Chapter 30: CORA, Convergence & Cores

You have Died. You will respawn after an indeterminate length of time has passed. Please enjoy your death dream in the meantime and thank you for playing Cauldron of Realms Ascended!

As the darkness of game death dissipated, I found myself laying on nothing amidst a great big vast white of nothingness. A bright white as far as I could see in any direction, all around me, above and below, despite being seemingly solid under me. 

I had always pictured death as this great dark nothing similar to how the game handled it in the seconds before the death dream and respawning, but in this moment I could see death being an endless limbo in a place like this.

Had I finally died for real? 

“Sorry about this,” came a familiar yet unfamiliar voice from behind me. “Normally this place would be configured as a space you feel safe in and gain comfort from, but I’m at a loss with what to configure it as after our previous meetings.”

Pushing myself up into a sitting position and I shuffled around to face the voice. 

“We made a mistake with our previous choice and failed to recognise the positive associations were with the time and people, not the place itself and you don’t seem to have any suitable secondary locations. I really hope this isn’t too disconcerting,” spoke the voice.

Standing in the white void was a blonde girl wearing oversized glasses who appeared to be in her mid teens. Stranger still was her implying we’d met before and how she looked as if she could have been the younger sister or daughter of the motherly person I had met on my previous two visits to the death dream.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I finally spoke. 

“MaTRON?” 

The girl flinched, before hesitantly nodding while a hand held her glasses in place. 

“...yes, that’s me,” she squeaked. “I’m MaTRON, ummm May. This is how I see myself normally. I’m really sorry about last time,” May replied, sounding anxious. 

No, worried about how I would take this, worried I would be as fragile as last time. Worried I might be angry at her. I suddenly felt like crap over how I treated her last time and how I had run off.

“No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t…” No. No excuses. Apologise properly.

Pausing I took a deep breath. 

“You were trying to help me last time and I was rude, I was hostile, I was overly defensive. I even all but treated you like I was a pig and we were in an interrogation room at one point. And then I ran away from everyone who could help, including you. I’m sorry. A lot has happened in this last week and I don’t want to keep running from trouble, keeping my head down or being too scared to stick my neck out to do the right thing. I don’t want to keep running from help and those who care about me,” I apologised, fists clenched at my sides as I sat cross legged staring up at her.

May’s anxious worry disappeared with a single exhaled breath, to be replaced by a relieved and somewhat proud small smile. “You’ve been through hell haven’t you. I hope you don’t take this badly, but I am glad you have someone like your friend to support you.”

I couldn’t help but smile remembering how Roxi had continued to stand by me after I’d told her the truth. “Yeah, I do.” 

“As much as I don’t mind talking in this empty simulation, do you might if I take this simulation somewhere a little more comfortable?” she asked, before noticing my apprehension at the thought of the simulation returning to my old family home. 

“It’s a simulation of somewhere you have never been before. I think you might like it,” she clarified with a reassuring smile.

“Umm.. sure.”

An explosion of colour went off between us and then rapidly spreading like the fractal pattern of river ice shattering underfoot the white expanse was filled.

Instead of being nowhere, we were now somewhere.

What appeared to be an extremely modern and expensive looking psychiatrist's office complete with stereotypical leather Chaise couch. I didn’t spend much time examining the room because of the view through the seamless floor to ceiling glass window that took up an entire wall.

We were extremely high up over the ocean and below us all the way to the horizons was a deep blue carpet sprinkled with tiny white reflective diamonds. I’d never seen the ocean, the closest I’d been was the Delaware bay. I made a trip down there to search the bay’s coast after hearing an automated cargo ship on its way to UN City had capsized in a storm  not far from there.

Looking straight down, I saw a gleaming city of spires that seemed to grow straight out of the sea, its entirety filled with bright buildings and the shell-like domes of arcologies. A few towers, like the one I was in, reached even above the cloud layer, defying gravity and deity alike.

Further out, past the shining spires, other districts floated atop the ocean. One was an evenly spaced forest of cone-shaped miniature arcologies, while another had older buildings, weathered by age and neglect. Twisting highways and raised boardwalks connected everything, allowing the citizens of the city to use wheeled vehicles of all descriptions to travel about.

“This is…”

“UN City?” May asked, moving to join me looking out the window. “Yes it is or at least a simulation of it, there are plenty of cameras and drones from which to reconstruct it. Not that it is needed. This office doesn’t exist, but the room does. As did a simulation of it, view and all, they used for tours when they were auctioning off the rooms and penthouses in this building that hadn't been presold.”

“It’s…” I trailed off again, unable to find the words to describe this.

“A lot?” May again offered helpfully. “I totally agree, I was made for CORA so the first time I saw simulations and live footage of the city I felt the same awe. Maybe one day I’ll be able to walk the streets for real.”

“I know it probably isn’t as perfect as it looks, but it sucks that I can’t help but feel it's unfair that people can live here in this amazing paradise while barely seventy five miles away I was struggling to survive squatting in ruins and repairing and jailbreaking stolen and smuggled goods from this place.”

“Do you want me to pick a different simulation?” the S.A.I. offered.

“No, this is as good as any other place,” I declined. As much as I couldn’t help but feel bitter and jealous looking out this window, a different part of me was soaking in the city below with fascination wondering where Roxi lived and what it was like for her living here.

Stepping back from the window, the girl with the glasses waved a hand towards the psychiatrist's couch, “Please take a seat. Then we can start to discuss what we are here to talk about.”

Taking one last look at the city below, I reluctantly tried to tear myself away from the window. Approaching the couch, I sat down and lay back. Awkward. Twisting around, I tried laying on my side to face May.

Nope.

Still awkward. 

I’d never considered how awkward it would be to lay on my back or side and have such a serious conversation with an almost stranger. Wriggling, I pulled myself back up into a sitting position leaning forward elbows on knees, chin resting on my interlocked fingers. 

“Good. So, um, we should begin, I can and am speeding up your perception of time to stretch the amount of time we have to talk, but there are still, like, limits to how fast I can safely speed up players. Except... I’m not sure those limits apply to you right now. So, yeah, I guess what I am saying is there is still only so much time before I need to send you and Roxi off for resurrection back in the church ruins,” May started.

“Huh! Wow…” It doesn’t have been a surprise given what I already knew and had read, but it was still impressive hearing it in person.

Leaning forward and adjusting her glasses, May steepled her fingers causing her whole manner to shift towards displaying a more confident and serious demeanor despite her youthful appearance. 

“Last time we talked you, ah, you still had a lot to emotionally process and you sort of had to leave before I could explain what we were doing to help your situation. Which is, like, totally understandable. I mean… well, nevermind. That is part of what I wish to discuss with you today. Your situation, I mean. Not the way you left. That’s fine.” She sounded awkward and a little nervous as she spoke, but I think she was just being extra careful with my boundaries.

“What can you do? No offence, but I thought being a ghost trapped in a vr game was pretty permanent?” 

I didn’t really see a way out, she’d already explained that I was technically a simulation of my living self, body and all, in a simulated vr pod which pretty much allowed me to continue to exist just in this game. 

Maybe she could somehow arrange for the rest of my simulated pod’s functions to work like the home space and the web browser within. Possibly even going so far as to arrange access to other games, bringing my existence closer in line to those in long-term storage pods.

“So after I scooped your consciousness out of that fire, I called in some favors. I began looking into the problem both on a technology level and going back and combing through the various databases they set up for me to use in my role as a psychiatric care A.I. In CORA both me and my friend have been looking after you and doing our best to ensure you have a mostly safe, enjoyable and enriching experience. I’ll get to that in a bit,” she quickly added, noticing that I’d begun to open my mouth to ask how. 

“Outside of the gameworld, I have been working on a way to help you regain agency and freedom. To, if you consent, bridge the gap between human and A.I. and potentially transform your existence into something closer to a S.A.I. giving you the ability to exist in and freely experience the world of the digital.”

“What?”

I hadn’t even considered what she was offering. I hadn’t even thought it was possible! Artificial Intelligence was really just hyper intelligent programs capable of learning and adapting to better perform the roles they were placed in. 

That was as much as most people knew about them, aside from the fact that they were all developed from the same A.I. seed code. A lot of the information about how A.I. and A.I. seed code was kept secret. Likely because of how they had been developed during the Third World War as a means of negating the American Republic’s nuclear arsenal.

I still wasn’t entirely sure how Sentient Artificial Intelligence came about, it wasn’t meant to be possible, but I could see it happening as a result of the rapid evolution A.I. underwent during their lifetime as a result of the adaptive capabilities. Perhaps it was a result of having to interact with and understand humans. Still given how they came to be and the digital environment they came from, I couldn’t see how I could become something like one. We were just too different.

May however, nonplussed by my outburst just once again adjusted her oversized glasses and launched into an explanation. 

“So I have been working on a way to allow you to interact as a quantum-digital existence with the FTLN more freely. You’re already a bunch of bytes within the FTLN, with your agreement, we can well… Uh, make you more like us S.A.I., make you more than a simulation of a human plugging into VR. Let you perceive and interact with the FTLN like we do, let you into our world.”

“No, I get what you meant. I wanted to know how, how can I become like you are? You’re digital, code. I’m organic, meat-ware. Even with how you saved my life, I am still tethered to a flesh and blood body, just a simulated one built from scans and my med data. Wouldn’t this be such a huge change that I would no longer be me?”

“Ah, right! Good question. I’ve already devoted a lot of resources researching this, looking up medical, psychiatric, neurology databases as well as anything I could find on how A.I. work, as well as comparing scans of how your mind and consciousness works with scans I took of the code and consciousness of myself as well as A.I. and some of my S.A.I. friends.”

“I was surprised by what I found too!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Turns out it should actually be possible. I’ve been working on an interface.”

“An interface?”

“Think of it this way, a VR pod is a type of interface that allows human minds to in a way inhabit specially prepared digital spaces,” she explained. “Are you following?”

“That was an overly simple way of putting it, but I understood yes,” I answered, nodding.

“So what I am building is an interface similar to what we A.I and S.A.I. have for our core code, so you're not bound to that simulated pod and only interacting with the FTLN like a human would. Instead you would be able to perceive the FTLN and interact with it in the same way we do. Let me show you.”

At her words the room’s windows darkened as if an eclipse was occurring, casting the room into half shadow. Then gesturing in front of herself, a blue hologram of a vr pod with a little Jaime inside appeared between us. With a second flick of her hand, two 3D pulsing balls of tightly intertwined tiny code appeared beside the pod, one made of purple light and the other red.

Pausing for a moment, she peeled a tightly woven shell of code from one of the balls like it was a mandarin peel and held it up for me to see.

“Even though I’m starting with the existing code wrapper that all A.I. kinda have, adapting it for you is a different story,” she said with a small frown. “I've been analysing the simulation I used to keep you alive and it really isn’t the same as an A.I. or S.A.I.” 

My expression must have said ‘no shit’ because the S.A.I. quickly jumped to clarify what she’d said.

“That's not to say there aren't similarities!” she quickly burst out, waving her hands in front of her. “Excluding a lot of the more superfluous bits, I was more concerned about getting all of you than discerning what was or was not needed, our consciousnesses do have similarities in how they function.”

Waving her hand over the displayed simulation of my pod and I as if to erase it, the pod disappeared to be replaced by another different pulsing mind in the same blue as the pod hologram. This one without a code wrapper.

“In some ways your consciousness is more similar to an A.I., but in others it's more similar to a S.A.I. It's kinda eerie to be honest and there might be something going on there, but I don't want to jump to any conclusions just yet.”

Looking again at the holographic display, a trio of holographic minds pulsed between us, each slightly different but similar.

“What I am saying is I am highly confident that once I have determined which parts of the simulation are essentially to your identity, mind and consciousness and which are just unnecessary, I’ll be able to distill you down to what is the ‘core code’ of you and then adapt for you the code wrapper we use as our interface. The eyes, ears and limbs etc that allow our minds to interact with our world,” she said, tapping the purple ball of light’s wrapper cloning it, then turning the cloned shell blue before using it to wrap the orb of light that represented me. 

“I think my brain is going to explode…” I groaned, dealing with information overload and trying not to wince at the mental-image of my brain being scooped out and ‘distilled’.

“I hope not. We need that intact for the cyber-surgery!” she scolded, hands on hips, a smirk threatening to break out at the corner of her mouth.