in helping Austin.
It remained the one and only time he’d been able to stand on level ground with his Dad.
Over several months, they’d flushed out potential problem areas and their solutions. His father had coached Austin on QI development. And, most importantly, they’d delved into the nuances of how Kuora could tap the epigenetic potential of players.
Before he disappeared, Bendik had committed to funding the construction of an initial six facilities across the US to house the immersion pods for players to access the game.
With the roadmap they had created in hand, doing the actual world programming had been dependent upon Austin having a QI capable of integrating with the array. For this purpose, Bendik had provided him with a base-level, minimally imprinted version of a proven QI that he himself had cultivated into Max. Austin’s copy had eventually become Elle.
He’d first trained Elle’s technical capacity and quantified the details of their objective–creating a virtual universe. Then, he’d set the soft program goals and intended impacts on those playing. This gave her an ultimate objective and provided incentive for her eventual evolution.
Only after Elle’s awakening as a member of humanity, did they delve into the subtle variables, determining how to help each individual. Aka: age, sex, innate capacities, trained skills, personal history, psychological health, relationship to success and failure, and comfort with death.
Informed by conversations with his father, using more than a million neurological profiles, and with Elle doing the heavy lifting, they had created a web of interconnected elements that became the framework for achieving those goals and impacts.
Before Elle’s evolution, while her objective had been percolating, unresolved, in the background, he’d generated the database for detailed object creation by pointing her toward object sets.
Everything from pre-industrial-era housing, to the mud-and-daub construction method of Serengeti plainsmen, to geological science, to concepts like governance, everything possibly needed to create a digital world went into the data.
She compiled information about each collection and parsed it into separate elements; mapping their interrelatedness as she did. In this work, his primary role was to solve the conflicts she couldn’t; in so doing, he improved her capacity for conflict resolution.
Conflicts were situations where Elle couldn’t distinguish an on-target or correct outcome from a destabilizing or implausible result when she was generating new content.
For instance, when she incorporated early-1700’s European building design with a fantasy world Elven city and, pulling from the European part, included masonry walls and slate-tiled roofing on Elven dwellings, built hundreds of feet up in a tree–that was a conflict.
Because he wanted Kuora to be new and unique, while maintaining at least a gamer’s idea of believability, Elle had to learn to combine existing ideas with new, creative ones.
The struggle was learning to create new digital objects that were right on the edge of believability, without going too far. Aiming for this fine line, there were a near infinite number of ways for conflicts to occur.
How would she merge a tribal feline race with the staunch, no-nonsense feel of Russian culture? Did cat-folk drink vodka, or possibly a distilled version of thistle sap they called Mistalka? Humans could dream up this kind of thing, but Elle often struggled.
Creativity was an elusive ability, requiring intuitive leaps that connected for both the creator and audience. There was no book, no instruction manual to learn creativity.
If you didn’t have it naturally, it was best trained indirectly through trial and error, an open mind, and studying the fringe examples.
One useful case had been studying the difference between graffiti and art. At times, distinguishing between them was clear, and in other cases it was not.
Sometimes they occurred side by side, and two different people could argue which was which. And in some rare cases, graffiti, skillfully added to existing art, undeniably elevated its impact and beauty.
A fringe case like this, where the cultural convention of graffiti’s implicit wrongness, was challenged by a clear exception, provided the raw material Elle needed to get the mind of being creative.
These cases, combined with Elle practicing by creating real-world/fantasy combinations, followed by exhaustive conflict resolution with Austin, culminated in her evolving the capacity for creativity.
All of that, was the process he’d officially completed just the previous night. Although in truth, Elle had probably been ready for weeks.
Now she’d been running at a 400,000x time multiplier for fifteen hours, creating and watching over a wholly virtual world. He was dying to see how she’d done.
As Austin came around a sweeping right to pause at a stop sign, the trees began to recede. More homes were visible, and soon enough small retail buildings began to populate the roadside.
Easing the NexU into transit mode, its body rose to the height of a pickup, intake vents disappeared, the air-slicing shape blunted, and airfoils molded back into the front and rear panels. Austin finally allowed himself to imagine all of Kuora’s possibilities.
In his mind’s eye, he saw epic kingdoms rising, marvelous magical discoveries, and imaginary races brought to life. He saw family strife as individuals left their homes, exploring and interacting with other races, some falling in love and bringing beautiful mixed-race children home to pureblood grandparents who might or might not accept them.
Central hubs of commerce grew into economic powers as rare goods caravans brought their wares to distant trade partners. Monarchs were crowned and deposed, wars were fought, won and lost, some for territory, and others for vengeance.
Austin found himself grinning. He was more excited about this evening than anything he could remember. Tonight, Austin, Matty, and Racheal, would begin exploring the vast world of Kuora. He hoped to find grand forest cities populated by long-lived magical races, maybe elves maybe not.
He imagined riding up on towering hilltop castles circled by crenulated battlements and talking with the gate guards. He was intensely curious about the possible evolution of new intelligent species.
He also pondered how the darker and more malevolent forces in Kuora would look. Would the dark be a clear and visible enemy, perhaps dominated by a cult of necromancy? Or would it appear more plain, non-magical, and driven by old fashioned greed and politics. Or perhaps religious conflicts based on unbending dogmatic canon would grind on the people of Kuora. Humanity had certainly experienced its fair share of those.
Kuora, approximately the size of Earth, had more than twice the landmass. This meant that even if the player-base expanded into the billions, Kuora would remain opportunity-rich and uncrowded–the possibilities were limitless.
Players would guide and define the histories of new nations as their stories were stitched into a world indistinguishable from the real one.
Excepting, of course, magical powers, imaginary species of sentient beings, and a system that gave quantifiable control over one’s body and mind.
The vivid fullness of Kuora would also starkly illuminate another question. What was reality?
This question served a purpose, Austin didn’t intend the experience to simply create a meta-physical conundrum for players. It would help to chip away at the hardened structures of people’s minds.
In doing this, breaking down limiting ideas, it would begin to open those minds to the possibility of a life engaged with the unknown.
Regarding the meta-physical puzzle, the theoretical possibility of universes nested within universes, that idea made even Austin’s head spin.
For a full afternoon he’d tortured himself, convinced it was possible to figure some way to test the real world for authenticity. But, the rabbit hole was too deep; he couldn’t imagine a viable test.
That was eighteen months ago during a fit of anxiety about what a successful Kuora launch could prove about the nested universe mystery. Racheal, his longtime friend, had found him wallowing in that dark hole and rebuked him.
She had pointed out a simple issue. If Earth was a virtual world, it would probably be monitored by an advanced intelligence with a vested interest in maintaining the illusion. Further, she argued that if he did find a way to pierce the veil and prove the world was a simulation, that intelligence, in all likelihood, would delete him before allowing him to mess with the program.
The simple thought was well-reasoned enough, and he quickly dropped the obsession.
Austin’s thoughts returned to the moment as he approached MP2. Turning off the road into a retail plaza, he drove down the line of parked cars, and snugged his limited-production Altra into a spot fronting on Matty’s joint. It was the best pizza between Raymond and the Republic of New York (RNY).
Matty had abandoned the original Matty’s Pizzeria, his short-lived, but highly successful, business there five years ago during the succession fighting. He fled from the conflict into northern Maine and stayed with Austin for a few months before getting over the shock and deciding to stay and open MP2.
The Succession War had been a fast and brutal affair. So fast that Matty probably could have returned, but he didn’t. After coming home to their boyhood stomping grounds, he’d felt compelled to stay. Austin was glad he did. For him, real friends were hard to find.
As for the RNY, a self-appointed group of magnates, controlling a substantial share of the world’s wealth, had built a series of massive luxury bunkers in Manhattan and Long Island. Subsequently, they had secretly connected their gilded sanctuaries through an expansive system of underground tunnels and quietly created a self-sustaining military force, entirely based out of the subterranean megaplex.
The weaponry possessed by this private military had humbled what the government provided GIs. Because of this, the conflict was more a show of force than an actual fight.
In addition, the whole thing had been broadcast live. Council-owned media outlets had aired the laughable battlefield dominance the Republic forces held over the US military as part of their strategy.
These videos told the story more effectively than any speech or argument could. Based upon an invisible, non-lethal, immobilizing technology, the RNY forces captured entire infantry, light artillery, and tank companies without a single shot fired.
When the futility of the fight became apparent, some commanders, those harboring deep resentment toward an entrenched government, chose to turncoat and join the RNY. Soldiers who trusted these leaders followed, and entire units shifted sides without a single loss of life.
Many billions worth of US government warfighting equipment was abandoned until salvage units returned to collect it.
With the US government’s technological superiority overcome, and the Army soldier’s willingness to fight in question, the violence ended quickly in favor of negotiations. At the bargaining table, the US government gained concessions for access to the Federal Reserve, the UN as well as a substantial reduction to its national debt.
That was all it took. Congress passed a law allowing power to change hands cleanly.
Now, several years later, the RNY succession had emerged as the most effective ever achieved in opposition to a world power.
Unsurprisingly to Austin, it was later revealed that the council controlled an orbital satellite presence capable of defending against attacks originating from US military’s Guardian III satellites. With that supposed trump card removed from their arsenal, the government had been left with no viable force-based options.
To many, this tiny new country had all the answers. In certain circles, near hero-worship abounded, but Austin and his friends didn’t believe the hype. It was all just too altruistic for a rich bunch of assholes. A group Austin decidedly excluded himself from, despite his inherited wealth.
Parked, he opened his door–Whoomp!
“Woah!” Austin was suddenly dazed, stunned by a bright sunburst of light and the deep noise of a transformer failing.
His heart jumped in his chest. “Ahh!” Frantically, he grabbed for the door frame and caught it, swinging out awkwardly, but saving himself from crashing to the ground.
He blinked his eyes and looked around. The light was gone. Did that come from… Matty’s place?
He wasn’t the only one outside, other people on the sidewalk around the retail center were looking toward MP2.
Austin closed the car door, scanning the parking lot. Several stores down a man and woman were pointing at MP2. Farther away, in the entrance to the grocery store that anchored the L-shaped cente
r, a group of a dozen people had gathered. They talked animatedly, and one couple waved in the direction of the pizza parlor.
With cautious curiosity, he moved toward the parlor door and saw all the customers frozen in a daze. Most were seated, a few were standing at their tables, but everyone was locked on the ordering counter at the back.
Suddenly, several pointed vigorously toward the back. A moment later, chaos broke out inside the small eatery. Everyone was yelling, grabbing for loved ones, and rushing for the door in a mad scramble.
They knocked over tables and kicked aside chairs in the furious rush, causing half-eaten pizzas, silver pans, and red plastic cups to fly about while glass shakers filled with Italian herbs and red pepper shattered on the concrete floor. The view through the glass was a frightening mayhem.
A couple of young kids started screaming as their mother panicked and grabbed them both. She didn’t even bother to free the little one from her highchair.
Austin walked up and held the door open for the exodus. Upon seeing a gap, he grabbed a guy by the arm before he could bolt. “What’s going on?” Austin asked.
The man looked at him with real fear in his eyes. “Let me go, dude!” The panicked man struggled to break free as he looked anxiously over his shoulder.
The slower customers began to spill out the door. An elderly couple hobbled out. Behind them the mom with the two kids stumbled through; one arm awkwardly clutching a five-year-old boy on her hip while the other hand dragged the entire highchair.
She clattered through the open door and down the sidewalk–little girl facing backward and crying as she bounced and clung to the side rails.
The man pulled harder. “There’s flying pans in there! I don’t want no part of this shit!”
“What? Flying pizza pans?” Austin said in disbelief. Before he could question further, the guy wrenched his arm free and took off.
Confused and concerned for Matty, Austin held the glass door for the final few fleeing patrons. As they cleared out, Austin finally got a good look at the inside.
Sure enough—about three feet above the counter—a stack of large, metal pizza pans floated.
