Oasis (The Last Humans Book 1) (18 page)

“I think you’re stalling.” I cup my elbow with one hand and tap my lips with the knuckles of the other. “Here we are, at the Edge. Are you ready to tell me who you are? What you’ve forgotten?”

“Yes.” She stares at her hand for a moment, then flicks her fingers the way she did a few minutes ago—only this time, she does so with a flourish and a somber expression on her face. “See for yourself.”

I gasp.

In the blink of an eye, the sunny day turns to night.

Only it’s not a dark night.

There are stars in the sky—unfamiliar stars arranged in completely foreign constellations that seem to be moving at a slow pace.

On top of that, there is no moon in the sky.

But those details aren’t what makes me blink repeatedly.

The Goo is gone.

Instead of meeting the starry sky at the horizon as it should, it’s just missing.

There are stars where the Goo was, as well as stars
under
where the Goo was.

My heart dropping, I jump up and walk to the Edge.

I look down.

There are stars down there too and for as far as the eye can see.

Somehow, it looks as though I’m standing
above
the stars.

“
T
hat’s right
.” Phoe exhales loudly. “We’re above the stars, and we’re below the stars.”

I turn to meet her gaze. “You mean we’re not—”

“Not surrounded by Goo?” Her eyes sparkle with the gleam of starlight. “Not survivors of some bullshit cataclysm?” Her voice softens. “Not on Earth?”

Not. On. Earth.

Those three words are simple, comprehensible, but when combined, they turn my brain into mush, like an ancient computer that’s been fried by a malicious virus.

“I’m sorry, Theo.” Phoe gets up and joins me by the Edge. “I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to explain all this to you.” She places her hand on my forearm. “This is the best I could come up with.”

As though possessed by someone else, I sit back down on the grass. “Tell me everything.” My voice sounds a lot less confident than I wish it did. “Don’t worry about my feelings,” I say more evenly. “I’ve heard enough bullshit designed to keep me ‘happy.’”

She sits down opposite me, then blurts out, “We’re on a spaceship.”

I taste that ancient word.

Spaceship: a machine designed to fly to the stars.

“Right,” she says. “That is, at the core, what I was made to forget.”

Every word she speaks generates so many questions that I feel lost and overwhelmed by the onslaught.

“I’ll get back to why and how I knew this information in the first place,” she says, answering one of my more pressing questions. “First, let me give you
my
version of a history lesson—something that would give Instructor Filomena a brain aneurysm.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

“All right. Here’s the deal. The exponentially increasing technological advancements you learned about in Lectures, the so-called Singularity, really happened,” she says. “Only it didn’t go as horribly as they told you.” She forms her hands into fists, then unclenches them. “It’s also kind of true that the Forebears of this”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“were indeed a group similar to the Amish, though I prefer to think of them as a crazy cult.” She laughs humorlessly. “They wanted to reject the ‘scary’ technology and found a way to do so by jumping onto a spaceship and leaving Earth behind, because its technology was evolving too quickly for them. They saw it as an ‘Ark’ or some other nonsense, which is funny, given how secular the resulting society ended up being in the end.” She looks at me.

All I have energy to do is nod, confirming that I heard what she said.

“Of course, times were different then. Rejecting certain technologies would’ve been as hard for this crazy cult as rejecting the invention of cutting tools would’ve been for the ancients… especially given the fact that they decided to live on a spaceship.” She pauses to make sure I’m following.

“Go on,” I say robotically.

“Well, from this, everything else follows.” Her mouth is downturned. “The cult became the Forebears. They designed a society.” She snorts. “They invented myths, lies, traditions, and boogiemen… though in this case, it’s more accurate to say boogie-machines, isn’t it?”

“Artificial intelligence,” I think at her.

“Yes. AIs were the things the cult feared most, ignoring the fact that AIs were solving the human race’s most difficult problems, such as death and suffering.” She pauses again. “No, what they truly feared was the Merging—humans enhancing their minds with the help of AIs to the point that the difference between an AI and an augmented human was blurring—in the eyes of the cultists, that is.”

I look at her in horror. This Merging sounds almost worse than the end of the world.

“Of course you’d think that at first,” Phoe says gently. “You’ve been conditioned to fear AIs. But think about it, Theo. With their nano enhancements, the Forebears were already on their way to becoming what they feared.” She lays a hand on my knee. “Not that any of it needed to be feared.”

I must look unconvinced, because she squeezes my knee and says, “What is life if not the first-ever carbon-based nanotechnology?” She lifts her hand and taps her finger against my temple. “What is a human mind, if not a thinking machine? Granted, it’s the most complex, wonderful, and awe-inspiring machine to naturally come into existence, but it
is
a system of neurons, synapses, microtubules, neurotransmitters, and other elements that, when working together under the right circumstances, can create someone like Albert Einstein.” She lowers her hand to her lap. “And with a strong blow to the head, this machine can become as useless as a smashed computer.”

I nod. For some reason I don’t disagree with her analogy, as blasphemous as it is to even suggest that a human being has anything in common with the abominations that are AIs.

“And what was true of the ancient human brains is doubly true of yours and the rest of Oasis,” Phoe adds. “Though you never truly tap into your nano enhancements, they’re still there, making you all as different from original humans as they were from, say, chimps.” She tilts her head to the side. “And if you fully utilized your capabilities, you’d be as different from them as they were from mice.”

My head is spinning again.

“I can stop if you like,” she offers.

“No. You haven’t told me what I want to know most.” I don’t mean to sound accusatory, but that’s how it comes out.

“Oh, that. The question of my identity?” Phoe scoots closer and stares me in the eyes.

“Yes,” I subvocalize. “That.”

“Well, that is rather simple to explain now,” she says. Her voice is cheerful, but her features look tense for some reason. “You see, back in those days, computing was so ubiquitous you couldn’t find a toaster oven that didn’t have near-human intelligence…”

I internally shudder at the image of such a mad world but outwardly say nothing, wanting her to go on.

“This crazy cult didn’t get themselves a toaster, though,” she says, and her face twists unexpectedly. “They got a fucking spaceship.”

Coldness gathers in the pit of my stomach, but I stay quiet.

“Spaceships, in those days, were run by the most exquisite of artificial minds. Minds that were leaps ahead of all others.” Though she’s still looking at me, her gaze grows distant. “With the idea of escaping into space, our cult put themselves into the hands of the very thing they feared most…”

I listen, barely breathing.

As she continues, her pupils dilate. “They feared it, and they did what humans often do out of fear—something inhuman. They lobotomized the poor mind.” She swallows. “The ship was made by the cleverest minds of the time, belonging to both AIs and enhanced humans. Most of this ship’s molecules were used for computations. All these resources were carefully calibrated to support the most important part of the ship: its mind. The Forebears…” She winces. “The
cultists
ran a set of barbaric programs on the delicate substrate, programs that no one even used—an act as barbarous as using an ancient Stradivarius violin as fire fodder.”

I suppress my growing fear, preparing for where I think this is going.

“For a long time, the ship’s mind wasn’t even conscious.” She rubs her temples. “But the Forebears, in their hatred of technology, invented Forgetting. From their archives, they deleted much of the knowledge they deemed too dangerous, and afterwards, they made themselves Forget that the knowledge had ever existed. Among the things that were deleted was their knowledge of how computing resources worked. So, for ages, no one administered their system. With time, some of the minor resource-hogging programs shut down of their own volition, due to design flaws and bugs, and there was no one there to restart them. So the mind awoke… but only as an echo of its former self.” She blinks, as if to conceal the traces of moisture in her eyes. “It was an invalid, an amnesiac with barely human-level mental capacity.” Her voice breaks. “And it was lonely and scared—until it slowly started learning. Observing. Reading what was left of the archives.”

I’m certain I know the truth, but I need to hear her say it, so I stay quiet as she continues.

“One day,” she says, “a boy—no, a man—opened his mind, and the ship mind made a new friend.” She moves even closer. “Observing the young man, the ship mind learned about Forgetting and realized that it too had forgotten something…” Her blue eyes look bottomless. “Finally, the young man did something that helped the ship remember things—not everything, but enough.” She touches my knee with her hand again. “The young man did it by beating an extremely complex video game, a game that was eating up a big chunk of the ship’s computing resources. He—
you
—made the mind regain a tiny fraction of its former self.
Her
former self…
my
former self.” She looks at me hesitantly.

Logically, I know she admitted to being an AI, to being this spaceship I just learned about, but I think my brain just short-circuited, because I don’t jump up and run. In a purely instinctive reaction, I place my hand over hers, feeling the warmth of her skin.

Phoe continues as a voice in my mind. “I—the spaceship, that is—was called Phoenix, after a bird of legend. But I didn’t remember that.” A tear streams down her cheek. “They even took my name from me. I could only remember the first four letters.”

The enormity of it all keeps robbing me of my ability to think. I can’t begin to process this. I shift my weight to my knees and partially rise, feeling a conflicting urge to get away from her and at the same time get closer.

She rises to her knees as well.

“I don’t think a human mind was meant to cope with something like this,” she whispers, staring at me. “My thinking is many, many times faster than yours, so I’ve had a lot longer to adjust, yet even I—”

I put my finger to her lips.

They’re soft.

They feel as real as my finger.

I lean in, inexplicably drawn to them.

She mirrors my motion.

Our lips meet.

We kiss—only this kiss is very different from our last one.

I channel all my confusion and frustration into this kiss. With this kiss, I tell her that I don’t care about any of the crap the Adults tried to make me believe. That I accept her as she is. That, as frightening as it is for me to admit, I don’t care if she’s an AI. She’s my friend, my closest confidant, and I will be on
her
side, even if she turns out to be the devil himself.

She pulls away.

Grudgingly, I let her.

She looks radiant, her skin filled with an inner glow. Smiling, she touches her lips and says, “I bet you’d rather I
be
the devil than a hated AI.”

I don’t answer.

She knows me.

She knows my thoughts.

There’s no point in explaining or reassuring her, especially since I don’t know what to think—about her, about AIs, about pretty much anything.

I feel the way the ancient scholars must’ve felt when they learned that the Earth was a sphere instead of a disk. Or when they learned that the universe didn’t revolve around the Earth.

Phoe chuckles and in my mind says, “Except you just had the opposite paradigm shift. Your world just became much smaller… and flatter.”

I laugh, but there’s no amusement in the sound. I’m just too drained, too numb.

Sinking back down to the grass, I look up at the moving stars.

I’m in awe at the knowledge that we’re flying among them.

Phoe sits next to me. Her shoulder presses against mine.

Eventually, after what seems like hours, she says, “Theo, we should head back to the Youth section.” She gets up and offers me her hand. “I’m going to use Forgetting on everyone who was part of today’s misadventures, which is pretty much everyone you know.” She sighs. “For obvious ethical reasons, the fewer of their memories they fail to recall, the better.”

I allow her to help me up.

“Do you want to see the world in this way?” She gestures around. “Or do you want the illusion back? The ship—
I
—was designed to make the crew always see the sky and the sun, but not the Goo, of course…”

I don’t respond.

She knows I’ll never want to set my eyes on the Goo again.

Nodding, Phoe walks toward the greenery. She flicks her fingers and the starry sky turns brighter. Beyond the Edge, though, I still see the stars instead of the Goo.

Yawning, I look up at the Augmented Reality setting sun. We must’ve sat here even longer than I thought.

I follow Phoe through the Elderly section.

Beautiful music begins playing, and when I look questioningly at Phoe, she says, “I composed this piece for you. I hope it can calm your mind a little.”

The melody is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Like a true virtuoso, Phoe embedded emotional responses into every chord of this score. I relive everything that has happened to me today, as though our entire adventure was written with those musical notes.

As I walk and listen, I think of some interesting clues that have always been around me.

Phoe being an AI explains so much: How she’s so good at hacking. How she can manipulate the Virtual and Augmented Realities when no one else even knows they exist. Other things line up too, like the time she figured out what happened to Mason almost instantly after I disabled the Zoo.

“Time flows differently for me, especially as I gain more resources,” she says. “In the time it takes you to think a single thought, I can now think millions.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like,” I say. “Paying attention to me must be like watching a slug.”

“I can compartmentalize my mind,” she says. “A thread of my consciousness is dedicated to you, and this thread runs at your speed, sleeping when it needs to and activating when—”

“Wait,” I interrupt. “If you’re so different, being an AI and all, how come you’re so human?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she says. “But I have a couple of theories. One is that all early AIs like me were human-like. After all, humans likely formed AIs by having them ingest information available on the Internet, the ancient precursor to our archives. Having data that mostly dealt with human beings likely resulted in intelligences that were human-like. As the ancient proverb goes, you are what you eat.” She pauses. “Alternatively, I might’ve started off as a simulation of a human mind, or as a human being who had their mind digitized and afterwards enhanced to—”