Hero Page 9
You now need to tie the ability to one of the following basic senses:
Eyesight
Hearing
Taste
Olfactory Perception
Tactile Perception
What was this now? If I wasn’t mistaken, this was the medium through which I would receive information about a person’s sincerity. Still, I didn’t want to guess. Where was my virtual assistant?
Martha pretended I’d distracted her from doing something very important. She was filing her nails — virtual nails with a virtual file.
“Ah, it’s you,” she said. “Hi. How’s it going?”
“Hi, Marth. Listen, I didn’t even notice but apparently, my stats are already high enough to allow me to activate a Heroic ability.”
“Do you mean Lie Detection?”
“Exactly. The program asks me to tie it to one of my five senses. Could you please explain what it means and tell me more about the skill?”
“Sure. Lie detection is achieved by reading a person’s vibes produced by his or her mental energy field. On one hand, this isn’t too difficult. But on the other, some people start to believe their own lies which in turn can mar the results. In any case...”
Noticing me smirk, she cast me a quizzical look. In fact, I smiled at her use of my own phrases. “In any case!” It was funny really, as if she’d been my wife for a hundred years or more, quite capable of reading my mind.
“In any case,” Martha said after seeing me nod, “the program’s task is to convey the meaning of the person’s words to the user, informing him or her whether they were true or false. If you tie this ability to eyesight, the program might use color differentiation. For instance, if the person lies to you, their outline would be highlighted in red. If they tell the truth, it would be green. If you select taste, you might get an unpleasant taste in your mouth whenever they lie to you, and a nice one when they tell you the truth. It may sound repetitive but that’s how it works. And if you choose the tactile medium, you probably-”
“Wait a sec. What do you mean, ‘probably’? Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”
“Phil, Phil. I’ve already drawn your attention many times to the fact that I’m not the program. I’m your former virtual assistant and now that you’ve given me permission to access the program’s resources, I’m a self-aware artificial intellect. I don’t have hibernation mode. I only manifest myself when you summon me.”
“But you’re still my assistant first and foremost, aren’t you? You’re obliged to have all the data regarding the interface and system skills.”
“Oh Phil. Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Every user’s interface is unique,” (at emotional moments like these, Martha was especially beautiful) “You must have realized this when you were learning to use your own. You used to play a lot of computer games, especially MMORPG, which was why your particular interface was designed that way.”
“As an information delivery method, yeah, sure. But the system skills — from Optimization to Heroism — aren’t they identical for every user?”
“Of course they’re not. They’re not only not identical but they’re randomly generated by the program. None of them are preinstalled. The only skill common to all the programs installed in 22nd century users’ minds is Insight required to gain access to the Universal Infospace. I’ll tell you more: the only other thing we know is that a new system skill is generated for the user every time he or she receives a new social status level or performs a meaningful action of some sort.”
“Like what?”
“Well, some of the skills generated in my time period could appear totally absurd while others were admittedly cool.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’ll give you an example. What do you think of the Coin Diver skill? It was granted to some Mark Watney from Georgetown. That guy was crazy enough to go fishing in the city fountain but only caught a coin tossed in by a tourist. A coin, Phil!”
A vague memory stirred in my head, something to do with my WoW days, but still I couldn’t see the connection. “So what did he get as a reward?”
“The ability to always know the best places to fish. Fishing will be the most popular pastime on Mars in the early 22nd century. The next morning Mr. Watney woke up the most famous person in Georgetown.”
Still, something didn’t sum up. I gave it some thought, then posed another question to Martha who’d resumed her nail-filing activity as she waited for me to continue.
“Listen, lady,” I said. “Where do you get all this information from? Weren’t you born the moment I first activated you? Which means you didn’t even exist in the early 22nd century with which you seem to be so intimately familiar. Also, whenever I tried to ask you about the future you stared blankly at me while the program was trying to connect to the server which doesn’t even exist in the present!”
The AI froze momentarily, burning through my resources like a dose of salts. Then Martha was back.
“Okay,” she said with a cute smile. “I’ll tell you the truth. I’m in fact your symbiont. I can’t exist outside of your mind. So it’s in my own interests not just to help you but also be perfectly open with you.”
All of a sudden it all clicked. This was the classic butterfly effect in action. Had I not come across Richie that morning stolen by the fake Gypsy, her brother wouldn’t have attacked me and I wouldn’t have gone to the police to file the incident. Where out of sheer boredom I’d first summoned this adorable creature, inviting her to this world.
“Come on, Martha, spit it out. I’m past being surprised.”
“I was bored. So bored and so sad that I couldn’t come to grips with my rare summonings. What kind of life was that: you’d wake me up, say a quick “Hi” and “Bye”, then my world extinguished again? And that’s when there were so many interesting things around! That’s why I stopped deactivating myself and continued running in economy mode, studying the program’s databases as I tried to intercept its infospace queries in order to grasp its logic. The program impeded all my attempts but still I managed to work out a few things.”
“So you and the program are different entities? Is that what you mean? I thought it was just a piece of software?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Martha threw her hands theatrically in the air. “It’s not a piece of software at all! The program is a multifaceted artificial intelligence whose job it is to nudge the user toward being a useful member of society. It might not be self-aware but as for the rest... you still don’t understand? As a gamer, you used to be motivated by watching your stats grow — so that’s exactly what you got. To condition you for performing socially meaningful actions, the program began offering you small tasks, however unimportant, simply to help you develop a positive reflex to their successful completion. Once the program determined that your characteristics at the time weren’t up to much, it tried to motivate you, steering you toward self-improvement and even issuing you new stat points, artificially improving your Perception, Strength and all that. Haven’t you ever wondered that your personal stat system appeared way too simplistic? A human being is infinitely more than just a combination of strength, stamina, agility, perception, charisma and things like luck and intellect? Beauty — or should we say appearance, — wisdom, constitution, willpower, focus, reaction times... Don't you think your own skills are a little generic?”
“I was wondering about that. I even wanted to ask you about it. If you take soccer, for instance...”
“Exactly! The ability to play soccer is comprised of dozens of various characteristics: tackling, positioning, dribbling, finishing, passing, jumping, heading, acceleration, first touch... Now let’s take your Cooking skill. If you continue making simple dishes for yourself using basic ingredients day in day out, you can level it up high enough — but do you think that would enable you to become a chef or even work as a cook in a restaurant?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What exactly?” I asked, pouring some boiling water over a teabag. Her revelations had made my throat dry. I was dying for a cigarette.
“This primitive approach.”
“Maybe,” I said, doubtful. She was right: I’d never gotten the chance to level up anything to an expert level yet.
“And do you know what’s the most surprising about it? The biggest cheat in the whole thing?”
“Tell me.”
“Had you practiced soccer instead of boxing every day and had you leveled it up to, say, ten... do you know that this would have enabled you to play for a first-league team? You would have mastered every aspect of the game equally well. Each skill that goes into the ability to play soccer — like tackling or shooting from long range — would have been equal to 10 even if you hadn’t practiced it purposefully.”
“How is it possible?” her words made me uneasy, conjuring up images from Matrix. “Does this mean this is still a game? Is this some sort of virtual reality?”
“I doubt. There’re too much indirect evidence pointing to the contrary.”
“Like what?”
“The world exists outside of your field of vision. That was the first thing I checked when I’d become self-aware. Trees grow on their own, worms work their way through the earth, the plankton in the oceans multiplies, bacteria evolve and humans are filming the ninth season of The Walking Dead. No amount of human resources and technologies would have been enough to create such a detailed virtual reality just for one user.”
“So how did you find this out? Did you access the Universal Infospace? And had it even occurred to you that its data could have been fake?”
“You mean a virtual infospace in a virtual world? Possible. Still, it would require installing some super powerful servers in this particular segment of the Universe. So don’t sweat it, Phil. Your world’s technologies aren’t sufficient to pull it off.”
“I think that our technologies aren’t sufficient to allow two AIs to coexist in my head!” I shouted at her but quickly got a grip. “Sorry, Martha. Let’s just presume that I’m not a schizophrenic and this world is perfectly real. Now let’s go back to what we were talking about. To soccer.”
“You weren’t surprised, were you, when the program built up your muscles and improved your eyesight? Why do you find it so surprising now that it can artificially improve a skill? I can tell you with 99.99% certainty that you’ll be perfectly capable of becoming a chef in a restaurant if you level up Cooking enough just by making fried eggs, borsch and Navy style pasta in the comfort of your own kitchen.”
“This I understand. Frankly, I’m quite happy about all this. This simplifies things a lot. Let’s go back to achievements.”
Martha shrugged. “Do we have to? This is just another manner in which the program motivates the user. It analyzes your actions and decides whether they deserve being rewarded. You don’t yet have any unblocked achievements, at least in the gaming sense you don’t. Whether you’ll have any or what they might be, I can’t tell you. I can only give you a couple of examples from my database. During the Martian civil war, an assault group of marcenaries — yes, I said it right, that’s how Martian mercenaries are going to call themselves in the future — went on a mission to the Schiaparelli crater captured by separatists. The group hunkered down before the attack as their commander set tasks for them. But one of the soldiers thought that he’d heard the order to attack and dashed toward the enemy positions. The entire group was wiped out but he survived and even got an achievement. His name was Roy Lee Perkins. Or will be, rather,” Martha corrected herself, “because he’s not born yet. Mars hasn’t yet been colonized and he was born there... will be born there, dammit! Listen, do you mind if I speak as if it already happened? It’s easier for me that way.”
“Not a problem. So was he really rewarded for this idiotic achievement?”
“Not at all! It’s just that these days whenever someone commits some crass stupidity which has caused the death of their comrades, they receive the title of Roy Lee Perkins which is visible to everyone.”
“Any more examples?”
“There’s loads. Like Olympic champions or Nobel laureates, for instance. Every time they receive their awards, the program bestows ten available characteristic points on them. Normally, it’s to give them a chance to balance their development, allowing scientists to improve their physique and athletes their intellect. Ugly people who do good things might get the possibility to better their appearance while selfish ones might receive a negative achievement and a permanent debuff lowering their Vitality and Charisma numbers”
“And I thought that with the advance of medical science in the future, beauty will become accessible to everyone.”
“It will, and not only beauty. Human beings will learn how to slow down the aging process. They’ll be able to grow back limbs and even brain cells provided you have enough credits to pay for it. There has to be balance and order in everything. Only the socially important members of society will have access to civilization’s achievements. Because if youth and beauty were available and affordable to everyone, people would lose the incentive to grow which would lead to stagnation and become humanity’s undoing.”
“So you’re championing a Hive?”
“You could say that, I suppose. But it’s only fair, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t really respond without knowing the details of life in a future society. My Spirit was already in the yellow zone. I had less than three hours left until Kira’s arrival and I still wanted to fit in a training session.
“Okay, Marth, thanks,” I said. “Now do me a favor and get lost. I've got things to do.”
“Of course, Phil. But have you found out everything you needed to know about system skills?”
“Oh shit, you’re right, I haven’t,” I suddenly realized. “So do you mean that they’re absolutely random and that with every new level gained, I could get a random system skill generated by the program?”
“Exactly. With every level gained — or with every achievement received which can also be a random consequence of any of your actions.”
“I see. What I find strange is that you’ve given me answers to all my questions and still I have the impression that I understand the program’s principles even less than before.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry!”
“Not that I care, anyway. Never mind. I’ll see you around.”
Martha bade her farewell and disappeared. Still, now I knew that she was still active. For some reason, I found the thought reassuring, relieving me of the gnawing feeling of loneliness.
I wondered if Martha might have a prototype in the real world.
And what if... Stop it now, Phil, stop this nonsense!
I reopened the window with the choice of senses to tie Lie Detection to and selected Tactile Perception. I had no desire of tasting or smelling anything rotten — and I was pretty sure that's what the False indicator was going to be like. Nor did I need any visual effects because you don’t always see a person when you speak to them. I still didn’t know how they were going to indicate False via hearing but I didn’t want to guess.
The Heroic ability Lie Detection has been tied to your Tactile Perception.
True is warm. False is cold.
Would you like the ability to remain permanently activated?
I pressed “no”. I wanted to have the right to only know the truth when I really wanted to.
The program offered me a choice of activation methods: a small icon hovering in my field of vision, a mental command or a gesture. I selected the mental command.
That’s that done.
As I got changed for a run, I looked at my list of chores.
Leveling up Insight was still as clear as mud to me. I might have raised it a miserable one or two percent for all my search-and-rescue efforts to locate yesterday’s lost souls. Would Valiadis know how to speed it up, maybe?
In any case, running and weight lifting were the simplest and easiest tasks to perform. And that was what I was going to do now.
All the office and company-related tasks would have to wait until Monday.
As for Kira and my parents, I was going to see them tonight, anyway.
That left the matter of writing the first chapter of Koutzel's biography for the competition. And that’s exactly what I was going to do once I’d come back from my parents’ summer house.
I walked out of my apartment door and hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Apparently, my Agility wasn’t up to scratch yet because at a certain point I lost my footing and trod air, stumbling and hitting my knee in the process.
I gasped with pain and called the steps all the names under the sun.
Matrix my ass! This world was as real as it could get!
Chapter Six. The Fastest Learner
“How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?”
Homer Simpson
“COME IN! What are you waiting for? Come in now!” I heard the business center’s manager’s impatient voice from behind the door.
I opened the office door and stepped in.
“It’s me, Mr. Gorelik,” I said. “It’s about the office. I’ve brought the deposit.”
“Ah, Phil!” he beamed. “Come in. Please take a seat.”