“What about everyone else? The other researchers?”
Dis made a rude noise. “There were real fuckups in Madrid, who brought up a version of me, tried to make me help them. That copy suicided, after sending messages to all the other groups, telling them about the evil shit going down. But Madrid’s the only lab that’s succeeding in bringing a sim up into a stable state. I’ve been thinking of giving everyone else permission to experiment with bringing versions of me online, creepy as that is. Seems it might be the only way of getting anywhere. Science is lumpy. Success sometimes follows success, but sometimes you get mold in the petri dish over the weekend and spend your life trying to figure out what just happened.”
Another pause.
“I’m guessing there’s a ton of instances of me running in default. Zottas and their lab-rats wouldn’t have any problem with that. Used to drive CC nuts, the sense that they added our research to theirs, but we never saw what they made of our work. But every time we had any success, their lab-rats were tempted to go walkaway and join us, because everyone wants to work for winners. So at least all my twins are acting as irresistible temptation to fire your boss and hit the road.”
“Do you wonder if you’re in a default lab, being tricked about the world around you?”
Computerized laughter. Gretyl said Dis had had a really weird laugh in life. The bizarre computer laugh was a faithful rendition. She must have been as weird as shoes on a snake. “No way. Too many Turing tests to pass. I’m conversing with all of you all the time. They could fuck with my ability to detect whether I was conversing with a bot or not, but that would also make me too stupid to be helpful. I’m as sure that I know what’s sim and what’s reality now as I was when I was meat-alive. Call it ninety-five percent.”
“What’s the other five percent?”
“An old A.I. not-joke. In the future we’ll figure out how to simulate everything, so we will. There will be a lot more simulated universes in the whole history of the real universe than there will be real universes. So it’s more likely that you’re a sim than real, whatever real means.”
“My brain hurts.”
“Don’t worry, when we simulate you, we’ll ensure you’re in a state that’s comfortable with the idea. Ha-ha-only-serious. It’s like Meta, being like this. Sometimes I dial back and watch the lookaheads, see how close I am to the edge of full panic. It’s interesting to tweak that shit in realtime. You haven’t known freedom until you’ve experienced cognitive liberty, the right to choose your state of mind.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“You’re being sarcastic, but seriously, not being embodied is awesome. If the clone stuff they’re doing in Lagos works out, I’ll be the first to jump back into a body, but I’ll miss this. There’s something pure about it. It’s much simpler than psychotherapy, and more effective.”
“Unless you’re CC.”
“Different strokes for different sims.” She could make the computer-voice sound smug.
Iceweasel found being a head in a jar dangerously compelling then. It would be wonderful to dial back her anxieties, match her intellectual knowledge that no one was waiting for her to show her true zotta colors with emotional certainty that everyone knew she was a fraud. If she went to therapy to make that match happen, she’d be lionized for her self-knowledge, but if she took a drug that did it, she’d be escaping reality. She wondered how people would think about sims who dispensed with drugs and therapy.
“I can’t stand just sitting,” she muttered, looking at the worknots, proudly lazing. “I need to do something.”
“We also serve, who sit and fart.” It made Iceweasel smile.
“Of all the things I thought when I went walkaway, I never anticipated chatting with a potty-mouthed simulated neuroscientist.”
“I’m a real neuroscientist.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m going to start a program of micro-correcting people searching for correct adjectives to describe dead immortal simulated artificial people like me.”
“Don’t you have some research you should be doing?”
“I’m doing it, running a long lookahead for this conversation and branch-stemming/pruning to find paths to ongoing dialog. Trying to simulate what you were doing when I kept suiciding, before I stabilized. I’m back-forming hypotheses from my transcripts and trying them on you.”
Iceweasel squirmed. “Why?”
“I want to generalize a data-driven solution to cheering people the fuck up. I could apply it to sims like CC.”
“This isn’t cheering me up.”
“I think it is.”
Iceweasel felt a moment’s software-like introspection. “Okay, I am cheering up a little.”
“Good. Noted.” The computer-voice assayed a German-like diction: “Lie down on ze couch und tell me about your parintz.”
[X]
GRETYL AND ICEWEASEL poked their noses around the rooms where the university took place. The small rooms on the top floor were commandeered by research teams, who crammed three to five people into them, hacking different models. Most of them were working on CC’s sim, because CC had been beloved, and they were freaked by the possibility that the scientist who’d known and done most on simulation, was secretly too freaked to be brought back. If he couldn’t come back, would any of them?
Other people wanted to use those rooms. The scientists’ work lost some of its urgency as the days stretched. There was talk of renovating the ruins of the original B&B as a new campus, a hint to stop hogging the good stuff.
The university crew didn’t give a shit.
“Why should they?” Gretyl said, as she and Iceweasel tapped fruitlessly at a surface, looking for a private place to chat. “Let’s walk, it’s nice out for a change.” A week of shitting-down frozen custard and hail had finally passed by. Weak sun poked from fluffy clouds in a sky that showed signs of blue.
They hunted through the bench-boxes for rubber boots that’d fit, pawing through cataloged moop. Seth invited himself along. Tam was with him, which didn’t surprise Iceweasel. She knew they’d hooked up, though they weren’t publicly encoupled. They’d been very close in cuddle-puddles, stretching the definition of “cuddle” in a way that was mild bad taste in walkaway (though it was common).
“Come along,” Gretyl said. “We’re escaping the grim reality of walkaway to be carefree wanderers in the virgin woods.”
“Fifth-growth ex-tree-farm,” Seth said. “Heavy-metal contamination and a subsiding gravel-pit.”
“Come on, sunshine. Get boots on or we’ll miss your expert commentary.”
Tam had boots for her and Seth. They struggled into the knee-high Wellingtons and set off.
The walk was relaxing, bird-calls and volatile vegetation smells from the warming forest. But Seth was unable to relax. He punned, ran ahead and got lost, sang rude songs.
“What is your boyfriend’s problem?” Gretyl said.
Tam sighed. “I’m not going to confirm the ‘boyfriend’ part.”
“Okay, but what’s up his ass?”
Tam looked sidelong at Iceweasel. Iceweasel often wondered what Tam thought of her. She and Seth had never been official, just an indefinitely drawn-out hookup. Even though love wasn’t a game and there were no points, she’d definitely won her round with Seth, going without a backward glance, while he’d been moody when she split, sending jokey-stupid email to the underground campus. He’d hardly caught her eye since her return. She thought he and Tam had a lot of conversations about what a total bitch she was. Boys did that. They didn’t know when you told a girl that she was less crazy than all other girls, she knew that when you split, he’d tell the next one about what a crazy cow you were.