The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl
by Bryce Anderson
singularity (n):
a strange or unique property
a point of mathematical discontinuity
an unobservable point of infinite density, a.k.a. a black hole
a period of sudden, self-catalyzing technological progress which precludes making any firm plans for next Saturday.
Copyright 2012, by Bryce Anderson. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. In short, you may give it away, but you may not sell or modify it.
Gentle Reader,
Thank you for purchasing, borrowing, or pirating this book. I hope you enjoy it, though if you find yourself not enjoying it, I hope you'll put it down and find something else to do. You could sit by a lake, feeling the sun on your back as you watch the ducks paddle by -- glaring at you with those haunting eyes, those seething pools of blackness that seem to beckon as they draw you through the gates of Hell itself. Do not trust ducks. They're up to something.
The point is, I am at the same time honored and flummoxed that this book is how you're choosing to spend your time. Thank you.
If you do like this book, I beg you to rate and review it on one of the ebook sites (Amazon et.al.), tweet it to your Friendsters on MyFace, and casually mention it in conversations whenever related subjects(*) come up. Publicity is the lifeblood of any author, and it's especially vital in this early stage of my career.
If you don't like it, please post a review anyways. Perhaps I'll find the feedback useful, and if nothing else you'll get that off your chest.
Also, I post short stories at http://bannedsorcery.com. Some of them I edit first. I'd especially recommend Empty Skye, as it's set in the same universe.
Good luck out there,
Bryce
* Related subjects include The Future, Technology, Virtual Reality, Killer Robots, The Obsolesence of Human Labor, The Weather, and Where Should We Go Out to Eat?
About this edition
Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of ebook publishing. As it turns out, you can't publish exactly the same ebook through Amazon and Lulu at the same time. What does this mean for you, the reader? A special, Kindle-exclusive afterword, a tour-de-force of surreality, with a bit of dadaist cubism thrown in for good measure.
Hmm... Actually it's turning out to be more of a political rant. Because that's just the sort of thing we're running short of in this day and age. Anyways, enjoy the book, and maybe skip the afterword.
VOLUME I
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// CORPSECICLE //
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Date: August 08, 2014
It was about three AM when Dr. William Mellings parked his motorcycle in front of the Biomedical Sciences building. He cut the ignition, then fumbled for his wallet, trying to find his swipe card. His riding gloves added a layer of complication to the procedure, which led to multiple interruptions of his brain's reward signal, causing a stressor signal in his limbic system, which led to the generation of a stress-mitigating vocal utterance.
Most people would have left it at, "I swore." Sometimes he hated knowing his own mind.
Key card in hand, he walked up the concrete stairs and swiped his card, noting the slight tickle in his prefrontal cortex as the light flashed green and the door unlocked. As he passed through the glass doors and turned left down a darkened hallway, he tried to feel the grid cells in his hippocampus light up as they continuously updated a mental map of his location. This is what his brain did when it didn't want to think about something: it thought about itself.
He took the three flights of steps down to his basement office, as the motion sensors flipped on lights ahead of him. His footsteps echoed down the bare concrete hallway. He had always appreciated the austerity and solitude of the lower levels. It spoke to his vision of the platonically ideal scholar, one who set aside transient pleasures in order to pursue the more lasting pleasure of discovery.
Maeva had always hated it down here. It made her feel claustrophobic.
From down a side hallway, he heard the clatter of heavy things hitting the concrete, followed by a mitigating vocal utterance in a decidedly female voice. He went to investigate. He found a young woman struggling to get a pair of compressors back on a push cart. "Helen?"
She shrieked, knocking the pile off the cart again, then slipped on a bunch of metal tubes and landed on the floor. Helen Roderick -- one of Mellings' more promising, if rather odd grad students -- looked up at him, wide-eyed. Recognition crossed her face, but she didn't seem relieved. If anything, she seemed even more apprehensive. "Dr. Mellings? What are you doing here?"
"I needed some things from my office. You?"
"This is... well, sort of a side project for the folks in cardiology. I'm building a piece of equipment for this study of theirs. Nobody over there is remotely mechanical."
William boiled at this. "Still, they have no right to pilfer my grad students. You work too hard as it is." He pulled out his phone.
Helen looked horrified. "What are you doing?"
"Calling Dr. Whitmer. I go on vacation for two weeks, and he retasks my people? No."
"Please don't!" She closed her hands over the phone. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault. They put out a general request on the mailing list, and I volunteered myself. I needed the extra money, and I know I should have cleared it with you first, but I didn't want to interrupt your honeymoon. Please, please don't call him," she begged. Her hands were still wrapped around his.
He pulled away, and tucked his cell phone in his pocket. "All right. I'll let him get his sleep. I should probably get some sleep too." He thought about asking her if she wanted some help. It was his job to put the students first and all. Ordinarily he would have. But then, ordinarily a tiny interdepartmental squabble wouldn't have gotten a "meh" out of him.
But this wasn't an ordinary time for him. "Just clean up after yourself, okay?" He did an about face and began to walk away.
"I'm really sorry," Helen called after him.
Dr. Mellings stopped, and turned around. "Don't worry. I'm not mad at you. There's... it's not really related to this at all. Displaced aggression." He shrugged.
"You okay?" she asked.
No. "I'll explain later."
Helen nodded sympathetically, then went back to work.
He went back to his office and unlocked it. He flipped a switch, and the lights brightened to the accompaniment of a protesting buzz. He let his eyes wander over the cramped, cluttered space. On the far wall, there was a series of posters. The largest showed a line drawing of a human head in the style of a 19th century anatomy illustration. The limbic system was highlighted in red, and the caption below said, "YOU ARE HERE". Books lined the walls and were stacked on every available surface, climbing to precarious heights. Most had a bookmark in them. A few had two: his, hers.
The shelf nearest his chair was covered with framed photographs. He slid around his desk, a departmental hand-me-down that was too large for the cramped space, and looked them over. Maeva and William on the summit of El Capitan. Maeva screaming her head off at an anti-war rally. Maeva and her brother Boris in front of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Each one tugged at him, ratcheting the hole in his heart a bit wider, as he placed them in a cardboard box to take with him.
It was done, and he hadn't cried. That was a small victory, he supposed. He reached for the last portrait that sat next to his computer screen, but his hand came to a stop on a glass vase. There were flowers in it, desiccated to the point of flammability. They might have been chrysanthemums; he'd never cared to lea
rn the difference.
"I bought these for you. Your office, so colorless," she said.
"Really, you shouldn't have. I like it fine down here."
"Fignya! Your mind, it longs for color. I will send you the citations if you will not believe." She set the vase, full of lush yellow flowers, on his desk. "You will see them each day, you will think of me, you will be happy." Her words were crisp and precise, despite her heavy Russian accent.
"You're supposed to wait until we're married to start changing me."
"I am not patient woman, and there is much work ahead. I need those forty-three hours to mold you into proper husband." She laughed and kissed him.
Now the tears came, and his body was overcome with great, racking sobs that made it difficult to breathe. He held the flowers to his chest too tightly, and they crumbled into dry fragments. He dropped the vase on the floor, and buried his head in his hands, letting the weeping come until it ran out, and he merely felt empty again.
When he finally regained a bit of control, he picked up the vase and put it back on the desk. The impact had chipped it. He looked at his cell phone. 3:52. Damn, he'd fallen apart for about a half hour. It had felt, well, not good, but cathartic at least. Maybe now he should drive himself home.
Or...
He knew it was a mistake, that he was misdirecting his own grief. But he summoned the campus directory on his phone, and found Dr. Whitmer's home line. Three rings.
"Who the hell?" slurred a barely conscious voice.
"Hey, Whitmer. Why do you have one of my grad students up at all hours building equipment for you? It looked like she was building Frankenstein a pacemaker."
"Huh? Who is this?"
"Dr. Mellings, Neuroanatomy. You've got Helen building some contraption down by the freezers for some study, and you have no right to steal my people for other proj--"
Now he sounded more alert. "Nobody's building me anything, and I'll be having a word with your department chair, Doctor... your name again?"
"Dr. Erlang." He hung up, and left his office in a dead run. His phone started ringing, but he ignored it. "Roderick!" he shouted, now completely panicked but not completely sure why. He went back to where he'd found her. The apparatus was gone, and Helen with it. Room by room he searched, but found nothing. Maybe she had packed it up and taken it home, or taken the elevator to another level. But William had an apprehensive feeling. It prodded him back to the deep freezer, the only place on the floor he hadn't checked. He slid back the heavy door on its rollers and flipped on the lights.
It was like stepping into a horror movie. Under the harsh fluorescent lighting, Helen lay naked, stretched onto some sort of gurney. Her body was hooked up to a pair of machines by a profusion of wires and tubing, and her head was ringed by a halo of needles that appeared to be buried deep into her skull. The machines gave off occasional whirring and sucking sounds. Something went 'parp.'
Dr. Mellings willed himself to step closer. Her skin was pallid and ice cold to the touch, her mouth open slightly, as though she had frozen in mid-sentence. Her eyes were open and staring straight up at the light, and the expression on her face was serene, almost hopeful.
He had his phone out, and was dialing 9-1-1, when he saw two envelopes taped to Helen's chest. One read, "TO DR. MELLINGS". The other, "TO WHOEVER FINDS ME." He supposed that both were for him, and opened the second one first.
To Whoever Finds Me,
Sorry about the mess, and I really didn't mean to scare you. Please, whatever you do, do not unhook me from this device or allow me to unthaw until Dr. Mellings reads his note. He knows how to get me back up and on my feet, although it might surprise him to hear that.
Also, if the gauge on the machine dips into the red, replace the liquid nitrogen tank with the one under the table. The freezer is cold, but not cold enough.
I know it's a small consolation, but I left a tub of ice cream on the shelf for you.
Helen Roderick
Hands trembling from the shock and the cold, he opened his own letter.
/////////////////////////////
// WAKING UP IS HARD TO DO //
/////////////////////////////
Date: January 04, 2022
Synch ratio: 1,641,600/1 (0.05 sec/day)
Helen awoke in darkness and blinding pain. She tried to scream, but couldn't find her throat or lungs. She felt as though she were suffocating, and every inch of her body screamed in agony. Before she could make sense of any of it, the sensations stopped, leaving a total numbness that felt wonderful in comparison. A few seconds later, her nose caught a whiff of warm, freshly baked bread. It soothed her somewhat. One by one, shards of memory rose into her consciousness, but slipped out of reach before they could form a coherent picture.
Date: February 11, 2023
Synch ratio: 931,408/1 (0.09 sec/day)
The memories were disjointed, elusive, full of needles and cold. She'd hit a button, and fallen asleep.
It wasn't suicide. That's what she'd kept telling herself.
There was a static sound, which slowly cohered into music, like an old AM radio struggling to catch a frequency. She recognized the tune as Handel's Water Music. She remembered asking to hear it, but she couldn't quite remember who she had asked or when. Then a voice came to her, mixed into the music.
Date: July 15, 2024
Synch ratio: 443,010/1 (0.19 sec/day)
"Helen, do you hear me?" The voice was male, and spoke quickly, a staccato burst that reminded her of machine gun fire, or an auctioneer on meth. When she didn't reply immediately, the request came again, a hair slower this time but still faster than a real person should have been able to speak.
She tried to reply, but for some reason her throat wouldn't work. She tried again. The third time, she heard her own voice, dry and rasping. "Water."
Date: February 14, 2025
Synch ratio: 337,932/1 (0.26 sec/day)
Almost before she had completed the utterance, the pain in her throat disappeared. "What the..."
The verbal gunfire came again. "Helen, this is important. Are you in any pain?"
She thought for a few moments. The pain was gone. Now there was only numbness, coupled with a strange feeling of involuntary euphoria, which reminded her a bit of the single time she'd dropped E her freshman year. "I did it for science," she said. She felt dizzy.
"What was that?" the voice asked.
"No. No pain," she said.
"Do you know where you are?" She recognized Dr. Mellings' low, friendly voice within the bursts of speech, and the recognition triggered another flood of memories. She latched onto them, holding on until a picture began to emerge.
Finally, "Oh my god, it worked?"
"Welcome back, Helen."
"What year is it?"
Date: July 11, 2027
Synch ratio: 101,371/1 (0.85 sec/day)
"2027."
It had been fourteen years. "I left my wakeup call for 2024. I'd like a word with your manager."
She had hoped for at least a chuckle. Instead, Dr. Mellings sounded apologetic. "The problem is simulation speed. We started you up in 2022, but the simulation is so complex that it was taking about three weeks to run the simulation for one second. We just got a huge grant from DARPA for more computers, though."
She took a few seconds to parse the words, then a few more seconds trying to come to grips with the idea of three weeks passing every second. Then she felt self-conscious about not having said anything for months on end. "Don't call me 'the simulation," she blurted out.
Date: January 05, 2029
Synch ratio: 18,902/1 (4.57 sec/day)
The voice ignored her, sending another fast auditory burst her way. "Now Google has chipped in some spare cycles. It's 2029 now, but now a second of your time is more like a few hours of ours. Depending on how hard you're thinking, of course."
"I'm always a bit sluggish when I first wake up."
"The Internet loved that line. You're a major cele
brity now."
Date: January 10, 2029
Synch ratio: 18,759/1 (4.60 sec/day)
Helen froze. She had absolutely no idea what to say to that.
"Helen?"
"Are they... is everyone listening to us now?"
"Our conversations are part of the dataset that we have to release. You know how grants are."
Helen used to get panic attacks from time to time, especially in very public situations, and she could feel the first stirrings of one now. How many people were watching her? Thousands? Millions? What did they see? What were they thinking?
But even in this moment of extreme self-consciousness, the usual physiological responses were almost absent. There was no feeling of weight crushing down on her chest, no overwhelming need for more air than her lungs could move, and no adrenaline-fueled burst of speed as she high-tailed it out of a crowded auditorium.
Date: January 14, 2029
Synch ratio: 18,750/1 (4.60 sec/day)
Being incorporeal had its advantages. She could feel the attention of the world upon her, but it hadn't crushed her. "This is a bit embarrassing," she admitted. "Could you maybe put up a video of an adorable kitten to distract them?"
"Just try not to think about it."
"That won't be easy."
"I'll distract you. We're about to bring your optic nerves online."
A pure white light overwhelmed her consciousness. The sensation was a little terrifying, made all the more so by the fact that she couldn't look away or shut her eyes to it. Before she had time to adjust to the sensation, Prof. Mellings' rapid-fire voice was peppering her with questions about what she was seeing. Then came a series of questions, the answers to which were, "red", "blue", "black", "diagonal stripes", "the mandelbrot set", "a lake", "the moon", "Julia Roberts", and "four score and seven years ago." At the end of it, Dr. Mellings asked, "Are the images blurred, distorted, or discolored in any way?"
"A little. Should that concern me?"
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