Idempotency (3 page)

“Sure thing, pal. Of course, will do,” Jimmy replied sincerely.

“Great. Thanks, Jimmy. You are a good friend.”

“You too, buddy. I’ll catch ya in realWorld.” A moment later Jimmy blinked out of existence.

RealWorld. Where is the real world anymore?
Garrett wondered.

He looked around. There were a half-dozen virtTrippers atop the mountain now, mostly stargazing. Garrett dictated several commands to the interface of his bilateral ocular implants. A warning message appeared in his periphery, asking if he wished to proceed in terminating his virt session. Garrett agreed, and the virtTrippers around him disappeared. But the Martian landscape did not.

With a deep sigh and a heavy heart, Garrett Hawpe reached up to his helmet and began to unfasten five life-protecting latches around the neck of his atmospheric suit. Alarms flashed on his visor and in his ears. Warning messages shot out and were transmitted to a nearby security outpost. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw the fledgling flashing of emergency lights from several antigravity vehicles at the midpoint of the Martian mountain.

The pressure was intense, but different from what he had expected. He felt something in his bowels. Pain. He hadn’t felt pain in such a long time. And the tingling of extreme cold!
What a strange sensation!
he thought—his final thought. And then, Garrett Hawpe, the oldest living human, experienced the one thing he seemingly never could: death.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial

Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues

You can tell by the way she smiles.

— Bob Dylan, “Visions of Johanna”

“Mr. Dylan Dansby?”

Dylan flinched, then glanced beyond the translucent hologram suspended a half meter in front of his face. The contents of his bilateral user interface appeared only to him. The man walking toward Dylan saw an encrypted version of the hologram, appearing as a simple, azure-colored, undulating square. Reaching toward the left side of his head with his right hand, Dylan clicked on the small BUI device sitting gently atop his left ear. The hologram enacted a clever shutdown animation; twisting as if being flushed down an unseen drain.

Dylan was sitting in a chair that appeared oversized, largely due to his own short stature. As he stood up, a pleasant voice emanated from the chair, inquiring as to whether he would be needing anything else and reminding him not to forget the jacket he had already picked up. Ignoring the chair’s entreaties, he began walking toward a tall man who was walking in his direction from several aisles away. The man was scanning the lobby, looking for Dylan. Their eyes met, and the man noted Dylan’s simple attire: tan slacks with a black button-down shirt adorned with a dynamic logo of the company he represented. The word
SolipstiCorp
spun across his shirt’s left front pocket in a deep red color so as to not draw too much attention. His jacket was the only article of clothing that hinted at Dylan’s playful personality; it was a handwoven brown tweed jacket, with two ornately sewn front pockets. This jacket was not in style (and possibly never had been), but Dylan wore it well.

The man standing in front of Dylan was a tree, nearing two meters. He towered over Dylan’s one-and-three-quarter-meter frame. What he lacked in height, however, Dylan made up for in persona. His stocky body type was muscular with a coating of insulation derived from a love of food and drink. A mien of brown hair sprouted atop his jovial round face, while a wide smile offered no prevarication toward his gregarious nature. Dylan was a people person, and it showed in every way.

“Mr. Dansby, I presume. Janet and team are ready for your meeting. Would you mind if the corporation checked you in?”

“Of course not." The question was a formality, since the network could have scanned him the moment he entered the corp’s land (and would have, had he stepped a meter past reception), but such was the etiquette of the day. Within a nanosecond the corporation had all pertinent information regarding Dylan Dansby: age, lineage, physical attributes, contact information, résumé, DNA, NDAs (current and expired), place of birth, all major surgical procedures, and a myriad of less important information that would surely be considered important to some low-level customer-relationship manager.

“Wonderful. This way then." The tall man gestured ahead, and the two began walking at a brisk pace.

The lobby was a magnificent display of Old World opulence intertwined with New World tech. Exotic marbles created a patchwork of rich colors whose pattern seemed to be driving toward chaos. Virtual assistants, also known as holoPods, stood at various points in the room; holograms of a torso and generic face sat wavering above a round metallic stand. The holoPods were fully interactive, able to answer any question pertaining to the corporation or the facility. The lobby contained four rows of twenty chairs in each row. It appeared roughly a quarter full to Dylan when he arrived. Each person waiting in the lobby did so with their private BUIs engaged, and the holograms bobbed obediently in front of their owners’ faces. Those few guests who had ocular implants did the same within their private vision; their eyes glowed red to denote their “busy” status. Ambient rustles of cloth whispered across the room as people waved their arms in front of their faces, connecting to the world through their floating interfaces.

In the middle of the lobby stood a sculpture carved out of a reddish-hued rock mined from Mars. The sculpture depicted an elderly man in a suit sitting on a park bench. The expression on his face was innocuous. Words were carved into the base of the sculpture, which read
EarthwideGamingCorp—Manifesting Martian Memories Since 2099.

As Dylan stared at the impressive stone, his path began to veer and he slammed into a thick man who was walking briskly in the opposite direction. Several people were attracted to the sudden swirl of commotion that broke through the stillness of the lobby. The larger man grumbled something about paying attention as he bent down to pick up a few dropped items—Dylan was unsure if this was directed at him or if the man was berating himself. The man also picked up Dylan’s jacket and tossed it back to him without making eye contact. Dylan began to apologize, but the man was already hurrying away. Dylan caught a glimpse of a blond ponytail swinging behind him.

Shrugging, Dylan glanced back toward his tall host and remarked, “Must’ve been late for the next boat to Mars.” The tall man didn’t laugh.

After Dylan gathered himself, the pair began to walk through rows of chairs toward an arched doorway. On the way, Dylan asked, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“You may query me with the pronoun ‘Host,’ Mr. Dansby. I’m merely an animated representative of the EGC.”

Dylan’s mouth gaped open and he stated bluntly, “You’re an
android
?”

“Yes, Mr. Dansby, though we utilize the term
animated representative
,” Host answered. It motioned Dylan through the doorway, which opened into a large indoor garden.

The pair walked on a circular gravel path through the garden. Gravity-defying platforms known as magLifts dotted the garden, ascending and descending around them, carrying passengers to all floors of the building. After passing an unusually large ficus plant, Host motioned Dylan onto a small platform that immediately began to rise after the pair stepped inside. Dylan took in the spectacle and flinched a moment later as a neighboring platform sped uncomfortably close, snapping his attention back to his most recent astonishing technological discovery.

“Who is your manufacturer? I’ve never been
unable
to identify an android by sight before.” Dylan made no attempt to hide the awe in his tone.

“My manufacturer is the Earthwide Gaming Corporation, more commonly known as EGC,” replied Host.

“When did EGC begin creating androids?”

“They have been supplying various aspects of tech to third-party manufacturers for decades, Mr. Dansby. It wasn’t until two weeks ago, however, that the corporation announced their intention to begin manufacturing their own EGC-branded autonomous and proprietary models.”

“Huh. And for what purpose? What’s the business model? Will they be selling the androids direct to customer, or are these to be used as part of your greater travel and gaming businesses?”  Dylan asked. His interest was piqued, even though androids were outside of his typical biz-dev expertise.

“That information has not yet been publicly announced, Mr. Dansby.”

He already had several more questions lined up. “What level AI are you?”

“We’ve arrived, Mr. Dansby,” the android stated flatly. If Dylan hadn’t known better, he would have thought Host was being rude.

Swiveling his head, Dylan noticed that the ascending platform had stopped about halfway up and docked against the marble walkway that circled the interior cone of the building. “So we have. Thank you, Host." Dylan placed his right hand out to shake Host’s hand. Host seemed surprised at the anachronistic gesture and momentarily paused. Dylan noticed a hitch in Host’s movements as the android reached out to reciprocate the handshake. It was the first indication to Dylan of Host’s robotic nature.

“Your meeting is directly inside the outlined holoDoor. You may head on in at your leisure. Thank you, Mr. Dansby,” Host stated evenly. Nodding slightly, it turned on its heel and walked back onto the platform and floated downward.

Dylan stood in front of a seamless white wall. A breath later, the outline of an oval doorway emerged in front of him. He rolled his eyes in frustration; his antipathy for secluded holographic entrances ran deep. He’d had several bad experiences with them, including a particular case many years ago where he walked toward the door only to have his nose thud directly into what he thought was a passable hologram. As a consequence of that experience, Dylan became compulsive about always placing a hand through the holoDoor before his nose. After his hand check, he entered with a smile and without hesitation.

“Dylan! Great to see you. Thanks for coming down." Janet Mayburry, a thin woman of medium height and slight build with blonde hair, lurched out of her seat from the middle of a long oval table upon Dylan’s entrance. She bounded forward, extending an arm. Her hair was styled straight back on her head and bobbed slightly in protest to its owner’s fervor. Janet instinctively spun around and introduced each person around the table, noting their name, role, and an anecdote pertaining to their EGC accomplishments that Dylan would ostensibly recognize. In each case Dylan nodded a tacit approval and flashed his affable grin. Once the platitudes had ceased, Dylan took a seat at the head of the oval table, and Janet proceeded to sit back down at the center of the table.

Dylan was quick to kick off the tangible portion of the conversation with the desire to steer the nascent discussions from the outset while attempting to butter up potential partners. He was an expert at doing both. “Listen—as you are all getting settled back in your seats, if I could just start by saying—Janet, ladies and gentlemen—first off, on behalf of SolipstiCorp, I want to thank you for having this conversation with us; hopefully, this is the first of many more to come. We certainly realize that we’re a small fish—shoot, we’re more like algae—in a big pond, but to have a chance to grab the ear of such an esteemed corp such as EGC, that’s an honor for us, so thanks for having me."

A natural pause occurred at this juncture of Dylan’s discourse, but he quickly continued on before Janet could interject. “And then, second: if I could, I just wanted to speak about the elephant in the room: the recent news about Garrett Hawpe taking his own life on Mars. Obviously, this was a terrible tragedy, and it’s quite unfortunate that EGC—you fine folks—have been drawn into this maelstrom simply because Mr. Hawpe chose to end his life on Mars and happened to take an EGC Mars Liberty Cruise to get there.”

“It’s the only affordable way for the public
to
get there,” Janet interrupted.

Dylan nodded his head subtly and agreed, “Very true, Janet. Yeah, you folks have done a fantastic job with the Mars Liberty Cruises. You know, initially I had planned to open this conversation discussing how amazing my recent trip to Mars on EGC’s Liberty had been. My trip—and thanks for footing the bill for me, by the way. My girlfriend especially enjoyed it; very kind of you. Anyhow, I thought my trip would be a really cool way to frame the potential synergies that I think our two corporations can bring to each other, and then this . . . tragedy with Mr. Hawpe occurred . . . and while terrible, it does highlight some mutual opportunities our teams have. I don’t want to use the word
serendipitous
, but in many ways, I think this tragedy will emphasize why you folks will be extremely interested in our tech—”

“How’s that, Mr. Dansby? We’re all very excited to hear your pitch—but very busy, I might add,” spoke a short, round, brown-haired woman who displayed excellent bias for action by cutting through Dylan’s small talk.

“Dansby . . .” A man at the end of the table suddenly snapped his fingers. “Dansby—hey, are you related to Randy Dansby of the First-Seventy-Three trueElderly?“

Dylan smiled, “Yes. As a matter of fact, Randy Dansby is my great-uncle.”

“How’s he doing? I’ve heard he’s having—”

“He’s fine, thanks for asking.” Dylan steered off the topic of his ailing great-uncle as fast as he could.

“Did you ever have the chance to meet Hawpe?” blurted another starstruck man.

“No, no. I barely even know my great-uncle,” Dylan lied. He cleared his throat, needing to make this quick. “Look, everyone—I know you’re all super busy, and I can’t even imagine how much money this meeting is costing EGC to have all of you in one room at the same time, so allow me to just jump right in: Has anyone ever heard of the Sensorama?”

Dylan smiled, but his audience looked at him with confusion. “No? Well, let’s start from the start, then. Morton Heilig is considered to be the grandfather of virtual reality. In 1955, he published a paper entitled ‘The Cinema of the Future.’ He believed that someday moving pictures would come to encompass all senses—sight and sound, of course, but also dimensions, smell, touch, and even taste.” Dylan raised his hands and waved a hologram to life in the middle of the holoTable. A photo of Heilig appeared and was soon replaced by a desklike device. Dylan waved his hand through the hologram of the desk and rotated it as he spoke. “Heilig actually built a prototype of his vision in 1962. This thing even predated the personal computer and the original Internet, things we take for granted today. The guy was
way
ahead of his time. Aside from the somewhat risky ocular implants that some folks are using these days, most new virtual-reality devices are just incremental improvements on this 1962 technology.
Nineteen sixty-two!
That’s almost exactly one hundred and fifty years of very little tangible technological progress . . . until now. Our new technology allows people to live entire virtual lives, from birth to death, in the span of days. We call this a deathTrip.”