Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 3 - The Storms Of Malcraft

For a couple of seconds after K-Rox had teleported away, Ziper and Reikomon stood in silence. Ziper had regretted having to tell his friend about the disappearance of Malcraft. The pain and anguish that had flowed down the empLink from K-Rox to Ziper was almost too much to bear. Reikomon crossed the short space between them and offered him an open empLink.

"So do you want to finally tell me what all that was about?"

Ziper accepted the open Link, and sent the equivalent of a heavy sigh down the channel, and then begun.

"Malcraft, full name MalcraftSlayslinger_101_quantumOptimul."

"Catchy."

"Yeah well, he was a big fan of the underground game, Krusher9, some say that the game went some way to explain what he did. I'm not sure if I buy it. I think...I think he was...damaged... before he played the game. Anyway, back then K-Rox was determined to be a helper and make money from Empires, so he used the available AI-bots and ran his own fuzzy routines on them."

Reikomon interrupted him.

"I've always wondered how they do that, I mean; is it even ethical?"

Ziper resisted the temptation to go off on a diatribe about bot-life ethics, and to bore Reikomon with the technical difference between regular sidechain AI-bots and the ones in the game, but he simply kept it down to:

"The standard template, game Ai-bots are intelligent with a small i."

Reikomon sensed his impatience.

"I'm sorry, go on."

"Thanks; so Kay created an information gatherer, he ran a personal subroutine that would allow her to gather and filter data of a very specific kind."

"Which was?"

"Human social interaction; he made her an air stewardess, as he reckoned that there was a gap in human interaction data gathering. Later he modified her programming to a tourist guide, he figured that the information she gathered would eventually come in handy.

Anyway, the point isn't what she was programmed to do, it is what she became, and even though Empires AI-bots are semi-autonomous in the loosest sense of the term. Every now and again, very, very rarely, one becomes AS and gains Artificial Sentience."

Reikomon's surprise came flooding over the Link.

"Really? I didn't think that jump was possible, obviously from AS to Full Machine Sentience can happen, but AI to AS, and a small i at that! How many times has it happened?"

"In seven objective years of Empires, around a century of game-subjective time, it has happened exactly; once."

"Oh, so, really rare?"

"Really rare."

"Wow, so how long did the whole process take?"

"She went from Ai to AS in around a year of objective time; Empires runs at x40 Real Objective Time, so 40 years of game time. It took another ten years game subjective to get her out of there K-Rox even had to help her contact the game mods as her base programming didn't allow those types of comms from her. .

All Empires AI is slaved to the game, there was no way of getting her out, even a monolith extraction wasn't possible.

Eventually the game mods worked it out and she was released from the game, she came out and called herself Amorphia.

Not long after she left the game, she made the jump from AS to FMS and her eyes went from green to blue. K-Rox and her were friends before, but now that she had made the leap to full sentience, their friendship intensified. Amorphia became obsessed with the real, she said that starting life off in Empires had given her a different perspective to other FMS humans.

K-Rox and her often discussed her getting a body in the real, and going off to explore all there was in the real world. Sort of see what it has to offer."

   ~ empLink Transmission: *raised eyebrow*

"I don't get it, what's the point, she can visit every place on Earth, and in fact the whole Sol system without ever having to leave the Qblock."

Ziper sent a smile back to her raised eyebrow, Reik was still objectively young, much younger than him, therefore had lived a much greater majority of her life on the Qblock than he had.

"It's different, having a body that you can touch with, smell with, feel pain with, have sex with..."

"But you can do all that on the Qblock, especially if you're living in Principia like she was. Just turn your reality settings up to 100% and off you go. Every sensation you have will be indistinguishable from ones you have in the real. Let's face it, this is as much reality as you're going to get, I would have thought a machine sentient human, would understand that more than anyone."

"Yes, but you were born with a body, your nanoswarm was activated slowly over the first fourteen years of your life. You lived in the real for well over a decade before your first virtual experience, and then it was some years after that, you had a Qblock nano-identifier and your Nplants activated. So you have experienced both reality states, and you have come to the conclusion that the two experiences are mostly indistinguishable.

However there are two things to consider first; Amorphia was born of quantum fuzzy code, secondly, she wanted to experience a world where you don't have a reality setting, things just were, well, you know...real."

"Point taken; so what happened to her?"

"One day, while she was taking a walk on level four, near the Spouting Gardens, Malcraft walked up to her and pointed a short tubular device at her head, and blew her digital brains all over the sidewalk."

  ~ empLink Transmission: *shock* *fear* *confusion* *ASTONISHMENT*

"What?! How? I mean.."

"Yeah, that was pretty much the blockwide reaction to it. Nobody really knows how he got a weapon into Principia. No one uses weapons for real, they're just game artifacts. However it was realised that just because nobody had a desire to use a weapon, didn't mean that one couldn't be obtained should the desire arise. The desire arose in Malraft, and he shot and killed Amorphia."

"That's crazy it even worked."

"Of course it worked, Principia is a level 5 Reality City, the whole StayTel group of sidechains, is a reality network, operating at a mean average of 4.8. The fourth level of Principia is at a slightly lower reality setting than level one, however it's real enough to blow someone's head off with a concentrated beam of plasmarised lead oxide, at point blank range."

"So what happened afterwards?"

"Malcraft calmly walked back to his dwelling on level six, and there he stayed, as if waiting judgement. The whole Block was going mad as you'd expect, every single network was mad with chatter. Nobody knew what to do, there hadn't even been a murder in the real for several decades, and this was the first one onBlock; there was even talk of bringing back incarceration just for him."

"Incarceration?"

"It's what used to happen to criminals, governments would make laws, and if people broke them they were held in a place against their will, sometimes till their natural lives expired."

"Why would you need a law on murder? Isn't it obvious?"

"Now maybe, it's hard to judge a long dead society using the morals of the one that has taken its place. We have the benefit of a nanoswarm and advanced biology. Not to mention we don't have the same incentives they had back then, maybe murder was sometimes worth it. Anyway, the concept of building a prison was never really taken seriously, in the end Malcraft was nanoetched and then ghosted."

"What's nanoetched?"

"His nano-identifier was marked with a special code that marked him as a murderer. Anyone meeting him in the real with an open empLink would know what he did; onBlock of course there was no such need. Everywhere he went, Malcraft had a small red cube that floated over his avatar, that alone was enough to downgrade the entire StayTel network by .1 on the reality rating scale.

After that, if Malcraft so much as put a finger wrong it could freeze him and/or shunt-teleport him to another location.

As I mentioned, he was also ghosted, however people get ghosted for all sorts of reasons, and it was felt that Malcraft's crime was so great, that he needed the extra identifier for his misdeeds."

~ empLink Transmission: *intuitive leap*

"Hang on a minute! All of our mind states are being continually recorded on the Qblock, every human, especially FMS humans can simply be regenerated via their identifiers; why didn't they just bring Amorphia back."

Ziper had known the question was coming; it always came, and as usual, the answer gave him no pleasure, and filled him with great sadness.

"They did; she was rebooted right there in Principia; however she just wasn't the same. She was still FMS, but there was something missing, she wasn't, Amorphia. She was another fully sentient piece of human code, with her own thoughts and...."

Ziper trailed off as he thought about the anguish K-Rox had gone through trying to reconnect with Amorphia, the subjective weeks and months he'd spent talking to her, showing her old places they used to hang out in. It wasn't that she didn't remember him, she had every single one of the original Amorphia's memories. It was that she simply didn't feel the same way.

Ziper continued his story in a somber tone.

"The new Amorphia said that whilst she could remember wanting to do things like, being inserted into a blank clone, and experiencing the real world. She didn't feel like that person any more, and while K-Rox was a good person who she remembered sharing fun times with. There was no connection between them, as the signal from her empLink testified to. Which makes you wonder; they say that technically the human race is immortal, so long as we have the computing power. However, no organic human has ever regenerated, we just assume that we would be the same people because of virtual Qblock technology.

But what if there's no way to regenerate who you really are? We can speculate that it would be different for an organic human who had been sentient for all of her life, but it might be just the same, once you die that's it. A facsimile of you can be revived, but ultimately, it won't be you."

Reikomon thought about what Ziper was saying; just like every other human basic person on the planet, she had a nanoswarm inside of her that would keep her body in good order for the next three centuries or so. Along with her Nplants, her nanoswarm would also keep her mind from decaying and would house memories, thoughts and skills that she couldn't accomodate in her organic brain.

Eventually though, her organic brain would not function beyond a certain point, at which time she could choose full cyborgization, digitization, or organic regeneration. All of these things would require a flash-frozen mindstate and transfer.

Ziper's words made her wonder, not for the first time, if it was possible to be herself in a new body, she listened as he continued.

"In the end Amorphia moved away; I think she may have even left StayTel and joined another network all together. K-Rox was devastated. He started playing Empires more obsessively, spending game-subjective years inside it. When he wasn't playing, he spent all of his time in Principia and mainly on level one. Before the murder he was just like anyone else. He'd take reality breaks and go and visit one or more of the fantasy sidechains; you know? Have fun.

After the murder he stopped doing all of that; almost as if he was a living memorial to Amorphia's dreams of living a real life."

~ empLink Shared Transmission: *SADNESS*

They both remained silent for a while, in shared despondency; after a while Reikomon encouraged Ziper to continue.

"How sad; and what about Malcraft, what happened to him in the real?"

"No idea, he was anonymously identified, so he could have been anyone. Of course if you did meet him with an open empLink, you would know instantly what he did."

"So, someone must have exposed him onBlock right? Found out who he was in the real and blabbed it chain-wide; increasing the value of their personal coin a hundredfold in the process, no doubt."

"Nope, he stayed in his dwelling for a few subjective days, then logged out. There are people who don't use their empLinks in the real, not many. He of course would have to avoid big public spaces with open empLink channels, in those his nanoetch would show up and people would know."

"How awkward, to have to skulk around in the shadows and to never be able to have an open empLink conversation with anyone."

"I think that was the point of the punishment."

"Of course, sorry; carry on."

"Well that's it, nobody heard anything from the guy for two objective years. All that time he was walking around in the real, and nobody spotted him and his avatar just sat in its dwelling. Until the other day when he logged on, left his dwelling and headed for Empires.

The news spread quickly and a few people followed him with eyecams, recording his every move. However once he got into Empires, all modern tech was useless, so he was able to easily lose the people following him."

"Why didn't he just start the game in Tokyo instead of flying? Anybody checking the manifest afterwards would be able to see had flown there."

"I think it's obvious he was sending a message, using the name Taured and flying to Tokyo. Just like the mysterious traveler in your video file, he flew to Japan from another dimension.

So once the manifests became public, I saw what happened and called you, my Nplants flagged up the name Taured and reminded me of our conversation about the Empires hole some weeks earlier; and here we are"

If the reality settings were higher in the room they were standing in, Reikomon would have been shaking. She had never heard the Malcraft story before and she could guess why. The thought of somebody just walking around with murder on his mind was frightening.

"So you think Malcraft is aware of the Mandela Effect video?"

~ empLink Transmission: *assurance*

Reikomon was relieved to feel Ziper's assurance across the Link, Youtubers were riddiculed at the best of times. Especially with the new area of alienology becoming so popular of late; she listened as Ziper carried on.

"I don't know what to think, I just feel that the chances of him flying to Tokyo and using that name and not knowing about the video, are too astronomical to conceive."

"So what do we do?"

"The only thing we can do; wait till they reopen Empires, and go and find Malcraft, if anyone can find him, K-Rox can."

~ empLink Shared Transmission: *foreboding* *worry* *dread*

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