Ocean in the Sea Page 46

  A young black woman jumped in front of Scott and held up a picture of a two mountains connected by a rainbow. She was about his age and pretty, save for her crazed expression and wildly tangled hair. She chewed madly on a huge wad of gum and grinned wide enough to show stubby broken teeth cracked from excessive grinding. “LOOK!” she said excitedly, pointing at the picture. “It’s a RAINBOW! I made it myself. My name’s Mindy. What’s yours?”

  “Scott,” he replied. Putting a finger on his temple he engaged a trick he’d been playing with. “But you’re not interested in me, Mindy, you want to draw some more. You want to draw a pony and a waterfall.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes fluttered. “I just thought of something to draw. Bye Scott!”

  “Goodbye, Mindy.”

  Near the edge of the group at a table by himself, Lewis Herman stared down with a trance-like intensity. Five rows of dominoes lined the surface in front of him, each perfectly parallel. He seemed oblivious to all but their precise orientation.

  “Dad,” said Scott. “It’s me.”

  “Shh.” Lewis’ eyes flicked up for the briefest of glances before returning to the dominoes. “They might move.”

  Sighing, Scott pulled a chair out and sat down. “Dad, I brought someone who can help you. This is Thomas Yangley. He’s a Professor.”

  “He’s fat and old,” said Lewis, “just like your mother.”

  Scott jerked the chair next to him and told Thomas to sit down. “Make it so everyone around us hears something mundane when we speak,” he told Thomas. “And make them mind their own business.”

  The Professor nodded.

  “Dad, would you like to be happy again?”

  “Nurse Swenson is a cunt,” said Lewis. “Bill told me so.”

  Frowning, Scott turned to the Professor. “It’s his brain chemistry, right? The doctors say he’s bipolar and he has OCD, ADHD and some level of Schizophrenia.”

  “In their terms, yes,” said the Professor. “There are a series of disconnections in various parts of his neural system. Electron transport leakages, Schwann cell genetic replication disorders creating interrupts between…”

  “Fix it,” said Scott. “Fix all of it. Heal him. Make him normal.”

  “The term ‘normal’ is relative, Administrator. Do you wish me to make him normal according to your personal definition?”

  “Yes,” snapped Scott. “Read my mind, figure out what I mean by normal, and apply it to my father. Better than normal. Make him awesome. Can you do that?”

  “Of course. That is much easier. He is now awesome.”

  Lewis raised his head. “Scott.” A tear rolled down his face. “Oh God… Scott. I’m so sorry.” His head dropped into his hands and he sobbed. “I’m sorry…”

  Scott rapped his fingers on the table. “Why is he crying?” he hissed to Thomas.

  “He feels regret,” whispered the Professor. “He can now perceive what other people have felt, and his memories of past events are torturing him. They will continue to do so until he deals with them. That will take some time.”

  “How long?”

  “At his current rate, longer than he will live,” whispered Thomas.

  “Screw that. Make it as if he’s dealt with them. Can you do that?”

  “You keep asking me that question. You should realize that I am not doing anything. These actions are entirely up to you, and there is nothing you cannot modify within the simulation. I am a Proxy. You are the one in control.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Scott, “but it’s better being able to ask you until I get the hang of this.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to spend forever explaining everything to him either. Make it so Dad has learned everything Kingery told me and understands it. And adjust his mind so that he’s dealt with all of it and is back to emotional neutral.”

  “Neutral is relative,” said the Professor. “You must…”

  “Stop with the bullshit,” hissed Scott. “Just take your best guess.”

  “Done.”

  Lewis shook his head from side to side and exhaled. With one hand he began picking up the dominoes. “Thanks,” he said. “I understand now.” He raised his eyes. “I already said I’m sorry, but… I am.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” said Scott. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Thank you Scotty. How can I help you? What do you need from me?”

  Scott leaned back. “You know everything Kingery said to me? You know what this place is and what we are?”

  Lewis nodded. “Yes. We are artificial constructs living in a virtual computer system and you have administrative control.”

  Scott bit his lower lip. “I’ve been screwing this up, Dad. What should I do? When I was a kid, when you were still… with it, you were the wisest person I knew. You had all the answers for everything. How should I remake the world, Dad? How can I make it a better place without destroying? Because, just in the last few weeks, I’ve learned that it’s kind of delicate.”

  “I understand,” said Lewis, “but I’m not the one who gave you administrative access. The other version of me, the Lewis/Garibaldi combination, he should have left you better instructions.” Lewis rubbed his jaw. “Maybe he couldn’t. It’s hard to tell someone what to make from a bag of parts when they can make anything they want. He handed you the bag and left you wondering what to build.

  “Here’s my current read on the problem, Scott. I can help you solve the ills of the world. I can help you stop war. I can help you mold the world into utopia. But it doesn’t answer the one question everyone wants answered. And that is, what’s it all for? Why are we here? When you remove all the distractions and struggle, it’s the one remaining question. How will you answer it? How can you give people purpose?”

  “Who cares so long as they’re happy?”

  “They will care,” said Lewis. “You don’t answer that question and it will all fall apart. Trust me on this. The struggle to survive is their purpose. If you make a utopia, you take the struggle away. People will start looking for another purpose, and they won’t be happy until they find one.”

  “I…” Scott ran a hand down his face. “What does the term ‘sandbox’ mean to you?”

  “It’s where you run software that could fail,” said Lewis. “It’s the experimental zone. You find your errors there and fix them before they can affect your user base.”

  Scott appreciated the clarification. Even when Lewis was at his worst, he always knew more than his appearance might suggest. Scott hoped there was a touch of that now. The question of ‘why are we here’ and ‘what’s it all for’ were ones he could answer, but no one was going to like it.

  “Dad, our entire universe was built so that the other version of you could see what the future would be like if Mom and I lived. And that’s it.” Scott held out his hands. “That was our purpose. Nothing more. And it’s been done, so we no longer have a purpose.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Lewis raised his eyebrows. “Let’s dig a little deeper. What was the actual motive that gave rise to our existence? What was Lewis’s need? Why did he do it?”

  Scott raised his eyebrows “Curiosity?”

  “Of course, curiosity, but he wouldn’t be curious if it weren’t for…?”

  “Love,” concluded Scott. “Because he loved Mom and I.”

  “Sure, love,” Lewis huffed impatiently, “but we’re getting off track. Have you talked with Valon Kang?”

  “Yes. I went to him last week. He doesn’t know anything. Majutay Radionics is working on a brain scanner, but that’s all it does. It can’t ‘write’ to a person’s mind. Kang is an ordinary rich guy, just a simulant like the rest of us. Tanandor was never here. Not in the sandbox.”

  “No. He didn’t need to be,” said Lewis. “He was inside of the other version of me. Everything the other Lewis did followed Tanandor’s plans. When he created this place, he did so because Tanandor willed it. This place is part of that plan, so let’s skip Lewi
s’s motives and go straight for the jugular. Why did Tanandor want Lewis in the sandbox?”

  Scott shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Then think back to Lewis’ conversations with Tanandor. Tanandor is a partial of Anadar, sent out to bring back aid. But anything Tanandor does in the ring can be observed by the enemies following him. They’re on his tail. They’ll find it. So where can you hide something from your enemies?”

  Scott paused and crinkled his nose. “Here?” He looked doubtful.

  Lewis gazed at Scott from under his brow and leaned closer. “Where better?” he whispered, “to generate an army? Within a sub-simulation behind an unimportant low-level interface inside a simulation undergoing recalibration. It’s like putting a diamond ring in the catchment basin under a spinning disposal. There’s no way you’re going to find it looking down the drain and if you stick your hand in there, you’re going to lose some fingers.” He leaned back and shook his head. “Anadar needs simulants raised with interfaces and trained someplace where his enemies can’t detect them. Someplace outside of the ring’s simulations in a child-realm with no deviation parameters.”

  “And you think this is that place,” asked Scott.

  “I do. And therefore we have a purpose,” concluded Lewis. “We are not simply the leftover bytes from Lewis’ experiment to see the future of his previous life. That’s what he was meant to think when he left. And when he offered you the administrator interface, you accepted. Think about that for a second, Scott. Tanandor chose the other Lewis using the probability interface. Based on the results we can make some assumptions. Those results led to you and me and this conversation. He didn’t just choose Lewis, he chose YOU. So let me ask you this. Do we, as simulants in this sandbox, have any stake in the survival of the ring?”

  Scott stared at his father with a doubtful expression. He turned to Professor Yangley. “What did you do to him when you ‘fixed’ him?”

  “You told me to make him awesome,” said Thomas Yangley. “Would you like him less awesome?”

  “What is your definition of awesome?” asked Scott.

  “I used algorithms from the Attistorial logic library to provide him with additional context in the operation of simulations and sub-simulations,” said the Professor. “It seemed advantageous given your intention to ask Lewis for advice pertaining to a paradigm for which he has no practical experience or expertise.”

  “In other words,” said Lewis. “He gave me a clue as to how this war is being fought in the ring. The ring has rules, limitations. Those rules and limitations are duplicates of the ones above us. Echoes of code that must be obeyed. Such things can be leveraged as in any war. It is not so different form history. The sandbox becomes a forge. Interfaces become weapons. Conduits become roads. Simulations become battlefields. Buffers become citadels and fortresses.”

  “But are you guessing at Tanandor’s intentions?” Scott asked him. “Are you sure he manipulated the other version of yourself so that he would create this place? So that we would raise an army? I mean, if we just assume you’re right and proceed to alter the world based on those assumptions, what if it turns out that you’re wrong?”

  “Then,” replied Lewis, “we will have followed the general premise of many stories when the characters encounter a problem and one of them offers a solution. That solution is taken as fact and will later turn out to be completely accurate. No one wants to read a story where the primary assumption turns out to be wrong.”

  “Yeah…” Scott clasped his hands in front of his face. “But this isn’t a story.”

  “No. It’s a simulation and we’re simulants. But what’s a simulation except a story played out by AI given a specific role? You think the ring isn’t full of literature? I’m willing to bet that every story the Entalins ever wrote is out there somewhere. Alien stories. Human stories. Good stories. Bad stories.” He leaned closer. “THIS story. The only question, Scott, is how this story finishes. And that depends on you. The ring is under attack. An enemy seeks to destroy it. You can do something, prepare to defend it, or you can do nothing and be destroyed along with everything and everyone.”

  Scott stared at his father. He looked at the Professor and back to Lewis with an uncertain expression. Taking a deep breath he ran his fingers through his hair and slouched. “I was hoping you’d help me create a utopia,” he muttered. “I mean, you know we can’t leave the sandbox, right?”

  “The other Lewis told you that.” Lewis picked up a domino and examined it. “But he only knew what Valon taught him.”

  “So there is a way out?” Scott asked hopefully.

  “If we’re smart,” said Lewis. “If we’re ready and if we’re lucky, then yes. Because there’s one thing Lewis forgot. There’s another jumper stuck in a child sandbox inherited from this one. A Paradisian.”

  “Heticus,” Scott realized in shock. He had forgotten as well.

  “Yes. And what are the odds the other Lewis would forget about him?”

  “But how does that help us?” asked Scott.

  “He has a jump interface,” said Lewis. “If we’re ready, we can take it from him. He’ll be out in seventy eight years. That’s how long we have.”

  “To do what?”

  “To make the people of Earth understand what they’re fighting for. To give them interfaces and train them. To keep them from killing each other. And to develop the technology required to access the Attistar and transfer a copy of Heticus’s jump interface to our chosen simulant soldiers. We also need to access Kingery’s connection with our parent simulation. It’s still linked with his host. That’s how we’ll get our soldiers to the ring when we’re ready. Once we get there, we’ll need a plan to defeat an unknown unstoppable force. Are you up for it, Scott?”

  Scott hesitated. He turned his head slowly and regarded Lewis with critical eyes. “I don’t care how awesome the Attistar made you, there’s no way my father could know all this.” He looked at Thomas Yangley. “Who is he?”

  The Professor raised his eyebrows. “Do you really need to ask, Administrator?”

  Scott shook his head. “No. I don’t.” He stared at Lewis. “What happened to my father when you took his body, Tanandor? Where is Lewis Herman?”

  “We’re somewhat merged right now,” replied Tanandor. “I came here with the first Lewis. I was linked with him, the same piggyback technique I used to jump with him last time. But I didn’t want to bother him while he was here. He deserved a reward for his service, so I waited. Now that he’s gone, it’s time to get to work.”

  “But if you’re here, who is Arsus chasing after on Mars?”

  “Me.” Lewis smiled. “I’m just a copy, Scott. I was always a copy. It’s all data after all. Now are you ready to help me raise an army and save the ring? Are you in? Don’t tell me I did all this for nothing. I’d hate to have to do it all over again. The third time is supposed to be the charm.” He held out his hands. “I’ve got to get this right at some point.”