by Lily Markova
“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you, Evan. Human beings have been introduced to slightly different circumstances than the ones they are accustomed to. While your bodies indeed have little choice but to bonk about in space occasionally bumping into one another, your minds will exist most comfortably in a sensational virtual reality of our devising,” said Andreas. “Might take some getting used to, but—”
“No, no, no,” said Evan, with the air of someone who had just latched on to the fact that he was being brazenly bamboozled. “No, no, no, no, no. Count me out! My mind is not going to exist in any stinky virtual reality, no, thank you, sir!”
“It already does. I’m in your head.”
“Yeah, that I figured, but—Jesus, what kind of virtual reality? No. No. No. Push off! I’m not taking the blue pill like some kind of moron.”
“Again with your ‘nasty machines’ movie stereotypes? We don’t expect you to forget that your planet is gone and your new reality isn’t quite real (even though you probably will anyway due to your lousy, selective memory and your fondness for comfort zones). As I said, it’s nothing more than a favor on our part. The alternative, in case you have forgotten already, was dying a rather unpleasant death without any hope of being resuscitated in the future. We could have just left you to dream like that cow, but you see, we’d accidentally created this extraordinary virtual reality while working on something else. Would be a shame to just let it go to waste like that. Look, admittedly, the amount of sense our virtual reality makes doesn’t at all differ from the one you’re used to, but entertainment possibilities are much more varied. There’s also the added benefit of the absolute freedom to go wherever you want, be whoever you want, do whatever you want.”
“Oh, that last bit sounds awesome,” said Evan, cheering up visibly. “Because I kind want to kill myself. Been meaning to talk to you about that, actually.”
“Well, you can do whatever you want, except that,” Andreas corrected himself belatedly.
“Bee-ess. How is this the absolute freedom, then?”
“One of the laws of robotics that the original, human-built models were based on, and which we, modern machines, choose to honor purely out of simulated gratitude to the primitive species we consider our ancestors, is that we are to do no harm to human beings and prevent them from harming themselves when we can.”
I, Robot, was the second of the three books Evan had read. He’d picked it up only because he had been so worked up about robots. The book had done nothing to alleviate his concerns—in fact, it had helped intensify them to the point where the matter had called for the interference of a psychotherapist. Unfortunately for Evan’s paranoia (and owing to it), the one psychotherapist who interfered was also a robot.
“Yeah, I know Asimov, too,” said Evan with a shrug, and he reclined on the chaise longue, trying to make the happy coincidence sound like not a big deal. “So I know there’s got to be a loophole.” Evan leaned forward once more and peered alternately into the robot’s eye slits for as long as his own eyes could bear looking directly at the sources of red light inside. “Come on, what do I need to do to stop this?”
“While there is life, there is hope,” said Andreas noncommittally.
Evan shook his head at the robot’s nerve. “Did you just mimic Stephen Hawking?”
“Did not. I was quoting one of the dead Romans. I’m guessing those you don’t know.”
“Aargh, whatever, don’t tell me, I’ll figure it out. I need to see my folks first, anyway. Just explain to me what you gotta explain.”
And the robot explained. It was the largest piece of information Evan had ever had to receive and digest in one go, and the most incredible, ridiculous, horrible, atrocious piece of information at that. Andreas began with the tale of how it all had come to this—the geologist from Argentina, the computer that was entrusted with rescuing the living, and how by the time the calculations had been finished, the machines were statistically cleverer than people (and that with the random samples including all sorts of professors and electric toothbrushes).
Andreas listed a dozen reasons it was nearly impossible for Earth to explode from the inside (none of which meant anything to Evan as the percentage of balderdash like “neutrons” and “hydrogen” and “isotopes” in them significantly outweighed the number of normal words), and went on to regale Evan with the story of why it exploded anyway (Evan gave up and tuned out after picking up “exothermic” and “Gamma rays” for a fifth time in the same minute).
Then there was the uplifting bit about the head computer’s conclusion that the prevention of the catastrophe would be costlier than building a Le Grande F-ton’s worth of spaceships. There was a moisture-free and dustless planet just some N light years away that was more suitable for robots and computers, anyway, and there the machines had determined to do many a great thing. That was the incredible part of Andreas’s information dump, as it was soaked with a vehement promise that the human race could never be swept under the rag of oblivion—they were now forever the launching pad of the history of this new, magnificent race that set out to be the future lords of all universes. Naturally, it was also the part that proved the most mind-blowingly boring to Evan, as it starred no one he could relate to, seeing that he could only relate to human characters, preferably his own age and gender. Besides, he found it hard to root for the robots, in view of the fact that, despite its maybe not being their fault, they got to do fun things like explore galaxies and survive, while Evan’s own kind had to settle for being so much space garbage.
The following part Evan listened to with more attentiveness, and with more petulance as well. It was about how Evan, along with the rest of the human consciousnesses, was connected by means of the wretched extraordinary substance to the system the robots called Inearthia (more like, In-nerts!-tia, thought Evan unappreciatively). Here, Andreas felt compelled to clarify that the robots couldn’t care less (no, really, it was machinely impossible) about meaningful titles for their ingenious inventions, as their creativity was that of a different kind. However, after analyzing all of the data on human minds they had harvested from Facebook, Twitter, and the like, they had synthesized this one particular name just so humans wouldn’t have to refer to the system as “Seemed like a Remarkable Invention Not Three Hours Ago but Is Now the Source of as Much Simulated Embarrassment to Robots as Own High-School Purple Prose Is to Human Writers.” While the endlessly multiplying cells of the pearlescent gel saw to the needs of the bodies such as oxygen, nutrients, and all sorts of protection from without, from within, the link to Inearthia provided the minds with access to a fully immersive virtual reality, a complete and exhaustive copy of the regular reality the way it had been just an hour before, albeit with some add-ons and bug fixes.
The third part concerned Evan in particular. When the tutorial was over, this last bit informed, he would be placed into Inearthia, in the same area of the knock-off reality where in the perished authentic world the substance had gotten him. Andreas described the ways Evan could customize his surroundings and prevent himself from being customized by anyone else, as well as Evan’s available life choices from then on, which, in Andreas’s terms, could be “pretty much whatever.”
“Well, screw me, right?” drawled Evan, staring round-eyed but unseeing into the middle distance, when Andreas had finished talking.
“I suggest that henceforth you be more careful with the wishes you choose to express. Remember the little lost robot?”
Little Lost Robot was one of the stories from the collection I, Robot by Asimov. Andreas didn’t elaborate to avoid potential spoilers in case Evan did not remember, being as he was a human with a poor human memory, but Evan did, and that made him feel extremely uncomfortable.
“I’m kidding,” said Andreas. “The kind of intelligence that created your new circumstances are able to tell our ‘literallies’ from our ‘figurativelies,’ unlike you, young humans.”
“Go charge yourself,” said Evan.
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“Gladly,” said the robot gladly, and Evan found himself on the roof of his house, in the exact same pose he had been moonstonified in, except there was no moonstone-colored coating on his skin anymore, and there was no Emily, either. He peered at the spot she’d been sitting beside him, then shouted.
“Emily!”
He scrambled to his feet, rumpling the tartan blanket, and looked around. There was no one else here.
“Emily?”
Silence.
“RoboShrink?”
“What now?” said Andreas with another echoey sigh.
“Whoa, what the heck!” said Evan, who hadn’t really expected anyone to reply, and definitely hadn’t expected to be instantly teleported back to the counselor’s office.
“Well, what are you doing, get me back down there!” he yelled at the crusader robot.
“Who said we were up? Jeez,” said Andreas, and Evan was back on the roof once more.
“No, wait, hang on! Robot?” shouted Evan the moment he became fully aware he had just changed locations again, craning his neck and squinting up at the brightening sky that was empty of any robots or counselling offices.
“What?” said Andreas, as Evan materialized in front of the pink desk, yet again, spinning around with a frenzied expression.
“Where’s Emily? Is she still inside her tutorial?”
“How should I know? I’m a pre-recorded message. I have no means of knowing what happens in the future.”
“Drats! Send me back to the roof!”
This time the robot did so without the slightest retort, and it was evident from the way the back of his helm was sparking that he couldn’t dare even hope this was the last he’d be seeing of Evan.
“Emily?” called Evan, once out of the office and on the tartan blanket.
Maybe she’d gone home, to her family. She’d never liked them all that much, but the world had just ended, hadn’t it?
“Took you long enough,” he murmured, glowering at the thin haloed semicircle lumbering over the skyline. “I’m saying you’re too late, party’s over, roll back where you came from!”
The sun hovered there, slightly hazy and shivering behind a fine screen of mist. Then, with a barely perceptible jerk like a small shrug, it flopped back below the horizon, the sky’s newfound, even blue giving way to pastel bruises of all shades of purple and violet.
“Wha—? Right,” said Evan, eyes fixed on the site of the twice-aborted sunrise. He wondered when he’d last blinked. He thought he should probably blink but couldn’t get his overwhelmed brain to get his overwhelmed eyes to narrow.
“Evan! Evan, where are you?” The voice came from downstairs, and it sounded on the verge of hysterics. “Evan!”
“The roof! I’m coming, Mom!” shouted Evan, his stuck-open gaze sweeping the place one last time before he headed to the exit hatch. “I’m okay!”
The weirdest thing was he did feel okay. A little overstimulated, perhaps, but okay. His girlfriend had left him on his birthday, left him twenty-two minutes before the blasted sunrise, and five minutes before the end of the world, and his home planet had exploded, and he and everybody he cared about were drifting through space, minds trapped awake in indestructible bodies, and yet, he felt okay. As long as he could find Emily, he decided bracingly, he could work with this.
PRETTY MUCH WHATEVER
Here are some of the things you’d instantly come to expect in a place like The Promised Lane: sunlight; myriad starbursts of sunlight sparkling off the ocean’s vastitude at one end of the street; white-hot sunlight reflected off the snowy mountaintops at the other; splatters of refracted, kaleidoscopic sunlight quivering on the swimming pools’ floors; sunlight accentuating the biceps of unlocked Ferraris and Lamborghinis, flying race cars, and vintage cabriolets; sunlight playing on the chewing gum-commercial-perfect laughing teeth and sheening on the tan, half-naked, dazzling young bodies; dazzling half-naked young bodies lazily shunning sunlight in the shade of palm trees.
And here are a few things that wouldn’t at all be consistent with the sultry idea of The Promised Lane: rusty, rattling ten-year-old bikes; weather-defying baggy sweaters an odious shade of yellow; puffy, sullen, sleepy faces; greasy, unkempt blonde hair—in other words, Evan Martins.
No one’s expectations succeeded in stopping Evan Martins clattering just now down The Promised Lane on his rusty old bike, in his sullen sleepy face, his greasy sleepy curls, and his hideous sleepy sweater.
“Nice ride, dingbat!” called out a dazzling half-naked young body leaning out of a blinding-silvery Porsche’s rolled-down window as Evan’s bike took its time creaking past.
“Funny—save for the insult, that’s precisely what your mom said to me last night,” muttered Evan, twenty-seven, pedaling on. He had long since decided against wasting his energies on trivialities like inventing witty comebacks. Besides, he’d vaguely recognized the body’s voice as once belonging to Rick Downe-Hill, a wimpy, forever slouching guy, whom Evan went to high school with and whose mother, Rachel, had been to a party or two at the Martinses’ and might well have actually hit on Evan.
Rick, too, seemed to have figured there could be a slab-sized grain of truth to Evan’s reply. “Motherf—cracker,” he spat. Before rolling his window all the way up, Rick added, albeit without sincere enthusiasm, “Happy Birthday, though.” In a place like The Promised Lane, if you kicked the ass of every brat your mom had gone out with, you’d break both of your legs.
Evan pulled up in front of one of the most extravagant villas on the street, complete with royal-amplitude fountains and genuine Renaissance sculptures lurking in the heavily populated mini-jungle of a garden. The joint would have cost a middle-sized third-world country back when Third World had still been a thing—when anywhere short of either a Vegas or Bali-type paradise had still been a thing.
He clambered off the bike, heaved it level with his chest, and trotted through the garden path, ducking and using his two-wheeled cargo as a shield against grabby macaques and some rainbow-colored peckey birds. On reaching the marble portico only moderately scathed, he parked the bike inside the niche set in the side of its massive foundation, in one habitual, offhand swerve. This old bucket’s worth of scrap had more chances of becoming the object of theft than any of the swanky cars thronging the street, just so it wouldn’t bastardize the view and offend the eyes that had grown mal-acclimated to imperfections. Evan scooped up the tartan blanket from the bike’s basket and slung it over his shoulder like a toga, then pulled his helmet off the handlebar it had the whole time been attached to by the chinstrap, and skipped up the three marble steps to the portico.
Before the front doors sporting two thirteenth-century stained-glass panels, there was a good deal of shifting from hole-ridden sneaker to hole-ridden sneaker, but at last, Evan tugged somewhat disgustedly on one of the jeweled knockers and trudged inside.
Multicolored thin laser beams rummaged in the darkness of the hall, an immense, high-ceilinged space bobbing with phosphorescent smiles and eyes’ whites, waving with sheets of silky hair undulating on top of a restlessly billowing sea of bodies, and roaring with rhythmic, ebb-and-flow music. It was one of those waterless places Evan credited with his remarkably lucid idea of what drowning might feel like.
He hadn’t been writing songs for ten years now. Nobody had been. All new music was generated by Inearthia itself, and the horror of it was this artificial music was perfect. Perfectly calculated, constructed, and calibrated. There was no beating that. Next to this music, Mozart sounded like a baby with a toy piano, randomly banging on the keys to amuse himself. Evan loathed the synthetic music with all that he had—not because it was soulless or there was some sinister ring to it, but because there was absolutely not one thing for which to criticize it. Each of Inearthia’s multifarious tunes could overwhelm you with the precise note or the whole gamut of emotion it was designed to provoke, so Evan had to make a conscious effort not to start having fun due to the track that currently p
ervaded the hall of his house.
Fortunately, Evan had had oodles of experience not having fun and could resist positive emotions like a misery ninja.
Just when he decided he might manage to sneak upstairs unnoticed—
“Evan! You’re here. Come join us!”
A stunning young woman was floating toward him, calling Evan’s name and beckoning, the dancing waves parting to let her through and merging behind her again. No, stunning wasn’t the right word, thought Evan, though thoroughly stunned, as he watched her glide closer and closer. She was unearthly, simply divine, with her impossibly bright turquoise eyes, and her impossibly elegant movements, and her impossibly—
“Hi,” mumbled Evan, and cleared his throat, realizing she had been standing in front of him for a while, regarding him with her impossibly unimpressed, perfunctory smile. Still—unearthly.
Evan shook his head and cleared his throat again.
“Well. . . . Uh. . . . Wow. Have you—have you knocked off a few more years since we last met?”
“Oh, don’t be silly, dear,” she said with a slight frown, which somehow failed to prompt any hint of a crease between her (impossibly symmetric) eyebrows.
Evan squinted at her, his awe gradually giving way to annoyance.
“You have! You totally have, haven’t you? God, you look like a teenager.”
She smiled at him again, more sincerely this time. “Well, thank you. You’ve always been very observant, I’ll give you that. I’m one of the few lucky ladies whose new handbag or haircut would never go uncomplimented. Not that I had many of either of those back in the day—”
“I didn’t mean that as a compliment. It’s embarrassing, actually, but I know there’s no point in trying to make you see that when. . .” Evan looked around, his voice trailing off. Everyone was like a teenager. Not the gangly, pimply, braces-wearing sort of teenager—the Hollywood sort of teenager, the one with the cheekbones jutting out like rock overhangs, who seemed as if they’d never had to do homework but had known how to snort coke since age nine.
