“But perhaps even better,” I continued, taking a loud bite, “I can eat it too.”
As I munched away, I could feel its juices running down my chin. It was a good simulation of biting into an apple, but still had room for improvement, I thought as I chewed, contemplating the appleness of my experience.
“The ultimate no calorie snack,” I joked, taking another bite. This got some laughs.
“Seriously, though,” I continued, raising the apple and smiling, “with pssi installed, you can eat and drink whatever you like as much as you like with zero caloric intake—for this afternoon’s activity we’ll be lounging in Pompeii at a Roman feast while your proxxi takes your body to the gym.” This earned some more hushed laughter.
“Describe a proxxi again?” asked Ginny, cocking her head and fishing for a sound bite. I obliged.
“Proxxi are biological-digital symbiotes that attach to your neural system, sharing all your memories and sensory data as well as control of your motor system.”
The proxxi program was my life’s work in creating the basis for synthetic intelligence. Where previous research had tried to create artificial intelligence in a kind of vacuum by itself, my contribution had been to understand that a body and mind didn’t exist separately but could only exist together.
We’d started by creating synthetic learning systems attached to virtual bodies in virtual worlds that gradually became intelligent by feeling their way through their environments. The proxxi program had taken this one step further when we’d integrated them intimately into peoples’ lives, to share in their day to day experiences.
They were still artificial intelligences, but ones that now shared our physical reality to seamlessly bridge the gap between the worlds of humans and machines.
Ginny screwed up her face and asked, “And why would we want to attach something to our neural systems?”
“And just why wouldn’t you want to get attached to me?” asked Marie, my own proxxi, materializing to walk beside me. She smiled at everyone.
This earned a round of laughs. With the flick of a phantom I removed the apple from existence, my taste buds going blank as it flashed away. The hair on the back of my neck had begun to stand up which meant the slingshot test must be about to start. I’d better wrap this up.
“Everyone,” I announced, reaching out to encircle the group of reporters with my phantoms, “if you’ll allow me, I’d like to take whoever is coming up to watch the test firing of the slingshot.”
We’d ensured almost everyone had signed up for a front row seat to the demonstration. We needed to show we weren’t just serious about cyber, but also had a committed kinetic program.
“To finally answer your original question Ginny,” I said as I grabbed them all and we shot through the ceiling of the conference room, accelerating up into space and earning a few gasps, “pssi will change the world by beginning to move it from the destructive downward spiral of material consumption and into the clean world of synthetic consumption. It’s about the only viable solution we have left with nearly ten billion people all struggling for their own piece of the material dream.”
I slowed and stabilized our flight path, bringing us to a stop about ninety thousand feet up. Dispersing the reporters’ subjective points of view across a wide radius surrounding the target zone, I motioned down at the oceans below and then towards the rising sun on the horizon.
“The fact that we have to face is that the eco-crunch is destroying the planet while the fight over dwindling resources is fueling the Weather Wars, and pssi is the solution that will bring us all back from the brink!”
On cue, the slingshot began to fill the space around us with an ear-splitting roar and fiery inferno. I left the reporters’ visual subjectives in the thick of it while retreating to view from a distance, backing away several miles, and then several more. What had seemed so awe inspiring moments ago now appeared as just a bright smudge in the sky, and miles below shimmered the green dot of Atopia.
My mind clouded with sudden doubt.
Our imagined power dwindled to nothing when viewed with a little perspective, dwarfed by unseen forces operating on much larger scales. Just then I was enveloped in a fast moving cloud, and, as if responding to my thoughts, a strong wind sprang up. The thunderstorm was coming.
The blaze of the slingshot test was still dissipating on the main display in the middle of the Atopia Defence Command center. I lit up a smoke as I arrived, gently fading my image in next to Commander Rick Strong, my own pick as head of our newly formed Atopian Defence Forces.
He’d had an exemplary career in the US Marines, demonstrating repeated bravery rescuing men under his command. His first deployment had been in Nanda Devi, in the terrible fighting over dams high in the Himalayas that had sparked the Weather Wars. His psych profile indicated latent post-traumatic stress disorder, but just enough to make him think twice before starting a fight. With the fearsome weapons we’d installed on Atopia, I didn’t want some trigger-happy wingnut’s finger over the button if things got hairy.
A battle-hardened veteran, Rick brought a direct, and sometimes violent, experience of the realities from the outside world that helped ground the team here. We were masters of synthetic reality, but I had a feeling our created realities could be blinding us to the real dangers out there. Rick was the perfect antidote.
Kesselring, the CEO of Cognix and main benefactor behind Atopia, had been the first to begin speaking about the need to have defensive weapons. To begin with, the suggestion had seemed completely antiethical to the cause, Atopia having been born from a free-minded spirit to escape the cluttered corner the rest of the world had led itself into. I’d been against it to begin with, but as time wore on, I began to get the feeling that we may need them before all this was over.
“Finished playtime yet Rick?” I asked, shifting my hips from one side to the other and taking a drag from my smoke. I could feel the sense of safety that these weapons instilled in him. Perhaps he had a point.
In all cases, I wanted him to feel safe. I knew that one of his main reasons for coming here was to try and rescue his relationship with his estranged wife, Cindy, and I sincerely wanted him to succeed and raise a family here.
“Yeah, I think that about does it.”
“Good, because I think you scared the heck out of the wildlife I’ve managed to nurture on this tin can,” I said with a laugh, “and the tourists want to go back in the water—not that you didn’t put on a good show for them. That was quite the shock and awe campaign.”
“You gotta wake up the neighbors from time to time,” he laughed.
We’d purposely removed any reality filtering of the weapons test to measure the cognitive impact they would have on people. The response had more than exceeded the threshold for emotional deterrence that we’d needed for the project—just another success notched up on our path forward.
“Well, that’s your job, Rick, to help scare the world into respecting us. Mine is to scare the world into saving itself.”
I said this without humor, and Rick looked at me, nodding at my seriousness.
“Anyway, good work.”
A small pause while we looked at each other.
“Did you see that thunderstorm coming in?” he asked, and I nodded. “We’ve been tracking that depression for weeks, but we can’t avoid them all. Anyway, it’ll water your plants up top.”
He smiled. I smiled back.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” I suggested. I knew his wife was having a hard time adjusting to life here and missed her family. It was more than that, though, her depression being a chronic condition that stemmed from her relationship with Rick. It was something I thought we could help fix.
People reacted differently to the sudden immersion into limitless synthetic reality when they arrived here for the first time. Most adjusted quickly and within a short time they’d usually be off creating their little own nooks and crannies of reality that suited them. Some had a more difficult time, but I had a feeling Cindy would come around soon.
“That’s actually a great idea,” answered Rick after a moment, busy adjusting the control systems for the slingshot shutdown. He looked towards me. “So you really think that thing is a good idea?”
