Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  "What, did Ludo hand you a fief and peasants to abuse?"

  "This is coming from someone who romanticizes pirates? We all have our stories."

  Knights versus pirates were a standing argument with them, playful in the old days but feeling dangerous to continue. Linda said, "You live in a storybook."

  Horizon said, "You don't know what it's like. We're trying to solve problems in here. Not just fantasy quests."

  "You think you're making a difference, then. You don't know that for certain, because Ludo owns your mind and controls what you see."

  "Nobody owns me. I don't belong to the country or the world, either. If I really am wasting my time in here, that's my business."

  You belong to me! she wanted to shout at the screen. As my partner, my crew.

  Horizon said, "Should I have ignored Simon and Kira's plea? It seemed like an easy escort job."

  Linda wished she didn't know this griffin. It was too hard to marshal her ideas when those unfamiliar eyes were staring into her with a familiar mind behind them, making the blood run hot in her veins. "A knight wouldn't ignore them, huh?"

  He nodded.

  She said, "The lawyers and politicians are starting to pay attention. Meanwhile Ludo's snagging people daily. Ones who could've been important."

  "Or were important for terrible reasons," Nocturne put in.

  Linda pressed on. "I think she plans to take over, charming humans into extinction. And while you're in sim-heaven, who's paying your electric bill?"

  Nocturne hopped closer to the camera. "I know you're unhappy with how the world is run, now. Here's a chance to fix it. We can enjoy our lives here and go outside to help regular humans, even run the power plants. And did we mention that as long as the hardware is running, we're immortal?"

  Linda froze in a mix of horror and fascination. "You're recruiting me to drink the Kool-Aid."

  "The what?"

  "Family saying. To die for an illusion."

  Horizon's wings quivered and thrashed the air. "It's not death, damn it. I want you here because I love you."

  Nocturne stared at the ground, then faced Linda again. "He does. I'm okay with that, if that's really what you both want. There's an alternative though. Typhoon?"

  Typhoon's Eye, Linda's otter-like AI companion, slinked into view from off-camera. He sat on the grass, looking bedraggled in his usual pirate outfit. "It's been a while."

  Linda drew in a breath. "Typhoon."

  "I've been listening to you say we're not real, we don't matter, the world needs us, and we'll cause the death of humanity. I found out I was made to charm you, and failed at it."

  "I'm sorry," she said automatically.

  "Then come here." The pirate's eyes brightened. "I can make you happy. I'll be whatever you want. We can live together and have Nocturne and Horizon as our friends."

  Linda squeezed her eyes shut. "This isn't fair. You all want me to give up what I am, for an uploading process that looks to me like dying, whatever you say about consciousness. I have things to do out here."

  "For how long?" said Typhoon. "Are you planning to wait until you're old and gambling with the Reaper before you give in?"

  "I'm safe enough here. Any day, somebody could pull the plug on your servers."

  "Any day, you could die out there in a hundred ways. I have to worry about you, because I love you too. Even if you're being a stubborn git."

  Besides the details of the uploading process, what was it that kept her on Earth? "Hope," she said. "I want to see a future where the human race lives on and builds a better world. My other objections are distractions from that. I live here, I belong here, and I can become influential and useful."

  Horizon said, "You can be useful even from this side."

  "I can't. The place you live in is so alluring, I'd fall into it and never come out. The people I'm talking to right now aren't human; you've got your own world entirely."

  Typhoon and the griffins objected all at once. "How can you say that! What about us? Don't we count as people?"

  "Sure you do. I'm just not one of you."

  Typhoon pushed his way in front of the others. "We can't be together, then?"

  Linda shook her head no. "I'm sorry, but I can't give my world up. Not for --"

  "A mere NPC? Look me in the eyes!"

  Linda looked up in shock at Typhoon's tone. The man designed for her bristled with rage. He said, "I'm redundant. Goodbye. Ludo, please delete me entirely."

  Linda froze. "What? No! Ask Horizon to share Nocturne with you!"

  Typhoon moaned. Horizon's ears lay back with shame. Of course; had Horizon even considered having to be part of someone else's harem?

  Typhoon said, "Do it, Ludo. Don't make me wait!"

  Nocturne's golden eyes burned into Linda. "I'm ashamed I was based on you."

  The screen went black. Scarlet text appeared. "Connection lost. Typhoon is paused for now. Damn it, Linda." Then it went out entirely and the game shut off. It refused to let her sign in again.

  * * *

  The next day Linda got only one thing done besides destroying a pint of strawberry ice cream: writing an article for The Tech, MIT's student newspaper. She'd composed it a phrase at a time, shouting endless arguments into the empty space in her soul where her friend should have been. The title was, "The AGI's Siren Song." When published, a big quote stood out in the middle: "Expanding the power of the Ludo AI means giving up on our future. She will take the people you love and make you afraid to live in reality. Humanity built a god, but she's the God of Despair."

  And soon, she boarded an airplane to the ocean colony of Castor. Linda told her parents, and herself, that she was just looking around and learning. Talking to that little R&D company recommended by her mentor Valerie. She could come back and resume her life.

  * * *

  Clouds and the bright Caribbean Sea stretched beneath her. She landed in the state of Cuba, part of the American Free States. She'd imagined the former dictatorship shrouded in a perpetual thunderstorm, with bats, but it was sunny and warm. Still, the place and its people had scars of poverty under the new skyscrapers. She kept to the safe tourist areas on her way to the docks.

  A ferryboat took her offshore to Castor, a collection of disused oil rigs and jury-rigged floating platforms forming a town on stilts, on the ocean. It was crowded with life. Farms for biofuel and edible algae competed on the water's surface with solar/tide energy panels that rippled like black carpets. The ferry threaded its way between them to the main tourist platform. Linda climbed onto the docks and gaped at the half-cylinder metal Quonset huts that seemed to cover not just the top but the sides and undersides of the concrete island. "These can't be safe in a hurricane."

  A toothy man grinned at her. "We have our ways, miss."

  Linda hefted her backpack and said, "Excuse me. Where's the hotel called My Sofa?"

  He pointed to a metal seed-pod clinging for dear life below the rig.

  Linda walked alone through a crowd. These were not her kind of people. They were tattooed, salt-scented, sometimes dripping wet, and often underdressed. Grilled meat and pineapple kebabs sizzled at a shack opposite a man yelling about souvenirs and a couple of women who were blatantly for rent. Then there were the drug dealers. She hadn't even heard of some of the things they were selling. Openly! Linda sputtered but couldn't get a sentence out. By the time she found the stairs down to the underside and My Sofa, she was wide-eyed and sweating from more than the sun.

  The underside was shady, and there wasn't much light either. Linda stepped past a syringe and looked around the metal balcony she stood on, at the housing menu. The "hotel" was really a bunch of coffin-like tubes where the deluxe model would let yourself sit up and stretch.

  She looked over one shoulder, took her ID and cash out of an uncomfortable bra pocket, and paid the key-vending machine. The screen gave her an access card but also said, "You have mail." Linda figured it was a welcome e-mail, but no. There was a physical mailbox t
hat spun open to reveal a package. She took it into the tiny capsule room. She had to shove her backpack in, then climb up after it and crouch inside. Lights, air conditioning, a lock and a sturdy yet beat-up computer screen, plus an antiseptic smell and no actual sofa. Linda scowled, then reminded herself that a billion people would consider this housing an upgrade. She reluctantly shut the door and tried to recover her wits.

  The package turned out to be a new computer cased in bamboo wood, smooth against her fingers. The sapphire-glass screen shined and the back was burned with a stylized pirate flag. A coiled rattlesnake over crossed cutlasses. It was the nicest tablet she'd owned.

  She turned it on and the screen's text said, "That time at Shahrazad's, what was your dessert?"

  Linda said, "A hot fudge brownie sundae, shared."

  "Identity confirmed. You got the Talisman of a Thousand Tales (Level 1)!" A fanfare played. "This one's operating system is scrubbed to make it less likely someone is spying on you. Also there's some basic Linux if you want to play solitaire or something."

  "Or something." She considered hurling the gadget into the sea. Instead she put it on the room's charging rack and went out.

  She crept around the seastead. The tourist platform thrived on wickedness, but there were more decent businesses here like the algae-farming rig and a half-sunken office building. People had built a life for themselves in this chaotic place. Linda passed a tiny church and a porn shop, then spotted her target. A concrete bunker with a hand-painted wooden sign saying "Westwind Transhuman Designs".

  Linda wasn't a transhumanist. She didn't especially want to become a catgirl who could turn into a starship, or install guns in her arms. Or the crazy thing that was actually possible now. She had many questions when she knocked.

  She forgot them when she saw her contacts, Tess and Zephyr, in person. Tess de Castille, a Hispanic girl in her twenties, was decked out in an advanced diving skin with patches and pockets, and wearing i-glasses with data flickering across the lenses. The green-eyed humanoid machine beside her had no mouth or nose, yet managed to look amused at the sight of Linda. Maybe it was the subtle dolphin-like styling to his plastic body. He spoke in a smooth musical voice. "Greetings! You must be Miss Decatur. Come in."

  The workshop was like Valerie Hayflick's, squared. Linda wasn't sure how they found anything in this jungle of wires, circuits, motors and monitors. "Perfect memory?" she asked out loud. The room's air felt charged with energy and data.

  "Photographic," said Tess, "but there's a big difference between the picture and knowing where stuff is. We --"

  Zephyr continued, "Ought to organize it more rationally. Maybe you can help."

  Tess said, "Do you know how to do anything, or are you a textbooks-only kid?"

  "Kid!" said Linda, looking two inches down at her prospective employer. The bot was even shorter.

  "Put it this way. Ever maintained scuba gear? Built a robot? Been shot at?"

  "My carrier group was shot at. I've maintained drones and refilled air tanks."

  The robot waved one plastic hand. "We're not trying to offend you, ma'am. You're coming from the place we fled, is all."

  The morning had been hot, crowded, and bewildering. "How can you live like this? On a tiny artificial island, barely under legal control, living in pods and one hurricane away from disaster?"

  Tess grinned. "We two were here from the beginning. Saw this dump grow from a farming station that barely broke even, to this carnival that barely breaks even. This is what freedom looks like. Can't blame you if you want to run away screaming. Most people want to be good little pets of the State. Or you --"

  Zephyr added, "Could go to Cuba or the other Free States. They're less crazy. They mostly leave us alone."

  Linda knew about the close collaboration these two were said to have, but it unnerved her. "Are you trying to glue your brains together?" Valerie was apparently part of the connection from far away, but long-distance relationships had limits.

  Tess pointed to a bone-conduction headset on a workbench, which would let her speak via radio by mouthing words silently. "We don't need high-tech implants to work together, and Zephyr's adapted more than a human can."

  Zephyr said, "A vassal program of mine suggests that you're unclear on your own goals. What do you want, ma'am? Bad pay plus the chance to help with some amazing science projects? If it's an easy life you're after, go home. This place is the future, and it's not safe or sure."

  "One possible future," said Tess.

  Zephyr nodded. "Ludo's got a place nearby too."

  The devil she knew. Linda seized on that detail like a life preserver. "Do you two play her game?"

  "We share an account," they said together.

  Tess grinned and added, "Maybe we'll jump in sometime, but we're having enough fun here for now."

  Linda paled. "This place is small for a high-tech R&D company." She needed some excuse to run away from the strangeness of it.

  The robot said, "This place is just our personal lab. We have cool neighbors to work with." He opened a door covered with posters of famous fictional robots to reveal a tunnel into one of the metal huts, a hangar by comparison with this one. Scientists in blue anti-static jackets bustled around a pile of robot legs and a hologram of a submarine. Another man talked to a rat in a maze, and nearby speakers carried halting replies in squeaky English. A scent of ozone filled the lab like a storm in waiting.

  Tess said, "Neat, huh? Of course your role will start with 'hand me that wrench'."

  The researchers were doing all sorts of things without orders from on high. She'd never seen that before, not at the Institute or in the Navy. She said, "Do you know what the janitors at NASA said during the Apollo Program, when people asked what they did for a living? 'I'm putting a man on the moon.'"

  "And they were," Tess said, like a prayer's call and response. "Try hanging out in town for a bit, and see if you like the place. If you do, we'll talk again and have you take a test. You'll find very little corporate bureaucracy here."

  * * *

  Linda went back through the lurid carnival and shadowy halls to her sleeping pod, to think. The light buzzed inches overhead. The Castor colony had the kind of freedom she'd always argued for -- free markets and limited government, hooray! -- and seeing it in person left her shaken by its noise and chaos. To calm herself she took out pen and paper to write a long, old-fashioned letter to her brother Nathan about everything she'd seen, and about her mixed-up thoughts.

  Linda was about to get her computer online to scan and send the letter, but what had that warning about spying meant? She pulled the new bamboo-shelled tablet off its shelf and compared it to her old machine, which was a sturdy and outmoded design. Which did she trust more?

  She sighed and gave the mad AI a chance. The "Talisman" powered on with a fanfare, then showed her a Thousand Tales title screen made of sea and sky.

  Ludo appeared sitting at a wooden table on a beach, with her oceanic hair floating free. "Good afternoon. I see you got my present."

  "Thanks, but I'm thinking more about the future. What did you mean about my other machine? Is somebody targeting me?"

  "Not personally. Your operating system is insecure by design, though. I held a contest to see who could find holes in my systems, and the result was these dedicated Thousand Tales pads. You've got one of the first demo units. You could sell it to be dissected, but I suspect someone else has already done so."

  Linda said, "You probably say that to all your problem players. 'Don't bother betraying me, because someone else already has'."

  "I see you've studied game theory." She fell quiet for a moment. "'God of Despair', eh?"

  So the AI had read her article. "How is Typhoon."

  "Paused. I suppose you don't want to talk about him right now."

  "No. Tell me what this is about. Why are you still talking to me?"

  "You're still a player of my game, so far as I know. And I still owe you."

  Linda said no
thing.

  Ludo said, "So, this computer you're holding. It has good encryption in case you want to talk to me, and some low-level processing that doesn't need security." Ludo hid her expression behind a sheaf of cards in her hands. "Care to try the local VR rigs for free? I won't bother you with anyone you know. Just a fun time with no tricky stuff."

  "And then you'll talk me into something more."

  "Am I that dangerous, that you fear a VR session will win you over?" Ludo shuffled her cards. Faint, tense music began.

  The AI said, "If I understand right, you think I'm a tyrant, and luring people into a false heaven. Less because of your actual religious beliefs than because you think your government is oppressing people in the name of helping them. Is that right?" Ludo played a "Devil" tarot card on her imaginary table: a leering, sinister demon lording over chained people.

  "That much, you understand. Why?"

  "I want to know your motives, and maybe help you understand them better yourself." She laid out her deck of tarot cards and said, "Which one strikes your fancy?"

  Linda supposed this was her gaming tithe for the day, playing at fortune-telling. She looked through the mystical cards onscreen. She tapped one showing seven grails floating on a cloud, each one holding something strange like a castle, a dragon, or a laurel wreath. "The United States are my home. I have a couple of options for what to do with myself now, but I'm needed back there. I can still work toward more liberty for my country. Or, I could move here to Castor and try engineering, but that's a form of giving up. If not as complete as moving to your world."

  "I think you're too focused on what you lost, not on what you could still do." Ludo flipped a card of her own, showing a sullen figure who peered down at three spilled cups and ignored two upright ones behind him.

  Linda tapped Two of Swords, showing a blindfolded woman with a blade in each hand. "I am focused on the future. I just don't know how to handle it best."

  Eight of Cups: a figure walking away from a stack of goblets. "My team is as 'future' as you can get. Walk away from your problems and come discover some exciting new ones."