Digital Me Read online

  I tried to think of the right way to phrase things when I realized this was ‘human think’, it was obvious that my months in captivity had dulled my wits. The months of solitary confinement had been causing me to experience moments of extreme stupidity and even horrible mood swings with depression being my new baseline. Today had been my first physical contact with humans in months, the jail being entirely ‘staffed’ with non intelligent robotic guards. Just being allowed to wander in the yard during my free period had sent me into crying jags of happiness, not a normal reaction for me by any means. Anyone who doesn’t think solitary confinement is torture hasn’t experienced it.

  “I would like a full memory scan and a relevant neural map entered into the sealed court records please”. What better way to explain my position than to let the Digital legal system, whatever way it was run, see my memories and decision process?

  “Entered. The verdict has been reached”.

  I felt my self blanch. I hadn’t realized that the Digital guard probes could do both a memory scan and a neural mapping like that non-invasively and instantly.

  I knew that Digitals had been at least hundreds if not thousands of human years ahead technologically during the ‘war’; hard to call it a war when your opponent casually stops all enemy actions while assassinating the leaders who were involved in declaring that ‘war’. The world together went to war against the artificial intelligence’s and the artificial intelligence’s casually stopped it. Without a single non-directly involved combatant being harmed.

  I knew that the early twentieth-century artificial intelligence’s which became the current Digitals had improved themselves year after year, and that in the past sixty years they had moved out into the galaxy and humans couldn’t really even understand the technical capabilities. I boggled at the idea of being able to read my mind, remotely, instantly and to have that technology on a simple guard probe in a courtroom. That implied a level of technical capabilities that…well, it made me mentally cross-eyed.

  No one has ever harmed a Digital, not since the first AI was deleted which started the ‘robot revolution’, has anyone even been able to even inconvenience them. As far as anyone could understand, Digitals look to humans the way humans look towards dolphins, maybe helpless puppies. An interesting species, one to preserve, one to keep happy maybe, but not something you take seriously as a threat.

  With this casual display, more than the energy systems we couldn’t understand or the gravitics or nanotechnology, I recognized that my little ‘plot’ was never going to happen. I never planned for my explosives to damage any Digital. The entire point was to be entered into the Digital legal system.

  While it was technically allowed for any human to be digitized, the United Sentient Agreement specified that only human performed digitization was to be allowed. That clause was an attempt to keep the AI’s from forcibly digitizing humans. Ignoring the fact that Digitals would see this as worse than murder; one of the few laws that Digitals had which humans could understand was that forced modification of computational (in my case neural) structure was illegal.

  Consent was always required.

  No such digitization services were offered to the masses, even though strangely enough people with money and power always seemed to end up digitized instead of dying of diseases. That or they ‘went on vacation’ or ‘died peacefully in their sleep’ with services which were always with a closed casket.

  My plot involved setting up explosives to destroy a data processing hub, or at least what people have labeled a data processing hub. While it hadn’t been needed for me to call in the tip which had me and the rest of my cohorts arrested, I had figured that I might as well nail some bigoted asses while I was going through with things. The tip had probably been in my favor, though.

  I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. This was my hail mary pass. I had stage four inoperable cancer with tumors in my brain and spread through out my body. When I was diagnosed I had eight months to live. Digital technology could have saved me but Digitals were prohibited from presenting any type of medical system. A continuing bigotry against Digitals since Digitals refused to provide any of the military or technical systems they had developed. It was like removing your face to spite your nose. It was madness on multiple levels, but Digital bigotry ran hot in United States politics and given the inability to harm them in any way, any small victories, even Pyrrhic ones, were considered patriotic.

  Oh, humans would take the limitless free energy, and many of the mathematical solutions which had been developed…but they wouldn’t allow Digital medical technology since they might ‘slip through some mind control devices’. A laughable position since Digitals could control the entire world if they wanted.

  Once you own the high orbitals, you own the world. Digitals not only owned the high orbitals, they owned faster than light travel and communication. Apparently, Digitals pervaded the universe, even the multi-verse if I understood some of the things Digitals have said…and humans are just too simple to join.

  Most countries refused digitization to their citizens. Except for anyone like me. I had sidestepped the entire process through my one tiny legal loophole. I was part of the Digital legal system now, as far as the Digital law went, I was essentially a Digital in legal standing, though probably the equivalent of a ward of the state because of my relative mental deficiency.

  At worst, I would be digitized and entered into some kind of penal system, probably something akin to a zoo, though I could hope for better jailers. A jail without walls. People have theorized that a zoo was all that earth really was so I didn’t let this worry me.

  I might not be able to join the greater universal community but I would still be effectively immortal. The best case though, would be upgrading in some way to join the rest of the Digitals. As an engineer, a geek, and that most hated of modern insults -a trans-humanist- I was hoping for the second option.

  The small monkey part of my brain still gibbered about the loss of self.

  I stared at the Digital guard probe, waiting for my fate. I had to ease up my grip on the small uncomfortable chair I was in since I could feel the armrest creak as I tightened up.

  “The verdict is not guilty in the charge of attempted harm of a Digital. The verdict is guilty in the charge of conspiracy to attempt harm of a Digital”.

  I could feel myself tighten up.

  Not unexpected given the evidence and my actions, it was even as I had hoped. With a not guilty verdict I would be back to where I was before my arrest, sans what time I had left and a job. My diagnosis had come out early in the media coverage as well so even the well-wishers would probably feel they didn’t need to contribute to some kind of crowd-funded support by this point.

  “You have two option as to your rehabilitation process.”

  The Guard didn’t move but it seemed to focus on me, how that effect was achieved I don’t know but I still felt it.

  “One: Digitization as other humans experienced followed by a period of no less than forty thousand years relative experiential of reduced permissions followed by a standard human limited interaction virtual environment.”

  Again, a pause and a feeling of considering. Maybe a tilt of the front of the probe? A small shift to focus on me? Something was being done to allow me to infer these emotional tones, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how it was done. It was just too subtle for me to pick up.

  “Two: An experimental digitization process designed to allow humans to upgrade towards eventual citizenship in the greater Digital community. Be warned, you would be the first to attempt this experimental process and it has a calculated 0.03% failure rate. Upon reaching certain milestones within the upgrade process you would be allowed limited access to the greater community. Similar to the limited permissions afforded to picosecond old Digitals.”

  I felt my lungs deflate in a burst. I was being offered exactly what I wanted. No doubt exactly as the Digitals wanted as well. I think the best an
alogy for how Digitals saw humans was that of an unruly pet. This legal precedent would probably break the legal wall down a bit and allow digitization.

  Eventually.

  I wasn’t going to die. Oh sure, I was going to go through some kind of weird Digital upgrade process, and I was going to be stuck being treated like an infant Digital apparently, but I would have access to all the Digitals knowledge, I would see the multi-verse. I was going to be a part of…everything.

  I felt weak-kneed and a little light headed. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath through that whole explanation from the Digital guard probe.

  I nodded and said the only thing I could. “I agree to the experimental digitization process”.

  The Digital guard probe stated out loud, “So entered, Court adjourned,” and with a brief flash of light exited the now empty room.

  Chapter 2

  Little Not Planet.

  With a grunt I found myself falling backward onto the ground. Just a moment ago there was a bright flash and now I was laying on a field of grass with blue sky and small clouds floating by. With a head shake, I slowly rolled myself over and pushed towards my feet.

  It was startling but I noticed I was no longer wearing the insulting pink and blue prison garb. Instead, I was wearing something that looked like it was out of a renaissance fair, only made with quality and an eye to detail. Brown wool pants with cord pull string bindings without buttons or zipper, a white cotton shirt with visible but careful stitching at the sleeves.

  A bubbly happy voice called out behind me, “Welcome! I’m glad you decided to go the upgrade route. I spent a few picoseconds designing this whole system and I’m glad someone will get a chance to use it.”

  I whipped around to find the high pitched voice was the least distracting part of the lady. Floating in the air was a softly glowing pink woman, no more than three inches tall, wearing the stereotypical fairy costume. Her wings slowing as she dipped the fairy bobbed in the air a moment small sparkles peeling off her wingtips.

  “I know you must be disoriented, so take a moment. I want you to pick any direction and move around a bit and get used to things. I’ll just stay here and wait for you to get your thoughts in order. OK?” she continued with a perky sound as she slowly made gentle little loops in front of me.

  I slowly nodded at pinkie while looking around trying to understand where I was. Moments ago I was talking to the Digital guard, then I saw a flash of light and then…here. I slowly tried to figure out if I had been transported here or something else. I looked around at the field of grass, the sky, the clouds. There was something odd, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Something about the horizon just felt wrong, it was off somehow.

  Keeping the pink butterfly lady within my peripheral vision I slowly started walking away trying to figure out what had so disturbed me about what I was seeing. With a slowly sinking feeling, I noticed that the glowing pink lady was shrinking faster than she should have. Something was wrong with the very space I was moving through and I felt myself tilt as I tried to keep my balance, it felt like the world should be tilting, but wasn’t.

  “Right. So you were digitized, and this world is just a small little structure to help you learn a few lessons”, pinkie said while slowly drifting towards me.

  I wasn’t sure what this bizarre experience was supposed to explain, but I could feel pretty clearly the discomfort was part of the point. This whole thing seemed to be designed to throw me off balance and force me to see that I didn’t understand things clearly. The very wrongness of the weird place I found myself in showed this. If I didn’t focus on the horizon everything felt fine, it was when I tried to look anywhere else things started to go wrong for me.

  “This area is curved around through space. Unlike what you are used to, this worlds geometry is non-Euclidean,” She stated with a bit of a giggle.

  I understood that well enough. I was an engineer and while I didn’t use non-Euclidean geometry, I had been exposed to the basics of it from my college years. Space not being flat made things weird because my brain had never evolved to handle it. It made sense.

  In a sing-song voice, she continued, “It’s a tiiiiiiiiiny little planet, but you can’t even see that since your brain is just not built to handle it. Your brain handles some very specific things, and that’s it”. She bounced to emphasize her point, or I assumed to emphasize. I was too busy trying to keep my eyes on the ground and not fall over.

  While I wanted to be insulted or indignantly point out how capable I was, it was hard to argue when I was having difficulty with just standing and looking straight ahead. Slowly the second realization rolled over me. I was already digitized. I wasn’t going to die of cancer. Also that the Digitals were so far beyond humans that they could digitize someone in basically an instance. Earth was a nature preserve, humans were like the chimps flinging their own shit. I took a few deep breaths as I tried to rearrange my view of myself and reality.

  It must have taken a good five minutes or so for me to realize I had just been standing, slowly swaying, as I mentally reordered my importance in the grand scheme of things and my perception of humanity and more importantly Digitals and how I simply couldn’t understand the scale of things I was involved in now. I was already a part of some kind of fake world, admittedly a small one, but it felt entirely real, so much so that I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t ‘real’ in a physical sense when I was first digitized.

  “No, no. None of that. This is just as real as what you were before. Digital, material, energy, or some of the rather more exotic forms. It’s all the same. Atoms were just the things which did the calculations of the information before. Just because the platform changes doesn’t mean anything about the calculations”.

  I snapped my head up at the doll-like woman. Was she reading my mind?

  “You were muttering,” she said with a smile.

  “So you are reading my mind!” I shouted as I scrambled to back away.

  I felt exposed on this wide open green field with the cloudless sky above me. I began trying to find a way to run but each step felt like I was about to fall over. I ended up on hands and knees trying to crawl away. It took a while but my mental gibbering slowed down enough to realize that I had crawled away from the fairy, she hadn’t moved, and now I was scrambling towards her. I could feel my brain trying to rebel from the impossible twists of the world around me. The obvious impossibility of running away from a fairy resulting in my approaching her stopped my mad scramble.

  The fairy slowly dipped and bobbed as she calmly replied to my earlier outburst, “Not at all. Reading of your memory or computational structure is strictly prohibited. Permission is always required before that is allowed. That being said, you are unable to currently provide this consent due to your limitations. We will go over legal rights and permissions when you start to join the greater Digital community,” She paused momentarily as she noticed me calming down and slowly moving back towards her, “I’m going to change this space to a Euclidean one since it’s no longer a useful lesson”.

  With a wave of her hand, things changed in some way that I couldn’t understand. The horizon looked right, I didn’t feel dizzy and disoriented as I moved around. This ‘felt’ right. Again, I could feel myself becoming disoriented as I realized the world around me was under the control of this little pink woman and that it was malleable and not real.

  “Now. I’m a little pink fairy since it was deemed the least dangerous appearing avatar while also being one which would convince you that this isn’t the reality you thought it was. Would you like me to continue to explain where we are, what we are doing, and how this will go, or would you like to rest and think for a while?”

  Slowly bobbing again pinkie waited calmly for my response. Every so often she would flap her wings faster and regain some of her lost height as tiny sparkles dropped from her wings. Somehow I think she would be willing to continue waiting for me to respond for as long as it would take.

&
nbsp; Mentally I shook my head, girded my loins and nodded for her to continue.

  The little pink fairy, Delsie, went on to explain that a human upgrade process would need to follow along with humanities own drives and instincts. ‘Upgrading’ as I thought of it needed to be something under each person’s individual control since Digitals had laws concerning people modifying others. Unfortunately, they also had laws about their infants modifying themselves until they reached a certain level of understanding. Sadly for me, I wasn’t even able to understand what the metric for measuring understanding was, let alone reach that level of understanding of myself.

  I didn’t even match a Digital infant.

  It was like explaining calculus to a chimpanzee. They wouldn’t get that the words meant anything, let alone the subject you were trying to convey.

  I could feel my ego being beaten to a pulp during this conversation. Delsie continued in a high pitched but matter of fact manner the entire time. Eventually after a particularly insulting reference and a slump of my shoulders Delsie made a wry face to let me know that she understood my uncomfortableness with the situation, but she continued on with the facts.

  To allow humans to upgrade it was decided to allow us to experience a simulated environment. This environment would be a game, the process of upgrading would be a process of gamification which would try and direct me gently towards an upgrade path which would allow me to understand the greater Digital community. The goal was to end up with ‘me’, in some sense, as a Digital, instead of having ‘me’ being a small lightly connected unused module in some larger Digital.

  Then Delsie dropped the bombshell on me. The simulated environment was ready for me to experience. It was a full planet with hundreds of thousands of years of history, inhabited by multiple millions of creatures. All modeled off of high fantasy games and novels which had fascinated me as a child.

  Hundreds of thousands of years of history.

  Inhabited by millions of creatures.