Steve and Jane walked into the business, labeled Madam Myst’s Hall of Cleansing. The business appeared to be slow, and the decor reminded Steve of a palm reader or occult shop, with elaborate rugs and strange mystical paraphernalia along shelves. It had a darker atmosphere, and the very air felt like it was fully infused with incense.
Just as they were wondering where the exorcist actually was, a taller female Drone, having red eyes and silver paint, walked in, and was startled by their presence. She had garb that matched the mystical theme, having an elaborate hat with a jewel at the center of the front, and flowing red robes, which was all very surprising to see on a Drone. “Oh, my goodness! Sorry, I didn’t realize I had customers. I was doing some cleaning up in the back… how may I help you two?”
Steve was about to make a joke about a fortune teller being surprised at something when he suddenly remembered she was an exorcist, so it didn’t really apply. Instead, Jane stepped forward. “I’m Jane, and this is Steve. We think we have a rogue AI in our systems, and we need it purged.”
“Very well. Please, take a seat.”
Two metal chairs raised from the floor, clashing with their futuristic design against the rest of the room. As they sat down, Myst knel in front of them and adjusted their posture and head position as she asked questions. “So, how long have you been experiencing issues? Can you give me a description of the AI? Do you know its name?”
Steve answered, having more memories of the AI than Jane did. “We don’t know its name, if it has one. We were in a dangerous situation involving Vorpals, and it started flooding my vision with all kinds of odd alerts. But it might be worth noting that, while Jane uses AI, I actually can’t. So that just adds to the mystery.”
Myst froze, suddenly looking Steve right in the eye. “What did you say?”
“I have tried using an AI before, but it just didn’t work. Why? Is that significant?”
The female Drone backed up. “More than you know… tell me, Steve, how much do you understand about this world?”
“That’s a very odd question… are you going somewhere with this?”
The room started to seem strange as the woman walked across the room to pick up a crystal ball. “Trust me, this is very relevant. Do you really know where you are? Who you are?”
As she walked back to him, more strange things began happening. The floor began to crack, and things began falling off the shelves and crashing to the floor as Myst didn’t react at all. He tried turning his head to check if Jane was seeing the same things, but he couldn’t. His eyes were transfixed on an increasingly intense vortex of distortion centered around the crystal ball as the woman approached him, holding it out in front of her. “You’ve been asleep for a long time, Steve… it’s time to wake up.”
Steve gasped as he opened his eyes, panicking as he had no idea where he was. He frantically clambered out of his hospital bed, pulling IVs out of his arm as he knocked over some cart with medical equipment on it, causing some nurses to restrain him and put him back on the bed until he realized the most disturbing part of all. He saw his arm, and it was no longer metal. It was flesh and blood.
He held it up to his eyes, shaking with shock. “What the hell is going on???”
A woman ran in, tears in her eyes as she saw him and covered her mouth. “Oh my god… Steve. You're awake!”
“You know who I am? Who are YOU? Where am I? Why am I human again!?”
The woman pulled up a chair, sitting next to his bed as she waved the nurses away. “Steve… listen to me. You were in a very, very serious accident. You’ve been in a coma for five years. They said you might have some memory gaps, but… I never imagined it would be this bad. Do you… recognize me?”
Steve was having trouble not freaking out. This was too much to take in. “No… no, I don’t remember you. Who are you?”
The woman smiled sadly, eyes red with tears. “I’m your mother. Emily Lyon.”
Steve stared at the woman claiming she was his mother. It couldn’t be true… everything he had seen? Everything he had done? Could it really have all been just a dream?
He stood up. No, something was wrong here. Something felt very, very, wrong. The woman claiming to be his mother stood up as well, talking calmly and patiently to him. “Steve… what do you remember? Anything?”
Steve looked around. For some reason, he felt like he needed to buy time. Things didn’t feel right. “I… I remember my dream, I guess. I was a robot, living in a world with people who could fly and all kinds of other strange creatures. It all seemed so real...”
“No, Steve. None of that was real. You are in the real world right now, and I need you to try to remember. Anything you can tell me about your real memories? The ones before the accident?”
“There… was a fire. Was that it?”
“YES! Yes, that was what happened. Can you remember anything else?”
“Before that, I was working at my job… and there was an auto-correct system I discovered.”
“Of course, you mentioned that before. I remember. But do you remember anything about a voice in your head? Telling you to do certain things?”
Steve paused. He had later learned the auto-correct system applied to not just the digital world, but the physical world. That was revealed just before the fire, and was what led him to learning he was in a simulation at the time. He turned to the woman. “Wait, what do you know about the auto correct system?”
“Um… whatever you told me. Does it really matter that much?”
Steve got in the woman’s face. “The very day I learned about it, I also found out it could affect reality. Which was also how I learned I was in a simulation. So tell me… if it exists in this world, then how? Unless we are in another simulation?”
The woman stumbled over her words before responding. “Steve… you are being paranoid. You are misremembering what the auto-correct system was, it didn’t affect reality.”
Steve walked over to the window, looking outside. It did look like his original simulation, but had sloppy mistakes all over the place. There were roads and parking lots outside, but absolutely no cars. It appeared to be noon. “Where are the cars?”
“...cars?”
Steve was sure his instincts were right now. “Yes, cars. That kind of road I recognize, but they are meant to be driven on with cars. Why do you not know what cars are when roads meant for them are right outside?”
After failing to answer why she didn’t know what cars were, she vanished, and so did the nurses. Even before that happened, Steve had already been noticing other strange inconsistencies, like a lack of furniture in other rooms to match his own. A hospital would have standard equipment everywhere. And now that all people had vanished, his suspicions had been confirmed beyond any remaining doubt. Someone had shoved him in a new simulation, built only to imitate his old one.
A disembodied voice spoke to him. “You are a sharp one, aren’t you? I guess that makes sense, though it makes little difference.”
Steve was irritated at being at the mercy of such sloppy world builders who missed so many obvious details, and his anger bled into his tone as he responded. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“Well now… that’s not a simple thing to answer. Suffice it to say, we know what we want, but getting it from you? That’s the really difficult part, and you made it even harder by catching on so quickly.”
A gray Drone appeared in front of him. It had no features; eyes, mouth, or otherwise. Steve picked up a nearby chair and threw it at him, but it passed harmlessly through the being before fading away entirely. The Drone tilted his head, a bit surprised. “Did you really think that would work?”
“No, but I would hate myself for not trying if I found out later it would have.”
“...Fair enough.”
“So, are you going to level with me, or keep wasting my time?”
“Your time is no longer of any consequence. You will remain here until we extract that AI from your mind. Unfortunately, we can’t keep you unconscious while doing so. We need your mind awake and active, preferably thinking of other things entirely, which is why you simply knowing this isn’t the real world makes tracking through your subconscious more difficult. Jane… we couldn’t have her wondering where you were and snooping around, so we just put her into stasis.”
Steve tried in vain again to punch his captor, falling through the simulated Drone. “You monsters! You aren’t going to get away with this! ” He stood back up, brushing off the simulated dust he had accumulated from the floor with his useless attack. “Why would you want a defective AI anyways? The technology exists to create them, right?”
“You obviously know nothing about how AI are made. Some very basic ones are completely synthetic, but the best ones are simply altered brain scans from the living. They are updated to be more efficient and never act outside certain parameters, but that’s it. Some people get celebrity AI, others have special family owned AI, but all of that is beside the point. That rogue AI? We have no idea where it came from, only that it pops up everywhere.”
The Drone grew more impassioned with each word, beginning to gesture dramatically with his hands. “Sightings of it have actually existed throughout all of recorded history. It’s a persistent little presence, and no one knows how it is transmitted. I’ve heard attempts to stomp it out have been completely unsuccessful, as every time they believe they achieved success, it reemerges somewhere. It does things AI aren’t supposed to do… pressuring specific courses of action, coming up with new and radical ideas, even altering itself. We call it the Esoteric Polymorphic Intelligence Catalyst, or EPIC. But don’t let our playful naming scheme fool you. We want it as a weapon of war. We have seen it actually override a Drone’s controls against their will. That ability alone means every single living Drone in existence could be turned into one of our soldiers. In addition, as the name implies, it has an incredibly high intelligence, and is known for creating entirely new technologies on the spot when under pressure.”
Steve was befuddled. The AI in his head could just override his will? At any time? Why did it act so strangely, making weird and broken requests for access? He shook his head, again trying to make sense of what he was hearing. “You… you can’t do this. It’s unethical… evil. I won’t cooperate with anything you ask!”
The Drone laughed. “Nothing you do or say matters. We will keep you here until we manage to pry that pesky thing out of your mind… but I guess I will leave you with this warning. We’ve tried before with other subjects, without success. They don’t survive failure, and we have no idea if they can survive success. So, make your peace. I make no guarantees on you surviving this.”
The Drone vanished, as Steve realized in abject despair that he was now simply waiting for death.
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Same post on Minds
Note: New installments are released every Sunday. I use predictable urls so I can go beyond a week between posts, since you can't edit a post after a week. This means the "Next" link won't actually lead to anything until this post is a week old. Just wanted to clarify that for those who might be wondering.
Also, if you are enjoying the series, you may want to check out the book I published right here. It is set in the same universe as this story, so some of the characters can show up in that book, and others might show up in later ones.