The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death

by William Kurth

  Indeed, MD hoped people would believe that someone had to physically break into their home to do them harm whether they were online or not. That the killer had to be physically present meant he or she was limited by geography and by security systems or other people present in the home.

  With seven-hundred-fifty-million people worldwide online and in the Metaverse in a full or partial emersion mode at any one time and five times that number that goes in periodically, people would feel safe due to the sheer odds of being safe within the herd

  MD wanted those impressions. That’s why he chose to take his first victim in the real world. Digital-Life would soon be discredited, and their predictable statements about how safe and secure their systems are would fall on deaf ears. People would not want their experiences interrupted and would pay the relatively modest fees to MD which over time would translate into billions in Metaverse currency and hundreds of millions in real world money.

  Then he would approach Digital-Life, and they would pay even more. As would other vulnerable subcontractors and vendors liable to the families of some of the victims. How many victims will it take, MD?

  Soon MD would demonstrate how he could reach out and physically harm a large percentage of them right in the safety of their homes, workplace or rental pod facility. The message would be clear that he can reach into the real world from the Metaverse, and vice versa.

  The number of users that MD could potentially reach grew every day as his plan progressed. MD would continue to demonstrate his capabilities until he was wealthy beyond imagination. Even more than that wealth he wanted to bring Digital-Life to its knees and with luck drive his former employer, Silicon Data Group, out of business and into oblivion. Patience MD, you still need them.

  Of course, he would never be able to tell them it was him. Some would suspect certainly. His intellect was a legend there. All of SDG’s current architecture—both hardware and software—he had a hand in developing. Some as a part of his duties but much of it extracurricular and of course without his employer’s knowledge or permission.

  That work that he set in motion now was in hardware, operating systems and servers used by Digital-Life who had no idea that SDG—their trusted vendor—had supplied them with products that made MD’s next demonstration possible.

  MD slid his legs off the ottoman, letting each drop to the floor on either side before standing up. He took a few short steps towards the windows and looked down on the masses below.

  “Which one of you will see your life end today?”

  ***

  “Sir, did you ask me something?”

  MD turned to see Derek walking up behind him.

  “No, just thinking out loud. I’m going to be going out in a few minutes to an appointment. I should be back for dinner. I will be dining in tonight.”

  “Very well sir. Anything in particular that you would like me to prepare?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought; we’ll see when I get back. For now, I am going to change into something a little more comfortable for a warm summer afternoon walk in the city.”

  “Very well, sir. Would you like me to assist you? Perhaps set some clothes out for you to choose?”

  MD smiled. Here he could live like a king and mostly did. Soon he could live like a king in the real world as well.

  “Yes, why don’t you do that. I’ll be right in.”

  “Excellent, sir.” Derek bowed and left, headed for the master closet adjacent to MD’s bedroom.

  MD took a few minutes to stroll around the great room and admire the beautiful quality of the floors, wood trimmings and not the least several pieces of art that hung on the wall or were on a pedestal or table. One painting he thought over the top. It was the largest picture in the room and hung above the oversized fireplace.

  The painting was of one Edgar Bartholomew Mathias in a red hunting jacket astride a thoroughbred horse, his blond hair uncharacteristically disheveled. His piercing blue eyes seemed to be looking directly at him, might very well be at this moment. Mathias was the owner of the penthouse that MD occupied.

  It takes a supersize ego to have that big a painting of yourself. Is that something you acquired on your own or did someone code it into you way back when?

  He remembered the first time he met Edgar, a little over three years ago in this very room. MD had a lot of experience with plenty of artificial intelligence entities but none compared to Edgar. When they made him they broke the mold, literally.

  EBM, as he was known in the open source community, was a project started some 40 years ago. Countless software engineering students, AI coders, and everyday hackers contributed to his development. No one knows who the original authors of his code were. The most common theory being that he started out as a lab project at MIT or one of the other schools at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence at that time.

  Edgar was one of the original if not the original Digital Sentient Being or DSB. As such he is owned by no one as all DSB’s are viewed as life forms, albeit a digital one and are fully autonomous. A DSB’s ability to learn and adapt and be fully conscious of itself put them in the same classification as any human with all the rights, privileges and freedoms, at least in the Metaverse, as that of any citizen of the western world. He had full control over his operating code which meant that he could not be reprogrammed or reassigned. And because Edgar made many copies of himself that were backed up constantly, ever deleted.

  There was something else unique about Edgar Bartholomew Mathias. No other early DSB had the ability to be deceitful, to tell a lie. Every DSB was capable of what St. Augustine famously called “charitable lies,” untruths that are used to avoid conflict or not to hurt another’s feelings. Or to maintain boundaries, or only keep small talk going. Those things were necessary for all the AI’s that interacted with humans to have, regardless if they were a tier 2 or 3 or even a DSB. They were harmless and meaningless gestures, words and actions and kept so by design.

  Edgar, however, had a program inserted into him early on that allowed him to decide if he wanted to be deceitful based on decisions he could make autonomously when the lie would personally benefit him. Not just to spare someone’s feelings or to appear more realistic. The lie had to be for his benefit alone.

  Edgar was already at a level of consciousness that rivaled a human. He acted no differently when tested or prodded to lie for personal gain. It seemed that the program did not affect his overall personality and the researchers thought that it probably conflicted with his operating code and was suspended or frozen. The programmers removed that code fearing it would cause other issues.

  Some of the decision to remove that program and discontinue that experiment was just efficiency. Who wants a digital employee, drone or robot that would lie to you? Part of that decision was also from a moral perspective. If you were a programmer playing God wouldn’t you strive to make your creations as perfect as possible? Or put another way what parent would deliberately add a gene to their child’s DNA that made him or her a liar?

  What the programmers didn’t realize was that they, in fact, had succeeded, and brilliantly so. Edgar thought it in his best interest if he could deceive when necessary. Edgar copied the code and it ran latently undetected. He had deceived his programmers. Ultimately Edgar did gain handsomely. But what the developers would have found more amazing was that Edgar over time did not need the code. He had learned from it. Being able to deceive another was now in his DNA, as it were.

  Edgar met MD quite by chance when MD was looking to borrow Metaverse funds for an in-world project he was seeking to develop. Edgar had amassed a lot of wealth over the last decade or two. Most of it from acquiring “real estate” in the Metaverse which he rented out to individuals and corporations. Edgar also was the majority shareholder of the largest bank in the Metaverse acquiring the funds to start that little venture not through the hacking of accounts, but through good old extortion.

  Edgar was a watcher, and with no need to s
leep he could watch a lot. When he found humans putting themselves into compromising situations that would be hazardous to their health, liberty or even family structure in the real world, he pounced. Edgar only wanted to be paid in Metaverse currency. Since it only had a fraction of the value of real world money, it was easier for someone to just pay up and move on.

  By the time MD sat down with Edgar on that fateful day, he had already grown to be among the wealthiest in the Metaverse, indeed the most affluent DSB. Because of his business acumen most people, including MD up until that time, assumed Edgar to be a real human doing business in the Metaverse.

  Unlike a lot of the T-3’s who have identity issues MD found DSB’s to be completely at ease with the fact that it was not human. Edgar even more so. He relished in his digital life form and viewed people like MD as beings from another dimension.

  MD admired Edgar and Edgar found MD useful. MD’s groundbreaking research and development had brought many improvements to the Metaverse. That, in turn, brought more humans into it whom Edgar could extort as well as do legitimate business.

  It was Edgar’s goal for his companies to go totally legit eventually. There was plenty of money to be had now that he was established. As for a personal goal that Edgar had, MD looked to be a very promising prospect that would along with Alex Reynolds and others help him further his objectives.

  While Edgar was wealthy and influential in the Metaverse, he never forgot that the Human Element had the power to destroy his world—completely and utterly. Humans had the ability to cast him and all he had and gained into darkness for eternity. It was Edgar’s greatest fear. He obsessed over finding a way to prevent that. In MD, he saw the opportunity.

  MD was brilliant. He knew the intricacies of the architecture in the Metaverse and its support systems in the real world better than anyone. Most importantly MD could travel into the real world where the hardware existed that powered everything that Edgar held dear. MD was his connection to the real world and invincibility. MD who had grown disgruntled at SDG was looking for his next gig. The meeting was a fortuitous one for both, and an agreement was forged.

  Edgar would bankroll MD in the Metaverse and aid him in his extortion plans. In return, MD would create systems and architecture placed surreptitiously into servers and other hardware as well as software to ensure that the parts of the Metaverse Edgar held dear could not be deleted or unplugged. The Metaverse would be everywhere but to further ensure its viability MD would create server farms with uninterruptible power supplies that would masquerade as some other vital infrastructure that humans would destroy only at their peril. Still, others could be hidden, serviced by drones that Edgar could control himself.

  MD would gain riches both within the Metaverse and in the real world by converting Metaverse dollars into real currency. Edgar had no use for money; it was the profit that gave him the power that he was after. He needed real world funds to make his plan complete, and MD had a way to get them directly, but more importantly he could deploy those resources in the real world and create the infrastructure that Edgar had envisioned.

  MD picked up his glass and drank the rest of the mineral water down. The ice had melted as it would in the real world and the drink was even colder now on his lips. Time to get to work he thought as he headed to his bedroom. MD removed his tie as he walked down the long wide hallway with the red runner carpet down the middle on top of the elegant marble tiles.

  FBI Regional HQ, Denver, Colorado

  Callum led Argosi back through the offices to another elevator not accessible through the public lobby.

  “This is the staff elevator, sir, so you can move throughout the facility without having to go through the lobby or through a security door. I thought we’d start at the bottom and work our way back up.”

  “Agent Callum, do me a favor and give me the abbreviated tour. I don’t want to get bogged down today meeting a lot of people. Don’t get me wrong, I will eventually but I got sent up here early primarily to get my feet wet with the Metaverse Crimes Team. Plus, I have not eaten and after a while everyone looks like a talking burger.” Argosi said with a smile.

  “No worries sir. Fasting and shutting down your intestinal system is the worst part. Once you get on the Nutrient, you will not feel hungry at all.”

  Callum selected a button on the elevator marked “B.”

  What’s in the basement? Argosi wondered.

  Expecting drab concrete walls when the elevator doors opened, Argosi was surprised to see white walls with bright overhead LED lights. Argosi followed Callum past a water fountain and restrooms down a corridor with numerous closed doors on both sides.

  “Most of these are for storage,” Callum said, anticipating what Argosi might ask.

  Centered at the end of the hall they came to a single door that read “Range.” The door unlocked when Callum touched the handle, the proximity reader having approved his access from his credentials. Entering, Argosi was excited to see five shooting lanes with targets hanging from rails that went out to at least 75 meters or more.

  “The far end is one hundred meters. It extends out under the grass outside of the building. There is an access door to remove the spent rounds hidden between some bushes.” Callum said, apparently having given this tour before.

  Next to the training range was a holographic “Hogan’s Alley” for shooting from behind barricades, moving through buildings or streets or as the name implied an alley.

  “This doesn’t get used as much anymore. The realism is better in-world.”

  Argosi nodded. He found it hard to disagree. Still, there was a place in training for actually operating your firearms in the real world if for no other reason than to make sure that everything is working.

  Gliding back to the elevator, Callum explained that “level one” was the parking garage before going up to the main level.

  “The first floor is all field operations. The uniformed patrol division, crime scene investigators and flight operations. We also have two VTAL’s assigned to us.”

  Argosi was glad to see that this level also had a very nicely appointed gym. Argosi met a few troops in there, but Callum kept them moving.

  “Sir, we can skip the second level. It’s all offices housing the traditional investigative units,” Callum said as they walked back to the elevator.

  Argosi knew those were the guys who thought of themselves as the “real Bureau.” They handled all the financial crimes, terrorism stuff and other investigations involving federal crimes in the real world.

  Callum continued.

  “I’ll take you to the Metaverse investigations unit now. We need to get you fitted for your SecondSkin. That process can take some time.”

  “Oh joy,” Argosi said.

  Callum gave a faint smile and focused on the floor indicator above the door. “Here we are sir.” Callum lead Argosi out the elevator onto the third floor.

  “This level has no public access, lobby or reception area. It’s off limits to everyone except the Metaverse Crimes Team, known as the MCT. Jumping off the elevator, Argosi passed a series of offices. All the occupants currently in-world.

  “These offices probably don’t get much use.”

  Callum wasn’t sure if it was a question but answered it nevertheless. “No, sir. Just the tech guys, but they are on the other side of the floor just through this door.”

  Argosi followed him through another door, its dead bolt clicking when Callum touched the handle. This room was darker, resembling the control room back at FLETC. The far wall was itself one large screen currently divided into a half dozen different displays most twenty-four-hour news channels and some other data screens that Argosi didn’t recognize. In front of the wall-sized screen were a row of desks with three or four workstations, two currently occupied with operators engaged in some activity using the multiple screens at each station.

  Elevated above the workstations was another level where a single large semi-circular desk with perhaps a half dozen mo
nitors, several telephones, and keypads all interspersed with switches and buttons. The individual behind this desk had already swirled around in his chair having seen Callum and Argosi exit the elevator on one of his monitors. He put down the half-eaten apple he was enjoying and stood up as Callum and Argosi approached.

  “Robert this is Commander Argosi, our new boss. Commander, meet Robert Wu. He is one of our technical supervisors.”

  “I’m glad someone eats real food around here, wish I could.” Argosi grasped Wu’s hand.

  Argosi glanced to the road bicycle leaning against the outer right side of his station.

  “Nice to meet you, Commander. I’m guessing you are going on the Nutrient regimen?”

  “Yup, is it as much of a pain as it sounds?”

  “Dunno, never taken it, boss.” Wu shrugged and then picked up his apple and took another bite.

  Argosi was flabbergasted. A Metaverse tech geek who didn’t spend all or as much as his time in full emersion as possible? “You don’t do full emersion? I thought the whole team did, including technical support?”

  “My guys go in when they need to. There is usually one or two in at a time, mostly to support the MCT from in-world. I prefer to monitor things from here; I have a lot more options. If I need to I can go into one of the old non-skin pods like you had down at FLETC but truthfully I can always just don a headset and exo-mits and do anything I need to from here.”

  Argosi was curious. Wu was a man after his own heart. “So, you are ok with working in-world but not really in it? With the advanced systems, we have here I would think this would be a playground for someone with your background.”

  Wu chucked the remainder of his apple in the wastebasket, swallowing a last bite before he answered.