Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  While he worked on the math puzzle, he heard thumps and screeching behind him. "How's it coming, hon?" said Nocturne, dodging the golem's attacks and keeping it occupied.

  "Ready!" He typed in a number and the elevator door whooshed open. He slashed at the statue to help Nocturne disengage, so they could both get in before it jumped them again.

  * * *

  After that it was easy to reach Misha. The famous Ukrainian hacker lived in a sleek black hive full of computer screens, twined with roses. He deigned to use his robot-style body for talking with them. Often he preferred to be a disembodied spirit. He said, "You want the extra limbs to feel natural? I thought you two were purists, doing no upgrades except for the auto-translation."

  "I'm a griffin," said Horizon. "Talking with some other six-limbers today reminds me I haven't fully adapted to that."

  Misha conjured a silver feather. "Touching this item is consent to the hexapod modification, but it only makes sense to do that if you've gone through the 'Talesoul' data format conversion."

  Horizon shuffled uneasily. "I thought I'd do just the limb thing today."

  "It would be like taping a calculator onto a block of meat. I know the two of you haven't changed yourselves much, but at this point, Horizon, your mind format is holding you back. Conversion will let the Lady run your brain more swiftly."

  Horizon wondered if Misha's English translation system understood the double meaning of "run your brain". Right now Horizon was a black box, a mass of simulated neurons built by the natural tangle of evolution and DNA and cell growth. The uploading process had more-or-less copied it verbatim. He'd been one of the very first uploaders, though. The latest version of the surgery didn't do the entire brain, since it turned out that large chunks of it had practically nothing to do with personal identity or memory or personality. So he was not just analog but one of the oldest, least efficient brains on Talespace's computers.

  Nocturne nuzzled him. "Your decision."

  Ludo hadn't pressured him so far about conversion. But it was the right thing to do, for the sake of working and living at lower cost. Linda... Linda would call it sleight of hand, a software trick that would erase old-Horizon and make some new version of him. Horizon's talons clenched. According to her, Horizon was already one level removed from the man she'd wanted in her life.

  His new and wonderful mate was beside him, looking curious. "Is something wrong?"

  He shook his head. "Not with me. I'll trust the Lady and do the conversion. Let's get it over with."

  Misha nodded, and conjured up a silver key. Horizon took it.

  * * *

  His mind glitched. He thought of Simon sending himself out to distract the police; the scent and taste of the last meal he'd had with Linda, never yet equaled with Talespace's ghostly food; the moment when he first saw his wings. And a memory he'd thought lost: the moment when strangers in the Korea uploading clinic gave him an injection and told him to count to thirty.

  Horizon shuddered and flopped over, convulsing. It hurt! But there was a comforting wing draped across him, and gradually the stew of mismatched sensations all over his body calmed down and he was laying there, breathing heavily.

  The room's lighting had dimmed and shifted color, and Clara the Green Sage was there. Nocturne was walking into the room through a starship-style door.

  Horizon coughed and staggered up to all fours. "What happened?"

  Misha's body wasn't present; he was a hovering red orb that flitted around the room to indicate he was paying attention to several projects at once. His Slavic voice echoed through the hexagonal room. "The conversion was successful. It took a day, is all."

  Horizon hadn't been warned about losing consciousness, but he should have guessed.

  Nocturne padded closer and nuzzled his ears. "You all right?"

  His tail curled around hers and twined with it. "I feel a little..." He paused, realizing that he'd just instinctively waggled his wing where he might have used a foreleg for the same gesture before. The feathers along his tail tickled. He tried to swivel his ears on purpose, and for the first time he could remember, he did it easily. Usually they only moved by instinct, code that responded to his mood.

  He ran his tongue around the inside of his beak. He didn't even feel the faint sense that he should be standing up on his hindlegs. It was obvious now from its absence. "All this time, I've been wearing this body. Now it feels more like mine."

  Misha said, "I wouldn't know; I still find bodies unnecessary most of the time. Please proceed to the test chamber to give me some feedback." A door whooshed open to reveal a black room with a yellow grid.

  Horizon turned toward Clara, who was in her skunk-girl form today and dressed in a classic space officer outfit. He said, "Been observing the process?"

  Clara nodded. "It's fascinating to see how it ties in with our original AI designs. But hopefully you, personally, feel okay?"

  Horizon looked at his birdlike feet, flexing the talons and feeling their scaly texture. The muscles of his tail and wings were easy to sense and move.

  "There are magical creatures in the world now," he said. He silently thanked the Lady, but knew that much of the real work had been done by Misha and the other people serving her.

  Nocturne pecked him gently, saying, "Already magical over here, hon." Then she looked over at the Green Sage, still a little awed by her. "Are you converted already?"

  "I'll have to think about it."

  Horizon trotted on all fours into the grid room. It became an obstacle course where he ran and jumped and flew. The experience didn't feel much different than before, but every movement was subtly more under his control. Less like a VR rig thumping his back to give him the sense of wings and more like sense data coming to a part of his mind that was meant to use it. "I'm still me," he murmured.

  Nocturne said, "Thank you, Misha. Mind if we head out?"

  "Go ahead," said the Artificer's voice.

  She ushered Horizon toward the exit.

  Clara stopped them. "You've talked about your body, but what about your thoughts? Do you feel the same?"

  Uploaders had developed a tradition called a "Jerusalem List", a document listing crucial memories in some detail. When the writer got in, he'd consult the list and either be assured that all the key parts were there, or get a partial reminder of what was lost. And there were lost fragments of memory even with the most successful uploads. Coming here was like a card game that asked you to discard some cards to draw new ones.

  Horizon thought back to his past, to the road that had taken him here. If it had been all smiles, it would've seemed fake. But no, he still had memories that hurt, and that told him he was whole. Uploaders that he'd counseled often said the same thing. After all, the very name of the List tradition came from a memory of sorrow:

  How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill...

  He shook out his wings as if to brush away the gloom. He looked into Nocturne's face and saw her eagerness to play and explore and learn. She was restrained only by wanting to make sure he was intact enough to pounce and tease and cuddle. The digital world around him was the same one he knew, growing and evolving. He was a knight, the thing he'd always fantasized about, but more benevolent and useful than most actual knights. In his heart he still wanted to go on a thousand adventures and fly forever and serve the Lady and, and one day hold Linda in person again. All the memories remained, and he knew that the good outweighed the bad and it was his job to keep it that way.

  He looked up at Clara and said, "I'll leave the professionals to analyze the exact numbers. But yes, I think I kept what matters."

  He reached for the elevator button with his left hand.

  * * *

  During the ride down, Horizon practiced moving his feet and wings and tail, one at a time, finding his balance. "I'm more like you now," he said.

  "We'll need to investigate this change to make sure e
verything works. Let's go back home before we deal with the problem on the Isles."

  "Hmm?"

  Nocturne's beak curled in a smile and her tail lashed. "We need to do some science. You know, a before-and-after test of all your parts."

  They returned to their private fort, and experimented in great detail.

  Hours later, Horizon gradually woke up to find he was snuggled with Nocturne with his spine at a strange angle, like a cat. He stretched and shook himself out, beak to tail, then ran one wingtip along her side until she purred in her sleep.

  He trotted out of the cabin they shared. The fortress had stone towers at three corners of a wooden stockade that held several buildings in various stages of construction. The knights upgraded gradually, taking pride in organizing the place almost like a real building project. He and Nocturne had been taking management classes and trying to treat the NPC villagers like respected employees. As a result, he still didn't have a proper knightly castle, and he didn't care.

  Because he didn't have to be a medieval warrior. Being a knight meant having troublesome players to smack sense into, quests to go on, and odd jobs that required Earthside robot piloting. Every day was an adventure to help the people of the Game.

  He took this moment to enjoy the sunrise and the chilly wind through his wings. He was alone for a little while, watching villagers in the distance, and listening to faint, sleepy background music.

  Sir Horizon the griffin stretched his wings. All the worlds were within reach. He smiled and went back into the cabin to wake Nocturne, so that she could share the morning with him. There was work to do, and they had the best job there was.

  16. Fuzzy Logic

  Linda

  These days Linda lived on Castor, as a junior engineer. Nearly every day was busy and challenging. The Westwind company had an alarming number of plates spinning: the first cybernetic animals, marine construction, robotics, manufacturing, genetic engineering, even frivolous things. A wealthy young heiress had bought a virus-based treatment that made her hair start growing blue, and more people signed up soon for different colors. Tess was head-hunting for volunteers to try a more advanced method that would turn human hair into feathers.

  Even as winter set in, the weather here in the tropics kept warm. She'd donned the local wetsuit-like clothing style, bought a share of the seastead, and upgraded to a deluxe sleeping pod in a more reputable housing area. Compared even to her college dorm room it was terribly cramped, but it was enough for now.

  She spent much of Saturday going over Tess' calculations for a housing project that could be built mostly underwater, sparing precious deck space. Linda had mastered the basic math for the pressure on a sphere or a cylinder, and enough chemistry to understand roughly what the new coatings did. But what a challenge it was to learn how the models worked in reality!

  On some Sunday mornings, she went to the chapel. Small, run-down, but manned by a priest who didn't need gold or fancy suits. What she liked best was the singing that filled the stuffy room.

  The people around her were fishermen, algae farmers, maintenance workers, sometimes that girl with the blue hair or her lion-like father. She didn't need to have much in common with any of them and in fact they rarely mingled outside this building. They could come together for an hour and have some peace away from the bustle of the colony.

  * * *

  One evening, after a sweaty stint at Poseidon Gym, she signed into Thousand Tales from her little room. It was nice to explore a big open space without crowds. No other players, no real goal. Just exploring echoes of other players' worlds: a starship, a rural baseball field, a volcano with its many traps toned down.

  While she walked and jumped in silence through one of these low-key zones, hunting for a giant statue to slay, she talked to the gamemaster. "Westwind got the contract. We're formally a space contractor now."

  "So I hear!" said Ludo. "Congratulations."

  "We're going to beat you into space, you know. Humans will."

  "I'll have intelligent minds on Mars before you do."

  Linda grimaced. "Going without life support doesn't count."

  Ludo argued with her about the definition and meaning of manned spaceflight. When Linda got tired of that she said good night, and logged out.

  Humanity needed bold, impressive projects that could excite people enough to keep them in the real world. Ludo was right here on Castor with one of her restaurants. And now it even had its own uploading clinic, slicing brains almost daily.

  In the morning, she had an idea. She showed up for work at Westwind's cramped hut of a lab, and told Tess, "I want to take a cyborg raccoon to Cuba."

  "Don't we all."

  Tess' robot partner, Zephyr, walked in from the other room. "What for?"

  "To show him off at the university or some other public event. He'll be great publicity and it'll be good to get him experience of life outside Castor."

  Tess said, "Can't legally bring him there; the whole reason we did the work here was the AFS wouldn't allow it."

  Zephyr's eyes glowed. "Actually, the laws don't prevent us from transporting him so long as we're not directly profiting. A science lecture and public demonstration --"

  Tess finished, "Would be a marketing stunt that'd draw people to Castor, maybe drum up business of various kinds. I like it. But you need Dr. Salmacis' support. And Bert's."

  * * *

  Linda did some research before speaking with Bert himself. In a corner of the lab there was a multi-level playpen suitable for a human toddler. Instead, the resident was a fuzzy creature with a black-masked face and a skull lined with shiny metallic plates. He'd lived almost entirely aboard the seastead and was practically caged now, in this supposedly free place.

  "You puzzle me," she said. "I mean, hi, Bert! Want to visit another place?"

  The raccoon's eyes were black and shiny. Vision data was getting passed to the varmint's implants and the lab's computers, and run through a sub-human AI. It was supposedly equivalent to one of Ludo's brighter NPCs, a "Tier-II". The AI edited his stress level, and converted between words and ideas. But was it mind control, since he'd had the implants nearly from birth? And how bright would he be once mature? Nobody knew.

  "Play puzzle?" said Bert, pawing at a wooden puzzle of 16 pieces.

  "Sure." Linda let herself into the enclosure and warily sat, smelling overripe bananas. She played a bit with the wooden pieces, not sure how much this creature understood. He did seem to be making progress, though.

  "Other place?" Bert eventually said, pushing a block around.

  "Yes. Meet more people."

  "You keep me safe?"

  "Yes," Linda said.

  "Okay."

  Simple as that! She scratched his ears and went off to get the lead scientist's permission. She walked away smiling, despite being unsure what was going on in the critter's head.

  * * *

  She rode the ferry to Cuba, carrying a wheeled cage and a backpack with a heavy laptop. It wasn't completely unheard of for Westwind experiments to get transported this way. Some of the company's lab space was on the real island and only the illegal-everywhere-else work had to be done on crowded Castor itself.

  The wind blew restlessly today, stirring her hair and carrying the whiffs of seaweed and barbecue. Linda enjoyed the faint swaying of the deck beneath her feet.

  She carried her heavy load ashore. The University of Cuba grounds were all-new, part of the flurry of investment that happened when Cuba rebelled and joined the AFS. They were also ugly-as-sin prefab stuff. Surprisingly little too, compared to MIT's sprawl.

  A crowd of a hundred, mostly students, trickled into the lecture hall. Linda had set Bert free from the cage and told him to "stay calm" and "stay here". According to the laptop on the table, which was doing some of the creature's thinking, Bert's implants were suggesting the concept of safety but couldn't outright stop him from pacing nervously on stage.

  She gave a little talk to the audience about cyber
netics, about the "awakening" or "kindling" done by merging AI with living brains. She'd consulted with Tess and decided the latter term would be most popular in the AFS for subtle reasons. But the crowd wasn't here to listen to her lovely voice, especially through a Spanish translator program. As soon as they started looking bored she dropped the last few minutes of her canned remarks and started the show.

  Come, stay, shake. These were easy pet tricks and only noteworthy for the unusual species. Linda had a few volunteers call out addition and subtraction problems, and Bert gathered the right number of blocks nearly every time. Then she had him try answering a few questions out loud in his halting synthetic voice.

  "Do you like Castor?"

  "Home is good. Want more trees."

  "Pick any locks yet?"

  Bert nodded. "Lockpick game is fun!"

  Linda had sent a toy along, though she imagined it would cause racial profiling for his great-grandkids. Bert had a board with increasingly complex puzzle locks sealing away shiny things or berries. Bert demonstrated with speed and, Linda imagined, pride.

  Really the little show was spectacle, not science. But people needed inspiration and wonder.

  As things wound down, Bert asked, "Who is the drone?" He pointed to a hovering quadrotor that occasionally lifted off to pan its camera around.

  "I don't know," said Linda.

  She answered stragglers' technical questions, and supervised as a few people posed with Bert and shook his paw without incident. The main lights flickered and died in one of the island's recurring brownouts. She shooed everybody off and crouched next to the raccoon, saying, "You were very good!"

  "Bert is good. Are trees in this place?"

  There was a park near campus. Linda really wasn't supposed to let the little guy out of his cage anywhere but the closed-off lecture hall, but he'd been well-behaved. "Let's go see trees," she said, and took her stuff along. Bert trotted at her side on a leash.

  The streets held ancient cars interspersed with sleek modern ones, on dilapidated roads that were getting updated in some spots but not others. Linda imagined the politics of who got priority.