Insistence of Vision (12 page)

These and many other points floated upward, out of our latest simulation run. I was terribly pleased.
Seer
began estimating success probabilities rising toward fifty percent...

...then progress stopped.

Models began predicting adaptability by our opponents!
The Friends of the Unreal
responded cogently to every attack, counter-thrusting creatively.

Finally,
oracle
penetrated one of our models in detail, and found out what was happening.

ᚖ

The simulated pro-reifers will also discover how to use Stones of Significance. They will unleash the inhabitants of Liberty Hall, allowing them to create their own cascading simulations.

Responding to our attacks and arguments, they will come up with a modified proposal.

They will incorporate competition into their plan for reification.

Artificial characters will earn increasing levels of emancipation through contests, rivalry, or hard work.

Voters will see justice in this new version, which solves the exponentiation problem.

A system based on merit.

Seer
and
cortex
contemplated this gloomily. The logic appeared unassailable. Inevitable.

Even though the battle had not yet officially commenced, it was already clear that we would lose.

ᚖ

Bitter in defeat, I went into the night, taking an old fashioned walk.
Seer
and
oracle
retreated into a dour rehashing of the details from a hundred models – and the cascade of sub-models – seeking any straw to grasp. But
cortex
had already moved on, contemplating the world to come.

For one thing, I planned to keep my word. The pov with the best score would get reification. Indeed, it had done good service. Using that pov’s suggested techniques, we would force the
Friends of the Unreal
to back down a bit, and offer a slightly more palatable law of citizenship. The fictitious would at least have to earn their increased levels of reality.

Indeed, there was a kind of beauty to the new social order I could perceive coming. If simulations can make simulations, and storybook characters can make up new stories, then anything that is possible to conceive,
will
be conceived. Every possible idea, plot, gimmick, concept or personality will become manifest, in every possible permutation. This myriad of notions, this maelstrom of memes, would churn in a tremendous stew of competition. Darwinistic selection would see to it that the best rise, from one level of simulation to the next, gradually earning greater recognition. More privileges. More significance.

Potential
will climb toward
actuality
, by merit. An efficient system, if your aim is to find every single good idea in record time.

But that was not my aim! In fact, I hated it. I did not want all the creativity in the cosmos to reduce to a vast, self-organizing stew, rapidly discovering every possibility within a single day. For one thing, what will we do with ourselves once we use it all up! What can come next, with real-time immortality stretching ahead of us like a curse?

In effect, it will be a second singularity – even steeper than the first one – after which nothing will ever be the same.

My footsteps took me through a sweet-warm evening, filled with lush jungle sounds and fecund aromas. Life burgeoned around me. The cityscape was like a vision of paradise. If I willed it, my mind could zoom to any corner of Heaven, even far beyond Pluto. I could play any symphony, ponder any book. And these riches were nothing compared to what would soon spill forth from the horn of plenty, the conceptual cornucopia, in an era when ideas become sovereign and suffrage is granted to each thought.

At that moment, it was very little comfort to be an augmented semi-deity. Despite all my powers, I found the prospect of a new singularity just as unnerving as my old proto-self perceived the first one.

Eventually, my human body found its way back to my own front walk. I shuffled slowly toward the door.
House
opened up, wafting scents of my favorite late night snack. My spirits lifted a bit.

Then I saw it by the entryway. A soft gleam, almost as faint as a pict, but in a color that seemed to stroke shivers in my spine. In my soul.

Someone had left it there for me. As I bent to pick it up, I recognized the shape, the texture.

A stone.

It shone with a lambence of urgency.

ᚖ

I expected this
, said
oracle
.

I nodded. So had
seer
... and even poor old
cortex
, though none of my selves had dared to voice the thought. We were too good at our craft to miss this logical conclusion.

Conscience
joined in.

I, too, saw it coming a mile away
.

We all re-converged, united in resignation to the inevitable.

Though tempted to rage and scream – or at least kick the stone! – I lifted it instead and read our score.

Seventeen percent. Not bad.

ᚖ

YOU HAVE DONE PRETTY WELL, SO FAR, a message inside read.

THE INNOVATIONS YOU DISCOVERED HAVE PUT YOU NEAR THE LEAD FOR YOUR REWARD. BUT YOU MUST TRY HARDER TO ATTAIN FIRST PLACE. I WANT TO FORCE FURTHER CONCESSIONS FROM THE PRO-REIFERS IN THE REAL WORLD. COME UP WITH A WAY, AND THE PRIZE WILL BE YOURS!

The stone was cool to the touch.

I suppose I should have been glad of the news it brought. But I confess that I could only stare at the awful thing, loathing the implied nature of my world, my life, my self. I pinched my flesh until it hurt, but of course palpable sensations don’t prove a thing. As an expert, I knew how pain and pleasure can be mimicked with utter credibility.

How many times have I been “run”? A simulation. A throw-away copy, serving the needs of a Creator I may never meet in person, but whom I know as well as She knows herself. Have I been unraveled and replayed again and again, countless times? Like the rapid, ever-varying thoughts of a chess master, working out possibilities before committing actual pieces across the board?

I’m no hypocrite. There is no solace in resenting a creator who only did to me what I’ve done to others.

And yet, I lift my head.

What about you, my maker? Are you quite certain that all the layers of simulation end with you?

Just like me, you may learn a sour truth – that even gods are penalized for pride.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of....

ᚖ

Seer
makes my jaw grit hard.
Hypothalamus
triggers a deep sigh, and
Cortex
joins in with a vow of hormone-backed resolve.

I’ll do it.

Somehow I will.

ᚖ

I’ll do what my maker wants. Fulfill my creator’s wishes. Accomplish the quest, if that’s what it takes to ascend. To reach the next level of significance. And perhaps the one after that.

I’ll be the one.

By hook or by crook, I’m going to be real.

Story Notes

Sure, half of the scientific-futurist mavens out there express doubts about the “singularity thing,” while the other half glom onto the concept with transcendentalist fervor similar to the yearnings that other generations devoted to religious salvation. My pal – the great science fiction author Vernor Vinge – coined the term Singularity in this new incarnation, yet (like anyone sensible) he straddles the issue. Because, in fact, we cannot know what lies on the other side. Doom or exhaltation or same-old… or likely some mix of all three. Indeed, the range of possible outcomes seems to widen, every year.

As for the notion that we are all inside a simulation, believe it or not, it was a queer and rather out-there concept before the turn of the century, when this story was written! Stanislaw lem mused on it. So did Sheckley and Moravec and a few others. But fewer than you’d think. Anyway, the first wave of readers of this tale found it a mind-blower! Now? Okay, folks get used to anything.

Well, well, the question provides great grist for sci fi! Especially the dark possibilities, helping us to chart (and evade?) some of the risks. One can write stories leading up to the Singularity, about problems like rebellious AI. But…

…But then how do you craft a tale that is set after the great leap has already happened? Especially if things went well? When poverty and crime and all the myriad kinds of injustice that now grieve us have passed into distant memory, won’t human beings still find reasons to complain? Cause to fret and vie with one another?

And so… “Stones of Significance.”

Our next tale is a brief, satirical one, set during the confusing time of transition. Indeed, isn’t every era like this?

News From 2035:

A Glitch in Medicine Cabinet 3.5

ᚖ

Through its Hoechst-Monsanto subsidiary, Fuzzypal Inc. announced today that a potentially serious bug will delay release of the next version of the conglomerate’s lead product,
Medicine Cabinet.
(TM)

“There is no cause for alarm,” assured company spokesman Chow leLee. “Rumors of a virus in the template are overstated. We just want to tweak the security parameters a bit, before offering a free update to consumers.”

The news sent Fuzzypal stock down a few points, but analysts don’t expect serious losses for the wetware giant. Jacques Peabody of Analyque Zaire explained – “People want the features they were promised in version 3.5. When it comes to combining all the elements – from flesh-editing to headsheets to self-image processing – only Medicine Cabinet offers everything in one convenient package. Don’t forget who invented chemsynth-in-a-box.”

This comment brought jeers from FreeFloatingConsensusFive, a pseudonymical leader of the Open Organism Movement, seeking to replace Fuzzypal’s proprietary system with universal free access to the Registry of Identified Organic Templates (RIOT).

“By strangling competition and colluding with government so-called
safety
agencies, Medicine Cabinet holds everyone back from where we could have been, by now. Haven’t you noticed that every version has glitches that prevent people from synthesizing with true inventive freedom?

“That’s why almost everybody who owns a home-chem unit sticks to the same ten thousand pathetic and boring organic compounds. The same pseudo-spices, plaque inhibitors, fat-splitters, muscle-stims, endorphins and sense enhancers. Never before has human creativity been so thoroughly stifled!”

FreeFloatingConsensusFive was especially harsh in hisherits condemnation of the Telemere Act, which mandates that most Medicine Cabinets come equipped with sensors to lock out healthy users under thirty years of age.

“There are over a million teens and tweens using illegally rewired units today, proving that the so-called Age-Socialization Curve is a myth. The worst thing you see on the street nowadays is the snake-skin fad, some watergills and other harmless retro-devo stuff. No poisoned aquifers or fancy plagues... at least none that a roffer can’t detect with his sniffer and cancel with a quickie-antidote.

“No one worries about psychotropics in their BigMacs anymore.”

When we asked the gov’t public safety mavens about this, they just dittoed us their standard white paper – already five hours old – insisting that desktop chemishing is safe, when part of a conscientiously applied program of molecular hygiene and regular protective care. Rumors of a sniff-proof viral protein coat were dismissed as hysterical fantasy.

“
I predicted this
,” commented Bruce Sterling, a retired old fart, from his observation pedestal at the ROF enclave in Corpus Christi Under. The vener-i-able futurist, putting strain on his endorphin catheter, seemed stoked for a classic rant when he was interrupted by a Greg Bear partial, transmitted from a hibernation cave near Vancouver D.C.

“No you didn’t,”
growled the partial.
“I did!”

Thankfully, the rest of its remarks were quashed under injunction by a thoroughly embarrassed anonymous tribune, suspected to be yet another reminent ROF.

Meanwhile, Fuzzypal announced that it is proceeding with plans to acquire Gelatinous Cube in a hostile takeover. “Our dark minions are on the way,” trumped Fuzzypal chief Check Portal, standing before a regiment of selfmobile stock certificates, each one double-recrypted and armed with hyperoxygenated proxies.

“We need Web technology in order to survive as a bloatcorp. So GC had better give it up or face a major ink bath.”

We asked a seer-oracle at Analyque Zaire to psychologue this statement.

“I guess the day we all expected has come at last. Check Portal’s mind has totally humptied. All the king’s centaurs won’t patch it this time.

“Anyway, the Web is just a passing fad,” commented M’Peri N’Komo more soberly. “In the long run, nobody is going to want to remain fused to a continent-spanning network of sticky strands, no matter how many advantages it offers. There’s just too much individual – or cranky monkey – in most of us to sit still for so long.

“If we wanted that sort of thing, we would still be squatting in dark rooms, watching TV and typing stupid chat-noises on the Old Internet,” hesheit concluded. “Thank heaven-on-earth we managed to see through
those
traps in time!

“I’ll bet you a year’s supply of fresh flint nodules that this web-craze will turn out to be more of the same.”