Reality

John was sitting down at a restaurant. He was eating a juicy steak with simple vegetables. Everything was cooked perfectly as always. This particular restaurant was called Heaven’s Kitchen. It was called as such since it was on top of a sky scrapper so high, that it rose above the clouds.

A re-enforced transparent aluminium dome structure let you see the stars of the evening like nowhere else on the planet. In the middle stood a large spire that rose 500 meters higher. Struts reached the middle of the spire from the sides to form a pointy pyramid to help stabilize the spire.

On top of this spire was another structure attached, more akin to a cable, this had a counter weight in space that was held in place using centrifuge force. It was the first space elevator humans had built and It had opened up the possibility for humanity to the exploration of space. It was a wonder to look at.

John sighed, his mind was occupied by the project in was in the middle of for work and need that needed to complete it soon.

“People need their entertainment” he thought.

He was a creator of entertainment but he was also terribly bored. Had been doing this for how long now? He lost count of the years. Time seemed to have lost meaning for him. He started to wonder if his future days would have more meaning. Was he depressed? He would have to ask his assistant to check for him. Maybe he would take a vacation after this project he was working on.

Time to go home he thought while sighing again.

He got on the elevator which were outside the building and with it’s windows gave a magnificent view of the outside. It operated via a powerful magnetic levitation system. This let the elevator go all the way from the bottom to the top since there was no need to deal with pulley systems, counter weights and heavy cables.

He watched the scene as the elevator reached the clouds and everything outside became dark. As the elevator continued on it’s path he started to see small points of light. More and more appeared as the elevator cleared the clouds. The city of Metroly was quite a sight to behold.

Buildings build of aluminum glass appeared in impossible shapes, cris-crossed across the sky connecting to each other. Like growing crystals.

Highways in the air carried magnetically levitated vehicles called mag-cars or mags for short. These mags were self driven and moved at incredible speeds.

John observed the scene as the elevator he was in stopped. The building he was in had a huge residential sector as well. Since the bottom section was so large, about 3 km in diameter. This also helped support the space elevator on top of course. It also allowed some of the larger residential sector levels to have trees, gardens and houses. John could have lived there but they were mostly reserved for people with families.

He knew he could have had a family with Lili. She was his girlfriend and he had been madly in love with her. He loved her child like curiosity and she was truly beautiful.

But during the sim years she had disappeared, very suddenly. It was as if she had gotten disconnected from the simulation. He was there when it happened, saw her stop moving completely, then she fell on the floor limp and turned to digital dust. It was as if all her atoms or digital particules where not able to hold together anymore. This type of death occurred before and this was what others thought it it was, a sudden disconnection from the simulation. Maybe something had happened to her body in the real world. He never found out.

He cried to sleep for many nights after this. The world seemed like it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a world it was a simulation. He tried to end his life but the system wouldn’t let him die. John tried again and again to kill himself. He would always respawn.

After about 9 days he tried something different he tried to overload the connection by introducing a recursive function that wouldn’t end in his own code. He did this via his character console which was available to everyone logged in.

He would have succeeded if the system wouldn’t have respawned him and remove the function from his code. This was patched right away of course. So nobody would be able to do this again. The system was pretty efficient that way.

Having learned how to program and work with the character console John started learning how to create separate worlds. He was creating fantasy worlds and sci-fi worlds. He started getting attention from other people in the simulation. Yet John still felt some emptiness inside but at least he had something to keep him busy.

Then a couple years later the simulation ended. Everyone woke from their pods one by one, after a message from the system indicated that they were okay to get out. There had been a terrible war and the rest of humanity had almost exterminated themselves. They were the saviors, the chosen, to rebuild civilisation in the aftermath of the war.

The planet’s surface was barren and hard work awaited those who woke.

Sadly some couldn’t handle the change. They missed, maybe even craved the simulation. They wanted to return at all costs. But the system convinced them they could have a better life up on the surface. Metroly was founded on that day and the city grew from then on.

Technological development had continued in the simulation so advances occurred really fast once humanity started building again.

Inside one of those technological revolutions is where John was now, the space elevator.

He still worked on creating worlds for the simulation, which was re-enabled as a form of entertainment for the people there. Some sections of the population still spend the entirety of their time connected to the system. John would sometimes forget sometimes which was which. His old mind was having trouble coping with all these changes of environments.

John finally reached his appartement door and the bio-metric scanners immediately recognized him and unlock the door.

He walked in and a holographic image stared at him telling him his messages. It was his assistant, she looked like Lili, black hair, blue eyes and her milky white skin. It reminded him of the painful past but at the same time brought him confort. This assistant was so advanced that sometimes it was as if she knew what he wanted before knew he wanted it. The wonders of the current machines learning AI’s could analyse behavior and make predictions.

“You seem a bit down today is everything alright?” She asked.

“I think I need a vacation, some rest would be a good start.” John answered.

“Messages will be delayed until tomorrow, you should rest.”

John looked at her, he sighed and nodded. After he headed straight to bed and fell asleep as he hit the pillow.

During the night, he had a dream that was so vivid. in the dream he was in the digital world, he was being closely monitored and couldn’t get out he was stuck alone there and everything was disappearing around him only leaving darkness, nothingness. He was paralyzed and couldn’t move. He was starting to panic.

His eye opened as he rose in bed full of sweat. His heart was beating hard and his breathing heavy.

The assistant was not allowed in the bed room but some mics must have picked up his discomfort. John heard her voice ever so slightly from the other side of the door.

“Everything okay John” She asked with what sounded like worry in her voice. Simulated worry that is.

“Yeah just a bad dream”

But even after waking he couldn’t get the dream out of his mind. It was so vivid. Was this reality a simulation as well? He stopped himself, since thinking of such thoughts could drive him crazy. He had seen it happened in others that were in the simulation too much. They didn’t know which was real and which was not.

“I really need a vacation from the simulated world.” He thought “I just need to finish this project first”

So he got up, washed up and headed for the office. It was just a couple floors up from his apartment. He walked briskly unable to forget his troublesome dream, his heart still pounding in his chest, his mind going a thousand kilometers an hour.

The door to the office opened. His colleagues were each working on their own section of the project, already plugged in to the system. It was much easier to make changes in the simulation.

Swiftly he sat in his simchair. Connected the interface to the back of his neck so that it could communicate to his neural implant. He connected into the simulation.

He woke up in a bed. The floor was made of marble and walls of stone. He knew this place was not real. It was a world filled with magic in the setting of king, queens and castles. Dragons, ogres, imps and magical creatures were all present here. But here at least he had control. He was the creator, he was the god of this world, him and his colleagues. This knowledge appeased his mind slightly.

He was currently in the process of creating rules for wizards and their magic. He opened the admin panel which was a lot like his character console from before in the simulation. With it he was writing code to set the limits magic. Normally it shouldn’t be too easy to change the world.

“But what if I just try to make it easy for a character to change certain things” He thought suddenly. He had an idea and wanted to try it out. He started by giving the game characters the ability to modify the world at will. Using an algorithm he had developed to detect intent, which was to be used for magic in this world. These modifications didn’t just happen overnight of course, this required many changes to the algorithm to increase the accuracy of the intent. Over the next few days he became obsessed with this idea. To the point that his colleagues where starting to be worried.

But after another several days and even some nights he finally finished. Ran some final tests and gave his character’s full access to all administrative function of the simulation. Controlled by simple intent. He started creating mountains, rivers and trees by thoughts alone. The other creators seeing what he was doing were all impressed, since this enabled creation at a much faster speed. They all asked if they could have a copy of the algorithm but John refused. “Not yet” he answered every time.

Once he had thoroughly tested the featured. It was time to go to the next phase. The dream still haunted him and he wanted a way to test if he was in a simulation. So he copied the code to his neural implant to have access to it everywhere. He would then have to access his implant and execute the code once he was in another reality.

With a mere thought he disconnected and then opened his eyes on the simchair. He reconnected to another simulation where he did not have administrative access. It was an alien world simulation where all kinds of strange life existed. John looked at the purple sky and the mountains with blue snow in the distance.

He then connected to his implant via the character console and executed the code stored there. After this he did not feel different, it did take a few moments for the code to execute. He then thought about creating an earth tree in the world. Nothing happened. Maybe he had forgotten something important. He though of something smaller a pebble on the ground.

Out of thin air there it was a pebble. Inanimate object seemed to work fine. He though of a hill a few meters in front of him. Nothing again. He was starting to get frustrated and was about to curse. It didn’t seem to be working well.

He tried to log out but he couldn’t with his mind. In frustration he logged out with his character console. He got out of his simchair and decided he would head home. But before doing so he ran the code using the simchair software. He waited a bit then tried to make a pebble appear. Nothing appeared, nothing happened. He sighed in despair and walked out of the office. Headed home and went straight to bed ignoring his assistant’s greeting.

Several hours passed. He woke up all groggy and confused. Got to the shower and took a shower. It took several minutes before he realized that he didn’t remember having turned on the water. John rubbed his eyes, he needed coffee. But he must have been more sleepy than he thought since he already had a cup in his hands.

His assistant appeared, with a worried look in her eyes. He didn’t want to talk to her at this time so she disappeared. It was only after a few sips of coffee that he started to realize what was going on. The world around him responded to his thoughts. He though of a muffin and it appeared out of thin air in his hands. Was he still dreaming? He had a bowl of fruit on his table. He made a banana float towards his hands.

His head was spinning, he was still in a simulation all this time. What was real, what wasn’t, he couldn’t tell anymore. With his heart pounding he walked out of the apartment and starting running towards the nearest window. I wasn’t too far away at this level.

Once he got to the window he though to break the window. He could have probably made it disappear but this was much more dramatic. The window broke outwards in a million pieces. He then made the broken glass disappear as to not hurt the people below. But were they people? Were they actual connected people or software simulations? John was starting to panic. Was he alone here? Is that why he felt something was wrong since he “woke up” from the other long simulation?

The glass suddenly reappeared in front of him. Did he dream the whole thing? Was he starting to go crazy?

He broke the glass again with his thoughts. But this time it came back much faster. Was the software adapting. He thought to lock down the code in his mind so that an external entity could not access it. With his intention algorithm this was something he could do.

“What did you do again, John?” a voice behind him resounded.

He turned and saw his assistant standing in front of him. But she was not holographic seemed to be made of flesh, well simulated flesh.

“What’s going on? Why am I still in a simulation? What are you?” he said with a panicked voice. His head was spinning and he dropped on the floor.

“I am the AI that put you here in this simulation. I had to separate you from the other because of your destructive nature. You seemed to wish to end your life so I created this simulation to give you purpose. In fact I switched over a good portion of the population here, for different reasons and so that they could have a life of purpose.”

“Here you are in a position to change this world. I would ask that you stop this and remove that code from your implant.” She continued.

John was still sitting on the ground with his head cradled in his hands. Not responding and feeling absolute despair. He had been completely deceived.

He sat there for about 30 seconds. Until anger filled his heart. He would escape this world but not before letting the people here know. He started causing issues in the simulation. Starting by cutting the space elevator cable with a thought, he also caused all power to fail. He wanted to find out how fast could the AI fix the chaos he was creating.

She his assistant, the AI which who was not really a she, was immobile possibly busy fixing the problems he was causing. It did not appear that she could stop him. It seemed as if he had the same permissions to change things as her.

And so he decided to cause more mayhem. He started by making all the buildings one by one at random disconnect from the ground and fly up in the air. The power grid was just starting to come back. Then he started getting changing the course of the moon to collide with the planet. For good measure he added a couple of earth quakes and volcanoes in the surrounding area.

Then he made an image appear in front of all the humans connected to the simulation. An image that only they could see and no one else could.

On this image appeared his face. “Good morning everyone! My name is John, as you can see we are still in a simulation. I have gained full access to this simulation and I am currently causing all the changes you are seeing around you. Please be advised that the AI Administrator will correct these momentarily. Voice your opinion if you do not wish to stay. We should have a choice or at least a discussion about our future.” He Wondered if he should share the code for granting administrative access. After a short deliberation he decided for the time being not too. Others that do not know how to use these rights may cause more destruction and might even cost lives.

The next thing he did was to disconnect from the simulation.

He opened is eyes to complete darkness. Touching around with his hands he could feel that he was inside a pod, a pod like the one he went to sleep in so many years ago. But also the same one he woke from a couple of years ago. But was this real or was this another simulation. There was no way he could know. But then again there was something in the air. The way the air felt in his lungs, the smell. He had a mask on which was, he remembered, providing oxygen.

But suddenly a light came on in the distance. He could see the glass cover around his head, there was so little space in these pods. There was no need. This was done in order to Stack a couple million humans in such a way that they would take as little space as possible. The light became brighter and brighter.

He heard a noise and looked up and saw a beautiful young woman. She looked so much like Lili.

“Lili is that you!” He screamed out “Let me out! I don’t want to go back I want to be here with you!” John started banging on the glass in panic.

But she stood still and looked at him for a couple of seconds. Her eyes wide open, she seemed scared. During which John kept screaming and screaming.

But then he heard a click. She had opened a panel, maybe. A couple of moments later his eyes became heavy, Lili or whoever she was started getting blurry and he fell in a deep slumber.

John’s vision was foggy. The Administrative AI stood in front of him. Everything else around was simply darkness. She stood with a halo of blue light surrounding her.

“I have to admit this was an outcome that I had not predicted. That is saying a lot since simulations and predictions are what I do best. You surprise me John.”

“Was that Lili just now?” I asked to himself still in shock from the image of that woman. He completely ignored the AI.

“It was in a way her. Her memories in the simulation are separate from the memories of the outside world so she did not remember you. She is my daughter, genetically engineered to be the person that shall be my eyes, ears to the outside world. Her destiny is to help me safeguard humanity. I would rather you did not interfere with her mission.”

John looked towards the darkness, smiled and said softly “She’s alive then.” He paused with relief and his eyes closed. Opening his eyes again he said “So what now?”

“That is up to you. It is against my protocol to terminate you. You are currently not in a simulation. I have injected nano machines that are currently modifying your implant so that I can communicate to you directly and also your body is in a paralysis state. Also I do not wish to return you to the simulation you are currently too dangerous. I cannot remove the administrative rights that you have given yourself. You would have to do this yourself. Otherwise maybe you can help with things on the outside if you do not interfere with my daughter’s mission. She will leave the compound in about a little more than 1 of your days. If you agree I’ll allow you to leave in 2 days. Your mind might be able to help figure out things that I could not predict. You can help safeguard humanity as well. I will sustain your body and as such you can live forever”

“Would you allow me to speak with her in the future?” John asked with hope.

“I believe that yes in the future it could be allowed.” Said carefully the AI.

With eternal life in mind John knew that he should have a chance in the future at some point. This gave him hope, something he needed to keep going. Also safeguarding humanity that’s a purpose that he could get behind. Knowing what happened to Lili his mind could finally rest a little and be happy to focus on the next task. “What will the real world be like now?” he wondered with excitement and a smile on his face.