by Travis Borne
Another more powerful wave delivered globs of seaweed and left slimy blue-green stragglers around her feet. She curiously picked them up, pinching the weeds between two fingers. “Slimy. Yuck,” she said, then slung it at Jim. He’d just returned his attention to her when it slapped him across the face. She couldn’t help it and burst out laughing. Jim, as if mad, removed his hands from his pockets and cleaned it off, then cocked his head before joining her in the moment. They laughed together.
The salty smell engaged her senses and she took in a deep breath. She lost control of her face; the smile made itself wide between her ears. Jim just stood there with a content grin. “This is—how can this be? Jim, it’s AMAZING!” she screamed, the last word so loud a world could hear. Jim lost his grin and looked about with wondering eyes. “I almost can’t believe it,” she continued. “But why?”
The question brought him a memory: his first time. His mind followed the sequence of events since then like tidal surge: his hatred for the war, how it seethed, and this place, the entire dream world, every map—but, it allowed him to vent. And vent he did—for years. Things went dark and red, and he shook the thoughts, exchanging them, with effort, for the rare sense of happiness she’d infected him with only moments earlier. He walked closer, into the water, and then stood before her.
“We have some very special technology that allows us to stabilize this place,” he explained, although late to her question. “It applies basic rules in order to keep us, well, grounded. And it also allows us to share this dream, which is important for many reasons. Follow me.”
She wanted to know—yesterday. Amy followed as he walked along the packed sand of the empty beach. Yes, she had the look of a girl with a million questions, and Jim knew it was his job to answer them. It was time for work, time to be the teacher. And he knew it wouldn’t be easy—because of those disturbing aspects—the hardest part to explain, but later on that. He opened up to start, and then he saw them.
Before long, the beach was teaming people and families, lifeguards and vendors, and... Jim’s jaw fell limp turning the first letter of his first word into a mere punch-to-the-gut grunt. Obliviously, Amy was elated and things couldn’t be better. To her, the more the merrier and her face lit twice as bright. They both watched, with opposite expressions.
Amy giggled, a pudgy kid racing toward the water to beat his older brother tripped falling face first. His mother snatched him up and he was now half white, the sand sticking to some odd goo she’d smeared on his body moments prior. The people were arriving in droves, and carrying loads of stuff. Amy thought, why all the stuff?
Then she noticed Jim’s dismay. “What is it, Jim?”
He didn’t answer. With a look of shock, he just stared at the crowd with wide eyes, as if counting.
“What, never seen people in the dream before? Oh, right, the map.”
“Amy, I’m sorry, we’ll have to cut this day short for now.” He knew he couldn’t continue, at least not for the moment. Ted had told him to keep a close eye on things, to tread slowly, and not to hesitate logging out at any time for any reason. He asserted they must carefully assess new data in regards to extreme differences; that they’d waited this long, and were not going to take chances.
“Everything is okay, isn’t it, Jim?” She crossed her arms like a disappointed child. “What’s wrong? Jim, we just got here.”
“We’re going to log out but we can come back very soon, I promise. Follow me.” He quickly trudged back toward the reclined beach chairs from which they’d spawned in. “But trust me, Amy, there is plenty of time. Ted is watching us right now. Likely he is expecting us to call it so he can check something.”
“But why?” She ran to catch up. “And you still haven’t told me—”
“There shouldn’t be this many here with us. Only two people can enter one dream environment at a time. All others—are them.” He stopped, pointed at the newcomers, and she caught up. “Dream characters. We call them DCs for short, and they are generated by your subconscious. I don’t think there’s anything wrong but I’d still like to check in with Ted.”
DCs continued to flood the beach as Amy followed him back to the chairs. Like a population explosion, people began to fill the areas around them.
“Okay, Amy. Just lie down and relax just as you did to log in. Try not to focus on anything, just let your thoughts unwind. You’ll feel yourself falling asleep. Sometimes it can take quite a while so just be very calm and patient.” Amy and he lay in the beach chairs and after several minutes of relaxation, Jim spoke, “Director, Jim and Amy to log out.”
14. Routine Checks
They awoke in the broadcast room and the blue light devices slipped away from their temples. Ted stood near, waiting. Rubbernecking from their control panels, others gazed over as well. Amy portrayed confusion and momentarily crossed eyes but quickly regained her bearings.
“Amy, do you know who I am?” Ted asked quietly.
“Of course, silly. You’re Mr. Ted.”
“That’s great. And just plain old Ted is fine.” He chuckled. “Please hold still for one moment and we’ll be all set.” He rotated a scanning device around her forehead, back slowly, then around the top. Her eyes followed it. It possessed the same blue glow as the temple-touching things. Then he asked her a few basic questions and she got every answer right. “…okay then, things seem just fine. This was an excellent test and we have lots of data to go over. Amy, if you would, take a rest in the break room. Get something to eat if you’re hungry, and use the bathroom. I need to speak with Jim for a moment.”
Amy nodded with a sliver of disappointment in her eyes, but sparked at the idea of topping off the measly breakfast she’d been given in her new apartment. “Well, I am pretty hungry. Okay, but I sure hope we can continue that. It was fun.” She pointed at Jim, “YUCK,” thinking of the seaweed. She smiled, holding in a laugh, then headed straight to the fridge.
Ted and Jim walked to the BROCC then stood at the HAT. Ted initiated the replay of their session then retrieved some statistics from one of the nearby screens. Two other techs, Ron and Devon, Ted’s foremost assistants, joined them with portable screens in hand. Ron was a short 5 foot 5 with glassy-white skin, puffy facial features, and straight reddish-brown hair that resembled a helmet. He was in charge of overall map stability and helped Ted with analytics and predictions. Devon, the complete opposite, was taller than Ted, young and slender, skin as black as night, with a rounded hairstyle that resembled a skewed globe. He handled lender mental status and emotions, overall mental stability, and the environmental and dream character variables that could affect them.
“Should we call over the twins?” Ron asked. The twins were the only other techs that worked in the broadcast room, and relatively newer to the job than Devon. Jackie and Jenny, identical with unusually high cheekbones, had long straight red hair, intense green eyes, and small chins. They usually worked at the far end and kept an eye on the broadcast feed and buffer, its usage, depletion rate, and status alerts. Besides assisting the automation—something rarely needed—they also helped Ted correlate data when huge piles of it came through. And, like all techs, took a turn rotating for the night shift. The full team was active today only because of Amy.
“We don’t need them just yet,” Ted said, pointing to the screen above. “I’m accessing all of the feed data right here.”
“Okay, Jim. This is what we got. Apparently, Amy is far more advanced than anyone we’ve ever had in the program—we knew that already but our initial testing only unveiled this in a very general sense. They revealed that she was gifted but were not extensive enough to rate the true limit of her potential. She seems to exceed the test’s ability to rate it. And it might be early to say, but she doesn’t seem to have a limit. We’re still calculating the effect on the system when she’s logged in.”
Ted asked Ron to highlight the numbers on the screen and continued to explain, “You see, Jim, even with the broadcast feed active on your
map her levels remain very high. And when the DCs began to appear, her output still outperformed even our best working lenders. Here, take a look at this.” The hologram table (HAT) began playback. “Double speed please, Ron.” Jim and Amy arrived highlighted in white and moments later, many DCs were generated out of view, shown glowing in blue. As they strolled along the beach the DCs emerged, and all changed to bright green upon first acknowledgment. “Okay Ron, slow it down—right, there. Notice, regardless of distance, equal potential. She generated an unheard of thirty-two DCs, instantaneously—and more spawned continually until we logged you out. Jim, your record, has been obliterated.” Ted joked lightly.
With careless sarcasm Jim smirked, “My record was 21 and that’s fine by me, but what does this mean and how will we get a handle on the sheer number of DCs her subconscious can generate? Or do we even need to manage them with numbers like these?”
Ted rested his chin on his thumb, with his elbow planted in his stomach, held in place by his other hand. “I say we get in there and finish the shift, at least half of it. This is getting quite interesting. But for today, perhaps don’t manage the DCs. It is your call, but we can take this slow. Relax and enjoy your day. We’ll run a few more tests on our end. This is excellent data and it enables us to further comprehend the extent of creativity humans have lost as a species. The ramifications of altering DNA is probably greater than we’d previously estimated.” He gestured to Ron and Devon who were crunching numbers with their screens. “Guys, are we okay to continue?”
Ron looked up from his portable for only the second time since joining Jim and Ted. “Yes, map stability is at 100%,” he said, emphasizing 100% in his normal high-toned voice. “It is a little odd, but taking into account the addition of hundreds of dream characters, more than our system has ever managed, with Amy’s presence the system—”
“Ron?”
“I have to double check, this can’t be—” With his waist mount holding the portable screen in front of him, he rapidly gestured above it with his right, touching the panel with his left. Done. He rotated the screen to his side and looked up with a baffled expression. Air came out, but didn’t form a word; he hesitated again. “She is apparently able to stabilize the system on her own. This lends evidence to a theory of mine. She might be able to affect the system’s programming, and the environment, perhaps other variables—something we’ve never been able to touch.”
Ted looked at the hologram and hesitated, squeezing his lips together in a moment of thought, then turned to Jim. “I told you we were in for an interesting day, Jim. Do you have anything to add, Devon?” Devon was watching Amy while they spoke. She was seated on a stool at the bar, legs kicking a million miles an hour and eating a fruit bar.
“Everything looks perfect,” Devon said. “Her emotional state is solid. If it dips, it bounces right back, almost instantly. Very stable. I don’t think we’ll have much to worry about as far as crashing is concerned.”
All of them turned to see her except for Ron, who’d spun his screen back around after getting another tickle of an idea. They watched as she quickly devoured another fruit bar. “She’s like a kid in a candy store,” Devon said, in his naturally low voice. “She managed her first login flawlessly—no drawbacks. But we hadn’t had the feed activated for more than fifteen minutes so I’ll need more data in order to make better comparisons.”
“Okay then, we’re a go in thirty minutes,” Ted said. “Jim, please head over to her and hang out for a bit until we get a few things primed on our end. When you get logged in, you can resume your training. About managing DC count, passive manner should be fine. Explain things, I can see curiosity is eating away at her patience.” Jim nodded definitively at that, then headed to join Amy, who was watching the techs talk about her from across the room—she knew something was up, yet really, hadn’t a clue what. Ron and Devon went back to their stations and continued with calculations. Ted stayed at the hologram table. His swiping gestures reset the map, and he worked with the myriad of controls on the movable rim that encircled it like Saturn's rings. He did a quick check of all the other active maps, except for one—it had been set to private.
“Amy, I’m sorry, we had to go over some technical crap.” Jim mounted a stool beside her. “They want to make certain everything goes smoothly as we move forward with someone new, just routine checks.”
“Jim, can’t you just tell me straight, what is all of this?” Amy urged. “Please.” She was about to open a third power bar, but tossed it aside with a sigh.
The contrast from quaint outside life in the town where everything was extremely simple, all of this curious technology, wanting so badly to know, all of it left Amy annoyed, and ironically, drained. Her patience—what little she had—was climbing a tree into the sky, with no top in sight. The branches of knowledge were shorter, but the stem of meaning was a vine into the clouds. She wanted simple answers to what she’d just experienced. But she guessed if they couldn’t just tell her outright, it probably wouldn’t be simple, and possibly, not pleasant to hear.
15. A Non-alcoholic Drink
“I’ll be as straightforward as I can,” Jim said, sitting on the stool. “Our job is simple but our purpose is great. We log in to that dream world together and lend a part of our consciousness. That cylindrical tower in the center of the room uploads what we call the feed. It does so constantly to machines that use it. The status indicator needs to stay in the green, always. We are the lenders, and the systems depend on us at all times.”
“Lenders—” Amy paused. “—but why, Jim? Why do machines need our consciousness?”
“They need it because they would be lifeless without it, and we need the protection they provide. We don’t know all the answers, or exactly why. In fact, much of the software that controls this facility is in the hands of—perhaps the machines themselves. We cannot change or alter most facets of it, such as the rules of the dream state we work in and the various maps. There is room for improvement and it seems we have been allowed at least that; it’s what the techs do, much with great success. The motion path, that was created by us and it boosted efficiency quite a bit.”
Amy shook her head slowly. “Wow.” She looked over at the power bar she’d slid aside; it had grown an eye and was winking at her. Blinking her own eyes, she shook her head quickly, then picked it up and ate it.
“It’s crazy, I know. We hardly even have a say in how human life is to be lived in our town. We do know it was purposefully limited in technology and knowledge, for reasons we don’t entirely understand.”
“You know what’s out there, beyond the wall?” Amy asked.
“Well, we think there are more of these human cities. Ted has been working at this for a long time. He knows that some of the feed goes—elsewhere. But we can’t pinpoint anything, and we might never know for sure. We do know of the machines that are near us, they protect us and use the feed, lots of it. In the main control room of this facility, we have a small amount of control over this. We can see them on the screens and can even manually operate and control a few aspects of town security if the broadcast feed falters. Some assume war is too advanced for humans, yet we’re still needed. We’re most likely not the smartest species on this planet, but together with machines and technology, we are a vital part of it.”
Jim paused, figuring how to best arrange his words, trying to put a finger on things he knew for sure, rather than just best guesses to date. And Amy finally had patience like that of a grown adult, or that of a normal person. She stayed quiet and listened attentively. This is what she wanted—straightforward answers.
“Outside the wall that surrounds this little town the war rages on, but with the combined efforts of man and machine, although we now have drastically different roles, we continue our fight to survive. We lend, and the machines do the actual fighting. We’re winning, I hope. But there are tiers of knowledge; perhaps each hasn’t a full picture, or an up-to-date status. You were the last one brought to t
his town. You probably know from your experiences before arriving—and we still don’t know how you survived for so long—that the machines have been trying to exterminate us and millions of species have gone extinct. Most know this but we are only beginning to understand why and the reason could have grand implications.”
“That was, a long time ago…” Amy sighed, getting flashes, not wanting to remember, having had pushed many of her memories back. “You know why the machines want to kill us, Jim?” He lifted his fingers and shrugged slightly.
“We assume there are good machines—and bad—”
Ted interrupted from the distance, waving his arms. “Amy, Jim, we’re ready if you are.” He whispered it loudly then pointed toward the beds with two fingers. They stood up and looked at each other. Amy gave a single nod.
“Let’s do this,” Jim said, looking firmly into her eyes, and they started walking. “I’ll tell you everything I know. We have plenty of time.”
Before getting onto the beds Jim hesitated. “Amy, we’ll return to the same place, and we don’t have to do anything much just yet. Ted will keep an eye on our stats and crunch some more of his endless numbers. I’ll be explaining many things to you. We can have some margaritas at the bar and you may go swimming if you’d like. I know I feel like a dip.” She smiled at the idea and they climbed onto their beds. Amy looked up to the lights and an anxious tingle faded from her body. A few moments later they were both out.
A pelican sat at the end of a barnacle-encrusted dock on her far left. Waves rushed in and out, turning over seashells and leaving jellyfish blobs on the shore. Everything was exactly the same—except for that pelican. This time without such a hurry to move, Amy just remained there for a few minutes in silence, watching: the dream took focus, sounds began, smells lingered by, feelings came and she felt the chair beneath her as a separate entity, and a moist breeze tingled the hairs on her arms. This time everything seemed to load much faster. She didn’t budge, just looked around at various things. She noticed how focusing could affect the reality of the environment. Maybe it’s only my own perspective, she thought. She fixated attention onto her toes, wiggling them, then the columns on the pier as the water crashed powerfully, the morphing clouds in the distance, and as she did anything she focused on became infinitely clearer and more detailed.
