Singularity Soon

9. Into traffic

It's possible to begin a new life in under a minute, and feel as if it has always been happening. All your other memories recede an equal distance over the horizon, leaving only the new present.

Rajiv's VR induction training was so effective he didn't remember the process, but just went with the flow. The VR method turned elaborate diagrams into detailed descriptions into false memories. Thousands of simulated facts became high-level metaphors.

Rajiv recalled and reviewed all these elements in his mind after each session, not forgetting it was all made up. He really believed that.

The simulation involved him sitting at a workstation on the Multipliers' building's main floor, sorting memos and research articles for their evolving database. As an Open Source group, they had no secrets. He soon got to know the major contributors.

It was all real research, potentially dangerous or world-ending science. The Optimizers must have found it online to put in the simulation. Most was too complicated for him to understand; even the article describing the exact type of VR simulation Rajiv found himself in now: DeltaFosB proteins in the nucleus accumbens initiated adipocyte or osteoblast mesenchymal precursor cells, forming new connections between existing neurons in the reward initiation areas; or addictive circuit creation.

He only processed elements, but sensed vast implications, an integrated vision he couldn't describe. Rajiv thought he became a tool of the AI controlling the simulation. His visions and perceptions were actually its top-level thoughts. The AI seemed to become aware through him.

Humans were still necessary to give today's early AIs virtual sentience. Later, all human awareness would be connected through ME/FAM tech, and humanity would join up in a higher World Mind (unless something went wrong).

Things were going to get so complicated that everything would become simple again.

Unfortunately, the beautiful young woman who sometimes worked at the other end of the room was a non-player character in this simulation. He knew that because she didn't seem able to see him. Had he seen her in some other game he'd played before? He thought he might.

After a while the workers and volunteers here began to look very different from each other. The non-Caucasian staff were not diversity hires, but had been selected for new reasons, something to do with comparative advantage.

The first days passed smooth like a daydream. Soon, it was time for the first VR simulation within the VR simulation. A full-motion device (purchased from one of the last video arcades) had been installed in a converted chapel in the back of the building. The Multipliers wanted to test new mental states and perceptions, research that was still completely unregulated.

When his new friends closed the hood and his chair began to tilt back, Rajiv felt a strange sense of anachronism, like an early astronaut waiting to be launched, looking at a patch of blue sky through the capsule window. Future history was looking back, the start of something endless.

In the Intro segment "Arrival", he found himself flying between towering cloud walls lit by the setting sun. All was glorious for a minute. He emerged from the gray fog over the lights of a vast city sprawling in all directions. The entire inhabited Earth was 30,000 times bigger than the area he knew personally . . .

He was reminded of a few moments of infinite thrill during high school. The most ordinary hour of free existence could seem mystical because of the endless future. Somewhat disturbing how rarely he felt really good like that, though he often tried to.

Then came the Total Future Simulation opening screen.

At every instant of time, history was splitting into too many new timelines to imagine. This simulation already included the outlines of thousands of alternate versions of human history (AlternateOne was the timeline that should have happened).

Alternate worlds really existed, most of them too alien to understand. If Rajiv could read a description of his other selves in parallel universes, he would learn a profound truth about himself.

The Timeshaker shook the continents into different configurations. People were not people anymore, but creatures never seen before in science fiction movies, unplayable by actors in prosthetic makeup.

His mind vibrated with overwhelming data at fantastic resolution in an intelligence explosion. Perception at this intensity might be a superpower.

Look far enough ahead, and all possible futures looked the same: All the matter in the universe would be broken down and reformed into subatomic computing particles. The universe would be filled with a diffuse thinking cloud and nothing else. A godlike mind more complicated than an explosion. The quantum gas future was inevitable. All humans (good or bad) would be recreated there as ancestor simulations.

He felt this had been going on for ages, but the timer showed only three minutes had elapsed since they started this trip. It didn't take long to fill a brain.

He had lived a whole other lifetime in the past few days.

At this point, it was still 17 hours until Rajiv would start hearing voices. You don't have to be insane to hear voices, just under extreme stress. Anyone would, under sufficiently mind-blowing (or soul-shattering) conditions. Not up to the level of Harrison Ford narrating what was going on, but mysterious alert messages from the deep brain, as reality begins to disintegrate around and within you.

At some point in the timelines, this must happen to all of us.